Frogs and films

Mr. Four Square was much happier about this state of affairs than I was (the dining room table at the house I babysit at on a Tuesday night is made from a giant old Four Square sign - I don't know if I've linked to this before but there was an article about the house in NZ House and Garden a few years ago, it's a bit more child-friendly now, e.g. no more vases at two year old height, but still full of heaps of cool retro NZ things).

I decided to frog the scarf I started knitting a few weeks ago because something I had thought I could live with when I first noticed it became too annoying. What's more annoying is that I'd done the same thing before and forgotten that lesson (it was over a year ago though). Basically if you want to do a border and you're doing some kind of alternate pattern inside the border (like rib or moss stitch, which isn't so much a pattern but whatever) you need the amount of stitches inside the border to be uneven othewise the border is going to look wider on one end. I had 34 stitches and I was knitting K K (the border) K P (x15) K K (the other end of the border). Even looking at it written down, it's obvious that there are three Ks in a row on one end and ultimately that makes it look like the border is 3 stitches wide on one end and only 2 stitches wide on the other end when it's supposed to be 2 stitches wide on both ends. Are you asleep yet? I'm not, I just have a headache. I am not good at maths or imagining how things will look. Hence the ripping out. Now I need to start again and make it go K K, P K (x 14), P, K K.

In unrelated news, it seems like it has been movie o'clock lately, so in brief:

The last two classic movie Sundays have actually been Saturdays. One was Cry Baby which I didn't know anything about except that a young Johnny Depp was in it. It was strange and funny.

The other was Kramer vs. Kramer. This had a young Meryl Streep in it and she was a total babe. I also really like Dustin Hoffman, although the first scene with him and his son made me worried he was just going  to do a toned-down version of his strange character from The Graduate. I had a few secret tears towards the end when he's telling his son the outcome of the court case, even though I had already guessed what the actual ending was going to be.

On Sunday Kate and I watched Like Water for Chocolate which we had been meaning to do for ages, ever since we realised earlier in the year that we'd both recently read the book. I'm not sure what the movie would be like if you hadn't read the book first and didn't know that it's style is basically magic realism. But it's very beautiful - the landscape, the colours, some of the costumes - and in Spanish which adds to the exoticism of being set in Mexico. The trouble with seeing a film based on a book is I immediately went, 'I didn't imagine Mama Elena looked like that at all' and kept thinking that the whole way through. But it's a very faithful adaptation of the book - the book's author wrote the screenplay which always helps - and I loved the actress who played Tita. The hair of the actor who played Pedro was ridiculous.

And I can't remember when, I think one night two weeks ago, but I saw The Help at the movies and really enjoyed it. It's pretty long but even I, who am a chronic watch-checker, didn't feel like it dragged at all. I can't believe Emma Stone is only 22. She was great. Her costumes were an excellent contrast to the shiny, bright, florals of the Southern belles. And I loved the character of Minny. As for giving a child the first name 'May Mobley': Why? Whyyyy?