Talking Tuesday: Dear Comrades!

 

 

Last night my husband and I finished watching a stunning Russian film called Dear Comrades! It is the previously classified story of the 1962 protests in the Don River region over rising food prices and the State's efforts to quash the protests and then cover up the violence that followed. 

The story is told primarily through the eyes of a true-believer Party member, and her journey is quite extraordinary.  I'm still trying to wrap my mind around all the layers of meaning in the film, particularly since the ending is a bit ambiguous and left me with a lot of questions about what happened in the following years.  Shot in black and white, the cinematography is note-perfect and deserves all the festival accolades it has received.  

A number of questions are asked by the film: what do you do when all you hold sacred is shown to be a Potemkin village?  What does it mean to remember the past and honor it without idolizing or demeaning it?  How do we live in the truth of the terrible things that happen to us without breaking?  What does it mean to own your mistakes?

It is a film well worth seeing.

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming: Stripes! Sweater

I finished my Stripes! sweater at last!  It was the Penelope sweater right to the bitter end, as I swapped out two stripes in the body and one of the sleeves while I was knitting the second sleeve, but I'm glad I did.  I'm quite happy with the end result, and have worn it twice already!  

I made a size 2 with no modifications except to swap the 3/4 sleeves on the cropped version to long sleeves and to knit the sleeves flat and then seam, as I always do.  I did make a few more increases than called for because I don't like my cuffs to flap around and my wrists are small, but I probably would make one or two less increases next time (my cuffs had 40 stitches on them, for reference).  

 

 

 

I also cropped the body slightly more than on the sample because my torso is even shorter than Andrea's!  But the visual effect is the same.

 

This is a pattern I would definitely knit again, possibly in a solid color, because I enjoyed the process of it, and stripe combo difficulties aside, it would have gone quickly.  (If you consider that I've basically knit this entire sweater three times since the end of November, it's a fast knit). 

 

I immediately cast on a Weekender with some Capra yarn that I had, and am enjoying that so far.  And in true Juliana fashion, when Lilias Day came out in the white colorway, I immediately swatched it from some yarn I had set aside for a different project.  Yay for stash-busting!  And yarn for days!

All This Without You Bonus Content

 

Good morning all!  I have a new website for my writing and artwork.  I plan to keep writing in this space about the things I usually write about, but if you would like to keep abreast of book news and other tidbits, maybe put the new site in your RSS reader?  

I'm planning to share some bonus content from All This Without You over the next weeks, and perhaps do a giveaway.  One advantage to sharing some of this content on a website is that I can link to some of the things mentioned in the book to provide a more sensory experience.

For today, please enjoy a deleted scene from early in the book, including a musical link.  

If you want to know why I used images from the Cave of Swimmers to make the page headers, you'll have to read the book!

All This Without You--pre-order available!

I'm chuffed to say that my book is available for pre-order!  The paperback version should be live for pre-order by Monday, and the kindle version is available to pre-order now.  

All This Without You will release on February 16, 2021!