Monday, January 30, 2017

Knitting Striping Socks & Anticipating the 89th Academy Awards

Welcome back to ZAK Entertainment! We've got two big topics for today, Knitting and a discussion about the upcoming 89th Academy Awards (The Oscars) so let's get the cameras rolling!

A Self Striping Sock Beginning; Finishing a Custom Knitting Pattern


It's that time once again, time for me to cast on a new knitting project! Last Wednesday I dug out my knitting stash to have a look see at what sock yarn I had. The needle chooses the yarn they say and my needles (2.75 MM to be exact) chose some self striping yarn to knit.


I've already casted on my socks and knitted 10 rows on the ridge. As I've already done a pair of socks using a knit two, purl two ridge I decided to shake things up and add a tad bit of cable knitting into my ridge. I've been into knitting cable lately, from my Waffle Owl Washcloth object to my Cable Beanie, so I figured why not? Let's add some cable into this sock project. I'm knitting these for my sister, Annie so I've only casted on 52 stitches compared to 64 like I do for myself. (I have big feet, apparently.) Technically this is still a knit 2 purl two ridge but after so many normal k2, p2 rows I add in a cable to the back instead of the standard knit 2.

The self striping yarn is already blooming nicely and the cable doesn't seem to disrupt the flow of the stripes. Not sure if I'm going to be continuing the cable down the sock yet or not but we'll see.

I've also been knitting on my custom patterned Washcloth... Actually I've finished it!


Yes as you can see by looking at all four sides of this cloth I have finished but! You guys won't be able to view the body of the cloth just yet. I'm still working on the pattern for all of you so no peeking! Though I wouldn't wait too long, it's just about finished and ready to hit the web.

Anticipating the 89th Academy Awards


Each and every year the Academy Of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences honors the films and the people who made it possible at the Oscars and this year will mark the 89th Academy Awards. We've almost made it to 90 years of incredible films made by groups of talented visionaries, an inspiration to me and many other Film Makers a like. Of course like all years the Academy Awards is broken down into multiple categories, each holding the movies and those involved from the past year, as such all movies awarded will be from 2016. The Academy Awards will be presented on February 26th (Those at home can watch it on ABC) and will be hosted by Jimmy Kimmel. As a self proclaimed movie buff I'm pretty excited to see what movies win the many different categories.

One movie that released in the previous year called La La Land, starring Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling, might be taking quite a few awards home as it's nominated in 13 categories, including Best Picture, for a total of 14 nominations! (It's got two original scores nominated.) Everyone seems to be loving that movie but Best Picture also has some other big contenders like Arrival, a SciFi/Mystery thriller about 12 mysterious extraterrestrial spacecrafts landing across the planet. After a mistranslation from many of the world's nations Linguist Louise Banks must unlock the truth of their language before the world makes a massive mistake. Other Best Picture nominees include Fences, Hacksaw Ridge, Hidden Figures, Lion, Manchester By The Sea, Moonlight and lastly Hell or High Water which stars Chris Pine, Ben Foster and Jeff Bridges. Hell or High Water is another movie that's caught my eye of interest. It's a neo-Western crime thriller directed by David Mackenzie and follows two brothers (Chris Pine and Ben Foster) who carry out a series of bank robberies to save their family ranch. This movie looks pretty awesome I don't know if Arrival or Hell or High Water stand a chance against La La Land but we'll see won't we?

In Animated Movie of the year we got Kubo and The Two Strings, Moana, My Life as a Zucchini, The Red Turtle and Zootopia. Yup we got two animated Disney movies in it this year, which probably means Disney is gonna head home with the award either way but there's a lot of creativity this year from the other nominees. Kubo and the Two Strings is a pretty awesome fantasy action-adventure animation, making a return to stop-motion animation which has always been a favorite form of animation of mine. It's about a boy named Kubo set in ancient Japan. Kubo has magic powers but also has had his left eye stolen from him. With his companions Monkey and Beetle he has to subdue Raiden the Moon King and his army of evil spirits. I've seen Zootopia and it was pretty good, I've not seen Moana yet though. Zootopia did win best animated film at the Golden Globes this year so who knows maybe it'll win again but my eyes are definitely set on Kubo.

