I wanted to try knitting in multiple colours, having previously done a bit of stripe work on full rows but not mixing it up mid-row. I found these patterns for Marvel icons in squares and thought that looked quite a fun place to start.

So close to the end now and the show descends into chaos! We were all really looking forward to five brilliant dances on Musicals week that would then send four couples through to the semi finals, only to find that Nigel injured himself and couldn’t perform. This late in the day, that means he’s out of the competition! There are contingencies in place for this, of course, and instead of someone else leaving the competition this week, there would be no public vote, these four couples go through to the semi finals and the judges scores roll over. Disappointing but still, musicals - hooray!

I’ve had a couple of mental health revelations this year, simple things that I’ve learned about myself. They mostly fall under the category of things that you read tips for all the time and think, well sure that’s just common sense, then realise you’re not actually doing it and that might be why you’re bending under the stress. Meanwhile, recently, Apple launched a new element to their health tracking platforms called State of Mind. This falls under the category Mental Wellbeing in the health app, alongside Time in Daylight (I really want to use this measure but seem to always have too long sleeves) and Mindful Minutes (used to be called Breathe, I think?).

We’re at the point now where the floor suddenly seems very empty even when all the couples are there - just six dances to get through tonight, and then only five couples making it through to next week. But hooray, the next show is the musicals special and with the quality of dancers we have left, we should be in for some brilliant entertainment. But that’s next week, let’s focus on our six special couples and how they got on.

The big ol’ Blackpool ballroom is our home for this week and it always feels like it really should just be the home of Strictly anyway, it is a really beautiful place, the atmosphere is amazing, and sure, we want it as a one off special occasion, but also, imagine opening and finale episodes here? Oh well, for now it can be our mid-season treat, and talking of treats, Kelvin Fletcher was back to do the terms and conditions. There seemed to be lots of people in the audience, star-spotting throughout the show, whilst also, obviously, watching closely all the dances.

Way back when this James Bond spin off project was announced, I thought it was a crazy idea. Some kind of reality show where people do some challenges and answer some questions to try and win lots of money… what does that have to do with Bond? The show, 007: Road to a Million, was recently released on Prime and I watched the first episode with a similar amount of skepticism… but it hooked me in and I absolutely devoured it. Eight episodes later, I was sad we had come to the end of the journey.

I’ve been using and writing about Duolingo and their excellent language lessons for a long time now, but was not expecting the wise old language owl to branch out into other areas, particularly maths and most recently music. The team have said they get asked a lot to expand into other areas, and it’s always been their mission to make the best free education possible so perhaps it was always the next steps.

The only intro I can offer for this post is the same as Claudia said in the actual intro to the show: Blackpool. That is the fifth mention, we have been on air for two minutes. Krishnan & Lauren - Samba I like Lauren’s teaching method of bow and arrow for helping Krishnan understand the shapes. Initial thoughts are only yellow trousers and fists for hands, but once in hold it got a bit better. The out of hold bits were not good and he really just looked surprised all the time, oh, I’m in a dance! Judges comments were mostly along the line of ‘you gave it a go.’

Hooray, a new section has appeared on this website and it’s dedicated to games and gaming! I’m a fair-weather gamer, usually dipping in and out of iPhone apps until the next Tomb Raider adventure is released. Tomb Raider and Spider-Man have been the two most recent games I’ve been obsessed with and they were a while ago now (haven’t started the new Spider-Man yet!)

The second season of Loki drew to a close this week, and I’m going to be honest, it was a pretty big disappointment. The whole series, in fact, hasn’t lived up to the fun and glory of the first one, even though this time out the stakes were higher and the time travel even more prevalent. The biggest problem I had with it was not enough time spent with the characters being themselves. The great thing about the first serious was the back and forth nature of the relationship between Mobius and Loki. We only got to see that fully in the third episode, title 1893, where they went back in time to the Chicago World’s Fair and chased around together like idiots. That was fun and brilliant.

I’m sure last week they were referring to the half point of the competition but that appears to have been this week - they may have mentioned it once or twice, you’ll have noticed! We’re coming down from the stress of Halloween week and are without a theme for a couple of weeks now until everything heads north to Blackpool. We’re left with some really good dancers, and although there are still a few couples who look like they could go home over the next few weeks, it’s really getting hard to predict who is going to do well or not each week.

The BBC just added all available classic episodes of Doctor Who to their iPlayer streaming service, meaning they have the entire collection of Doctor Who series old and new all under one roof. This is superbly exciting. It’s always been in the back of my mind to watch some old Doctor Who episodes, partly because I do feel bad at being one of those ’new Who’ only fans, but also because you can never have too much TV in your life.

