I took my little sisters to see Enchanted last night.  Or I guess I should say, I really wanted to see it, and used them as my excuse (although at almost 13 and 17 they’re getting a little old to be my excuse for seeing children’s movies).  It was really great though.  I had read mixed reviews where people liked the movie but were put off by Disney trying to make fun of itself, while still doing the traditional happy ending.  But you know what?  It’s a Disney movie – the villain is defeated, the hero and heroine live happily ever after.  That’s why you go see it.  Amy Adams played the Disney princess perfectly, maintaining her beautiful spirit throughout the whole movie.  Even the real world couldn’t bring her down, which is really saying a lot.

Another fairy tale that’s been in the news lately is Princess Bubble.  It’s a modern day story of a princess who’s a flight attendant, travels the world, buys her own palace, and makes lot of friends everywhere she goes.  The only difference I can see between this and the traditional fairy tale is that she lives happily ever after without finding a prince.  It’s not that I don’t like the whole idea of teaching little girls to be happy with themselves and value independence (because I loved this book too), but there’s nothing wrong with a fairy tale prince either.  When it comes right down to it, it’s the heroine herself that little girls want to grow up to be – the beautiful, strong, kind, generous princess who is happy (sometimes despite unhappy circumstances).  Princess Bubble emphasizes not being a damsel in distress waiting to be rescued, but having personal strength.  If you think about it though, you’ll notice that all the Disney princesses have their own personal strength.  They’re victims of villains because the story has to have a bad guy.  All fairy tales do.  In Enchanted, Giselle actually saves her true love at the end, which a lot of reviewers saw as a Disney role reversal.  I don’t think it is necessarily.  Except for the obvious stories where the princess was unconscious and needed to be woken with a kiss, all the heroines I can think of played a part in their own rescue or helped to rescue someone else.  They weren’t passive.

There’s nothing wrong with little girls enjoying a good fairy tale.  Obviously the real world can be harsh, but children should be allowed to stay innocent of that as long as possible.  Even as they grow up and see that not everyone can be happy all the time, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with still dreaming of the happily-ever-after.  When we were leaving the theater last night, I noticed that one little girl who came to the movie was dressed up as a princess.  She was having a good time and loved the movie.  Dressing up is fun.  Just like fairy tales.  In the movie someone tried to explain to Giselle that life/love is complicated.  Her response?  “But it doesn’t have to be.”  Exactly.

I was at the greatest craft store last weekend – Corning Stitch Works. My grandmother had meant to take us to the Crafting Cottage, which is apparently also a really great store, but we ended up finding the Stitch Works first. They mostly had yarn and fabric, although they also had some great vintage stuff (fabric and buttons, but a few odds and ends as well). I had gone there meaning to get some sock yarn for Clessidra, but as soon as I got a look at the fabrics, I didn’t even go over to the yarn side. I wanted a cut of every bolt in the store. Down here I really only go to JoAnn’s, although I know Fabric Row is right there too. Apparently there’s also a great shop in Haddonfield called The Little Shop that was recognized in the latest issue of Better Homes & Gardens Quilt Sampler Magazine. I’ll be checking that out soon. To get to the point though, JoAnn’s rarely has a ton of fabric I’m in love with. This store did.

I had such a hard time deciding what to finally get. My mom, sisters, and grandmother left me to go to another store I was taking so long. It came down to getting flapper, cowboy, and a random floral fabric. The flapper fabric, I don’t know what I’m doing with yet. I got two other fabrics to go with it in a quilt top, but I’m going to need some more. I got enough cowboy fabric for an entire quilt, along with the Tin Star Cowboy pattern by Hollyhock Quilts. And I got one cute little floral fabric for a little girl’s dress. I don’t know just who will get this stuff, it all depends on when I finish them (which I admit will not be any time soon). My friends keep having babies though so it’s not like I’m running out of gifts to need.

Click on the first two pictures to see them in better detail:

I’ve always loved quilting but I’m especially into it right now because I just read an article about how to do pretty advanced stuff on a regular sewing machine.

I went down to the Grand Opera House in Wilmington for a concert earlier this week. The venue itself was very nice and had great acoustics, although it wasn’t really the kind of venue I’d picture for the Avett Brothers. My parents saw them play at the Troc last year, which is much more suitable to the kind of crowd they draw (room is needed for standing and dancing, not seating). I loved the opener, Langhorne Slim. He played solo so it was a nice little acoustic session. I forgot to bring my camera but I recommend checking out his songs Get a Little Happy and Honey Pie.

