nothing to see here

I think the weather's finally turning towards spring! We've had highs in the 50s and 60s (F) all week, and it doesn't look like it's stopping anytime soon! I haven't seen any buds on trees yet, but the daffodils in the neighbor's yard are blooming, and it's been lovely and sunny the last several days and it's all very nice. :D (It is going to rain all week next week, though, which I am... less enthused about.)

In other news...

I got the yarn for my new crochet project! I am trying very hard to pace myself with the pattern, though, because I don't want to run out of rows I can do too quickly. I only ordered the first eight colors needed for the first two parts of the pattern; I have to get the other four at some point, but I don't know when that will be. Hence: pacing myself. Or trying to. I did very badly the first couple of days, but I've just done two rounds for the last few days, so that's good, I guess.

I have also been working on an afghan I got from a kit a couple years back. It's a much simpler pattern, thank goodness, and I'm making decent progress for something that's going to be nearly 5ft long. I had an incident with some tangled yarn yesterday, though, so I'm hoping I don't run out of that color before I reach the end. I salvaged as much as I could from the tangle, so... fingers crossed.

Also still working on the Rivendell cross-stitch, though I've slowed down a bit on it. I've got like 11 blocks of stitching left to do on the third page. After I finish page 3, I think I'm going to set it aside for a bit, though. I'm getting kind of tired of it, to be honest, and a break is always a good thing. I found a pattern on Shitpost Sampler [link] that I'd like to make for the guy who DM'd my last Dungeons and Dragons campaign, so that would make a nice project for my downtime from Rivendell.

Speaking of DnD! The new campaign started this past Saturday, and it was a lot of fun, though I continue to be clueless and awkward when it comes to improvising crap. Still, I had a good time, and the new DM is lots of fun, so that's all good. My character got half killed by a giant centipede! It was fun! The new group is meeting the last Saturday of every month (mostly because the DM is driving in from about an hour away), so I'm looking forward to our next meetup. :D

I also finished a book recently. I managed to snag the library's copy of The Testaments by Margaret Atwood last Thursday, and I finished it on Tuesday. It was a very gripping read, and discomfiting in more ways than one. (Mostly because I get the feeling nowadays that a lot of people in the US would love it if this country was more like Gilead. ://////) Still, I quite enjoyed it, and I am going to borrow my sister's copy of The Handmaid's Tale so I can reread that. I read it over the summer several years back, but I still don't have a copy of my own. So that's going to be in my near future, reading-wise, though I'd like to get through the backlog of ebooks I have out from the library as well.

Writing-wise, I have been doing... okay? I didn't manage to write on Saturday (too tired after DnD), but I did write for four days in a row, which isn't nothing. I've written a couple days so far in March, and I'd like to start writing more consistently, but we'll see if that actually happens. Who knows, maybe the changing weather will put me in a good enough mood to write more.

At any rate, I'm going to do my best to enjoy this spate of nice weather we've been getting, and maybe soon the world will be green and growing again! Hope you all are doing well, and best wishes for the rest of your week.

Some things, as always:

- I finished the cat cross-stitch for my SIL! Here is a link to a picture on Reddit! I am so glad to be done with it, because at least now that means I can focus on the Rivendell for my brother.

- Regarding the Rivendell cross-stitch: I am hoping to at least finish the second page, and maybe a bit of the third, by Christmas. I have no delusions that it’s going to be done in two and a half weeks. I am hoping, however, to get it finished by maybe the end of March next year? Here’s hoping, anyway.

- Other than cross-stitch, I feel like I haven’t been doing a whole lot? I started a book from the library (A Discovery of Witches, Deborah Harkness) that I’m probably going to have to renew because it’s 600 pages long and I don’t think I’ve cracked page 100 yet. It’s not that it’s particularly dense or anything like that; it’s just that I can’t seem to concentrate on reading for long stretches like I used to. I’m fascinated by the world of the story, and kind of fascinated by the human (well, witch) and vampire romance that seems to be brewing. I haven’t read a lot of vampire romance books, outside of Twilight (which was mostly to see what the fuss was about and later just for the sheer wtf-ery of it all). But it’s interesting to see how Harkness handles it, though I think it helps that the characters at the center of the romance are on par with each other power-wise, as opposed to being utterly mismatched (which is to say, one person has all the power, while the other can only hope that person doesn’t overstep their bounds).