I quite liked the intro to this week’s Halloween show, particularly where Krishnan got to have a go on Dave’s keyboards - what an honour! Anton wins the costume competition amongst the judges, Shirley’s was a bad choice as it restricted her ability to talk, and Motsi’s hair was flipping about all over the place. But the contestants had great costumes throughout, although is it a rule that someone has to be green at least once a season?

It’s so sad that Matthew Perry has died. Friends is such an integral part of my life, and of course it’s not going anywhere, but now it just has that extra layer of sadness and nostalgia that I wasn’t quite ready for. I recently read his autobiography which shared difficult but important stories about addiction, alongside lots of stories from his career. Perry did far more than Friends, obviously, but that’s the one that means the most to me. With that in mind, here are my five favourite moments from ten seasons of Chandler.

When I reviewed the second series of OMITB (we’re calling it that, right?), I was talking about the upward trajectory that it was on and hoping the third would continue that way. Did it? Didn’t it just! I really liked this murder as it was not connected to the first two series’ story so had a fresh take to it, and featured a lot of incredible new cast members - Paul Rudd and Meryl Streep as the headliners.

Is it just me or did this week’s Strictly live show have a very weird feeling about it? Of course we were one contestant down with Amanda Abbington absent for non-specific medical reasons, but the remaining pairs seemed very tense and making a few mistakes. And the judging was all over the place! We are at that point in the competition where it swings from ’this is a good score for a non-dancer trying their best’ to ’now we expect greatness and nothing else’ but still, it felt like a rollercoaster of a show.

The weather has definitely turned autumnal now, so it seemed like a good time to try out a knitting pattern for fingerless gloves. I’ve found a few different ones available online, but opted to go for this free pattern that looked relatively simple. It was back to the double pointed needles, and although it took me two attempts at the first glove, it actually was quite easy.

The week after a theme week, when we go back to normal and a random collection of dances and songs, always feels a bit flat. But this week there’s a really interesting selection of songs that mean I’m on board to see who can pull out all the stops and earn another week of dancing. Ellie & Vito - Samba I’m quite enjoying that each week Vito comes up with a new way of pronouncing something. This week, his attempt at peacock. Anyway, the dance, I felt like it was a bit frantic and I don’t know if it was the character but she didn’t look like she was enjoying herself. A good and entertaining dance for the samba, which is notoriously tough. All the judges mentioned her turned in feet, something to watch for in the future.

Earlier this year, Apple TV+ released Drops of God, a multi-lingual series set in the serious world of wine-tasting. I’ve just wrapped up watching the series, and I want to write about it but I don’t really know where to begin. It took a while to start watching, and a while to get into it, and it wasn’t a priority series so it took longer than expected to complete the eight episodes. But every time I watched an episode, I absolutely loved it, even though I can’t put my finger on why.

Movie week! Disney celebrations. Incredible costumes. And lovely AMY!! Overwhelming and we’re only minutes in. Let’s go! Nigel & Katya - Jive (Batman) I like the glitterball bat signal but I do not like this dance. I guess expectations were high as Nigel’s been so good for two weeks but this just wasn’t his dance. The kicking wasn’t great, and there were quite a few mistakes. He wasn’t put off by them though and the character was good. The judge’s comments were surprisingly positive, although agree it did get better as it went on.

I’m a little bit late posting this, we’re already a week into the final quarter of the year - but the films will wait for me, I’m sure. There’s a real mix of stuff coming up, but we’re still on a bit of a lull from the various strikes and I’m also wondering what on earth the Christmas output is going to be like this year. But I’ve avoided the festive stuff here, and gone for the big hitters that interest me.

There was a bit of a rumpus recently about certain fashion retailers starting to charge a fee for returning clothes bought online, which on the one hand doesn’t seem outrageous (I know there are customers out there that buy heaps of stuff as if they’re in a changing room and return what they don’t want), but on the other hand is a bit of a swindle when you never quite know what you’re getting when purchasing online.

Maybe I was just keen but it felt like the show just dived straight in and got on with it. Opening dance, traditional welcomes, couples down the stairs, and let’s go. Of course at this point in the competition, the show is super-size in length anyway, and it was also hugely obvious towards the end when they’d given the judges the hurry up and one word answers were all we were getting. Seems unfair on those couples towards the end, but that’s live TV for you!

There have been a lot of changes to Apple products and softwares around my house recently and I have barely scratched the surface of any of them. I mean, let’s be fair, I barely ever manage to scratch the surface of updates before the next lot come out but I’m always determined to try and I think that counts for something.

