I've had my ticket for Sunday night's showing of this movie for over a month, and have been getting more and more excited. Partly because it's Shakespeare, partly because it's my favourite play, and partly because it's JOSS WHEDON.

Such a lovely idea: finding a spare few weeks in the schedule, getting a gang of friends and colleagues together, and filming a play in your own house and garden - of course, in California there's no problem with the weather.

I'm sorry - Agent Coulson and Captain Tightpants in the same movie had me squeeing with the best of them.

And it was lovely. The Pictureville cinema was nearly full with a beautifully responsive audience. We laughed at the funny bits, smiled at the witty wordplay, and gasped at the betrayals and cruelty, even those of us who knew they were coming.

There were a couple of instances of gender-change, one of which (Conrade) was used to make an excellent point of dependence upon Don John. It was lovely to see Sean Maher playing someone so different from Simon Tam. And speaking of Firefly, Nathan Fillion was in a fat suit (at least, I hope he was in a fat suit) and played pompous and foolish beautifully.

Oddly, I found Benedick unappealing, both from a physically attractive and also from a language point of view. And it wasn't that he was American - all the actors here were American, and the speaking was beautiful throughout. He just didn't appeal to me. And much was made of Benedick and Beatrice's past history - his cruelty to her was clearly shown, which rather made him look shallow and her needy.

Clark Gregg was just lovely, lovely, lovely. Echoes of Phil Coulson were there, along with his avuncularity and affection to his lord, his daughter and his niece.

Putting it into modern dress immediately brought up the problem of dealing with the background story of battle and lordships. This was replaced with the idea that there was a Mafiosi background to the characters going on - it explained the weapons the men were carrying (guns in shoulder holsters, not swords) and the easy reverting to fighting and threatening.

It's had a very limited release since the premiere in Glasgow in February, and Whedon himself has said that he wasn't expecting it to have any sort of distribution at all. But I do believe it will be on much wider release in June - I shall go again.

One of the best movies I've seen for ages, and I'm not just saying this as a Whedon-fan, a Shakespeare-lover, or geek.

I've been keeping an accidentally felted sweater for ages to make something like these with it. Naturally, last night, I couldn't find the dratted thing. So just now I've had a quick and dirty go at making sewn slippers with a remnant of fulled grey wool.



I shall definitely have another go at these, making them a little more carefully, and probably with embellishment. The pattern I found had two upper pieces and one lower - I made it up double so the ankle edge is a seam and it's double thickness.



Lovely and snug. Very comfy. I need more.

I've been on the waiting list for an allotment at either of the two allotment sites in Esholt for eight years, and in September we finally heard that we'd come to the top of the list and were allocated Plot 4 at the Esholt Lane site. Yay. Paperwork arrived and was completed and returned in December.

Of course the weather's been bad this year, but it's taken until now to get hold of a key to the site. It's securely locked and there is no access without a key. I've been hassling (in a nice way) the allotment person at Bradford Council since January, and eventually she gave the contact person of the holders on this site my correct phone number this week.

So I popped down this afternoon to meet Diana and be given a key - for which I had to pay £5.50. Of course, this key didn't work, and she's had to take it back and get me another re-cut. But I asked them to unlock the site for me so I could nip in and take a few photographs.



This plot was apparently beautiful a while ago, but hasn't been touched for a couple of years. Quite how this equates to an eight-year waiting list if there are empty plots for a year or two I don't know!


The raspberry canes - still producing lots of fruit last year, when I looked over the wall, and these will probably be left. It's so late in the year that I really haven't got time for anything but a couple of raised beds this year, and putting in some herbs and a few already started plants.


Strawberry plants, I think. Again, will probably be left to see what happens. There are at least two rhubarb crowns that I spotted just coming up too.


Lots and lots of work needs doing here. And of course it's just getting busy with the wool shows and teaching and everything else. Oh well, I'll get some dye plants in here too.

Finally got around to finishing (and starting) the Iron Age/Viking/Anglo-Saxon generic trews I was commissioned to make, to go along with the tunic I made around Christmas for a Swordfest chum.