Visual Effects! One of my all time favorite parts of movie production and some of the Nominees listed here are actually not all that unexpected. We got Deepwater Horizon, Doctor Strange, The Jungle Book, Kubo and The Two Strings and Rouge One: A Star Wars story. Now first off I want to say Doctor Strange is very visual effects heavy but it did an absolute great job at it. Marvel Movies have always had quite a bit of visual effects work, especially the Thor movies but Doctor Strange takes it to an all new level and really shows how much you can do with visual effects. Now I discussed Jungle Book in an earlier post from last year, it was pretty great and to be honest it deserves the nomination. I mean the entire movie is practically visual effects, with only the kid being, you know, done by an actual actor. Rouge One: A Star Wars Story, now I've not seen this movie as a whole yet but I've had some look in behind the scenes. Actually quite a few practical effects were used in this movie, as well as computerized effects. It's a pretty good balance between the two. Anyway... Kubo got nominated! Which means this is actually the second, yes only second, animated film to be nominated for Visual Effects since The Nightmare Before Christmas! With all the hours of hard work that went into the movie as far as actually animating and rigging it there was a lot of visual effect work done as well and the movie just looks great because of it. So yeah I'm placing my money on either Doctor Strange or Kubo.

These are just a few of my favorite categories there's a lot more nominees for a lot more movies and you can view the full list by going to the actual Academy Award Nominee page:

Obviously I'll be talking more about the Oscar nominations as we get closer to the awards ceremony and I'll be doing my best to keep up with all the Oscar goodness (I got my notepad and pen ready.) to report to all of you the day afterwards. Yeah the Oscars actually happens on the day I actually write Monday's blog, aka Sunday. It's also in the evening so I'm going to be busy trying to get Monday's blog full of the Academy Awards.

As you can see when it comes to movies I tend to talk a lot. It's one of my biggest passions so yeah, sorry about that.

Anyway that's it for the main topics for today. We're wrapping up for the day once again but before that, I haven't done one of these for a few posts because it wasn't really doing anything but here's on update on our...

Re-Growing a Lettuce Challenge January 30th, 2017



Okay it's getting weird, it has like a week of no activity but now it's got shoots growing on the shoots. Some of the already grown leaves are curling up into a ball of sorts, like it was on the original lettuce we're growing this from. Lettuce is such a strange vegetable.

Having your Cake & Eating it Too


My kid sister has been baking again. Using some vanilla, flour, and eggs she attempted to bake her own cake. Oh my god Annie is a natural. It was absolutely delicious and I have no photo to show because, well I ate it all. Yes my sister makes some awesome cakes and despite this being her first time she did great. I should probably attempt to make one myself I'm just not sure if the first time luck is on my side or not. Hey I can make chocolate cookies and a mean lasagna so why not? I will definitely never compare to her though so here's hoping she makes more.

Discovering a DC Comic Book Blog


Oh yeah I recently came across a website called Comic Box Commentary. It's a pretty awesome place full of comic book reviews (Mostly DC) and just in general commentary. As a comic book lover myself, as well as the fact I've been reading comics quite a bit lately, this site is pretty cool. You can check it out at http://comicboxcommentary.blogspot.com/

Hey I should start more writing about comic books more on here, shouldn't I? As a matter of fact let's make that a topic starting now, I've already been dabbling in the topic a bit over the past 6 months.

That's a wrap everyone! Once again I have things I wanted to talk about but have to leave it aside until the next post, that can be frustrating but alas this post is pretty long now.

Check out  ZAK Entertainment on Facebook to keep track of when I post as well as on on Instagram. Also check out my Youtube Channel where I post all sorts of videos from Short Films, Travel, Knitting, Vlogs and more! I recently started up a Tumblr as well so you can check it out at zakentertainment.tumblr.com it's a great place to keep track and interact with me. I'm also on Twitter, Snapchat as ZAKManK, and of course Ravelry! I post here every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 11:00 AM CST (GMT - 6) with a wide range of awesome entertainment topics!

Keep your lives entertaining!

ZAK Entertainment

No comments:

Post a Comment