Thanksgiving Weekend 'n Crafts

Happy Thanksgiving! (Day or so late :) )

Despite all of the business that’s going on (cooking, cleaning, spending time with cousins I haven’t seen in two years), I’ve still managed to write about 5,000 words this weekend (yes, that does include this blog post). I’m supposed to be at 41,667 words, but I’m only at 37K. Four thousand words behind is fixable, though. Five thousand words today, and I’ll be back to where I need to be. Almost to 50K!

Came to my parent’s house to discover that my sister is using an old glass coffee pot as a tank for her fish. Isn’t it cute?

I recently bought a sewing machine, and used it to finish up a couple of projects I’d started a couple of months back with my embroidery machine. You can purchase machines that both embroider and do regular sewing, but you’ll get products that are a little bit nicer (if more expensive) if you just get one machine for the embroidering and one for the sewing.

The first project is a bookmark (I’ve got about three different versions of these on my Etsy store – I’m a reader and a writer, after all). This bookmark was embroidered onto felt, and then I cut out the rectangle, cut out a plain one, inserted a cardboard piece between the two of them for stiffness, and sewed all of the pieces together.

Since I’d used gold as the border when I embroidered this, I used gold thread for the top, and purple thread for the bobbin thread. I’m really happy with the result! It is a bit on the small side for a bookmark (just about five inches, not including the ribbon), but it’s about the biggest that I’m going to get with my embroidery machine.

I also placed this embroidered owl on a small tote bag.

Came out cute! I didn’t make the bag or anything, but in order to have a flat single layer of the bag (otherwise I'd just embroider right though the whole thing), I had to rip the stitches out of the sides, embroider the owl, and then re-sew the sides back up. Very easy to do, just needed a sewing machine. So that’s why I had sat on this project for so long.

Both of these are in my Etsy store now, but, though I need to adjust the pattern for it, I also made a cloth headband that I want to put up for sale soon.

It’s reversible, so you can switch it around for a different pattern:

I’ve played around with making these before, but this time I included some embroidered designs. They’re supposed to sit just a few inches above the right ear (did it wrong for the brown side, as it places the flower designs above the left ear). The headbands are only about 2 ½ inches wide, which means the designs have to be no more than about an inch wide. Turns out I don’t have a lot of tiny designs, but the ones that I have came out nice. I also think I should’ve done a bright yellow for the daisies, instead of the orange, as it kind of fades into the dark brown of the fabric.

I also don’t want the fabric to come to a square end when it connects with the elastic – I want it to be more of a point. I’ve got an idea for how to do that, but haven’t had the chance to work on it yet :).

The elastic is a thick and woven type, so it won’t pull uncomfortably on anyone’s hair or skin. I always hate it when I find a hair decoration I like, but then it hurts too much to wear. For this one, I made the elastic too long by about an inch, so that’s something else to adjust.

Most of the fabric I have is cotton, but I do have some satin, so I wonder if that is something people would like? At any rate, I think these will make a fun addition to my shop.

Word Count: 37,303

Coupon still active! 

https://www.etsy.com/shop/WoolRanch?coupon=BLACKFRIDAYWEEKEND

Black Friday to Cyber Monday Coupon

https://www.etsy.com/shop/WoolRanch?coupon=BLACKFRIDAYWEEKEND

15% off at my store!  Lasts from today through Cyber Monday.

https://www.etsy.com/shop/WoolRanch?coupon=BLACKFRIDAYWEEKEND


Starts tomorrow, runs through Monday, November 27th!

Sales, Plays, and Witches

Before I get into my main news of this week, Black Friday and Cyber Monday are coming up. You can get 15% off at my Esty Store with this code: BLACKFRIDAYWEEKEND

This code lasts from Thursday, November 23 (for you early birds) through Monday, November 27. I’ll be dropping a direct link on the night of the 22^nd.

On with the rest:

I’m in a play!

It’s called the Crucible, and for those of you who don’t know, it’s historical fiction based on the events of the Salem witch trials, a disturbing yet fascinating tragedy. I’m one of the village girls.

I’ve done a bit of research on these witch trials that were occurring in the world, and it’s interesting. Specifically, the time-line of events in Europe and America. Witch hunts have occurred in other parts of the world (and some today, sadly, mostly focused on women, especially poor ones), but Europe and America were particularly odd stories, given the overall craze that went on.  Like other hunts, there was a pattern of attacking poorer women and children.

At the time of the witch trials, people Europe had a particular method of storing their food that caused a particular type of fungus to grow – an edible one, but one that is an ingredient similar to those in LSD. Basically, it causes hallucinations.

It’s not an excuse for the actions of this time, but it does explain how it was that a large group of countries, each with their own culture and ideas, became caught up in a single mass delusion. Imagine, if you will, a people that is largely uneducated, and someone influential makes a reference to being cautious of those called ‘witches’, the importance of removing them from society, and superstitions old and new. Also, at the time, obeying and believing one’s superiors was considered extremely important.

