etc.

I’ve been collecting the movies we’ve seen over the past 4 months in a draft post and, for whatever reason, I haven’t remembered to publish it. This, being the last day of the year, I thought it was time to get this out of draft and commit it to the 2007 archives. As usual, these are starred out of a possible five.

• Alpha Dog ***
• Little Children ***1/2
• Thank You For Smoking ***
• Le Petit Lieutenant ***1/2
• The Grudge 2 **
• Perfect Stranger *
• Bobby ***
• Das Leben der Anderen *****
• 30 Days of Night ****
• American Gangster ***1/2
• Beneath *
• Notes on a Scandal ****
• Bee Season **1/2
• Eastern Promises **
• The Kingdom ***1/2
• Ratatouille ***
• Breaking and Entering ****
• The Wind that Shakes the Barley ***
• Wind Chill **
• Hostel: Part II **
• The Simpsons Movie **
• Even Money ***
• I Witness **
• Night at the Museum ***

I hope your 2008 is filled with 5-star viewing!

Elijah the elephant, a gift for Zach. One of the crafty things I couldn’t show you last week.

Best non-fiction book: The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, Michael Pollan.
I’ve been at this book for a few weeks, picking away at it in fits & starts. When I do pick it up, I find it extremely difficult to put it back down again, it’s that good.

Best fiction book: Consolation: A Novel, Michael Redhill
I haven’t read a lot of fiction this year, so there weren’t many contenders, but this is easily the best of the lot. It’s set in Toronto, so I’m sure the local-ness had a lot to do with why I enjoyed it so much.

Best movie: Das Leben der Anderen (Lives of Others)
Watched in ’07, so I’m going to say it counts. Looking back over the film archives this year, I’d have to say that it’s been a slim year on movies, and even slimmer on really good ones (I still have a post in draft listing everything we’ve seen since September, will post that soon). Das Leben der Anderen definitely stands out as the most beautiful story and generally the best all-around movie-watching experience. I loved it.

Best album: Neon Bible, Arcade Fire; Reunion Tour, The Weakerthans; Under the Iron Sea, Keane; The Reminder, Feist
Four brilliant records, how could I choose between them? So I didn’t.

Best concert: The Killers.
Mind-bendingly awesome and probably my most anticipated concert in ages.

Best lip gloss: Labello Caregloss & Shine
2007 has been the Year of Lip Gloss for me, I must have tried 7 types. This one came out on top in terms of lip protection, appropriate colour subtlety, shine, and pleasant lack of taste (I don’t need my lip gloss to be yummy, thanks). But wait, there’s a minor tragedy here: I found an old tube in brown at a drug store that obviously had some pretty old stock, because I don’t think they make that shade anymore. I can’t find mention of it anywhere!

Best online experience: Ravelry
As I mentioned the other day, I got my invitation back in October, while I was in the thick of conference traveling, so I only really got around to noodling about in there a few weeks ago. It’s as addictive as everyone says it is and even more useful too. I finished photographing and cataloguing my stash (login required for that link, sorry!) last week and at one point I found myself thinking, “wouldn’t it be handy if I could find patterns based on what I have stashed?” and indeed, I could. One click tells me who has the same yarn and what they are making/have made with it. Brilliant! I keep finding fabulous little utilities like this, the more time I spend there. Plus it has rekindled my love of the craft, which is always a good thing.

Best consumer-electronic purchased: Canon Digital Rebel XTi
I love love love this camera. It might just be the best consumer-electronic purchased ever.

Best place visited: Boston, MA
Many places were visited this year, most for conferences, some for vacation: Fort Myers (FL), Las Vegas (NV), Arlington (VA), Washington DC, St. John’s (Newfoundland), Boston (MA), Victoria (British Columbia), Monterey (CA), San Francisco (CA), Huntsville (AL). Boston was probably my favourite because it was the only pure vacation (no conference! no teaching! no work!) and because it’s an awesome city, and I’m a big fan of awesome cities. Next year’s traveling is looking less far-and-wide and I’m secretly pleased about that.

Best store visited: Morba
A dusty little mid-century modern haven on Queen Street West here in Toronto. We drive past this store all the time and every time we do, I tell the mister how much I’d really like to go in some day. So last weekend, we did! We bought a trophy lamp with a chrome base and dome shade that looks like it’s right out of The Jetsons, and an orange clock for the kitchen. This is my new favourite store ever.

