little feet, big sky

I’ve been watching more stuff lately, while Spice nurses, or at night with the spouse after she’s gone to sleep. Here’s the highlights..

Online

• Colbert Report – Perfect for election season.
• TPMtv – The best picks of the media on the election.
• YouTube top picks, Baby Laughing and Evolution of Dance.

Netflix’d

• The Queen – Interesting drama telling the fallout from Princess Di’s death from the Royals’ point of view. A little slow, but worth watching if you like the Royals in general.
• Helvetica – Fascinating documentary on, yes, the font.
• Underworld (Blu-Ray) – Just to see it again. Even better on Blu-Ray.
• Death at a Funeral – Funny. Peter Dinklage is awesome.
• Step Into Liquid (Blu-Ray) – Incredible surfing documentary. If you’re in the know, you’ll be planning your next trip, and if not, you’ll want to learn. Just gorgeous on Blu-Ray.
• The Brothers Solomon – Ehh.. a little too screwball for me. But I do like Will Arnett from his Arrested Development days.
• Surf’s Up – Excellent fun, especially on the heels of Step Into Liquid!
• Blades of Glory – Silly and hilarious. Perfect goof comedy for fans of figure skating.

Sign with Your Baby is one of those baby sign language books. It’s an incredibly short read, as half the book is just the signs themselves. The big difference between this book and the others is that Sign with Your Baby teaches American Sign Language, while many of the others do not. IMHO, why teach some random made-up signs that are not part of an actual language? Proponents of non-ASL baby signs claim their signs are simpler, but I feel they underestimate babies’ intelligence.

Anyhow. I really liked this book. Simple, to-the-point writing and the basic signs to get you started. They suggest starting signing from 6 months onwards, so I’ll either rent it again later or buy it from Amazon ($11). They also have a book/dvd/reference guide combo for $33.

Okay, so of all the things you can do with your iPhone, you can’t actually knit directly with it.. but almost.

Store knitting patterns on your iPhone using Evernote. After trying for ages to find a practical way to use this slightly clunky desktop app/website/iPhone app, I’ve found it’s great for storing patterns I’m currently knitting. Sign up online and create a new note. (You can download the desktop app for either Mac or Windows, too.) Copy and paste the pattern text into your new note. You can even drag a picture into the note, too, which is great for cables/braids or even charts. Install the Evernote iPhone app, login in from your iPhone and you’ll see your pattern there. :-)

Track stitches on your iPhone with Stitchminder. It’s a free app, and despite the slightly garish background of a blue ball of yarn, it works pretty well. Ironically, the preset column counts don’t have a heading for tracking stitches. Instead you can choose from column names like row count, increase/decrease row and pattern row. Make sure to set your Auto-Lock setting (Settings > General > Auto-Lock) to something like 5 minutes, so that you don’t have to unlock everytime you finish a row.

Now all we need is an iPhone app for Ravelry. :-) Any other ways you use your iPhone to help with crafting?