Certainly, there were incident of people accusing others in an attempt to get rid of them (for revenge or to take their property), but for the most part, the hysteria seemed to be rooted in what could be considered honest fear of witchcraft.

It was these stories of witches that the hallucinations focused on. Curiously, the mythology of werewolves was also around, but no one was killed for the crime of being a werewolf. Instead, people who claimed to be werewolves were considered to be in need of mental help. (Therapy for the mentally ill, rather than locking them away (or worse), really wasn’t in existent at the time, but this does appear to be one of its early appearances. I haven’t really researched into this, though.)

The worst part is that the accused basically had no defense – it’s a crime that can’t be physically seen. It makes one appreciate the theory of ‘Innocent until proven guilty’ that’s spread through Western culture.

If one was accused, one was guilty. Refusing to confess and proclaiming that one was innocent was taken as a sign that they were, indeed, a witch, and had to be tortured into confessing. (This type of process wasn’t exclusively for witch trials, it was basically a way of life for anyone accused of a crime.) Naturally, confession was a death sentence.

America’s inclusion into the witch hunts came as the hunts were heading towards their end in Europe, curiously enough. Looking at it, it almost appears like they were merely trying to imitate the events in Europe. The hallucination-causing fungus did exist in America, but it wasn’t as common. Fewer people died, and confession was taken as a sign that one wanted to repent, and they were allowed to live. Accusing others was encouraged during this confession. However, confession did mean that one was saying they had been a witch, and as a result they would lose their property.

But there were far fewer signs of the mass hysteria that had gripped Europe. A witch hunt could be ordered stopped by officials. An event could happen that would make a handful of people suffer, and then it would stop.

Like I said – a disturbingly fascinating tragedy.

Word Count: 25,073

New News!

Couple pieces of exciting news:

        Re-opened my Etsy store!

        Nanowrimo's started!

Nanowrimo:

I'm currently at just over 7,000 words out of 50,000.  For those of you who don't know, NaNoWriMo is a challange in which one writes 50,000 words during the month of November (hence, National Novel Writing Month).  In theory, writers work on one story that stars with nothing more than an idea, or - perhaps - some planing and plotting that was worked out in the months or so before.  The original challenge (about 20 years ago) said that writers had to be working on a totally new project (it also had a different word count goal).

In practice, a lot of people use this to work on stories that they've already started.  Some of them use this time to do something else entirely - it's called being a NaNo Rebel.  I'm working on a few projects, but the primary one is one that I've mentioned before on my blog during Camp WriMo's - small mini (or not so mini) challenges where you pick your end goal, whether words or hours.  It's a fantasy story with a humorous element where the narrator has gone missing, and the main characters - including the villain - are left on their own to write the story.

The biggest idea for Nanowrimo is NO EDITING.  Wrote a scene you don't like?  A) Why are you re-reading?  This isn't the time for that, and B) Re-write it - but don't delete it.  Both versions will go towards your total word count!  Afterwards, when you're editing your novel (hopefully with the end goal of publishing) you can take your pick of the versions, or even create a new one.

Since Nano starts on November first (midnight), any get-togethers naturally start on Halloween, so, yay! - excuse for costumes! Here’s a picture of what I wore:

In celebration of starting another Nano month, I’m doing a promotion of my book Glimpses on Amazon – from today through November 8, download it free! (See sidebar for a link.) And leave me a review! :)

In other news, and adding to the crazy business of my life this past week, I was asked to make some

cakes for my church’s seventh anniversary (and the 500^th anniversary of the Reformation, when Martin Luther posted the infamous ninety-five thesis’s). Specifically, I was asked to make cake for 250 people, which is a lot of cake. Plus they were also having other deserts at the picnic, so I ended up making cake for only 200 people. Here’s the results:

 

Came out nice, I think. The frosting is a type of whip cream (so no having to spend forever trying to smooth the frosting out) and on the sides of the rectangle cakes, I pressed on rock candy pieces.

I was going to place little swirls of the frosting on the top of the sides of the cakes, but apparently thirty-three cups of frosting only just covers five cakes. :)

For my last bit of exciting news, my Etsy store (etsy.com/woolranch) re-opened on October 28^th. Here’s a sample of some of my items up for sale (as well as what you can see in the sidebar):

 

Besides what I’ve been selling for years (books, bookmarks, crocheted items, earrings) I’m including items made with my embroidery machine and bead loom. I’ll explain the last in more detail next time. :)

Word Count: 7,414/50,000

Technology Woes, and A Questioning of Stabilizers

The more you use technology, the more dependent you become on it, and thus, somehow, the more often it fails.

(As I write this using technology that barely existed when I was born)

I and another office assistant have spent the last two of the last three weeks (and the last week someone, if not one of us) at work calling our IT department (they outsource it) at least once everyday.  It started with updating our email service.  And then somehow went downhill from there.  We came into work three Mondays ago with no one able to receive or send emails on their computers or their phones (through our work emails, anyway), a real estate matter that needed to close that morning (requiring emails to and from our office, escrow office, the seller, the buyer/borrower, and the lender), and a litigation matter that had to be filed (via email, naturally) as soon as possible.