- I also watched the first episode of The Mandalorian on Disney Plus. There were things I liked and things I disliked, but the former outweighed the latter, so that’s nice. I will have to fit the next episodes into my life somehow or another. I had a good opportunity the last couple days with my dad out of town (and thus not blasting the volume on the living room TV), but didn’t take advantage. Anyway, things I loved: the MUSIC, for one. I like that the world of Star Wars is being expanded just a little bit. I like that everyone seems to have their own motivations, good or bad. (Like, at one point the Mandalorian is assisted in getting to his bounty by a person who just wants the bounty gone, because its presence near his home is disrupting his way of life and he doesn’t like it. He has no dog in the fight either way, he just wants the Mandalorian to solve his problem by collecting the bounty quarry.) I love the creature/alien/droid designs. Just great design all around. I really like the IG bounty droid towards the end of the episode. The way he MOVED was amazing—just utterly strange and alien and awesome. And, of course, Baby Yoda/the Child is very cute.

- Speaking of Star Wars, I can’t believe Rise of Skywalker comes out in two weeks. I am probably going to wait to see it until my brother and SIL are here, and maybe we can all go as a family or something? I don’t know. I’m excited and hoping desperately that JJ Abrams didn’t fuck up the finale. (Still, as I keep reminding myself, at least it wasn’t Colin Trevorrow. Thank GOD.) I did see the press roundtable or whatever where Oscar Isaac was talking about his disappointment that FinnPoe didn’t happen and... well. I’m not surprised, to be honest; Disney wants to hold on to their “squeaky clean” image, even though that image is horribly exclusive so they don’t piss off certain (white, Christian, conservative) sections of the moviegoing population. And at least nobody’s queerbaiting by saying “well why don’t you just watch and find out if they get together ;)”. It’s still sad, though.

- Tbh the only thing I don’t want to see in TRoS is Reylo. The only way I can see that happening is if Kylo does something truly monumental to redeem himself, and to be honest, I feel like the only redemption available to him now is him sacrificing himself to save everyone else. He has made so many choices, and most of them have taken him down the path of self-service and empowering himself, not helping others. I guess I get why people ship it (hero x villain ships have always been popular), but... like... what part of Rey literally closing the door in his face in TLJ was unclear? Rey was only interested in him because she thought she could turn him. Given his actions in the throne room, I don’t think she believes that anymore. (Also, I don’t know about anyone else, but I don’t think telling someone “oh you’re nobody but with me you could be somebody” is all that attractive? Like. No? I don’t think so? If you can’t accept me at my scavenger nobody, you don’t deserve me at my Jedi queen?)

- Okay, I guess I have a lot of Star Wars feelings. So that’s a thing. (Other things I DNW: Kylo turning good, while Rey turns evil. No. // Rey turning out to be related to someone important. That is a huge no, the whole POINT of her character is that she’s unconnected with the Skywalker family and all their drama.)

- A N Y W A Y.

- Enough about Star Wars. Other things I have been doing include watching a Breath of the Wild LP on YouTube. The guy playing it has gotten through the story and at this point the LP is a Collect All The Things quest, which is fine. Eventually I’ll get to the DLC parts, which will be interesting because I haven’t seen the DLC yet. In a related story, I know there isn’t going to be any news about BotW 2 until probably E3 next year, but I’m still so excited about that. :D

- Other video games stuff: Animal Crossing: New Horizons comes out in like three and a half months now!!! I need to start paying down more of my preorder (I’ve got $30 down on it already, so). Cannot wait for more information on that, though there were some screencaps that came out from a Nintendo of Mexico meeting that look really neat. // Stardew Valley 1.4 continues to be fun. The only new content I’ve really gotten to at this point is the fish ponds, but that’s fine. I’ve already thoroughly spoiled myself on the new stuff, and I can’t wait to get to it all. :)

At any rate... that’s basically what I’ve been up to? Hope you all are doing well, as ever.

Some things:

- Still working on cross-stitch. I’m nearly two-thirds done with the first page of my SIL’s project, and I just finished the first page (of four) on the Rivendell project for my brother. I think I might manage to get these done in time for Christmas, though I’m starting to doubt that I’ll get them done in time to get them framed. Oh well.

- We celebrated my birthday and my mom’s birthday last week. I got some very nice yarn from my aunt and uncle, and then my parents got me a SWITCH LITE. :DDD And my siblings got me a couple $20 Nintendo gift cards, so that’s is also nice. I hope my mom and I can do something for my birthday on the actual day, because that would be lovely.

- re: Switch Lite: It’s turquoise like I wanted it, and I have purchased one game so far: Ori and the Blind Forest. I am having an okay time playing it? Though I’ve reached a point where I’m not sure where to go next, because it won’t let me do what I thought I had to do and I’m probably going to have to look up a walkthrough or watch a Let’s Play or SOMETHING. Ori is a platformer game, too, but I’m managing pretty well so far. It helps that the game is so pretty.

