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Woodland Wonders Blanket Finished & New Crochet Books
Only two years after starting the Woodland Wonders blanket by Eleonora at Coastal Crochet (highly recommended for original and beautiful crochet patterns), I have finally finished it! And this is why I can never participate in a crochet-along, which in this case was supposed to last for six weeks. I don’t know how they do it. I do want to give a crochet-along a proper go at some point, but I’m not sure if I have the time for that kind of devotion to a project right now. As I was nearing the end of my blanket, I did some shopping for new crochet pattern books and found two absolutely…
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“Power and Glory” – Phil Ochs
American music I love ❤️🤍💙
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“American Music” – Violent Femmes
And yes, I do like American music… happy 4th! 💥
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“Love Plus One” – Haircut 100
Released in 1982, “Love Plus One” was a single from the album Pelican West from Haircut One Hundred. The band was formed in Beckingham, London in 1980 by singer-songwriter and guitarist Nick Heyward and bassist Les Nemes. The song “Love Plus One” is known for being one of the great one hit wonders of the 80s, even landing at 90 in VH1’s 100 Greatest One Hit Wonders of the 1980s. I haven’t done an inventory of my favorite one hit wonders of the 80s, but I have a feeling it would be much higher on my list, because “Love Plus One” is such an 80s gem, and to me, this song and…
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Seven Samurai (1954)
Often hailed as one of the greatest films of all time, Seven Samurai (七人の侍, Shichinin no Samurai) is writer and director Akira Kurosawa’s tale of a village aimed to defend themselves from marauding bandits. Based on an account from the Edo period of samurai defending a farming village from bandits, Seven Samurai takes place in a mountain village of farmers in the year 1586. When farmers overhear a gang planning to raid their village once their crops are ready, they take the matter to the village elder, Gisaku, who suggests hiring samurai who will take food as payment. Thus begins their quest to find seven samurai who can protect their village.…
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“On Your Mind” by FKA twigs (feat. Lil Yachty)
FKA twigs just released a video for “On Your Mind” featuring a rooftop dance battle complete with a full cast of dancers. The video was directed by Jordan Hemingway with choreography by Ebony Williams. “It never ceases to amaze me how pain can manifest into the hardest and most euphoric sonics,” twigs writes about the song. “I think making songs like this keeps me on my toes and reminds me that I am not in control.”
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Music to Create To: Nicolas Jaar’s BBC Essential Mix 2012
As I spend more time practicing with oil pastels, I’ve been looking for good music to create to, typically going for something moody or something with a good flow. But this week I’ve been going back to something that has both, one of my favorite Nicolas Jaar mixes, the BBC Essential Mix from 2012. I don’t think I’ve heard anyone mix music as masterfully as Nicolas Jaar does, it’s done so well and the music is so good that it just sounds close to perfection. Hear the mix below or on SoundCloud here.
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Prairie Moon Friends: Deer
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Hiragana Chart
The Japanese syllabary hiragana is one of three language sets that make up the Japanese writing system. Hiragana symbols are the cursive versions of katakana, so they are more flow-y looking than the others. It is a common phonetic system consisting of 46 monograph characters, with five vowel sounds and ten base consonants. This base monograph system is known as gojūon (五十音), meaning “fifty sounds” to represent the 5 x 10 grid, however yi, ye, and wu are unused and on the w row, ゐ (i) and ゑ (e) are rarely used and not counted, and ん (n) is a unique, independent sound. Hiragana Base Monographs (gojūon) vowels only あ (a) い (i) う (u)…
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Drive My Car (2021)
After Yūsuke Kafuku’s wife dies, he must navigate his way through a world without her. The movie starts two years prior to this, where we are introduced to the couple in the opening scene of Drive My Car, where actor and director Yūsuke Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima) and his wife Oto (Reika Kirishima), a screenwriter who brainstorms story ideas with her husband during the afterglow of sex. At this time in his life, Yūsuke performs in a multilingual theater production of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, and the film switches between scenes in the play and the complications building in Yūsuke’s real life, touching on parallels between the two. Two years later,…