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Ok, so that sewing kitty gif sat up on the blog for over a month before I felt like I had something urgent enough to talk about to actually write up an entry.* It’s been that kinda of spring, so far. Thank goodness sewing kitty is adorable. Also, if you’ve come to this blog, according to my stats page, there’s an eighty percent chance you’re hungry,** and there are plenty of recipes on the site, so really I haven’t been terribly worried, right?
Anyway! It’s not just that the rain has had me a little bit slow (holy, carp, I’m tiring of the grey weather!) it’s more than that. I’ve been working on some stuff that has my head in other places, and some days it’s really hard to hone myself to a clear focal point for the blog. Aside from the fact that soccer season is back in swing and I haven’t really adjusted to the schedule change yet, I’ve been working on another book.***
And this book is new to me – loosely, you could call it sci-fi, or urban fantasy (there are no spaceships, but there’s both tech and magic in it), and outside of a handful of short stories, I’ve never really delved into trying to put something like this on paper. I’ve always wanted to (one day I’ll write dragon fic!) but haven’t ever figured out how to navigate the doing. This is seat-of-pants stuff, and as a task-oriented person, and as someone who really likes to have a clear vision of what I’m doing, a little harrowing at times. (Also, I’m one hundred percent sure that this is not a book that I could show to at least four people whom I love very much, as they would cough at the content.)
Which is to say, the going has been slow – I think I started this thing some five years ago as part of a NaNoWriMo attempt.† I put it down for a year someplace in there, when I got stuck. I’ve been picking at it intermittently for what seems like a dog’s age, and cussing at it occasionally. There was a whole summer when I sat in bed and whined something to the tune of, “If I only knew what my staaaaatement iiiiiiiiiis – wahhhhh!”†† I wrote three short stories that happen in the same world, after sitting down to work on the novel and getting sidetracked. I made file after file of drafts, and made a bunch of print-outs. I sat down and made a synopsis. And then another one. I had an idea of the ending, but was fairly hopeless about the execution of said ending. And then I put the thing away again, and didn’t touch it for a while – four months, five months, maybe. Incidentally, that’s kind of a long time for a project to sit, y’all.
But listen – something has shifted. Someone once described writer’s block to me as the time when your imaginary friends stop talking to you. Well, all of a sudden, they’re talking to me again \o/ And they’re rather chatty, actually. I’ve been nosing into my google docs while on break at work. I’ve been toting a paper printout and a notebook to the soccer pitch when Our Man Cub has a practice. I’ve been keeping a notepad on the bedside.
Have you read The Hunger Games yet? One of the nicest things about Our Man Cub being thirteen now is that we not only read together*, but we can share books independently. I read the book (well, books) after hearing about it for probably a year from all my friends. I have no idea why it took me so long to get around it it – prolly ‘cos I was buried in the Song of Fire & Ice books for the better part of three seasons, right? But anyway, Hunger Games, the whole series (there are three books), was wonderful – a page-turner, and a quick read as well, and I passed the books on as I finished them, to Man Cub, who devoured them, and then passed them off to Jaquelyn, who also loved them. Her beau listened to them on audio book, too, so all of us wound up chatting quite a bit about these books after we’d all caught up – a merry little book party, for sure!
Well! When it was announced that the first book is being made into a movie, we all got pretty excited. It’s coming out on the 23rd, and I’m keeping fingers crossed that it’s done well,** and planning to pick up movie tickets in advance. We are stoked =D
Also out soon (June 22nd) will be Brave, a Disney Pixar film that looks pretty fantastic. It appears we finally have a Disney with an actual girl hero \o/ The trailers give me chills, both with the content and the beauty of the whole thing (also the score sounds gorgeous). Look! Look!
I’ve always been a little bit fascinated with armour – maybe it’s all the sci-fi and fantasy that I read and have read since I was little, maybe it’s just a preoccupation with fashion, but I just think the stuff is terribly neat-o. As you may or may not know, Dear Will works at the Higgy as the conservator, and I worked there briefly, in education, a while back. So I’ve managed to learn bits and pieces about the stuff over the years.
So in 2oo8 when Man Cub wanted to be a knight for Halloween, I dug in with gusto. He and I discussed the matter at hand (fashion!), and decided on some fanceh scale armour. I researched, asked a ton of questions, and then I cut about a zillion pieces of black craft foam into chevrons, pulled an old long-sleeved tee out of the closet, and fired up the glue gun.
I fashioned the shoulders by molding them around a small pumpkin, and scaled up the shirt from the bottom up, and when I got most of the way around, I ran out of foam chevrons. So, um, I made him a cape and called it a day. Will finagled a helmet and a wooden sword, and our man cub brought home much candy that Halloween. That costume actually made it through two Halloweens (the second year spray painted gold and, “blood” spattered) before it was too small. I believe he would have worn it a third year had it not gotten tight.*
I loved the process of building the costume – the shaping and molding, and even the cutting out of chevrons was kinda meditative. And ever since that costume, I’ve been wanting to build another armour.