On to the Avett Brothers themselves. The two brothers play guitar and banjo, and drums with their feet, with another guy on upright bass. For this concert they also had a cello player for some songs. These guys play their instruments so hard that they needed to be retuned between almost every song, and restrung a few times throughout the night. They’re very high energy, which is what I love about them most. Some songs to check out are Talking Blues, When I Drink, and Talk on Indolence. I found someone else’s video from the concert I was at, for the song Solomon:

This past week I’ve been catching up on some knitting and sewing I’ve been meaning to do for a while. I really haven’t done much of anything in the way of crafting in several months. I travel so much for work that I’m rarely home and then have so much other stuff to get done when I am. I had some baby gifts to finish up though, and I decided to make some things for Christmas as well. There are a few unfinished things I want for me too, and soon since they’re winter items. I also taught another friend to knit and had planned to help her with sewing, so I’ve been to JoAnn’s a few times this week. I should not go there. I already have probably 25 projects with materials already waiting for me at home, but I always get more. I’m delusional when it comes to predicting the free time that I’ll have to work on all of this.

I’m in the Christmas mood already. I bought a couple of new Christmas CDs so I’ve been listening to the music already for the past week (alright, the past 2-3 weeks). It’s not the stuff they play over and over on the radio though – I tend to have different genres of music that just happen to be Christmas songs, so I need more than the 3 week window where it’s acceptable to play holiday music. I’m also planning on getting a tree for my apartment this year. I already have tons of ornaments that have been gifts through the years, and some other random decorations. I’ll wait to do all that until after Thanksgiving though. I do have some restraint.

Some less common holiday album recommendations:
The Gypsy Hombres – Django Bells
The Chieftains – The Bells of Dublin
Randy Travis – An Old Time Christmas
Just Can’t Get Enough: New Wave Christmas
Genuine Houserocking Christmas

I also love standards like The Nutcracker and A Charlie Brown Christmas.

CNN is having a final round of voting to choose a “hero” to feature onair. One of them came to my attention through the usual random degrees (as a matter of fact, he’s my uncle’s colleague’s brother’s grandson) – Pat Pedraja. He’s a 12 year old boy fighting leukemia who started Driving for Donors, which goes around America having drives to register people as bone marrow donors. So far he’s won the Young Wonder category of CNN Heroes but it’d be a great help if you could go and vote for him so he can be the final winner. There’s a video there and it’s really a great story. It inspired me to go ahead and register as a bone marrow donor. All you have to do is a cheek swab. The kit costs $52 for all the materials and processing so they’re also looking for donations to sponsor more registrations. Once you’re registered you’re on the list until your 61st birthday. Minorities are especially needed since people tend to find a match within their own ethnicity and not many minorities are currently registered.

I’ve decided to set my personal blog up here, after this domain going through various things for years. The main domain will remain my knit blog. I’ll eventually be moving some old posts over from a livejournal I had started in college. Just the posts, I’m not too worried about the comments or anything else. Any way, enjoy!

As a quick update on the missing luggage, I finally let myself be convinced to buy new clothes that night. After purchasing them, and also new toiletries, I went back to my hotel room only to find my luggage had been delivered while I was shopping. One of the bags was ripped, but they were there.

On to the fun stuff..

I spent 3 nights in New Orleans so you can bet we went around the corner to Bourbon Street every night. There was a fun little blues club not too far up where we got to see some good music. The one night this guy named Rooster played there. He walked around the place with his wireless mic and guitar singing to all the women present. I bought his CD because of one song he wrote called The Mirror – “I wish you was a mirror baby, I’d like to see myself inside of you” was the first verse, and they just kept getting better from there. The next night a band who I think was called The Soul played, with a guest singer named Eunice. They were really good as well:

A friend met me in New Orleans and we drove down to Lafayette to stay at the Blue Moon Guesthouse, which was fantastic. It was my first time staying at a hostel and I was surprised by how nice it was. We met some fun people to hang out with there, although there was this one crazy older woman who would walk around talking to herself and anyone in the vicinity, regardless of whether or not they were busy or already in a conversation. I would definitely stay there again though. They turned the back porch into a bar, the Blue Moon Saloon, a few years ago and now have live music and dancing most nights. So we got 2 nights of music there before moving on to the festival.

I’d been looking forward to the Blackpot Festival for months and months so I was way excited for it to finally be happening. It was held at Acadian Village, which was very nice but much smaller than I was expecting. Someone later told me that the festival was actually 3 or 4 times as big as last year (the 1st one). I can’t imagine them still being able to hold it at the same place if it gets any bigger though. This festival was great because it was set up by some of the musicians there, and they just camped right along with everyone else, and partied with everyone else too. But the best part by far was the dancing. No one does Cajun dancing where I live. I already knew the basic steps for most of it from one other festival and an Allons Danser concert I went to once. I finally got to actually do a lot of it here though, which made me extremely happy. Someone even told me I dance like a Cajun, which since he was Cajun was a great compliment. I loved every single band there and had the most amazing time. I am definitely going back. Some videos I took: