Bois Sombres et Profonds

For a change of pace I watched the French crime drama series La Forêt (The Forest), which starts with a missing teenage girl and ends up being an on-again off-again edge of your seat nail biter with some inexplicable parts. French films usually do puzzle me, so I was not surprised when this 6-episode series did the same.

The premise: village police are called to investigate the disappearance of Jennifer Lenoir, a sixteen-year-old who vanishes in a forest in the Ardennes, Belgium. They're assisted (and sometimes hampered) by her teacher, a former nameless orphan who had some kind of traumatic experience in the same forest when she was a little girl. Then two more girls disappear and the case is linked to even more missing persons cases from the past.

The plot is a bit all over the place, especially concerning Virginie, the female cop on the case (played very well by Suzanne Clément) and Eve Mendel, the very puzzling former orphan/present French teacher to the missing girls (played by the curiously ethereal Alexia Barlier.) Samuel Labarthe, who skillfully plays lead cop Gaspard Decker, was absolutely awesome in his role and kept me watching. There are several subplots that are more red herrings than anything, and more confusing characters in the secondary cast. While I was wading through all that I happened to notice something that helped me tag the real villain by episode 4.

It's a fairly good mystery cluttered by too many characters and waaaaay too much backstory. Simplifying and reducing the cast and the subplots would have been a big service to this production. I did like how the forest was used almost like a character, ala the island in Lost. Available on Netflix.

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Love Means This

Invested in a couple of hand-dyed bundles from one of my favorite fabric artists. This one said "Make me into something for Valentine's Day." So I went for a quilted and embellished tote. I kept thinking about what love means to me as I worked on it. Here's the finished tote. Although I was tempted to embellish with beads and pins, I got sick and only felt well enough to do a little stitching every night. As I worked I thought about how often love seems disappointing to us, especially when it fails to live up to our expectations. But now that I've experienced love in many forms, I can say that it's made me a better person than I might have been without it. Love is a precious thing, and should be appreciated in all its forms. I am very grateful for the love of my guy, my child and my friends who have stuck with me all these years. That's you two, in case you're wondering. :) Also finally found something to do with a ve...

Other Stashes

Along with clearing out the spare bedroom and tidying my office and our guest bedroom, I decided to reorganize some of my stashes. This is all the yarn I have on hand, sorted by color. It looks like a lot, but lately I've been using up a minimum of half a bin every month, so this is approximately a year's supply. All of my solid color cotton perle thread. I go through a lot of this every year, too. I need a container in which I can fit all of it together, but I haven't found the right one yet. I won't show you all of my fabric -- I'm still reorganizing this stash -- but I went through everything and donated two bins of fabric I won't need to the local quilter's guild.

Store Closing Haul

The mega Books-A-Million store over in Sanford is closing, and offered an extra 20% off on their current stock -- all sales final -- so I went over to do some shopping. Safely but sadly there was no one in the store but me the entire time I was there. The Holly Jackson novel is for Katherine, the Halloween board book is for Oliver, and the copy of Garden Spells is to keep on hand because I give that book to everyone. The rest of the books are for me. I love Anne Cleeves, and the Galbraith novel sounded interesting (the first couple weren't, but I'm willing to take another chance.) The Escape Room is by a new-to-me author, plus it was cheap. The GreenCraft mag is just a guilty pleasure. Hopefully the smaller BAM nearer to me won't close. I don't buy many books from brick-and-mortar stores these days, but that's really the last one within reasonable driving distance.

Valerean

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