Knitting A Skirt Using Scrap Yarn

[trovia]

For something completely different, I just posted a knitting pattern for a skirt that I made on Tumblr. Thought I'd share, because a) it's a very pretty skirt indeed and I'm very proud of my freestyle knitting :p and b) maybe one of you will have use for it, too.

The Tumblr post is here, featuring bigger pictures.

Comments

[roguedemon]

Heh, I am back home and my husband is traveling for business this week (he normally works at home, he's a technology consultant, but sometimes clients want him on-site) and I am taking a day of from life. One of my best friends had emergency quadruple-bypass surgery last week, and I have been alternately freaking out about him almost dying and trying to be as supportive as possible, and freaking out about my own mortality. We met my freshman year of college, he's my age. I don't know when we got so old.

So, more thoughts. I really loved all your SC ficlets. Regarding the reading, I loved getting a glimpse into their reading habits. I think Haymitch could have really gone places if he had the chance for a real education. I see him as very gruff and practical, no patience for fanciful stuff. I actually think Finnick has a more sentimental side that has been pretty much beaten out of him. But unlike Haymitch, he likes people in general and I think would be more interested in reading about fictional lives. When I used to study emotion and cognition, I came across some theories that talked about how fiction (whether literature, Tv, heater, etc.) allows us to get emotionally invested and feel things that we wouldn't get to experience that often in our RL. Basically, we are wired to feel and fiction lets us express that in a healthy manner, rather than rushing off to create drama in our own lives. I also feel that there is often more emotional truth in fiction taking place in a fantasy setting than in a supposed "real" setting that doesn't get the details right. So I totally see a Finnick getting into Sci-Fi or historical fiction types of settings, which in Panem probably means everything set before the Dark Days, whatever books he finds on the black market. It would be a good release for him because it would be removed from his RL. Maybe he and Haymitch borrow each other's books when they get desperate. Haymitch might be into a well-plotted thriller/mystery.

I can totally see them occasionally watching bad Capitol movies just to make fun of them (My husband and. I do that with the Twilight movies -- unintentional comedy gold). However, they need to take care to avoid anything poor Finnick has been forced to make a cameo appearance in (there are probably some really bad Distict four-themed rom-comes out there). And that one old movie Haymitch was in. ;) God, there are probably a whole bunch of movies with people playing Finnick Odair.

[trovia]

Ugh, I hope your friend is going to be fine. ♥

I think Haymitch is very smart. I loved in Millari's fic about his meeting with Beetee - I don't know if she's posted that yet - how Beetee immediately latches on to how smart Haymitch is, judging by the way he won. And if Beetee thinks so, he really must be very smart.

I wouldn't say that Finnick is more interested in people's lives than Haymitch. Quite the opposite, actually. Haymitch is freakishly good at reading people, as we know from canon - this actually comes up in the chapter I just posted - and Finnick just isn't. Finnick has been forced to become very attuned to what other people think and feel, but I think this stems from an anxiety that he developed because he's not a natural at it. He constantly looks for cues but he can't always figure it out, especially if he's looking for the wrong cues. This is also one reason why Haymitch's sexual preferences are currently leaving him so flummoxed. Haymitch, on the other hand, notices everything, files everything away. I think he has a lot of natural empathy, which is one of the reasons the mentoring was getting to him the way it did. He never had Finnick's ability of looking at his tributes as the female and the male. They were always people, and they always died, and it was always his fault.

Basically, we are wired to feel and fiction lets us express that in a healthy manner, rather than rushing off to create drama in our own lives.

Loving this thought. You would have greatly enjoyed the conversation I had with my therapist about my writing. Took her a while to catch on to what's so fun about it. I said, "I like people with problems, with communication issues, who figure out to connect with people." She said, "Oh. So this is like role playing in children's therapy." And it totally is. (I wrote one porny fic in my life, in the Chuck fandom. It was about a character who learned that his partner has this really obscure, slightly icky kink. But he's such a loving and giving person that he sets his mind to figuring this out, making it work, because he wants to make his partner happy. I'm massively squicked by the whole concept of engaging in a kink that you don't have just for your partner, and I marvel at how much just writing that fic, looking at it through that character's eyes, has made me relax about the whole issue. Total eye opener.)

Haymitch would get into mysteries, if out of other books, and after three or four of it, he would figure out the plot devices and the rules, reading them very intently, totally caught up in the matter of who did it. :D

They should never watch the movie Haymitch was in. ;) LOL.

(I think Finnick watches rather a lot of Capitol gossip television, as this directly relates to his life in the Capitol and his popularity. He needs to know what's coming.)