Innocent Little Hats

Sometimes a good blog post just kinda falls into your lap (figuratively speaking) over a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch and a good cup of half-caf Starbucks coffee (that last part is much less figurative).

Anyway about a week and a half ago I joined Ravelry.com, an awesome online networking site dedicated to knitters and crocheters and otherwise fiber-crazed people. It's a great site, and as well as connecting its users to one another, it's also a great tool for keeping track of what, for many of us, is a quite complex web of yarn and patterns and needles and projects. Everything is connected to wikis, and the site makes it really easy to, say, look at a pattern and see what yarn other users have used for the same project. Then you can see pictures of how that project turned out in the alternative yarn. This is particularly helpful to me.

The search function is also great, because you can say, "I remember seeing these awesome knitted cupcakes in XYZ store. I wonder if I can make them." Then you just search for "cupcake" and you get this. (I realize that you might not be able to see these links if you're not a Ravelry user, but just trust me, it's cool.)

Anyway, I was reading the user-created Ravelrly weekly newsletter this morning and found out about the Big Knit campaign by Innocent Drinks, who make the best bottles juices and smoothies in all of England. I miss them like crazy, and I miss their labels which said things in the ingredients list like the number of cranberries used and that there was a big woolly jumper (think: sweater) in the juice bottle. Ha.

So every year Innocent sponsors a hat drive, and everyone knits tiny little hats that fit on the smoothie bottles. Innocent sells the bottles in Sainsbury's and donates 50p for each hatted smoothie to a charity, this year it's Age Concern.

It's a funny little idea, but totally cute. So check it out:


thebigknit2008

In other news, I went to a Cookout for Change yesterday, sponsored by the Obama campaign. It was crazy hot outside (for September in the mountains, what gives?) but there was free food and free beer and general coolness.

We also booked our wedding photographer, which was a really exciting step. You can see her photo blog here. She was referred to us by one of our friends who used to work for her, and I'm so psyched about our coming engagement shoot and having her shoot our wedding. Her work is gorgeous and so are the albums she puts together and sells.

Last weekend we went to Charlotte to take care of some wedding plans, and we got SO much done: wedding dress picked out; bridesmaid dress picked out; invitation design initiated; dishes chosen; guest list discussed; centerpieces rehearsed and approved; and photographers narrowed down (and then chosen on Wednesday). As much as I really want to show you pictures of the things we chose, that would be cheating and I want everyone to be surprised at the event. I'm getting more excited every day.

A new look, a new life

I got engaged about a month ago… to be exact it was 41 days ago, minus about 5 hours. And it was fantastic. So needless to say I'm looking at some pretty big changes in my life, with graduating and finding a real job and getting married. I'm hoping for a geographical change too, even though right now I'm not sure if that will be toward NYC for publishing, toward Asheville for a hippe-esque life of mountainous bliss, or toward the West Coast for a lifestyle transformation I can't possibly imagine. Who knows?

This Lent season I gave up television, which I realize now was a fantastic decision. I read a lot during those six and a half weeks, and since Easter I've spent much too much time watching CSI and the like. I enjoy them because they're interesting and yet not too engaging. So I turn them on for background noise and end up watching for several hours. I'm hoping this will stop now that my roommate has taken the futon out of my room. I've also discovered that when I feel like watching TV I would really much rather listen to NPR. Yep, I've become one of those people that begins every sentence with, "So I heard this thing on NPR…" Instant plus in the dorkdom department.

I've also been watching a lot of movies this semester. I've been taking a class about identity in European cinema and have watched I-don't-even-know-how-many films for that. Plus I've been writing film reviews for The Daily Tar Heel, so that adds another one or two films each week. You learn a lot, watching so many films and reading so many books — not that that's any sort of profound statement, I have just come to appreciate my rediscovery of it all.

This week I discovered (without the 're,' because I'm being honest) the music of Joe Strummer and The Clash with the film Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten. For a full review you'll have to wait until Thursday's issue of the DTH. But I will say that the film was fantastic and quite eye opening, and I just bought the whole soundtrack. Like the film, the soundtrack is arranged in a sort of radio-show style, using recordings from Strummer's New Hour show.

This month has been about learning to appreciate what's out there, and learning how much there is left to discover.