I know, I know, it’s still August – I’m picking tomatoes and peppers as they ripen, watching to see if the pumpkins will fruit from the blossoms, getting a kick out of the bumblebees that have been flirting with our sunflowers, and pickling the cukes for later (exciting! I’ll post pix of the jars soon). It’s garden season, right? Absolutely.
BUT! Autumn is on the way, and if I may be completely honest, I could not be more thrilled. As much as I love the garden,watching stuff happen and change in the dirt, as much as we have enjoyed the hell out of home-grown zucchinis and all the dreaming about how we’ll improve on it next year, I’m super tired of being hot. There it is, all of it – I can’t wait for the weather to cool off and my blood pressure to drop. And red leaves! And the smell of autumn – zomg, the smell! And sweaters!
So, um, I’ve been knitting in anticipation. Hats. HATS WITH EARS!
It was no distress broadcast that saved us. In the end it was a forged map and some boat songs brought us home.
In the giants’ nest someone figured out the math in the hymnals, how prayer is incantation, and the way the sextant seeks the stars. Sums were worked, equations were fashioned, paper was folded specifically. We sang our shanties from the scattered coasts of the Isles of Brides to familiar orchards on familiar cliffs. They stamped our passports when we landed.
By then the figurehead was drunken, but the paper ship had held. Between us, a roll of quarters, a bottle of beer, two lemons, and a dog dressed in motley. Some documents (authentic), bills of lading made for an empty hold, and a book of verse written along the way.
The book and the dog were claimed at customs. We ate the lemons on deck and passed around the sweating beer bottle. It would be days before we got our land legs back.
Zomg what a week!
In addition to dailies and boss fights in Firelands, real life goes on, and it has been going on in a rather full manner. Man Cub is finally back from vacation in FL (where he had a blast, thank you), I’m still temping four days a week, and my application to vend over at the Holden Farmer’s Market* was accepted.
Which means that I’ve been sewing my little heart out. On Sunday I stitched and stitched while both The Fifth Element and Serenity played, as well as three This American Life podcasts, and two episodes of Firefly. And I made a whole bunch of rather pretty (I think!) shopping totes =D I put some up on Etsy this morning, too, if you’d like to check them out.
And speaking of Etsy – the lovely Ms. Lavoie over at Maple Street Shoppes has rounded a bunch of us MA locals together on her webbie. If you go visit my page by her, you’ll find a coupon code you can use at my Etsy shop.
The rest of the week has been awash in gardening and taking care of business. Read the rest of this entry »
I know, I know – I should be writing about Doctor Who. Really, I should – the family sat rapt on Sunday morning (we dvr’d it so we could skip the ads – damn the ads!) and enjoyed the hell out of ourselves. But it was a to-be-continued, and I just don’t want to write about it until I’ve seen part two, y’know? All I’ll say for the time being is that zomg, Steven Moffat, I has a little writer’s crush on him.
Ok! So back to the business of… well… business! I spent last week temping, as cash is tight all around, and that means that trade in pageant frocks is down. So temping it is. The agency that I’m working through is super nice, which is a bonus. We still have a bitty nestegg, which is also a bonus.
But there is time between jobs. Which is not great for the wallet, but super great for the creative portion of me. And I’ve been busy!
Last we talked batik, I was flailing a little bit – ahh, chemistry. But I think I’m getting the hang of this, at last. I did a bunch of baby clothes today, and was greatly pleased when they came out of the dye baths. I went back to the beginning, went mostly with one color, simplified simplified simplified. Also, I got a handle on the ratio for the dye bath \o/
So, I’ve been cuddling up this last few weeks, reading Dune. I needed something to read, and while in the bookstore, it occurred to me that I had never actually read Dune, that I had only seen the movie, and that was a loooong time ago. Suddenly Dune references are popping up all over. Have I unwittingly hooked into a zeitgeist?
Well, this morning Will emailed me a link to something just wonderful -
If you’ve read Dune, and you’ve read Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown, you may love this as much as I do. Clicky on the pic to go read the whole thing. I giggled a lot.
The envelope in the locked desk was supposed to be all full of dragon. I had it carefully (professionally) folded and packed. It was a little expensive, sure, but worth the cost. Those people are trained in things like that. They have contingency plans and insurance, and psychology behind them. They have good flat surfaces and bone folders. They have room for that sort of thing. If I had tried to fold it myself, it would have invariably come out lumpy and not fit in the envelope. Also, it would probably have gone poorly for the dragon.
So in the end it all fit in the envelope. Lined with bubble wrap, it was snug and secure. You could barely see the rise and fall of its sleeping breath through the manila and strapping. I knew that when I took it to the post office counter, I could deny with a straight face that there was anything liquid, hazardous, fragile, or perishable. It was just, well… heavy. But I was prepared for that. It’s why I paid extra for the packing. And hence the electric pallet jack and the borrowed 4×4.
Stop what you’re doing and go to the bookstore.
You want to read the hell out of this book.