Everything did eventually get sorted out, but it took two days for them to get everyone’s emails working.  The next few days involved bugs that kept popping up with issues sending emails.  And then there's the general fun of issue cropping up due to those updates, or due to something else.

It’s kind of funny – whenever someone in technology implements an update to make something work better, it never fails to always fail in some way.  Murphy’s law, I suppose.

In other news for my personal life, I went to a musical last weekend – “Sister Act”.  It was a lot of fun (and funny)!  A friend of mine got a small role, and invited me to the opening night.  It’s been quite awhile since I’ve last been to a play.

I also hit a couple of dollar stores looking for cheap items to practice embroidering on, and came out with a child’s t-shirt and a bunch of nice micro-fiber cleaning cloths.  I used one of the designs that came with the machine on one of the cleaning cloths, and, in terms of how the stitching came out on the micro-fiber, I think it came out nice.

  

I’m not a fan of the design – the three dots are kind of weird.  It’s actually possible for me to skip that part of the design, though, so I might try that.  I also should’ve placed the design further away from the edge.  Still, even if it’s not going to become part of my sellable merchandise, it’ll be fun to have a cleaning cloth with a pretty personalized design on it for myself.  As for the t-shirt, the design caused the fabric to pucker much more than I would've liked, so I'll have to keep experimenting

I also did a few more lace designs.  These two are free samples I found online.

  

I love the thread color, but making these took much longer than it should’ve due to the thread constantly breaking.  The snowflake, for instance, didn’t come out correctly, and will eventually fall apart.  Not all of the threads were able to interlock.  I don’t think it’s a flaw of the design, but a flaw in the thread.  It’s a bit frustrating, but next time I’ll have to spend more money on higher quality thread.  I’ve recently purchased white, silver, and metallic gold thread that should be in that ‘higher quality’ category.  The white's nice but the metallic ones are a bit finicky, which I kind of did expect.  Metallic thread's always a bit different.  It's quite pretty, though.

I also bought a couple of triangle-shaped pieces of felt for a non machine embroidery project, but I got an idea and stitched a design on it.  I'm going to turn it into a bookmark (as soon as I get access to a regular sewing machine again.  I have some (small) hopes for an older machine getting fixed, but if it won't, I'll break down and buy a hundred dollar Singer I found).

Techniques-wise, I didn't use any stabilizer with the felt, and seeing how I stopped having the bobbin thread show up on top (I have the tension turned down all the way to zero, so there's not much more I can change with the machine), I gave it a go with a towel.  I did use water-soluble stabilizer on top, but that's just to keep the stitches from fading into the terry cloth threads.  As a result, I saw no bobbin thread where it didn't belong.

So how necessary are bottom stabilizers?  I'll have to keep experimenting.  Maybe with thin fabric, or with really dense designs.

By the way, here's a video of the machine going on the felt project.

Return!! With an Embroidery Project

I'm back!

(At least it wasn't a whole year or more, yeah?)

Anyway, what really brought me back on was my excitement over a recent purchase - specifically, this:

It's an embroidery machine - a small one, as I can't get a hoop (similar to hand embroidery) that's larger than 5.5"x5.5".  The way it works is by hooping together a stabilizer under the fabric you want to work with, in the area you want to work in.  The stabilizer is a thin fabric-like material that adds a stiffness to the fabric.  Generally they're added under the fabric, but if you need to make sure that none of the stitches fade into your fabric (like if you're working with terry cloth), it's apparently a good idea to use a thin see-through stabilizer as a topper.

This machine is a Janome 200E, the most inexpensive of the Janome's (also the smallest and least fanciest).  It works like a sewing machine, in some ways - it threads just like one and the bobbin works just like one.  What's really cool is how it works after you've picked a design (using the touch-screen) and arranged it how you like it.  The machine came with 55 designs, and I've come across several free ones online.  The designs have some minimal sizing (increase and decrease), can be rotated, flipped, combined, and positioned.

Once you've done all that, all you do is push the start button - the grey one right above the needle... and let it go!  It does have to be supervised, in case the thread breaks and the machine doesn't notice (and yes, it's smart enough to most of the time), or if the stitches are coming out funny and the tension needs to be adjusted.

It took me a little while to figure how to put the thread on the machine to minimize thread breaking or tangling, but the position it's currently in seems to be the happiest.  Below is a picture of my first embroidery attempt.

Except for one incident where I didn't notice that the pink thread had broken and the bobbin thread was the only thing coming through, that came out well.  The purple thread was the one that I had the most trouble with, as the thread kept coming out twisted from the spool and getting tangled in the machine.  Still, I'm really happy with the end result.

Close-ups!

 


For this project, I used a tear-away stabilizer on the back, and a water-soluble film-like stabilizer for the front.