I thought I'd got plenty of fabric left from the fulled chestnut-coloured wool I bought from The Shuttle. Oops - this is what I had left:


I had to piece the bottom of one leg:


And even the gusset had an unusual seam down the middle:


But it's all finished, completely handsewn with linen thread:


It took lots of fabric - it's made for a gentleman with a 51" waist, and long enough to fold over once it's tied around with a belt. The belt loops may have to be moved, so they're only tacked on (but firmly enough to stay if they're OK).

Now, off to the post with it.

An excellent day yesterday at the BM.  For a change a cancelled train worked in my favour - I noticed my 0845 train out of Leeds had been cancelled just before the previous 0815 went, and was directed to get on that one.  My London dayrover was operative form 0930, so all was well and I ended up at the BM earlier than I expected.

I wasn't due in to the Ice Age Art exhibition until 1430, so I toddled up to the first floor Europe galleries, started off in the Medievel bit, and then happily found myself in the Prehistoric British through to the Romans in Britain.



I decided to take a sketchbook rather than a camera, and see what took my eye.

This was a small bronze from Afghanistan:


Completely accidental that the first two things that caught my eye were dragons.



Just liked the outline of this - a little Chinese jade deer cutout.

Saw my usual favourites - the Battersea Shield, Snettisham Hoard. The Sutton Hoo treasure wasn't around and it's spot is being remodelled. And the things that give me the creeps that I try and avoid - the Mold gold cape.

Into the main exhibition at 1430, and it just blew me away. Amazing. I was in there for two hours and it seemed like minutes. Very busy, and there were quite a few of us drawing, so we just had to take our time and wait to get to the right angles around the cases.









Very poor at the moment, so I couldn't afford the catalogue - I shall have to mail order it when I can. As it is, I bought two cups of tea in the museum (very good from the Great Court cafe), another one back at King's Cross (just to get somewhere to sit down because my legs were killing me by then) and the little booklet about the swimming stags carving.

Among other things, the prints gallery had an excellent display of early 19thC watercolours and sketches of Greece. This was particularly fascination - the Greece that Byron and Elgin knew, where the ruins were just part of everyday live. Costumes and landscapes are beautifully shown. Spent longer than I expected in here - so Romantic in the capitalised use of the word.

Then I popped up to the Japanese gallery, which I hadn't visited before. More prehistoric stuff than I was expecting, and a rather lovely Ainu coat.

Then back to my old favourites - the Elgin Marbles themselves, the Alexander room, the Mausoleum, and best of all - the Mycenean and Minoan sections. I was tired by now, so the sketch of the tiny bronze bull and his leaper isn't worth showing. But I said hello to the Master of Animals in the Aigina Treasure, and looked at all the tiny and brilliant seals.

Long, long journey home - or at least it seemed like it. Fair bit of knitting done both ways. And I must do some more drawing - I need to practice more. But I really enjoyed drawing rather than photographing - you *look* at things much more when you draw. I'm very pleased with the sandstone horse and mammoth-ivory bison.

Django Unchained. Loved it lots and lots, and I'm not normally a Tarantino fan. Perhaps because the violence was quite so cartoony, and the eye-gouging was actually now shown, just heard? Only thing that worried me was the whole underlining of the parallels between Django and Broomhild and their mythic counterparts, Siegfried and Brunhilde. Given what happened to Siegfried and Brunhilde, it really doesn't bode well for the long term happiness of the eponymous hero. (Except that Tarantino said that he supposed him to be the ancestor of Shaft, hence Broomhilda's surname of von Shaft. Excellent fun, regardless.

Zero Dark Thirty. Huge expectations with this one.  Not disappointed in the least. One of the few movies that I actually forgot to breathe in (which happens to me occasionally when I am completely involved in something - it doesn't last long!) The only other recent movie that this happened to me recently is Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.   It's a massive compliment to both movies, because it's not as if we don't know what happens at the end.  Bigelow is so impressive in that she just shows things without directing us to feel a specific emotion, which is not what another, more gung-ho, director would have done (Ridley Scott, I'm looking at you!)