This weekend, the BBC released a new and quite lengthy trailer for the upcoming Doctor Who specials, featuring the return of David Tennant and Catherine Tate as the Doctor and Donna respectively. I was already excited for these specials and this reunion, but now my anticipation is off the charts. I’ve had mixed enjoyment following the exploits of various Doctors under various showrunners since Russel T Davies left the show, but it has to be said, seeing that trailer just brings back such a rush of fondness for how the show was during the first couple of series… there really is an element of magic to Davies’ TV-making.

I’ve just finished watching the second series of Annika, a police crime procedural starring Nicola Walker that aired on Alibi. On the face of it, it’s your standard detective fare - each episode features a murder that needs to be solved, and a group of police at various levels in their career come together to solve it, whilst also dealing with their private lives.

The competition has started properly now, with our first full week of dancing - each couple taking to the floor and showing us what they can do. No one gets voted out in the first week, which means they get one more chance to impress us next week, but if I’m honest… I was impressed by almost everyone anyway! The start of the show was lovely, first featuring Amy in the opening credits, fingers crossed she can join in the series in some capacity at some point, and then the gorgeous location of Scottish castle ruins as the opening professional dance number. Then, the dancing got less professional as the contestants took to the floor.

I just wanted to celebrate the fact that the Top of the Pops replays have started again on BBC Four, after taking an extended break to make way for the Proms. We’d just dipped our toes into the start of 1995 when the classical stuff took over but now we’re back, and it’s brilliant! Britpop is starting to emerge and breakthrough the dance numbers, we’re still seeing warblers like Celine Dion rule the roost, but also the oddities are cropping up like Cotton Eye Joe.

In July, I wrote about the first part of a multi-part canal walk, following the towpath between two cities: Birmingham and Worcester. The first part of the walk was a lot of fun, and I quickly followed it up with a second outing. That was less fun. I was saving writing about it until I could potentially combine it with a more fun third element, but time has been ticking away and the weather is turning and who knows when that will be. So here we go!

I’ll be upfront about it - I’m not expecting great things from this year’s Strictly. Part of that is that I don’t know many of the contestants, although that’s not a dealbreaker. The last few years have seen me fall in love with lots of the contestants that I had previously never heard of, so not being too excited about the lineup at first glance might not be a problem.

The US Open drew to a conclusion last week with a new champion on the women’s side and the same old champ on the men’s side. I wish I could say I watched and enjoyed it all but I didn’t… the only way I managed to keep up with it was to have a copy of the draws, and read the news and scores each day to keep track.

Love, love this comic strip by xkcd - the booping craze is really taking off and I’m here for it. Boop! Also love that these comics are creative commons and available to share so easily. Way to spread the love.

I’ve been fascinated by these minimalist movie posters I saw on Kottke. They’re by graphic designer Michal Krasnopolski and are a challenge to present a movie poster with the limits of using only lines in and around a circle… and different colours. Something about this really makes me happy - the challenge of it, the idea of summing up everything about a movie to make it easily identifiable with such a limited set of tools, just brilliant. Really showing off what graphic design does best.

In this day and age of digital streaming and global access to content, it’s almost confusing when you can’t find something available. I have a short list of items that I want to watch, both film and TV, that aren’t available to me at the moment, and every now and then, I ask Siri to have a quick scout around and tell me if they’re available.

It’s a while ago I finished watching the sequel television series to the hit film The Full Monty - usually if I don’t get around to writing about something relatively quickly, then I don’t bother. But this has been living with me, at the back of my brain, thoughts that I have to get down on digital paper.

I continue to find the post-Top Gear careers of the three hosts fascinating, particularly as they diverge more and more into distinct personalities and making their hobbies their jobs. At the moment, James May is winning the battle for best-of-the-three for me, and not just because he makes very good gin.

This may be a tricky review to write because it’s hard to talk too much about the Apple TV series Hijack without giving away any spoilers. I’m not usually worried about spoilers one way or the other, but actually this series is really helped when you don’t know what’s going to happen next, or who you can trust.

I got to grips with circular knitting needles in the last project, and thought perhaps it was about time I dipped my toe in the waters of double pointed knitting needles - which means I could try my very first socks! I used this pattern for Relax at Home socks which seemed relatively easy and the kind of footwear I would enjoy wearing.

Finally, I have managed to cross ‘Watch Back to the Future: The Musical’ off my to do list. There have been a couple of failed attempts and I’ve been worried that the universe didn’t want me to see it, but I’ve thwarted the universe and seen the brilliance of this show.

Have you watched The Muppets Mayhem on Disney+? You may be thinking ’no, of course not, why would I’ but I’m here to tell you that you absolutely should. I wasn’t aware of Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem, even though by all accounts they’ve been around for nearly fifty years, but their comedy musical series that was released in May was surprisingly brilliant viewing.

