This sweater is an old favorite for lots of reasons.
I made it years ago from a pattern in Interweave magazine.
I repurposed the yarn from two cherry-red sweaters I bought at the thrift store. If I remember correctly, one was an angora-acrylic blend, and the other was cashmere–big boxy sweaters with some wear and tear that I found hanging side by side. I unraveled them and knit the two yarns together. I think I spent less than $20 on enough yarn for a whole cardigan, and I thought I was a genius.
That was before my mom died, and she helped me unravel the sweaters. It took hours, sitting on the couch gabbing, the cashmere constantly breaking as we went. There’s a zillion broken yarn ends woven into the inside of it.
This sweater turned out to be super sturdy, and I still wear it often after all this time. When I first made it, the fit was quite a bit looser, but it’s still comfy.
We’re hand in hand along any old street, by the lake this time, and laughing too at some joke we’ve made and forgotten, and the sun shines or it’s raining, lunch after lunch, dinner after dinner. You could see it as one thing after another. Where are we going? It looks like nowhere; though we’re going where love goes finally, we’re going under. But not yet, we’re still incarnate, though the trees break into flame, blaze up, shed in one gasp, turn to ash, each thing burns over and over and we will too, even the lake’s on fire now, it’s evening and the sidewalk fills with blue light, you can see down through it, we walk on water for a split second before faith lapses and we let go of each other also. Everything’s brighter just before, and it’s just before always.
This snow knitting was created by indigenous snow sculptors Heather Friedli, Fern Naomi Renville, and Maggie Thompson, also known as Team Kwe.
Team Kwe’s sculpture Ngig Nibi Ganawendan (Otter Water Protector) won second place in the People’s Choice awards at the 2024 National Snow Sculpting Championships.
The Paris Review podcast is a treasure trove of archived recordings from old interviews and readings combined with new performances of poems, stories, and interviews published over the venerable magazine‘s 7-decades in print. The sound design is rich and visceral and the content is mesmerizing.
Two recent favorites are Terrance Hayes’s self-soothing celebration of Blackness Bob Ross Paints Your Portrait and Zach Willams’s freaky but relatable story of 21st century office life Trial Run .
Longtime visitors to The Chawed Rosin may recall that Rick and I have a tradition wherein we save up our ticket stubs throughout the year and then on New Year’s Day we get them out and reminisce about all the tickety things we did over the past 12 months.
In 2023, we saw a glorious 27 movies in the cinema. Among them were big name productions that you have probably already heard of, like Barbie and Dream Scenario, both of which we enjoyed. But here are some you may not have heard about that we liked even better.
Broker is directed by one of our favorite filmmakers, Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda. We make an effort to see anything he makes. Like many of Kore-eda’s films, Broker is a touching story about good-hearted people who do things that are illegal, and sometimes things that are wrong as well. Set in South Korea, it featured some Korean actors we’d seen before–the great Song Kang-ho and Bae Doona–and several others we’ll be seeking out in the future.
The British film Living also has a Japanese connection. It’s an adaptation of the classic Akira Kurosawa film Ikiru, and the screenplay was written by Kazuo Ishiguro, whose books are among our most read, so we had to see it. The film follows Kurosawa’s original quite closely, and post-blitz London office life has much in common with the original Japanese setting, but the film has its own very different feel, not least because of the technicolor-like palette and film style evoking a 1950’s that is now more than 60 years in the past. Bill Nighy gives a wonderfully restrained and moving performance as a lonely bureaucrat trying to do something meaningful with his life before it’s too late. I think I could watch him sing The Rowan Tree a hundred times and still choke up.
Lineoleum looked like a sweet film that we would enjoy, and it is, but it was much weirder and more wonderful than we expected. I love stories that make dream sense rather than sense sense, when they work. This story worked for us. It’s for people who are astronauts at heart, which is probably most of us.
The latest film from another favorite director, Alexander Payne, also had a very retro feel. From its flashback opening credits to the grainy, earth-tone cinematography to the comfortingly familiar story of a misfit trio stuck with each other over a lonely Christmas break, The Holdovers feels very, very 70’s. Even the trailer is spot-on. But the clever script and the fantastic performances by Paul Giamatti and Da’Vine Joy Randolph elevate the whole thing to something much greater than a nostalgia piece. Some reviewers have written that it’s destined to become a Christmas classic. That would be nice.