I really wanted to do some free-standing lace, though, so, as I couldn't find any free ones (and the ones that came on the machine won't work for it, so I went ahead and bought a set.  Here's a couple of the results:

They're as small as they look - the cross is about 1.5 inches tall.  I made two crosses and the lamb.  I'm going to turn the crosses into earrings.  I'm not sure about the lamb.  It might become an ornament, or I suppose I could just sell pieces like that as-is.  It definitely wouldn't make for a good key-ring (too fragile) and I don't make necklaces.






I made all three of these on a single hoop, double-folded fabric-like water stabilizer.  The fabric material took a lot more to wash out then the film material, but the film material has more of a tendency to tear when it's used without fabric, and there's no way the film would've held up to the stress of making multiple projects on a single hoop.

I also tried to do a lily (equally small), but the thread caught on something when it was almost half-way done, tore in half, and resulted in a bunching of thin threads.  In a on-fabric job, this could probably be fixed by re-threading the machine, going back a few stitches, the machine going over the affected area, and then trimming the thin extra threads.  With free-standing lace, if all the threads don't interlock together correctly, the design falls apart when you wash out the stabilizer.

I saw a lot of complaints about these machines  (well, not so much the really expensive ones), and, despite the issues I did have today, 99% of them are user-error issues.  Also, why on earth would you try to learn a new tool with your good clothes?  Until I can get consistent results, I'm working with old towels and faded pillow-cases.

All in all, it's really, really fun, and I can't wait to do more.

Extra: Free Download!

I can't believe I forgot - this weekend, through the end of May 29, Glimpses is completely free!  Just click on the sidebar of the blog to get to it.  (And let me know what you think!)

Etymology: Fusty

As this past week has been uneventful, I thought I'd do my fallback of looking at the etymology of a word.

The word for the day (week? month?) is fusty.  It's one of those words I came across a long time ago (I don't remember where), and I keep those in a file and just add on as I stumble upon more words I find interesting.

'Fusty' (also with the forms of 'fustier' and 'fustiest') is an adjective.  As defined by Dictionary.com:

         1) having a stale smell; moldy; dusty
         2) old-fashioned or out-of-date, as architecture, furnishings, or the like
         3) stubbornly conservative or old-fashioned; fogyish

(Fogyish is a bit of a fun word, too)

Its origins start in Latin, fustis, meaning staff or stick of wood.  Then, in Old French, you get fuist or fuste, meaning wine cask (which were made of wood).  In the late fourteenth century in France, the word fusté comes into play, which means 'tasting of the cork'.  As the wood would take on the smell of the wine, the word 'fusty' came to refer to the stale smell of the wine-scented wood.  Full circle back to the Latin!

It doesn't take too much imagination to see where the references to something (or someone) being out-of-date comes from there, does it? 😊

Regularly-Scheduled Life

I'm finally getting to be back in my regular schedule this weekend, although after missing a couple weeks of dancing led to me actually having to take a nap after class (instead of just considering doing so).

I did spend a few hours beforehand wandering around the mall with a friend before, but I don't think that wore me down that much :).

Part of my regular weekend schedule is going to my bi-weekly writer's group on Sunday afternoons.  I might've mentioned them before, but we first met doing NaNoWriMo a few years ago, and someone decided to keep it up.  It was initially just monthly, and we've expanded in the last year or so to twice a month.  It's been a great way for me to keep up on my writing, and I have to admit that some months, the only time I do any writing at all is during those three hour sessions.

I'm currently working on a short story challenge for a contest.  I've got until the end of June to finish it.  The way this challenge works is there's about a dozen art pieces (paintings and photos), and you pick one to write a story of 2000-5000 words inspired by the artwork.  Sounds fairly simple (I've done the same thing, for poetry, in a writing class), until I looked at the artwork and realized that all the pieces are modern, real-world, non-quirky images.

I don't write reality; it's not really my thing.  I gave it a go with a couple of different pictures, but finally decided that I'm a fantasy writer (and abstract-y), I'd write fantasy.  So the story ended up being a mix of fantasy and reality, with the main character losing the ability to tell the difference between the two.  It's only a couple of sentences from being fully written (I haven't decided if I want the ending to be 'strange' or 'horror'), and then I'll have quite a bit of work to do for re-writing and editing it.  It kind of reads like I threw up on the page, at the moment (apologies for the visual :).  But really, it does!).   It's all a bit out of order, I think I'm leaving out certain important details, and there's very little dialogue.  Not necessarily a bad thing, I think, but it's something for me to consider.

I realized recently that a lot of my writing style is based off the older books I read growing up, like random philosophers (Plato, Alexis de Tocqueville), long lists of fairy tales and mythology, Frankenstein, Dracula, etcetera.  Books with very little dialogue.  I suppose the fairy tales saved me from habitually using paragraph-long sentences.   At any rate, it wasn't until I wrote a scene some years ago with five people talking in the same conversation that I actually learned how to write dialogue.  My first story - in it's current incarnation as Nightmare (one of the short stories in my book) - is an example of how I wrote before I figured out dialogue.

