A scarf for the long haul

I’ve been doing the Oscar Death Race—watching every Oscar-nominated movie before the ceremony—for the past two years. I see many of them because of my job, so February and March are mainly for some catch-up. Some of the animated shorts were great, and so was Ireland’s submission for best international feature, The Quiet Girl. But those were rare exceptions because at least one Blonde is standing in the wings for every Quiet Girl, which leads me to question why I do this to myself.

With awards season over, I’ve pivoted to more captivating fodder: Racing against time to finish my Succession binge. Or, as my friend Shan put it in our Succession group dm, “half-serious Arrested Development, no notes.” And catching up on the other TV shows that I fell behind while trying to catch up with Succession.

The Knit: Mineral Wrap

Pattern: Purl Soho

Yarn: Purl Soho Burnish in Prussian Blue; Purl Soho Mineral Silk in Starry Night

During my first year living in New York, I’d occasionally visit Purl Soho, a high-end yarn shop in the heart of SoHo¹ , so I could figuratively drool over all of the shop’s displays. The store-brand yarn is pricey—a rare splurge for me—but it’s a great resource if you’re looking for free patterns. I also went to a few of the monthly Knit Nights, where a bunch of primarily 20-and-30-somethings sat around a table, munched on snacks, and worked on whatever they brought with them.

Sometimes, I went alone. Other times, I went with my aunt because we were in the area. On one of those occasions, Purl Soho had a long scarf called the Mineral Wrap on display. Like many of its sample knitted items in the store, Purl Soho had ready-made kits with the allotted amount of yarn. The Mineral Wrap kit came with three Burnished skeins (sport-weight) and two Mineral Silk skeins (lace-weight ).

I was drawn to it because I thought the scarf looked cool as hell. It was also incredibly sparkly, and yes, I’m a fickle creature with knitwear sometimes. Unfortunately, the kit was out of my price range, but it was close to Christmas, so I mentioned it to my aunt in case she needed gift ideas. Lo and behold, Christmas arrives, and I receive the kit as a gift. But the early warning signs that the scarf might be more trouble than it’s worth were there. When I got the kit, my aunt warned me to be careful with the Mineral Silk yarn because it twisted and knotted with almost no effort involved; an employee’s attempt to wind a skein of Mineral Silk got so tangled up that she had to toss out the skein entirely and start over.

A few months later, COVID happened, and I opened the kit because we’ll be stuck inside for a while. According to my Moleskine notebook that I use to keep track of knitting projects, I started on April 6, 2020, and I’m still working on it. If you’ve seen any of my wrap-up Instagram posts, it’s my one consistent WIP over the past three years.

For me, the Mineral Wrap is a minor nightmare. First, it involved casting on 468 stitches because each row consists of the entire scarf length, and you’re knitting to extend the width. (Usually, you cast on for width and knit the length.) That means it’s a much bigger pain in the ass to go back and fix mistakes—and because it’s such a simple pattern logistically, it can be easy to zone out and make mistakes. I hate how the slip stitches look. I’m making mistakes on a pattern that only consists of knit stitches, which bugs the perfectionist in me. And Mineral Silk might be the most frustrating yarn I’ve ever worked with. It’s why this scarf has been perched on my desk for the past three years instead of stored in a tote bag, and if Purl Soho didn’t already discontinue Mineral Silk, I’d tell you to stay as far away from it as possible.

Could I have frogged the whole thing and trashed it? Sure! But it was a gift. I try not to waste yarn in general. And I’ve committed so much time and yarn to this damn thing—I’ve already gone through two full skeins so far, and I’m close to finishing a third—that I almost have to see it through now.

The Flick: Labyrinth

Streaming: Netflix; Tubi (with ads)

Like Willow, Labyrinth is one of those ’80s-era sci-fi/fantasy movies designed to traumatize an entire generation of kids that I never got around to watching when it would’ve equally fascinated and scared the shit out of me. But between a recent knitting project for someone who’s a massive fan of Labyrinth and David Bowie’s Jareth the Goblin King and the movie leaving scheduled to leave Netflix at the end of March, I decided to change that.

