If you’d like to see Colin Farrell’s introduction (and Jon Stewart’s introduction of Colin Farrell), you can watch this version. Colin Farrell seems to have studied at the Wanderer’s school of hair care — long and uncombed — and managed to achieve a sort of pirate look for the Oscars. The media wasn’t sure what to do with that other than show it a lot without saying anything about it.

*A friend recommended the film to me because it was 1. highly musical and 2. Irish. The film seems to affect different people in different ways. One woman was upset at the plight of the female lead, that she was an under-appreciated woman of impressive talent condemned to a life of obscurity. Some people couldn’t get away from the fact that the two leads started dating after the filming was over, despite an impressive age difference. The Wanderer and I, however, spent the next few days homesick, as seeing familiar but distant streets and hearing familiar but fading accents reminded us acutely of how far away we were.

There are three Irish designers in this issue of Knitty. And here I’d been thinking the “new wave” of knitting had passed Ireland by.

Knitty is a Canadian publication that initially had a primarily North American audience. After spending years reading through the knitting community, I enjoy the culture around Knitty as much as its content. (Even when the content isn’t to my taste, which has been often.) In some cases, I get to know people because they’ve published in Knitty and I start following their blogs. More often, I get to know people and then find out they’re submitting designs to Knitty.

I knit with the designer of this pattern, and the kid in the kiddie pictures is a friend’s kid. (He just broke his arm and has to have surgery tomorrow to get it set — send him warm thoughts.)

This lady saved my sorry arse this summer when I ran out of wool for a project. I found what I needed in her stash on the Rav and begged her to swap with me. She took a skein of Socks that Rock off me and I got to finish my shawl. And now she has a cute scarf pattern published.

And so on. I love reading about the designers and their inspirations. And, because it’s an odd quirk of my personality, I like knowing where they’re from. (It’s a habit I formed in college and never shook — whenever I meet a person, I want to know where they’re from. I often remember places of origin better than names.) I watch in awe as the strangest things become wildly popular things to knit. I don’t think there’s a sinner in the knitting community who hasn’t at least heard of Clapotis, though I might be the only knitter in the universe who doesn’t hate the design with an irrational passion but still hasn’t knitted one (or five).

The publication might be considered the flagship of the “new knitting.” You know, that knitting that might not be your grandmother’s knitting but we’re not saying that anymore because your grandmother’s knitting was pretty darn amazing and I’d really like to be able to knit like that thank you very much. So I’m happy to see Irish designers submitting their stuff and being included. I’m even interested in actually knitting one of the designs.

It could be that I noticed the Irish representation simply because I’m flying out there in a few short weeks and have done absolutely no planning.

In other news, I’m working like crazy and was accosted by door-to-door evangelists yesterday. By Tuesday, it had already been a long week. Now I’m in a twilight zone of long-weekness and juggling things, I’ve only dropped one thing so far, and it didn’t break.