- re: yarn: My aunt lives in CA, and she’s recently gotten into weaving and spinning, so now she frequents fiber festivals and the like, which there are a lot of in CA. So I got some nice yarn from local dyers and I really like it. Also like that I got two skeins of each color so I can make something big with them. I went ahead and wound one skein up and started crocheting it into a shawl. It’s working up pretty fast, too, so I might just get it done in time for the cold months, barring a loss of interest or something like that.

- Have not been doing a great job preparing for NaNoWriMo. I keep trying to write and then not writing, and I do not think next month is going to go well, but for all I know it could go great. I’m going to try to write something every day this week, so... here’s hoping. I’ve already done my writing for today, which helps a lot. Just have to do something tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. And so on. (I would really like to at least write something every day in November, so I can get that shiny streak badge, even if I don’t reach 50k. But I’m willing to bet that probably won’t happen, so I’m not gonna bank on it or anything.)

- Finished a book last week! Aurora Rising, Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff. It’s a sci-fi YA (or possibly New Adult; all the characters are 18 or older), the first book in a new series. Follows a very ragtag squad in a galactic peacekeeping force, plus the mysterious girl their leader pulled from the wreckage of a centuries-old derelict spaceship. It’s not like capital-G great or anything, but it’s a fun romp and I’d like to keep up with the series as it continues. No idea when book two comes out, though.

- Also started another book: The Feather Thief, Kirk Wallace Johnson. It’s a nonfiction title, and it’s about the theft of dozens of very rare bird specimens (including some collected by Alfred Wallace, a contemporary of Darwin!) from the Natural History Museum in the UK. The thief? A young American flautist obsessed with the art of Victorian salmon fly-tying. I’ve only read the first few chapters, which cover the history of Alfred Wallace’s collections, as well as the Victorian obsession with exotic birds and the eventual efforts to preserve said birds (and other species). It’s fascinating and infuriating at the same time. Fascinating because of the history and the obsession of the fly-tiers. Infuriating because it seems like these people can’t see past their obsession to understand why museum collections are so important. So I can’t wait to dig into the rest of it.


Can’t say there’s much else going on. Even though that’s a lot of stuff going on. I feel like I’ve got this big balancing act going on, and I’m not very good at it. But I guess that’s probably true for everyone in some way or another.

Anyway. Hope you’re all doing well, as ever. <3

Clearly I need a spooky icon or two, but Maleficent will have to do for right now.

Also the weather here where I live is acting decidedly un-spooky, because it’s been in the frickin NINETIES all week and I have just about had enough of it. It’s October and it needs to start acting like it. Though looking at the forecast, it appears (appears) that things might be cooling down next week, to which I say: BRING IT ON.

In other news: I finished the Hufflepuff cross-stitch for my sister! You can see it here where I posted it to Reddit. [link] I would have posted it to my Insta, but my sister follows me there, and I would really like this to be a surprise when I give it to her on Christmas. I still need to wash and press it and then get it framed, but I’m glad to be done with it. Only took me a week and a half to stitch! Which is a little frightening, but I guess that’s hyperfocus for you.

I am also plotting to have cross-stitch projects done for my brother and SIL as well. My brother’s a big Lord of the Rings fan, so I picked out this pattern for him [link], a travel poster for Rivendell. I’m not sure what my SIL likes, so I need to pick my brother’s brain on that, but I should be able to find something for her as well. I’ve already bought the LotR pattern, and if I get supplies for it this weekend, I should be able to start on it posthaste.

In an unrelated story, I’ve been playing Animal Crossing: New Leaf again. I’ve been playing catch up for the last few months, trying to pick up from where I stopped playing back in March, so I’ve been time-traveling and I’m currently playing in the middle of August. Last night, I was trying to catch a house centipede when I SPOTTED AND CAUGHT (!!!) A TARANTULA. Which I am still pretty HYPE about, because tarantulas (and scorpions) are very hard to catch. If you’re too close to them with your net out, they will charge you, bite/sting you, and knock you out, leaving you to wake up outside of your house. Which is pretty damn ruthless for a game as relaxing as Animal Crossing. So I’m very pleased with myself about that, and I’m hoping that sometime soon I can catch a scorpion as well, and be that much closer to finishing my bug encyclopedia.

