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Hi, Jan,

Wilson and I watched “This Film is Not Yet Rated” last night. It is so reassuring to know that one group of mostly white, mostly late-middle-aged, totally secret (until this film) and very highly paid people get to determine that the sight of Maria Bello’s pubic hair for about 1/2 second in “The Cooler” deserves an NC-17 rating but you can shoot as many people as you want as long as you don’t show blood and still get a PG-13 (countless movies) And don’t even think that violence towards women would hurt your rating, unless you show their pubic hair. Perhaps the slimiest part of the whole thing is that oddly enough, independent movies get NC-17’s far more often than studio films, and the reasons many of them get NC-17’s as cited by the MPAA (the rating people) often don’t cause studio films to receive that same rating. Oddly enough, the appeals board is staffed almost entirely by studio employees. Hmmm…

They claim the system is in place so the government doesn’t end up instituting censorship, but what results is, if not de facto censorship, at least blackmail. If your movie gets and NC-17, the major distributors won’t touch it. So, I’m going to write my local theaters and tell them I’m planning to watch more movies at home because of the obviously biased rating system. I doubt that will do much, but I’m sure writing the MPAA would do nothing.

On a more cheerful note, here are finished Bunny Socks! The yarn, Bunny Hop, is an angora (8%), nylon ( 42%), microfiber acrylic (50%). That angora makes the yarn soft and natural feeling, and I’m hoping the synthetics mean they will wear well. I knit them on US 2’s in my own pattern, which someday maybe I’ll post to the site. For those who are curious, the cuff is in cloverleaf rib, from Barbara Walker’s “A Treasury of Knitting Patterns”. The sock cinches in at the ankle (note the unusually narrow heel flap) but then quickly loosens so that it stays up on my thin ankles but doesn’t cut off circulation in my thicker calves.

Here, too, is a shot of my elongated vertical eyelet buttonhole as executed on US00’s at the start of DITF. The angora in the SOLsilke yarn makes taking close up a bit challenging, but I think you get the idea that this truly will be an unobtrusive buttonhole. The other shot shows you how far I’ve gotten in a cumulative 1:50 of knitting.

It is a gorgeous day here in MN - warm but low humidity, beautiful blue sky and green, green leaves against it as seen through my office window. From which is right where I’ll see most of the day, as I still have a ton of transition work to do as I leave my current role at work and head to the next. At least it is a Saturday and I’m allowed to take knitting breaks.

Love,

Ellen