Inspirational Birthday Cake

At my workplace, a cake is brought in for each person's birthday (unless we have multiple people with birthdays at the same time).  It's a bit amusing that, over time, the cakes have gotten taller and taller.  More often lately they've been chocolate, but otherwise, they're usually pretty plain.  Which isn't a bad thing, mind.

I've mentioned before, I think, that I enjoy making fancy cakes.  So whenever I see a cake with something interesting, I make a note of it and how to do it myself.

As I said, these cakes are generally plain.  Layered chocolate cake, not too sweet, smooth frosting, perhaps some writing that says 'Happy Birthday'.  This one had three layers of cake and two layers of non-sweetened chocolate ganache.  It also had, within the ganache, pockets of liquid salted caramel.

I've tried to make cakes with caramel filling, but either they don't taste right or the filling is too hard.  The best caramel, in my opinion, is between soft and liquid.  I'm not sure how this was done.  It looked a bit like the ganache was placed on the cake and then spots removed and replaced with the liquid salted caramel.  The caramel was soaking into the cake layers above and below each.

As a result of the soaking, this cake tasted even better the next day, and by the second day, what remained of the cake was even more soaked in the caramel.  Generally speaking, cakes dry up, and by the end of day two, if there's any cake that remains, we have to throw the rest away.  None of this cake was thrown away :).

It's been a while since I made a cake, but the next time I do one, I definitely want to try this sort of thing.

Desert Retreat

I'm typing this post up as I'm sitting on a balcony of a hotel room, listening to the desert wind rush through palm trees, birds chirping, and water splashing against the rocks.

Where am I?  Well, I'm in a desert at a hotel, as you probably assume from the previous sentence.  A better question would likely be 'why'.  My workplace is paying for a weekend retreat.  They do this every year, about this time of year.  I missed the previous one by about two months.  (It's a little funny to think of how much time has passed since I started this job - ten months!  It doesn't feel half that long, and yet at the same time I feel like I've been there a long time.  Which is nice.)

It's a bit wild that the firm does this, though I think it's pretty cool.  I've never heard of a job that had that as one of the perks.  They pay for the hotel room (villa.  It's more like a mini-apartment, really) and dinner at a very nice restaurant.  Mind you, when I'm paying, very nice is, well, $20 a person.  So I'm looking forward to tonight's dinner.

I brought my sister with me, and she drove all hundred plus miles to get out here yesterday afternoon, which was great.  I'm not a fan of driving.  We haven't done much so far except avoid the heat (the temperature's a bit high for my taste) by shopping.  She needed a new bathing suit (there's a water slide here we're going to check out later), I forgot to bring sandals, and, as there's a kitchenette in our villa, we grabbed some food to cook for breakfast today, lunch, and breakfast tomorrow morning.

Our plans are a bit vague at this point (hit the water at some point), but the general theme is mainly just to chill.  If anything exciting happens, I'll probably put up an addendum blog, but otherwise, see you next week :)

Guns, Ice Skates, and Lunches

A day late... better than a year late, right? :)

My Saturday started very early, and ended late, and as a result I completely forgot about making a blog post.  Which is probably for the best, as it would've been sleepy rambles last night.

I was invited to go shooting (as in, with guns) in the desert a couple of hours north of me by a friend of mine, whose husband came up with an automatic game system, of sorts.  I can't say much about it, as it's a currently un-patented, but he has an app that lets the targets move in pre-programmed patterns and then it's simply point and shoot at the one that's currently up.   The group they invited up were all beta-testers, helping him with finding issues with either the software or the mechanical part of it.

They had a bit of a competition set up for who could shoot all the targets in a row the fastest.  I didn't participate in that; it's been about four years since I used a gun and I'm very much out of practice of hitting my target (plus they were pretty small, but I don't really feel like that's an excuse.  I think I could've hit them well enough a few years back).  Despite that, though, it was fun.  I pretty much just used small pistols and a revolver - which was quite fun to use.  I also shot a gun that's similar to what the army uses, which I've never been near before.  Very little kickback, and very light.

Afterwards (for a very different change of pace), I went about half-way home to an ice rink that's open for a ten-hour stretch for public skating on Saturday afternoons.  I've never seen a rink with hours like that.  It was a small place, but very nice.  It's been about a year since I went skating at all, but for all that I haven't forgotten anything.  Like riding a bike :).  It took me a couple of rounds around the rink to get used to it, and then I skated for about two hours.  All the dancing has certainly helped my endurance and leg muscle strength, because I'd be very sore today otherwise.  As it is, I actually slept in a bit this morning.

Also, it being Administrators Week (who decides these things, anyway?), the attorneys took out all the non-attorney staff for lunch.  It was very nice; although I've worked in the admin profession for three and a half years (three different places), this is the first time I've received acknowledgement for it.

