Snowboard into Love

Ski into Love appealed to me as a drama because of the snowboarding aspect; the male lead is an Olympic-level athlete who chose to retire from the sport after a serious injury. I have never been an athletic person but I do appreciate athletes and the amazing things they do. Snowboarding is also a very exciting sport to watch; much like skiing was when I was a kid.

This Chinese drama is typical in some ways but unusual in others. Wei Zhi (Esther Yu) is a gifted manga artist who is forced out of her job and loses her pen name due to an enscrupulous publisher (ah, some echoes of my first career in writing! ha.) She goes to Beishan Ski Resort for reasons I'm not too clear on, where she meets coach Shan Chong (Lin Yi, who has been steadily gaining popularity as a series actor). He's the retired athlete who gave up on the sport. As he teaches her how to snowboard, she reignites his passion for the sport. Of course they fall in love.

I took my time watching the 23 episodes, and while the story had some issues overall it was a decent series. The lead actors were not the right age for each other (the female comes off as much older.) They had the female lead put on a burbling babyish persona that wasn't flattering to her and got a lot of complaints from reviewers. The secondary romance wasn't resolved in a satisfactory manner, and due to some odd expectation of how to wrap up the last episode, the series ending was a bit clumsy.

That said, they prominently featured a disabled character (the Disney version of one, of course) which is highly unusual for c-dramas, which usually portray everyone as young, healthy and extremely thin. The female lead was a bit chubby this time. The snowboarding sequences (not enough for me) were exciting, too. Based on the positives, I'd recommend this one. Available on Viki and Netflix.

Comments

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.

Downsizing

This was my fabric stash once I sorted everything -- 22 full bins. I spent a day taking out and boxing up what I could part with, with the goal of trying to reduce it by half, so I'd have 11 bins. I was very strict with myself, and removed everything that for one reason or another I was sure I wouldn't be able to use. This is what I ended up with -- 12 bins of fabric that I'm keeping. It's not quite half, but close enough. Half of what I took out went to a local quilter friend, a school and Goodwill. These four tightly-packed bins will be going to the local quilting guild once I make arrangements with them for a drop-off place. I am relieved and a little sad and now determined to control my impulses to thrift more fabric. I don't want to do this again, so until I use up six bins, I can't for any reason bring any new fabric into the house.

In Progress

I promised myself I would show you the good, bad and ugly of my cleaning this year. This is what it looks like when you dump thirty years' worth of stashed fabric on the floor -- and oy, what a pain in the butt to pick up again! This is what it looks like after it's been sorted, folded and placed in containers, which took me about a week. Now the hard part is to downsize my stash by at least half, I think (that's my goal, anyway.) I've already e-mailed the president of the local quilting guild, a local friend who is a quilter, and a public school art teacher I know to see if I can donate some of the excess to them. The rest will go to Goodwill. Already I've reduced my vintage textiles from two bins to one, and my scraps from three bins to one. It's probably the hardest clean-out I've done, which is why I saved it until last. I know I have too much fabric, more than I can use in my lifetime -- but at the same time, I love it. So I have to...

Valerean

Search This Blog