Fantasy A Gets a Mattress has achieved legendary status in Seattle, selling out theaters for weeks on end, beginning no doubt with people curious about Fantasy A himself, whose posters are familiar to anyone who does any walking around this town, and growing through word of mouth because of the rush of love the film evokes. Some people have said it’s a quintessentially Seattle film, but I’ll bet a lot of people who live in large cities all over the country where every single thing that’s cheap and funky and fun is disappearing have the same shaken feeling when they watch this goofy, angry, homemade movie–a sense of seeing the real world on film in a way that they haven’t in a long time.
Fallen Leaves is an Aki Kaurismäki film. Because he is Finland’s greatest film director, I am contractually obligated to see all of his films. Luckily, I love them. This one is very similar to Kaurismäki’s other films. It has gorgeous colors, elegantly shabby interiors, long silences, and longing for love. It’s set in Helsinki, but shows no landmarks, preferring, as all of his films do, side streets and dark alleys and construction sites. It features a sweet dog. But this dog is even sweeter than his other dogs. The whole movie is sweeter and, dare I say, happier? In some scenes, the actors even smile. Recommend.
Our movie life this year seems to have had a strong Japanese flavor. Hayao Miyazaki‘s 2013 film The Wind Rises was billed as his last, but I guess he changed his mind. The Boy and the Heron is the weirdest Miyazaki film I’ve ever seen, and that’s saying a lot. It’s like a long, wandering dream of grief. I don’t know much about Miyazaki’s personal life, but this film feels like it must be more autobiographical than his other movies. Strange and beautiful.
What about you? Did you see any good movies this year?
This tribute to Yo-Yo Ma at the annual Kennedy Center Honors for the performing arts will bring you some sunshine. The way it all comes together is so warm and wonderful, and such a delightful surprise for the honoree as his former collaborators appear on stage.
Happy Solstice! The days just get brighter from here on out, fellow Northern Hemispherians!
By the way, here’s a fun fact: Alan Alda seems to go to this event every year. I’ve watched a bunch of these ceremonies from different years, and he always turns up in the audience.
Today’s Artle answer was an easy one for me, because we have a reproduction of one of his paintings (painted by Rick’s mom!) right here on the wall beside me. Here are some of his most well-known works.
I’ve been enjoying checking in on the reader’s reviews of my most recent translation, Juhani Karila‘s wonderfully weird and kindhearted novel Fishing for the Little Pike (UK Title Summer Fishing in Lapland) (I know, it’s confusing). This book seems to delight almost everyone who reads it.
Seems like a sure-fire holiday gift, don’t you think?
At this moment in time, we’d like to invite First Class passengers only to board the aircraft.
Thank you for waiting.
We now extend our invitation to Exclusive, Superior, Privilege and Excelsior members, followed by Triple, Double and Single Platinum members, followed by Gold, Silver, Bronze card members, followed by Pearl and Coral Club members.
Military personnel in uniform may also board at this time.
Thank you for waiting.
We now invite Meteorite customers, and passengers enrolled in our Rare Earth, Metals points and rewards scheme and thank you for waiting.
Accredited beautiful people may now board, plus any gentlemen carrying a copy of this month’s Cigar Aficionado magazine, plus subscribers to our Red Diamond, Black Opal or Blue Garnet schemes.
We also welcome Sapphire, Ruby and Emerald members at this time, followed by Amethyst, Onyx, Obsidian, Jet, Topaz and Quartz members.
On production of a valid receipt, travellers of elegance and style wearing designer and/or hand-tailored clothing or flaunting individual pieces of jewellery including wristwatches with a minimum purchase price of 10,000 US dollars may now board.
Also welcome at this time are passengers talking loudly to cell phone headsets about recently completed property acquisitions, share deals and aggressive takeovers, plus hedge fund managers with proven track records in the undermining of small to medium-sized ambitions.
Passengers in Loam, Chalk, Marle and Clay may also board.
Thank you for waiting.
Mediocre passengers are now invited to board, followed by passengers lacking business acumen or general leadership potential, followed by people of little or no consequence, followed by people operating at a net fiscal loss as people.
Scroungers, malingers, spongers and freeloaders may now step forward.
Those holding tickets for zones Rust, Mulch, Cardboard, Puddle and Sand might want to begin gathering their crumbs and tissues ready for boarding.
Passengers either partially or wholly dependent on welfare or kindness, please have their travel coupons validated at the quarantine desk.
Sweat, Dust, Shoddy, Scurf, Turd, Chaff, Remnant, Ash, Pus, Sludge, Clinker, Splinter and Soot, all you people are now free to board.
The Chawed Rosin 
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