Ups and Downs, and Dancing

It's kind of funny how things go.  I started this week with my debit card number being stolen (how does that even work?), so I had to have my card canceled for the first time since I got it, about twelve years ago.  And of course, since banks are open only during business hours, I had to go to a branch with Saturday hours, which meant a week without my card.  That, of course, wouldn't have been too much of a problem, as long as I was careful to make sure I had extra cash on hand at all times, except that I opened my door to head to work on Friday and discovered a wasp building a nest less than a foot from my front door.  I was leaving for work early, which meant that I had the time to make some phone calls and find a company that would take care of them (because if there's one, there's more) for a reasonable cost and no later than Saturday.

I was getting to work early, however, because I was going to a dance that night and wanted to have time to get dressed.  Still, I left work at a reasonable time.  And then, naturally, someone parked a beaten-up car in front of my driveway.  I can park on the street in my neighborhood, fortunately, so I waited to call the police to find out what could be done until I got home from the dance (which resulted in being on hold for half an hour with the department of transportation at 10:30-11:00 at night).

Everything finally got sorted out, though, and the dance was awesome.  I really enjoy this dance club I found.  It feels a bit odd, at first, being one of the only people at their events who's under 50, but that seems to be a bit of how ballroom dancing is viewed - something for older people.  Most of their events are informal, with a bit of a lesson before opening up the floor to general dancing, but this one was semi-formal, with a fancy dinner at a fancy hotel.  So everyone was dressed up fancy, and even when I wasn't dancing, it was fun to watch them.  Plus, some of the dancers there were really good, and they're amazing to watch.

One of the most difficult pieces when learning how to dance is that the instructors keep telling people to go to dances, even if they're still beginners, and this group is very friendly for that.  At the dance last night, they had men there specifically to dance with women (there's always more women then men, no matter what the age of a group is), and they were all very good teachers.  I learned quite a bit.  And I won a door prize (I never win those!) for a private lesson, which'll actually end up covering the cost of attending the dance.

It's also why my post is late, as, after wearing myself out dancing, I woke up early to deal with the wasps, and then went dancing again this afternoon at my usual lessons.  So I'm beat. :)

Library Ruminations

It occurred to me recently that although I work right across the street from a public library, I hadn't yet gone and checked it out (it's been nine and a half months - time really flies!).  I went online and discovered that if i went in in person to fill out the application, there would be a fifteen day delay before I received a card and could borrow anything, but there wouldn't be any delay if I went online and filled the exact same application.  I have no idea how works logically.

I filled it out online, and then realized afterwards that I would have to show them an ID that had my current address on it.  Fun fact: when you're moving around from place to place every couple of years and don't actually own your own place (or have some sort of long-term lease), your driver's license will not have your current address.  There's also no point in hand-writing your current address, because I don't know when or where I'll move next.  I ended up showing the librarian the address on my personal checks (which only just happened to have been recently ordered, and as such had my current address on them).

I hadn't planned on borrowing anything; I was just going to see what type of books they had.  Naturally, half an hour later, I walked out with an audio recording of  'The Cat Who Went Bananas' by Lilian Jackson Braun.  They're mystery stories mixed with 'day in the life', and fairly relaxed.

I've thought about turning Glimpses (https://goo.gl/YzhABm, or the side bar) into audio version, with myself as the narrator, but it's been awhile (years, actually) since I listened to an audio book.  I looked into what it would cost to pay someone else, and at a minimum, $100.  I can't really justify that for a small collection of short stories.  But doing it myself should be fun, even if it takes a long time.

Belated Japan Trip Tale

Current Camp Nanowrimo Word Count: 1706

I can't believe all this time has passed and I completely forgot to talk about my trip to Japan.

So, background - my sister married a marine officer, and he's been stationed in Okinawa for the last couple of years.  Okinawa is actually in the tropics, so I planned the trip to be in October (of last year) in an attempt to enjoy cooler weather and less bugs (especially the bugs that come up through the toilets.  I don't think I could ever live permanently in a tropical area).

I'd wanted to go for awhile, but what finally motivated me to go ahead and buy the airplane tickets was the two of them adopting a Japanese baby boy :), born in December 2015.  He's the first child of my siblings and I (:D!!).  His name is Kai Jason.  They wanted him to have a Japanese name that wouldn't sound too out of place in America, but they also wanted him to have an ordinary English middle name in case he preferred to go by that when he got older.  Kai means 'Ocean' in Japanese, at least in the kanji they picked for the name.  Their language is fascinating - a word can have different meanings depending on how it's written.  (More on their language some other time - I'm working on learning their simplest alphabet hiragana).  His nickname is 'Bam-bam', so I'm sure that gives everyone a good idea of his personality.  He's also big for his age - he's pretty much worn clothes that are for a child one or two months older than him since he was about a week old.

