The Killing II

Saturday night TV just got good again as Sarah Lund, Denmark's best detective and inadvertent knitwear promoter has returned to UK screens with another puzzle to solve against the backdrop of political intrigue and threats of terrorism.

So we sat down with some Danish lager and I made sure that my knitting was subtitle friendly (a simple beanie for the Christmas shoeboxes) and prepared to be led astray, confused and misdirected through the bleak Danish landscape. Wonderful stuff!!
The Radio Times even has the pattern for this season's red sweater, and I'm sure that many fans will be casting on pdq! Awesome!

Meanwhile in daylight hours I'm battling against the billion billion leaves which fall in my garden every Autumn. I sweep them up then more fall off the trees. Today I emptied the leaf mulch bin and put the mulch on two freshly weeded flower beds  so that
a) it helps the beds and
b) I have somewhere to put the next gazillion leaves!!

I need to buy some more garotta powder to speed up the composting process in the leaf bin. Garrota is ammonium sulphate and while I know that some gardeners just pee on their compost heaps (usually after a trip to the pub and a few pints of beer!) I would much rather buy the powder than be the talk of the village!!

I've not been blogging about football recently, largely because it's been so depressing. While Newcastle are flying high at 3rd position on 25 pts, Sunderland are languishing at 15th on 11 pts. D is dumbfounded by Newcastle's current success (despite losing 3-1 to Man City yesterday) but I'm disheartened by my team's poor form. We had a goal-less draw at home yesterday against Fulham. Sigh.

Still, at least the brilliant Sofie Gråbøl is back and the leaves have been re-arranged in the garden!

Forbrydelsen

No spoilers!!!

D and I watched the final episodes of this brilliant drama on BBC4 last night and are still talking about it today, it was so good. It has a tremendous ending, and everyone's life has been tarnished by the events.

The acting, the storyline, and the bleak atmosphere made this Danish crime thriller ("The Killing") set new standards and has whet my appetite for the next series.
We'd been talking about who was the killer for ages, discussing different theories and enjoying the fact that for once we couldn't definitely say who-dunnit. So, to create the right atmosphere for the denouement I cooked frikadeller  for dinner, served with picked red cabbage, and we had a couple of bottles of Danish lager too. But to have been truly in the zone with Detective Lund we should have been absentmindedly eating some cold pizza from the day before and barely uttered a word.

Most crime thrillers focus on the police and the crime and pay scant attention to the bereaved family, but in this story the family remained prominent as they struggled to come to terms with the abduction and murder of their 19 year old daughter. The portrayal of her bereaved parents, played by Bjarne Henriksen (Theis) and Ann Eleonora Jørgensen (Pernille) was superb!

We aren't the only ones to have been gripped by this story- I've been following the episode blog on The Guardian and there has been a huge discussion on Ravelry about the plot and of course Sara Lund's jumpers! Ironically, I can't knit along to this as I'm too busy following the subtitles. I want to watch it all from the beginning to enjoy the trail of red herrings and to appreciate the tremendous acting once more. I'll keep my eyes open for more of Sofie Gråbøl's work too, she's a compelling actress.

Today we've had some cold left-over frikadeller in sandwiches and I feel more in tune with my new hero Sara Lund!

Forbrydelsen- the original title in Danish, meaning The Crime

slowly but surely

Cookie A patterns can be quite challenging and I've already learnt two new techniques and I'm only 2" done!

Firstly I've been making stitches while purling- I've been lifting the bar between stitches and then either purling the lifted stitch at the the front or through the back loop (tbl) Now, I've knit tbl but I've never purled tbl, and man that's hard on teeny tiny needles! I've been having to use a skinny crochet hook to create the tiny space to push the needle tbl purlwise. It seems to be working, but it's slower than just knitting tbl!

Secondly I've been cabling a three strand cable, 2 stitches brought forward, 2 stitches to the back then knit tbl the next two sts, purl the two at the back and knit tbl the first pair. This feels quite hard to hold two sep cable needles as well as the 4 dpns. I know that in theory that I could cable without using cable needles, but I'm not going to risk it! It's engrossing so I'm not knitting on this while watching anything complex.

This week's complex must see TV is a Danish crime story called The Killing  ("Forbrydelsen") which is subtitled so I have to keep my eyes on the screen, and has a very interesting plot so I can't predict whodunnit. The series is 20 x 1 hour eps so there's plenty time for many plot twists. I'm so glad that the BBC is showing this, even though I can't make any progress on my Rhombus socks while watching it. I did manage to get a bit done on my Landgirls top though- I can just about manage 2x2 rib while reading subtitles.