Can’t say there’s a whole lot else going on with me. I’ve got a ton of library books out again. Which is just... it’s the kind of thing that shouldn’t be a problem, but my attention lately has been elsewhere and I haven’t been the reader I usually was in a long time, so... ugh. I also haven’t written anything substantial in the last two months, which is also a little ugh. I need to decide if I’m doing NaNoWriMo, and if so, what I’m doing. And then working on planning that out. I don’t know. I haven’t been in a great writing mood since I got sick in July, and that was two and a half months ago. Urgh.

Anyway. Hope you all are doing well, as ever.

I want to say I haven’t been up to anything since my last entry, but that’s not strictly speaking true? I have been doing things. They just never to seem to feel like the “right” things, which is honestly an arbitrary measurement that was invented by Depression Brain to make me feel bad about everything. So let’s ignore Depression Brain and just count it all out.

- I revived my WordPress blog [link] again. I’ve posted a couple entries so far, and I’ve got this bad plan to try and post something every day next month that will probably not work out. I’ve already written four entries for that month-long deluge, so I guess we’ll see how it goes. Two of those have been Doctor Who reviews, so it’s nice to be back on the wagon with that.

- I’ve been reading Jeff VanderMeer’s writing book Wonderbook the last couple weeks. It’s a book that is not well suited to being an ebook, imo? I think the physical book is formatted kind of like a textbook, with short essays and asides in the margins that just does not translate well to ebook format. That said, it’s fascinating enough, though it’s making me feel like I’m a Bad Writer because I don’t generally put a lot of thought into how and why I write things. Oh well, I guess. :/

- I started playing the mobile version of Stardew Valley on my tablet. It’s fun, though the controls are a bit weird sometimes. And not having mods to do things like automate production or OHKO enemies in the mines is sometimes frustrating.

...Okay, maybe I haven’t been doing much actually. Anyway. Hope you’re all doing well and such.

Kitten update: he's still adorable. We gave him a bath yesterday, and he put up with it fairly well. He did try to get away a couple times, but other than that, there wasn't any crying or clawing, so that's a win in my book. He is exceptionally playful now, and he loves to get in the way when I'm trying to do something in here. But that's how it is with youngsters, so I don't begrudge him.

Other updates:

- I am slowly but surely making my way through the Good Omens TV show. I've watched the first two episodes, and half of the third (up to the opening credits). I would have watched the rest of ep3, but my internet decided to crap out and I couldn't get it to work again. That said, I am deeply enjoying the series. It reminds me a lot of Pushing Daisies, which I absolutely adore, so that's about a million points in its favor. And it's just... delightful. Can't wait to get to the end of it. And maybe reread the book at some point, too.

- After a week and a half of fits and starts, I'm writing again. On a random story idea I've had for a while, but that I wasn't planning to touch at all at any point this year. At this juncture I"m just writing whatever strikes my fancy, and so it's pretty plotless, but I don't care, so long as I'm getting words down. It's a werewolf story with a female lead, though I'm trying to avoid a lot of the female werewolf tropes I've seen before in fiction (mainly that female werewolves are... b*tches because being a werewolf means (for whatever dumb reason) that you can't have kids, and then also mean because they don't enter into the leadership of the pack and just dumb patriarchal stuff like that). So I'm playing with a lot of ideas and stuff, and just writing whatever works for me at the time.

But hey: it's words. That's all that matters.

- I need to start reading again. I finished the library book I'd been reading, The Radium Girls, which was an excellent if harrowing read. So I'd like to get back into Priory of the Orange Tree, but I just... haven't been reading? So maybe I need to whet my palate with something I've read before. I might pull a Pratchett or a McKinley off my shelf and read that, just to get back in the groove of it.

- Also need to get back into doing cross-stitch (which was on hold because I'd been doing at my desk in the spare bedroom, which is now a Bad Idea because Kitten) or crochet or knitting. Just. Making something with my hands. I've been playing too many video games, it seems like. Need to make something for a change.

- In the non-interior realm, Nintendo announced the Switch Lite yesterday. It's basically a handheld-only Switch, which after some reflection I don't have a problem with? I don't play a lot on my WiiU anymore; I'm mostly sticking with my 3DS. I don't want to get a full-on Switch and then let it gather dust because it's too many steps to turn it on (thanks, executive dysfunction). So I think this handheld unit will serve me just fine. (I will say, though, reading the comments on an article about it was both amusing and frustrating. As someone pointed out, if you're asking "who is this for", it's obviously not meant for you, so shut up.) That said, I wish we knew at this point whether or not Animal Crossing: New Horizons is going to have handheld mode. I'm guessing yes, given that it's probably going to be their flagship release for next spring, but... it'd be nice to know before I got one and found out I need to buy something else in order to play ACNH.