But oddly, the thing that came most to mind while I was thinking about this afterwards was an Ursula le Guin story from 1974, Those Who Walk Away From Omelas.  Given the state of Maya at the end of the movie, the price of freedom in the West is just as harsh, in some ways, as the child in the cellar in Omelas.

And off to London tomorrow, to see the Ice Age Art exhibition at the British Museum.  Completely broke at the moment, so it's just as well I bought my entry and train tickets back before Christmas.  Really, really excited about this - prehistoric art really touches something very deep in me.  I can just about afford the catalogue, and a cup of tea on the train home!

A friend of mine at the gym has given me a pair of jeans that don't flatter her (amazing how the cut of such a basic garment can vary so wildly!) because she thought they might fit.  These jeans (black, straight leg, expensive) are a size 12, so I thought she was a bit optimistic.  No, they fit - so the ridiculous amount of exercise and watching what I eat is working better than I thought; I'm losing size if not much weight.

We went to a Burns' Night Supper up at the gym on Friday evening; a step class first, and then we went to the supper as a group. Nearly didn't get home either! Snow had been forecast and it began as we were settling down, and it snowed and snowed. Many people (mostly the golfists) left after the food, so the quiz was cancelled, but the ceilidh band kept going and so did we. I made Mark dance rather than prop up the bar, and as the only man in a kilt he won the 'best dressed man contest' and was presented with a large bottle of Glenfiddich.

Having winter tyres on our little van, we weren't too worried about getting home, but it was hairy nonetheless. By the time we left, 11-ish, the police had apparently closed the road (Hollins Hill) that the hotel is on, but we carefully and slowly pottered down the drive (ploughed but still a couple of inches covered) and straight on to the main road. Being just at the bottom of the hill, we didn't have a problem, though quite a few people had to stay at the hotel.

Earlier in the afternoon I'd been to York to see the new Bishop of Beverley consecrated. Beautiful music in the Minster, but I'm still not quite convinced that working in York will be feasible. It will be lovely to work there, and I think I'll get on well with the new bishop as a boss, but it's going to cost about £150 a month more than my current travel expenses, and I don't believe that this difference is going to be paid for long. But I got lunch out of it too!

But after all that snow, the weather warmed up rapidly on Saturday and on Sunday it was positively spring-like. I took the pupz down to the river and nature reserve to see how far and how fast the river was rising. It was over the footpath by a couple of inches, but the wind had suddenly died down, the sky was blue, and it was lovely.

I have been busy repairing socks. There were a couple of pairs that have been sitting around since before Christmas waiting for a bit of work; when another pair developed a hole, I spent last night watching The Hurt Locker on the telly and darning.



The sock at the bottom was constructed with a separate heel, so I was able to pick up stitches around the hole and reknit a new heel on top of the shreds of the previous one.



Mark is living in his Cobblestone at the moment. I made his Cobblestone in Jan/Feb 2008 (surprised at this, but Ravelry comes to the rescue again) and Mark practically lives in it. It's not a particularly good quality yarn - a cone of navy pure wool I bought on eBay - and it has worn very thin at the underarm stress points and there was a large hole under one. So I darned it. And strengthened the about-to-go spot on the other side. I shall have to knit him another one of these days, it's by far his favourite sweater.

NB - I've always thought that if you're going to mend something carefully and well, you might as well make it visible so that others can appreciate it. Invisible mending has its place, but I prefer to show it off.

Night Writing

Only a neat margin of moonlight
there at the curtain’s edge.
The room like a dark page.
I lie in bed.

Silence is ink.
The sound of my breath dips in
and out. So I begin
night writing. The stars type themselves
far out in space.

Who would guess,
to look at my sleeping face,
the rhymes and tall tales I invent?
Here be dragons; children lost
in the wood; three wishes; the wicked
and the good.

Read my lips.
The small hours are poems.
Dawn is a rubber.