Best knit: Elijah (pictured above)
Full details on the project page in Ravelry (bien sur!), but for those of you who aren’t there yet, the pattern is here and I used just over one skein of Lamb’s Pride Worsted in Turquoise Depths (and a hint of Ruby Red for his scarf). It’s a really well-written pattern with no seaming, just a bunch of picked up stitches for the limbs (which was finicky, but not hard). I’ll definitely be making this one again.

Best person met: Zach
My new nephew and, hands down, my favourite person of 2007.

What are your bests of 2007?

I wish you could see Louis Armstrong singing White Christmas in the background, because he is.

This state of readiness is somewhat new to me. I feel organized enough this year that it could have been Christmas last week! If you’ve been here for a while you’ll know that this rarely happens. I’m not quite sure how it all came together (I don’t think I did much differently this year), but I’ll take it.

Happy holidays, everyone! I wish you similar readiness, along with a healthy dose of cheer, and plenty of joy!

Holiday Card 2007

If I were to tell you what I’ve been busying myself with recently, the list would look something like this:

• baking: can’t say, it’s a surprise
• knitting: can’t say, it’s a surprise
• sewing: can’t say, it’s a surprise
• crafting: can’t say, it’s a surprise

And so on, &c. It’s a wonder anyone out there in craftblogland has anything to talk about in the month of December. Of course, I’m hardly prolific in the craft department these days, if I was I suppose I could keep the gift-crafting to myself and share the non-gift crafting with you. Ha, fat chance there’s any non-gift crafting going on! Anyway, the holiday card I made this year is about all I can share by way of craftiness, even though the glue is barely dry, nevermind that none have been written or posted. It’s not a palette you’d probably expect from a holiday card (the card itself, nor the setting above), but I’m crazy about blue, brown, and orange at the moment. That orange watering can in the background? Won it at the library party a couple of days ago. Along with an assortment of other orangey backyard goodies. A little something to help me take my mind of winter and start dreaming of spring and summer. So lovely! So, anyway, back to the card: it’s your typical craft store creation, really, and not what I had in mind for this year’s card at all. But as soon as I spotted the bird-shaped craft punch in the store, I knew what had to be done. I picked up the alphabet stamps (in the shape of typewriter keys! Who could resist?), got out the blank, ivory cards, some scrap paper bits, and set to work. I’m pleased with it.

Some other newsy bits and links:

• I have a new nephew! His name is Zach, he was born 3 weeks ago, and I am absolutely in love with him. I can’t go 2 days without seeing him, truly. I’d post a picture but I have to get permission from his parents first (I keep forgetting to ask!).
• I survived an earthquake! OK, it’s somewhat old news, and probably a bit alarmist for a minor-ish quake in California, but still. It was my first!
• My Ravelry invite came in a few weeks ago! Here’s my sparsely-populated profile. Go ahead and friend me, it might encourage me to actually spend some time beefing up my projects & stash info. I have to admit, it’s the stash cataloguing on the site that really intrigues me (librarian much?)
• I went to Alabama last week for a quickie conference. I saw very little of it, the highlight being a drive past the U.S. Space & Rocket Center, twice (from the airport, to the airport). Wish I had time to go in.
• Time Management for Creative People, a free e-book that is in my to-read file.
• If you work with Photoshop or Illustrator you might like this collection of brushes, patterns, fonts, etc. I nabbed this off someone’s blog and forgot whose, sorry.
• My parents gave us a crockpot this year and the onset of winter has seen me scouring the interwebs for good crockpot recipes. Got any? Here’s one I can’t wait to try.
• We saw Feist last week and she was even more brilliant than I expected. The Great Lake Swimmers opened for her and they were pretty brilliant too. Folksy with a lot of nice instrumental work, and a lead singer with an absolutely haunting voice.

There, I think we’re all caught up now.

Hello, December. I did a little design update on the site, getting right back to basics. Some notes, mostly for me, but also for you, if you’re at all interested:

• no more background image. Instead, white!
• installed Smart Archives which produces this nice archives page. That’s a lot of detail right there, which I like for now.
• got PHP code running on WP pages thanks to Exec-PHP. I used to use RunPHP but that sort of stopped working after some WP upgrade, and rather than trying to fix it, I just found something that works instead.
• dumped all sidebar content in favour of a short blurb that mostly links to the important stuff.

Anything broken in your browser? Let me know! And, more substantial bloggy content soon, I promise.