They're also in the process of adopting a second child, a baby girl named Mika Jeanette.  This adoption process ought to go pretty easy comparatively, considering that the Japanese courts already decided to give one of their children to foreigners.  Getting America to recognize the adoptions is also a bit of a convoluted process, because the Japanese and Americans don't have pre-set legal agreements to do so, which I suspect is largely because the two countries have very different viewpoints on adoption (it's shameful to adopt, to be adopted, or to be put up for adoption in Japan (but the courts don't charge for it), whereas in America, adopting is viewed as something wonderful (though our legal system charges tens of thousands to do it)).  They're temporarily locked onto Japan until they finish going through both procedures, so we have to visit them :).

On to the main topic - Okinawa.

It's beautiful.  Despite the late time in the year - October - it's very hot, very muggy, and there's an almost constant wetness in the air - not really rain, but something close to it.  It rains a lot, though, year round.  As a result, everything is very green.

In the cities, most of the residential buildings are grey cement, which looks very odd at first to us from America, where houses are practically every other color but grey.  We did see random painted walls (as in, three of the four walls were grey, and one was red), and pretty much all of the stores were colorful.  They let plants grow almost everywhere over the buildings.  Apparently this is because they're very big on nature, but, practically speaking, due to the jungle-like environment, it'd be a losing battle to try to fight the plants.

And the cars.  It takes a bit to get used to, at first.  They're all tiny.  You know those Smart cars that look so silly in America?  They don't there.  All the cars are small (some are longer, for families larger than four (rare), and those stick out).  We also saw a handful of Hummers, which apparently tend to belong to gangs, and my, did those look silly there.  Their roads and lanes are small.  What's odd was seeing signs and such in Japanese, and then seeing 'FORD' and 'TOYOTA' written out in English.

I'll admit to being a total wimp about eating raw meat, but there's plenty to eat besides that.  We had quite a bit of ramen, I'm in total love with tamagoyaki (an omelette made by rolling layer of fried egg together), curry.... yeah.  I could list that for a long time.  An odd one is red bean buns, which is a dessert.  Japanese 'sweets' aren't sweet by American standards, at all.  These are plain buns with a red bean mash in the middle of them.  Yep, a vegetable used as a sweet.

I really wanted to buy a kimono while I was there, there was a sale (which was the only way I could afford one.  I had no idea they were so expensive).  What I ended up getting is a furisode style, which is a kimono with very long sleeves, which signify that I'm an adult and single.  The kimono itself is very long (one size fits all, and held up with a single belt that the top part of the kimono covers.  An obi (basically a wide fabric belt), covers the rolled over fabric, and they usually (not always) have a bow that's attached in the back.  They're quite difficult to put on by yourself, so I know I'm not wearing it quite perfectly (though I didn't get a slip (basically a second, thin, kimono that goes underneath and only shows at the color), which would've complicated the dressing process to the point of impossible for someone who didn't grow up in the culture).

(Front)

(Back)

Ready, Set...

Camp Nanowrimo officially started!

My project's called 'For Want of a Narrator', and (as I think I've mentioned previously) since it's a project that I worked on last year in Camp Nanowrimo, I have a word goal of only 5000 words per day.  Which, in 30 days, is only 167 words per day (if I write everyday).  In theory, it'll be enough to finish the story.

Here's the synopsis:

An epic tale of good versus evil, an evil overlord, a brave hero, minions and fair ladies - interrupted by the abrupt disappearance of the narrator. What are the characters to do, except to pick up the story-telling themselves?

It's meant to be an absurd funny story, and, though I don't particularly do humor too well, I think it works.  If you've read 'Glimpses', you know I can do absurd, so I feel pretty confident for that part of it.  Admittedly, I've never had someone else read what I've written so far, but since I can make myself laugh with what I've got, there's a chance I can make a reader laugh (similar logic to me writing horror.  If I can't at least get a shiver when reading a piece of horror I've written, it's not going to scare anybody else.).  I'm even playing around with putting some romance in, though only as an aside, applying the "Write what you know" theory, and, well, I don't know romance.

(No, that's not necessarily a bad thing.)

The 'epic tale' is a bit on the cliche side, and it's meant to be.  The only 'twist' is that the main characters step out of the story narration and discuss what scenes they're going to do, whether they should re-do a scene, and whether a scene should be ignored, all while staying in their prescribed alignments of good or evil.  Because, hey, whether the evil overlord is in his castle or outside of the story narration, he's still an evil overlord.

I really like these characters, and I think there's a lot of potential with the story, but I suppose only time will

See you in a week!  (With, hopefully, a word count of at least 1,334)


Word Count:184

Etymology: Susurrus

I ran across a webcomic some time ago that was called "Today Nothing Happened", and as that sums up my week, really (the only unusual event that occurred was a co-worker/assistant going on vacation the last few days of the week, leaving me manning two desks), I decided to do some research on the etymology of a mostly-unused word.  My sister, who's a linguist (also one of the below-mentioned nerdy grammar fans), suggested a rather fun site (if you're into words, anyway) called etymonline.com.