- Garden update: My squash plants (the zucchini and the pumpkin) fell victim to squash bugs YET AGAIN this year. We got several good sized zukes off the zucchini plant, though, and a couple of smallish pumpkins, so it's not a total pointless loss, but STILL. STILL. I was so upset when I found squash bug eggs on the pumpkin last week. And then on the zucchini. I'm not surprised about the pumpkin, given how its vines were going everywhere, but I'd really been hoping that, with the stilts for the planters my dad made, the zucchini could avoid that plague this year. But I guess not. At least the tomatoes are still doing okay. I've got enough off them to make tomato sauce this weekend.

...Can't think of much else going on. Hope you're all doing well, of course. Best wishes and all that.

I feel like I haven't been doing anything lately. I'm not as energized as I was a few weeks ago, which is annoying, because I'd like to get things done, but they're just not happening anymore.

I got about 75% through Crazy Rich Asians before I decided I didn't want to finish it. Mostly because I was tired of reading about these horrible people being horrible to each other. I get that the author is essentially making fun of the obscenely rich, but it just wasn't clicking for me. I could see that something additionally horrible was about to happen to the heroine and I just... did not care anymore. So that's been shelved DNF on my Goodreads, and hopefully today I can start something new.

I've written a little bit, but not a whole lot. I feel like my enthusiasm for writing has run out, in a way. Hoping to write something today, but we'll see how that pans out.

On the other hand, I have thrown myself back into fiber arts with a vengeance. I mostly finished up the crochet baby blanket I've been working on off and on for most of the last year. I still need to weave in the ends, but it's done, and can be delivered once that last bit of finishing is done. It's meant to be for my brother and SIL's first child, whenever they have one.

After finishing up that project, I picked up some cross-stitch again. I got the Stardew Valley cross-stitch book for Christmas, and I bought up what I needed to stitch a portrait of one of the bachelorettes with my Christmas money. I tried making a start at the project in April, but with everything going on with my grandfather's death my heart wasn't really in it? But the last few days I've gotten quite a bit done on it, and it's really starting to come together, which is exciting.

Speaking of Stardew Valley, I started a new game yesterday, mostly because I found a cool building mod that I wanted to try out. I don't know if I'll be playing a whole lot until I get my new monitor, but I did set up some time to play co-op with a friend of mine today. So that's gonna be fun. :)

I ended up only watching two of those movies I rented. Blade Runner and Loving. Loving was really good, and I thought Blade Runner was just okay?? I watched "The Final Cut" i.e., Ridley Scott's actual director's cut (the version called the "director's cut" was actually a workprint that got released without Scott's supervision; the Final Cut was supervised by Scott). And it was... just okay, to me. I feel like the movie wasn't interested in the same things I was interested in (which was mostly the character of Rachael, the Replicant who didn't know she was a Replicant). Also I wasn't fond of the way the film used Asian culture as a shorthand to exoticize the future Los Angeles. That said, I'm interested in seeing the sequel that came out a little while ago, just to see where they take those themes of humanity in the inhuman, which is something I've always been very interested in both as a writer and a reader/moviegoer.

I have high hopes for today--I'd like to write, start reading a new book, do my chores, cross-stitch some more. Maybe watch another episode of Good Omens, now that I'm done with the movies. My mom wants me to go to a new bakery that opened in town and pick up some cupcakes (which is easier said than done; the bakery's sold out in like two hours every single day since it's opened).

So hopefully I can make all that happen. Anyway. Hope you're all doing well, as ever.

Things seem to be going a little better for me. I'm still reading that McKinley book, and I wrote! Words! Of fiction! Two days in a row!!

Both of them were very short prompt fills, one for 100words and one for getyourwordsout. But hey, all words are good words, and I'm not complaining. I'll post the fills at the end of this post so you can read 'em if you want.

I'm honestly glad to have written anything at all, because honestly it's just proof that I still can. I know my writing tends to come in cycles and I should probably get used to that, but it's just... frustrating sometimes? I would like to write most days. Like, more often than not, but I'm not terribly good at that, it seems like. I get overwhelmed and stuff and yeah. I don't know.

Anyway. I'm hoping my days continue to improve. I think I'm gonna go digging around for another prompt to fill today. (If anyone can rec some prompt comms or sites or whatever, that'd be great.)

The fills in question:

100words fill: prompt: escape

TRON: Legacy fic, POV character Quorra.

( You're running away. )

getyourwordsout fill: dialogue prompt: "You can go by yourself."

TRON: Legacy fic again. AU where young Sam is on the Grid the night of Clu's coup, and Tron has to save him.

( He carries Sam... )