Almost a year ago, I wrote about a tweak to this very website that split off the films into their own sub-site, to try and speed things up as a publisher. It turns out, the more you write, the more a static site generator struggles to keep up. Well, fast forward to the present and I’m very happy to say the films are back home where they belong - all within mrschristine.com. It’s only a slight change but it makes a big difference - the films appear on the homepage now, in all the same feeds, and in the More to Explore section on the sidebar.

Julia Bradbury has walked all over the UK and made various TV episodes about her adventures, but one that has always stuck with me is the Worcester & Birmingham canal walk. Julia split the nearly 50km walk into a two day mission, stopping off at Tardebigge to break up the two halves. I finally got organised and kicked off this walk, but only did about 10km in the one session, so it’s going to take me a few more than just the two days. Never mind though, it’s an interesting walk and so far worth it!

I’m still learning a lot about yarn, the different types and weights, materials and measures, the fact that they appear to be sold in grams rather than length, and that kind of thing. But I do like perusing the huge variety of colours and yarns available, and was happy to find the above in store. Yarn made from recycled bottles is genius, isn’t it? What a great use of bottles that would otherwise just be thrown away. The texture is a little bit different to other yarns but I think you would get used to it quite quickly, and they’re not all going to be like this specific one, either.

It feels like the output of both TV and films has slowed somewhat, presumably relating to the strikes that are ongoing. Although any situation that forces a strike is not great, it is a bit of a relief to have a minute to think about what we’re watching and actually catch up a bit. I’ve been looking through the next few months of movie releases and there are quite a few that speak to me!

We need to talk about Silo… and there will be spoilers. To set thing up, I was looking forward to this obviously, as it’s about a post-apocalyptic world where a hardy group of survivors live in a sealed bunker, make do and mend, because the outside world is so dangerous. I hadn’t read the books, although I have now somehow managed to snap up all three of the books for future perusal.

It’s Wimbledon time! Lush green grass courts, strawberries and cream, and one eye always watching the weather to see how much play is going to get completed each day. I can’t wait! Here are five things I’m looking forward to ahead of the 2023 tournament: Being on it. Have watched qualifying and kept an eye on that draw, as well as being ready with the draw and the order of play for Monday. Let’s do this! The battle for the top prize. Can Świątek do it? Is this Jabeur’s time? Will Sabalenka conquer her demons to get a Wimbledon win? I’m not sure this counts as looking forward to, but the Venus Williams versus Elina Svitolina first round match is must watch for me. I can’t believe the only non-Brit wildcards have to face off in the first round, and I want both of these to do well, dammit. Such a wide field, and so open, we could have a complete surprise on our hands like last year, or it could be one of the players who is on everyone’s predictions list. Dark horse and underdog story, anyone? Thanks to Break Point, I actually know a bit more about the men’s draw as well, I’m usually fully focused on the ladies but this time I might spare a minute to browse the men’s results too. There’s always a rumbling of political aspects within sport at the moment, but I’m hoping this will be a great fortnight of quality tennis to enjoy. Ready? Play!

I’ve been meaning to write this post all week and I admit it feels a bit late to be talking about Glastonbury Festival a full week on from when it ended. But then again, I still watch old sets from past Glasto festivals, so potentially it’s a timeless thing and it doesn’t matter how long it takes me to get these thoughts down.

If you’re looking for a TV show that follows a brilliantly flawed independent woman investigating mysterious circumstances against all the odds in the deserts on the west coast of the US, then you’re in luck, there are two! Poker Face and High Desert both follow that premise and whilst they do have plenty of differences, the similarities are hard to ignore! Both were brilliant though, and I highly recommend them.

When it’s hot and stuffy on land, one option is to get out on the water and feel the breeze as you sail along. With this in mind, I joined family on board the SS Shieldhall for the first of their summer sailings. Steamship Shieldhall is the largest working steamship in the UK, staffed fully by volunteers who keep it running as a charity. The journey was from Southampton Docks in to Portsmouth Harbour and back again, a smooth journey that was pretty relaxing. You get the run of the ship, even an opportunity to go down into the engine room (although it was SO HOT, it really undid a lot of the cooling work from the rest of the journey), and up on the bridge to see the captain at work.

From hats and scarves, I wanted to move on and try knitting an actual item of clothing, so I started on a jumper from my beginner’s knitting book. However, I realised that summer was quickly approaching and it might be more fun and useful to try something like a tank top or vest. So, I opted for this super easy, but with a few elements I would need to learn, Classic Vest pattern.