No Vacancy.

My friend B and I are looking for a place together: 2 bedrooms in Hollywood, WeHo or Los Feliz. Doesn't need to be huge, but needs to have bedrooms with closets, decent windowage, and fully functional kitchen 'n' bathroom. And it shouldn't cost an arm and a leg. An arm, fine, but not a leg.

It would appear this is too much to ask.

We were walking around Hollywood in an ever-widening spiral of despair, calling every number listed on every sign outside of every apartment building. Nobody answers, no vacancy, $2100 for 600 square feet. Then a short woman dressed in black steps out of the bushes. "You need apartment, yes? Come, first floor, turn right, I show you apartment." Sounded like she was talking around a mouthful of borscht, but we could tell she really wanted us to see this place. Who are we to argue with Russian stubbornness? And delicious beet soup.

It's a cute little gray house-like building with lots of bushes outside. And then bang! we go in and it's the most perfect apartment I've seen in this city. Shiny pale wood floors, crown moldings, little built-in shelves in the corners of the dining room. Chandeliers. It's airy and bright and...chandeliers. In all the rooms.

She was only asking an arm and a thigh.

But there were two girls already sprawled on the floor, filling in their mothers' maiden names and how they got evicted once but it wasn't their fault. And I really wanted to tell them to move, because that's where I was going to put my spring green divan with the mahogany pedestal table, but I really need my thigh money to get me through these next few months of Building My Network.

Back to Craigslist it is.

Knitting socks cuff-down is a fad horror movie.

The first pair of socks I knit, I knit toe-up, from no real pattern. I did a figure-8 cast on five times until I got it right, then increased until the proto-sock fit over my toes. Then I knit like the dickens until the larval sock fit over my foot to the point where the top of my foot turns into my shin. Then I turned the heel (3 times was the charm for this feature) as per the Pine Tree Sock recipe. Then I decided said pine tree pattern was too sharp and prickly looking to go with my self-striping Laugh-In Regia Ringel (though I do want to try it in a tweedy fir-in-shadow green or fish-scale gray yarn), so I switched to the Firefighter Sock pattern. Lucky for me my socks were of a multiple-of-3 circumference already, and all was smooth sailing.

Then, rather than get stuck in a deep (TWO sock!!!) rut of toe-up-ness, I figured I'd learn how to knit the other way 'round. (Do they knit clockwise in Australia?)

I am now the Blair Witch. The first two rounds of a sock cuff are a fetishistic tangle of bent twigs, crow's blood and sheep hair. They look nothing like a sock. To be fair, neither do the first couple of rounds of a toe-up toe, which resemble a weirdly yonic god's eye. (Weird because it's a solid object in empty space, rather than the other way around, which seems more like what a yoni should be. Maybe it's a yarn hymen?) But after a few more rounds, the wool-and-bamboo marionette starts to look like a sock. I still think I prefer toe-up.

Next up: an eyelet-and-rib pattern for the Blair Witch sock.

Video Village #1

This is one version of where I spend most of my time. The not-enough-budget, sorry-we-ran-out-of- craft-service version. Although this shoot wasn't like that at all (except for the budget part). It was only one day, and they had fine crafty and a delicious lunch. We were shooting the shortest ends I've ever seen on a cool old Mitchell camera that is the exact same camera used to shoot Midnight Cowboy, according to the DP, who owns it. That's just about my closest brush with Hollywood fame right there.

I guess this is what a spec commercial is: it's gotta look super shiny, but there's not enough money for the stuff that doesn't show up on camera. Maybe one day, when I grow up, I'll work on a real commercial and earn the oodles of money they're always talking about. I should have gotten into this business through the commercial/industrial side and tried to break into movies. Then I'd be earning lots and lots of money while trying to make my way onto artistically fulfilling jobs, rather than trying for the few low-paying, artistically fulfilling jobs while wishing I knew someone who could get me a job on a commercial.

BUT I finished my first socks, and have started my Jaywalkers in Katia Mississippi in a variegated Cadbury's Mini-egg colorway. Ummm...like the pattern, hate the yarn. It's the kind of cotton that's fiddly, even though it's 40% acrylic, which I equated with 40% ease. Nope. It's got a spiffy sort of matte hand though. Now I have to decide if I rip out my 4 hours of knitting (that's 1.5 inches of sock) and start over smaller or if I forge ahead and give them to someone with bigger legs than I. Or if I find another use for the yarn.