Susurrus:

Definition (Oxford Dictionaries): Whispering, murmuring, or rustling
Pronunciation: soo-ceres

Pre-early 1800s, the word was actually referring a medical condition, similar to tinnitus.  The modern definition is actually late middle english.  The word itself is actually straight from Latin, which simply meant 'whisper'.

Susurration, a form of the same word, can be pinned down to about 1400 AD.  The Latin word it originates from is susurrationem, which (for you very nerdy grammar peeps out there) is the past participle stem of susurrare, meaning to hum or murmer.



Next Saturday is April 1, when I'll be beginning the Camp Nanowrimo challenge.  :)

Extra-Curricular Activities, and Economics

So this last week I picked up a transcribing job.  It's from someone I've previously worked with (yay for returning clients!) and her audio's are always pretty good quality.  Though, I gotta say, typing conversations that last just over 6 hours can be quite intensive.

Still, they're paying for my car payment this month, so there's that :).  Also... the car is new (well, to me, anyway)!  I'm not sure how I forgot to mention that, previously.  I bought it back in January.  It's a cute little car, though I'm not particularly big on it being silver.  I don't have anything against the color - it's normally one of my favorites - but soon after buying it, I went to a parking lot, where every other car is silver, black, or some variation on those two.  A little silver car fades right into the background.  I've recently seen some bright pink cars, and I bet those don't get lost as easily.

It's technically used, though only with 6000 miles on it.  I really wonder what the story is behind it being available for me to buy it.  Who sells a car that's practically brand new?  (Although, perhaps my viewpoint is a bit skewed, as my last car had 180,000 miles on it.)

It's also given me my first official loan in my life.  Which is... kind of wild.  I'm not a big fan of having loans, but it's such a necessity - an absurd one, in my opinion, but apparently, unless you've shown that you previously couldn't afford something, you'll have a very hard time purchasing something else you can't afford.  Which really, really, really sounds weird.  And ridiculous.

(This is (part of) why I'm not an economist.)

In my case, I'm using a car loan that's fairly easy to pay off so I can (hopefully) purchase a house in the future.  Someday. :)

Weekly Report: Dancing

It occurred to me that last week I had neglected to mention something that's become one of my staple weekly activities: dancing.

So apparently finding a dance studio that teaches classic ballroom is kind of hard to find - in Los Angeles, anyway.  Wonder if it's different in other places?  On top of that, my main interest is waltz, which is even harder to find.  Still, I managed to find a studio a couple of months ago.  They also teach tango and foxtrot during the 'American Smooth Ballroom' classes on Saturday afternoons, which are fun to do, even if they're not my favorite.

What with the complications with my knees and feet and all, even though my knees were healed, finding cute dance shoes can be difficult.  I don't generally wear heels, and when I do, they're orthotic (which is the best invention we've come up, ever, regarding shoes).  But when I went to lessons, the pretty shoes I liked best were heeled.  Also, orthotic dance shoes aren't a thing, apparently.  So I hunted around, and discovered that the style of heel I preferred is called Cuban (no clue why.  Research project waiting to happen, I suppose).  Generally speaking, I also have a preference for shoes that aren't very pointy at the toes, but when I saw these on Amazon, I couldn't resist.

 

 

Aren't they cute?  The purple part is velvety, as is the inside, which makes them more comfortable.  The colors of the purple and red are customizable, as is the type of heel and the height of the heel.  Of course, I got the shortest height available, which was two inches.  You can check them out here: http://amzn.to/2merHoL

Before I got these, I'd been using flat jazz shoes, which, as an aside, work just fine.  But since I want to dance socially at some point, knowing how to dance in something fancy comes in handy.

Published!

This'll just be a quick post, but... I'm published!  :)

I created an Amazon Author page, which you can access here: amazon.com/author/callistasteele

Also, for a preview: goo.gl/BnuMub

Come drop by!

...long time no see?

WOW, it's been awhile.  Didn't realize how long it's been.

In my defense, life's been really busy.  I finished the paralegal program, and about six months later (eight months ago) switched jobs.   My last place was a litigation firm, and this one is transactional - real estate.  I'm finding I like the transactional work much better than litigation.  It's a much larger firm, even though it's still in the 'small' category - I've gone from working in an office that had at most four people in it (and, most of the time, just three) to an office with fourteen people, and I'm in a an admin/paralegal team (instead of being, by myself, the administrator, paralegal, receptionist, and just about everything else.  I definitely prefer the team environment.)

The job's downtown, and I ended up moving from Pasadena to Culver City and am now the caretaker of my grandmother's house.  I'm not really a fan of the area - too crowded - but it'll work for now.

In my last blog I mentioned NaNoWriMo, and I've got an exciting update on my writing front - I'm publishing!

It's not the novel I mentioned writing at the time; it's a collection of short and flash fiction.  Eight stories (one being the completed version of the very first story I started thirteen years ago that got me into the idea of writing), 13,000+ words.  I'm going to be self-publishing on Amazon.  I've only got a bit more work to do to finish the formatting, so I'll be posting an update soon (promise!) about the status of that.