The Bare Knitting Necessities of Life

♪Look for the bare necessities, the simple bare necessities.♪

Welcome back to the blog everyone! How are you enjoying your Friday? Well whatever you're doing hope it's awesome.

It's COLD! Yes it's suddenly gone from 80s to near freezing temperatures in a matter of seconds (I blame the sudden rain storm we had). I am prepared though! I have tons of knitted items to keep warm in. Hopefully I can have my pair of socks done soon, I'm still on the heel flap on my second sock of the pair at the moment. So yeah keep warm everyone, dig out those lovely knitted mittens, hats, sweaters and socks! If you're like me you can also keep warm by constantly drinking hot tea and cocoa. Yes I am coming out the closet as a Hot Cocoa addict.

Also my Mum and Dad's 40th Wedding Anniversary was yesterday! They've been married 40 years now, I came along about 20 years after they were married, haha. They're wonderful parents and I love them dearly so I'm glad they got married and became my parents. I wouldn't be here blogging on this website otherwise, or knitting on the sofa alongside Mum.

ZAK Movie Time!

I've watched quite a few movies this past week that I've never seen yet. They're all newish movies so it's not like I've been way behind on my movies. If you noticed by the song quote in the beginning of this blog I recently watched the brand new Jungle Book movie.

 

Now going into this I really had no idea what to expect. I'm a huge fan of the original animation so I thought perhaps this would be a faithful transition at the same time I've always been iffy about Animation to Live Action transitions. Despite those thoughts though I actually loved this movie! They couldn't of picked a better kid to play Mowgli and the voices (while not the original voices) were a great fit for the different animal characters. Ben Kingsley voice Bagheera... Was he destined to voice Bagheera? Nobody knows but he did a great job as well as Bill Murray, who I never thought would make a good Baloo but he did a pretty good job playing the lovable bear. Shere Khan was played by Idris Elba, which is funny because he has voiced and played so many villains in movies recently. It wasn't too long ago that I talked about a certain new Star Trek movie which he played the villain in. I haven't watched the original animation in a long time but I can safely say Idris Elba pulled off Shere Khan perfectly.

Of course the Animals in this Live Action movie are all CGI animated (There aren't many real animal actors out there... Yogi Bear could of played Baloo but he was busy on other projects, haha) and while there were a few hiccups that I noticed the animation made the animals fit right into the live action surroundings. Though while they were all made realistic I could still easily point out the different characters.

There are differences from the original animation, this movie takes some more concepts from the Jungle Book stories not present in the original animation as well as changing some story elements just for the live action movie. The Wolves that raised Mowgli in the book had a much more prominent role in this movie as well. They kept some of the best songs from the animation as well! So if you've read the book (Which has a lot of stories in it that the movies never adapted.) watched the original animation and the 1994 Live-Action movie (Which.. I had no idea existed until now.) this will be an awesome nostalgic experience but at the same time adding it's own twists (Without drifting too far from the source material) to keep it new, enjoyable and fresh. I absolutely recommend you see this movie if you're a Jungle Book fan or just like watching a kid grow up in a jungle full of distinguished animals in live action.

Time to cast on a new knitting project!

I recently came across this Dishcloth/Washcloth pattern called Knit Waffling Owls. It's a free Knitting Pattern written by Margaret MacInnis on Ravelry. (You can also check out their Facebook page called Designs by Muggins). I'm going to be using some Silver Sage colored Sport Weight (The lot number is 2486 and color number is 8062.) yarn.

If you remember or if you're new here I was given this yarn back when I raided my Mum's knit stash back in October. I'm also using size US 5 (3.75 MM, UK 9) straight no cable needles. This pattern requires that I start off with a long tail cast on... Oh boy the long tail cast on. Remember my Knitting Cast On Nightmares blog? Yeah this is the cast on I just couldn't figure out, my fingers just would not cooperate with me. Well after a bit of persisting I actually figured out how to do it!

I finally figured out how to do the long tail cast on... for the most part! 😅 #knitting #longtailcaston #caston #maleknitting #knittersofinstagram #instaknit

A video posted by Zach Kuhn (@zakmank) on Dec 7, 2016 at 5:32pm PST4

I successfully casted on 52 stitches using the long tail cast on! I wasn't as fast as I've seen some people do it (Some people are so fast you can barely see their fingers! I can bet some of you are like that, one day I will match your speed!) but I did it. Now I assume this was my fault but the casted on ended up a tad bit tight. Not super super tight but tighter then it probably should've been. This is something I need to learn when doing long tail in the future.

So this washcloth is officially on the go now, I've gotten the moss stitch edging done and I'm on the waffle part now. Unlike making a real waffle (Other than the fact you can't eat it) this has given me a bit of a workout. (Can you get muscles from knitting? If so I'm going to be super buff.) I don't know why, I guess it's because I'm a beginner, but switching from knit to purl constantly on a single row is kind of hard. I did get into a rhythm after a while but when I put it down and picked it back up last night (While writing this blog actually, OOPS) I kind of lost my rhythm and made a mistake.

See it? At the top? Yeah my waffle has suddenly become... Not a waffle. I mean everything else looks great and yummy so far (Once again do not eat a waffle dishcloth it will not taste like a waffle). Well I'm going to unpick two rows so I'm back a plain knit/purl row and redo my P2-K1/K2-P1 rows and hope it all comes out alright. I'll keep you guys updated so be sure to check out Monday's blog!

One last thing about this pattern is the fact I'm going to be doing cable knitting. This will be my first step into doing cable so wish me luck! Though if I can't get past this darn waffle...

Anyway before I end the blog today I might as well go into what I've been playing recently regarding Video Games!

I've started up a new playthrough of Super Mario 3D Land for Nintendo 3DS.

This seems to of become a Christmas tradition where I pick up and do a playthrough of this game. Funny enough I always end up beating the game on Christmas Eve, let's see if tradition holds this year huh?

I really love this game, it controls similar to 64/Galaxy but at the same time has controls and elements from 2D Mario games. It's really a hybrid of classic and new Mario in a new style of Mario games. Each level has it's own unique design and challenge and always has three hidden star coins to collect. I'm currently on World 5 so I'm already half way through the main game. (There's a whole bunch of Worlds opened after the final boss.)

The 3D on this game is pretty great and has been improved vastly by the New 3DS (I talk about this in my 3DS comparison blog) I can actually use the 3D in this game now, which helps a bit with some of these levels.

Oh yeah, back in 2013 they released a sequel to this game called Super Mario 3D World for the Wii U. I'll talk about that game in the future but you can actually play as Luigi, Peach and Toad as well in that game.

I've also been playing Pokemon Black 2 but I'll talk more about my progress on that Monday. This blog is getting pretty long now.

Hope you all enjoy the rest of your Friday! I'm going to go and fix my waffle. I'm going to be setting up Christmas decorations around the house today as well, I'll be sure to show off our cool decorations on Monday's blog!

Don't forget to check me out on Facebook, ZAK Entertainment's Facebook Page, Instagram, Twitter Pinterest and Ravelry! Also don't forget to check out Redbridge High School's Message of Christmas song on iTunes! It's a wonderful song and all funds go towards getting the school better equipment. You can check out my Message of Christmas blog where I talk about the school and the song.

See you on the next blog!