And just…wow. Even though I’ve seen GIFs and out-of-context snippets of the movie floating around the internet for years, none of that prepared me for that first shot of Bowie on the windowsill with his sparkly cloak and the curtains billowing around him. It’s majestic, entirely over the top, and horny as hell, and once you factor in the rest of the movie tripling down on the camp, I’m a bit floored by it.

Sure, you could argue it’s a mishmash of several stories—e.g., The Wizard of Oz and Snow White, shown in Sarah’s (Jennifer Connolly) bedroom at the beginning of the film—but it’s exhilarating and inventive, and the puppetry is top-level. As a Jim Henson/Muppets fan, honestly surprised it took me this long to watch it, but better late than never!

What I’m Reading

• How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu: A series of short stories that examine the aftermath of a mysterious and ancient plague being released into the world because of climate change that showcases the hopefulness that emerges amid a world ravaged by grief and tragedy. Structured similarly to A Visit from the Goon Squad and Sea of Tranquility, it has shades of The Leftovers and Station Eleven.

• Oscar Wars: A History of Hollywood in Gold, Sweat, and Tears by Michael Schulman: Between my job and years of listening to You Must Remember This, I’m captivated by this kind of Hollywood history. I’m not far into it (I’m just a few chapters in), but I’m seeing family for Easter soon and taking this bad boy with me.

Shameless Plugs

• Daisy Jones & The Six the show? It’s aggressively fine. (And also way too squeaky-clean for the story it’s trying to tell.) But Daisy Jones & The Six’s in-universe, seminal album Aurora, which actually exists? A non-zero chance it’ll heavily feature in my end-of-year Apple Music Replay.

• Now that awards season is over, here is a look back on all the Academy Award-winning and nominated movies I got to write about over the past year: Aftersun, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, The Banshees of Inisherin, Causeway, Everything Everywhere All At Once, The Fabelmans, Fire of Love, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, Navalny, TÁR, Turning Red, The Whale, and Women Talking.

• Two shows I recently reviewed, Shadow and Bone season 2 and Ted Lasso season 3, have the same overarching issue: They’re trying to juggle too many characters and plots simultaneously. However, one of them is more successful at those efforts.

• I’d also highly recommend Rye Lane (a Sundance favorite, now streaming on Hulu!) and Yellowjackets season 2, which I’m enjoying so far.

Knit-Date: Ixchel Cowl²

My biggest fear around making the Ixchel Cowl was that I would fuck up the tension, and it wouldn’t fit. And yes, I fucked up the tension a bit (some of my floats are too long), but after I finished the entire thing and blocked it, it fit! A miracle upon miracle!

If you want to see more cowl photos (including some progress pics), I’ve got a project page on Ravelry and posted the cowl on Reddit.

Knitwear of the Week

Knit: A grayish-brown honeycomb cable-knit sweater perfect for deep-oceanic exploration in the middle of the Atlantic.

Worn By: Brock Lovett (Bill Paxton), the roguishly charming pirate treasure hunter whose discovery of a safe in the wreckage of the Titanic kicks things off in Titanic.

Costume Designer: Deborah Lynn Scott

Look. If people had mentioned to me that a very hot, in his prime Bill Paxton donned a cable-knit sweater in Titanic—and that he looked fine as hell in it—a hell of a lot sooner, it probably wouldn’t have taken me 25 years to see this damn masterpiece. My only complaint about Titanic, which I caught for the first time during the recent 3D re-release for its 25th anniversary on Valentine’s Day, is the headache the format gave me afterward.

Want to nominate your own Knitwear of the Week?

I’m now offering you a chance to nominate your favorite piece of cinematic knitwear. I’ve got more information about what I’m looking for here. So if you’ve got one, send an email over to [email protected] with your pick!

1  Purl Soho shut its doors when COVID hit New York, but while other yarn shops in the city reopened, Purl Soho kept its brick-and-mortar store closed. You can still buy yarn from them on their website.

2  The initial version of this newsletter went out without the photo attached, an error I blame on Grammarly glitching on me and leading to an accidental removal on my end. I have now fixed that, at least on-site.