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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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.

Goodwill Gamble #2 Arrives

My second Goodwill gamble arrived; this is one I paid ten bucks for last month. Just inside the lid was a big roll of plastic mesh that I think is for latchhook work. In the auction listing it looked like fabric to me, so that was unexpected. Someone at the seller's end was nice enough to put a note on this pinned fabric. I'll put on my gloves before I take it out to inspect it. The embroidered green fabric turned out to be 1-1/2 yards of sequinned and three-dimensional designer fabric. I'll guess this cost somewhere between $20.00 to $30.00 a yard, and it's in pristine condition. But here's a shot of everything in the lot, which is mostly crafty odds and ends with a small amount of cotton fabrics, a large amount of synethetic fabrics, and some other surprises. The original owner of these was probably a Catholic school teacher; these beads, crosses and medallions are the kind of rosary kits for kids to make at Sunday school or Bible camp (and s...

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...

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