Knitting ♥

Hi classmates, today I’m gonna talk you about a kind of art I practice as a hobby, and that’s knitting. I’m pretty sure everyone relate knitting with their grandmothers, or old people sitting on a rocking chair, covered with a blanket. Well, let me tell you that this kind of handcrafting is a very good stress reliever and helps to be more focused and creative.

Yes, it's a Dobby amigurumi. Dobby is a free elf :) 

It’s complicated to think about the knitting prominent exponents, but instead of that I think I’ll write about the different types of things someone could do with knitting. For example, it is common knowledge that the people wear knitted clothes, but you can also knit things to decorate your house, useful things like pencilcases and messenger bags, and if you are interested in crochet, you can knit amirugumis, a Japanese invention which is about creating little knitted animals, even though in the present you can knit anything as an amigurumi.

I like to knit because, as I said before, I practice it as a sort of therapy, but I also like it because it gives you the chance to make things that identifies you. There aren’t two equal handmade knitted pieces; each knitter shows their own personality on the pieces they knit. I think it’s important for our generation to recover this tradition, because with the clothes made in machines we, as a society, had lost the idea of having a exclusive thing, not just something you can buy in a very expensive store but a thing that has your own spirit on it, and no one can copy it.

Incest: legal in Portugal, illegal in Germany

The article I read was written by Daniel Sokol, and it’s about a case of incest that happened in Germany, and how the German court handled it.

It begins talking about an imaginary case about a couple of siblings that decided to have sexual intercourse. It was sort of an introduction to the real case, which was about a couple of siblings too, but they didn’t grow up together. The brother was given to a foster family when he was three years old, and 20 years later he met his sister, who was 7 years younger than him. They felt in love and started a relationship that had as a result 4 children, three of them were given up to foster families, and just the youngest daughter lives with her mother.

The article presents the arguments from both parts: the applicant’s and the government’s case. The applicant argued that Patrick, the brother, and his sister didn’t grow up together or met before, so they didn’t have a brother-sister relationship. He also argued that this case is different than the cases related to the Electra and Oedipus complex, because there wasn’t overlapping family roles, like mother-son or father-daughter. The government argued that the incest is banned because is the German government’s role to protect the family structure as a base of the society.

Even though, the Court agreed with the accusation that the government was violating Patrick’s privacy, the rule which regulates this topic specifies that is just for relationships between adults, and in German you are an adult when you are 18. Patrick’s sister was 16 when the relationship started.

At the end of the judgement, Patrick was convicted of incest, and the Court didn't violate Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights, about the privacy.

The article’s author explains that, for him, the regulation about incest in Germany has loopholes. He placed as examples other European regulations, such as UK, where the incest between adult siblings is prohibited, and Portugal and Serbia, where the incest has been decriminalized.

He ends the article asking the readers some questions the incest topic can open, related to ethics and moral psychology.

This is the link to the article, on the online edition on The Guardian newspaper.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2012/apr/16/incest-legality-ethics

Up :)

My favourite movie is Up. It's a Pixar production released in 2009, and it was directed by Pete Docter, who also directed Monsters Inc.

The story is about Carl Fredricksen, an old toy balloon vendor who has been recently widowed, Ellie, his wife, was the love of his life. They had a dream since they were children: living in a colorful house above the Paradise Falls, Venezuela, but they couldn't make it because everytime they saved up enough money to do it, they needed to use it in other things. 

Before Ellie died, Carl bought the tickets so they could finally go to Venezuela, but she got sick, and then she died. When Carl found himself alone in their house, he decided to attatch thousands of balloons to it, and travel to Venezuela to place the house at the top of the falls. During the trip, Carl met Russell, a boyscout who was at the porch when the house was elevating; Dug, a dog who had a "human language-barking translating dog collar"; Kevin, a female tropical bird and Charles F. Muntz, Carl’s biggest idol from his childhood.

I love this movie for several reasons. First, when the movie began, I couldn't help myself from crying on the first 5 minutes, when they show Carl and Ellie’s love story. It was very moving. Second, I have an old uncle who looks a lot like Carl and his wife’s name is Ellie, so it’s kinda cool to relate the movie to them. And last but not least, I love Dug and his attention deficit disorder when it comes about… SQUIRRELS. For those of you who don’t know this amazing dog, I leave you his first appearence in the movie 

Let's hear it for New York!

Hi dear classmates!

I went to New York, USA, in 2007, after I graduated from 8th grade. I have relatives living there, not in New York City, but in Westchester, which is a county located at the north of the Manhattan island. That (Chilean) summer, my grand aunt and grand uncle came here to a wedding and, when they left, they took me with them. I spent two months there, half December, January and half February. Yes, I spent Christmas and New Year's Eve too. 

I went to Manhattan almost everyday, it was like 30-45 minutes from Westchester by train. During the "trip" to the city, you could visualize all the different landscapes on the way. 

I have to say this, I couldn't visit as many places as I wanted to, because of the very low temperatures that city has in winter. And unfortunately, the day I could see a little bit of snow, it looked like powder sugar on the grass from my bedroom's window. When I woke up the next day, the snow was gone, so I realized I should've gone out to play with it when I could. It snowed the day before I arrived and the day after I left. I guess the snow didn't want to share some time with me. 

Here's me @ Rockefeller Center Ice Skating Rink, and you can see the Chilean flag  :)

And me again, with the Manhattan Island as a background

These holidays were very important to me because I had the chance to meet, not just a new place but a part of my family that I didn't know before, except by pictures.

I really think I will have the opportunity to go back there, and see all the things I couldn't see that time. Central Park is more beautiful in summer than in winter.