2018 Word War widgets

Last day of NaNo 2014

I'm starting the day at 36220 words. Yep, nearly 14k words to go to hit 50k. Not as bad as last year. And a much more believable goal now that I've remembered to take my Prozac, unlike yesterday. Oops.

I'll try to check in roughly every hour with what I'm at, what I'm listening to, and how it's going. So:

At around 8:15 I'd just added 1022 words, making my new total 37242. Now that I have this post set up, let's kick that in the butt before 9:00 rolls around.

Word War 2014 widgets

to save a hat

I did a thing today.

Quite a while ago, I supported a great sustainability kickstarter that involved teaching indigenous women in the Philippines to knit. I got a hat through it, which looked a little something like this:

I loved it. I wore it. A lot.

But then once I pulled it off with an acrylic sweater, which it ended up inside of. So when said sweater was tossed in the wash, said poor hat went in too.

This lovely cables became this:

 My camera didn't even want to focus on them.

My heart was broken. But I paid $40 for this hat, and some wonderful woman out there in the world spent her time to make it for me. So I still wore it. But now it sat up on my head like a bowl cut or a mushroom cap.

I was determined to fix this. And so, some hours and lovely blue variegated yarn later:

It's perfect! Well, not as much as if it hadn't gone through the wash, but I consider it   sufficiently resurrected from the dead.

So, have you been able to save any felting mistakes, or transformed them into something else?

--
Listening to: Ampersand by Unwoman. Beautiful rendition. I have a weakness for that little vocal squeak she does at one point during the bridge.

nano 2013 widgets

Nothing exciting; just widgets for the wordwar my friends and I are having.

Team A


 Team B

warning: boobs are below!

Because this culture is stupid and prudish about female nipples, I had to mark this as mature on deviantart. I'm pretty sure that also means I can't post it to facebook to share it.

I could go on a rant now--I mean, really: everyone, and I mean everyone has nipples. What's so mysterious and porny about them if they're constructed of XX genes?--but I'd rather talk about my picture. Ahem.

This took me about four hours, which is much improved from past projects I've done. I think a lot of that is because I got a new program: Artrage really makes me confident enough to do my pictures 100% digital, and being able to go from sketching to inking to coloring in one picture speeds everything up nicely. (Oh boy did that sound like a paid promotion. But I'm not being paid. Not even in anchovies. I just like the program.)

checking gauge is for suckers

And I am apparently not a sucker. I'm not quite sure this sock will fit me--same pattern size as my last one, but very different yarn. Oh wells. If nothing else, I have a sister with small feet.

 

I got quite a lot done during the evening session of Stake Conference today, and I'm hoping to get even more done tomorrow. I don't mind the three hours sitting in church at all; I often wish church was a lot more listening and knitting and a lot less herding six-year-olds. Sigh.

Lynx is way too cute.

sock it to me!

 

I finished a sock! I really should be working on things for my etsy shop, but I've been knitting socks instead.

I finished this one and started another. The pattern is Cakewalk Socks, since I wanted more handknit socks for less work.

And my cat is sleeping with her head squished on a pop tart box, because she's like that.

the end is nigh

For NaNo of course, but I hope for my novel as well. I've been half-busy with Etsy stuff this year, and half incredibly lazy and unmotivated. I managed to reach 50k by the 15th, but I haven't even added 20k more in the time since. So I'm aiming to change that today (and will be blogging throughout).

I've decided to have a last day of NaNo crazy writing day, despite the fact that I woke up at 6:30 yesterday morning after about 3 hours sleep. But I've decided I'm not going to bed again until I either pass out, get way closer to finishing (maybe final confrontation done, but not final wrap up), or write The End. I'm hoping for the latter, but I'll take what I can get--even passing out would hopefully give me good dreams. After all, this entire convoluted mess started from a dream I had during last year's NaNo.

Na-Na-Na-No

As sung by Lady Gaga, of course.

But yes, I'm doing NaNo this year, of course. At this point, I really can't picture my year without it. I would be totally lost in the month of November. And it's been a very sub-par year for writing (deciding to put a lot of focus on majoring in Illustration and starting a small business will do that, apparently), so I'm hoping to make up for that. Not with an impressive wordcount, as in years past, (although that would be nice too), but by finishing another novel during NaNo. That felt way cooler even than my 135k year. I like that feeling. I'm a bit addicted to it. And March was the last time I got my fix.

I'm not dead, I promise

Man, what a downer of a post to leave my blog on for months and months!

 I don't feel like doing a full 2012 goals recap, but suffice to say that I've actually started my Etsy shop now, so my days are filled with more knitting than I'd ever imagined they would be! Nothing much to show for it yet, as far as being in the shop--like with everything, I'm great at being motivated to start new things, and rubbish at actually seeing them through to the end. Getting stuck at 96% for weeks because I can't bring myself to do an hour of finishing work is the story of my life lately. Alas.

inner critic, go away; go jump off a cliff today. . . .

It's ridiculous that I just wrote a blog post justifying that yes, I am a writer, since now I feel so very iffy on that front. I know it has to do with the fact that I'm randomly depressed again, and that I just got a good critique (read, was not nice to my story in exactly the way it needed to be, and pointed out a lot of things I need to fix to make it work), so I feel like if I can't even write a story that makes sense, who am I to say I'm a writer?

in which I watched a ton of movies while on the clock

One really nice thing about the work I've been doing for my etsy shop lately is the amount of Netflix I get to watch, guilt free. I need something to do while I knit and crochet, after all. My viewing history of last night/this morning reads as follows:

guest post (or, what I spent my evening writing instead of fiction)

I've written a post for the Callihoo Publishing blog, entitled "What does it take to be a writer", in which I outline a few of the struggles I've faced in calling myself a writer. Check it out, and let me know what struggles you've faced in taking on that title!

http://callihoopublishing.blogspot.com/2012/07/what-does-it-take-to-be-writer.html


Also, I got oil paint on my gardening pants in class today, making me wonder if I should make them my painting pants instead. There, now I can still be random, even if I'm updating more frequently! :)

--
Listening to: In der Stille by Subway to Sally. The problem with this band is I keep listening to all of their albums on repeat while I work, so I keep getting bits stuck in my head and having no clue what song they're in.

summer classes

Don't you just hate those days where you forget you have something to do? I think I subconsciously set the tempo of my days based on whether I have to do something in the evening or not. Today, I forgot I have a class at 5:30, so I've been taking some time getting things done for my business, thinking I'll have the evening to relax a bit. Well, there went that plan. And now my drive to do anything work-related is faltering, since I know I won't get home 'til nine, and will only have about an hour before my self-inflicted bedtime. And I have to take the non-air-conditioned car again. Ick.

start of july goals recap: take that, mid-may!

Rewrite (at least) one of my novels.
Well, I didn't get it done in June, but I have been working on rewriting Clockwork. I polished my first scene up nicely before realizing I should probably be editing for story before doing line edits. So I'm in the process of summarizing all my chapters and scenes on notecards to try and get an idea of the shape of the story. It's hard because the only way to get better at rewriting is more rewriting, which you don't have a clue how to do unless you've done some rewriting. . . .

in which I decide I would like to blog more often

Even if I feel I have nothing to say. I can talk about writing, current knitting/crochet projects, my poor garden, even the fact that I really do want to get my Etsy shop up and running one if these days.
Of course, I always think that, every time I visit my cousins. Two of them run the pretty darn successful Quiet Mischief and Co., and watching them work and have goals and actually make a living off Etsy always inspires me. Usually for only about three days, or so, but I really would like to actually do it this time. Even if it means dealing with being a business, and taxes and shipping and having to build my customer base from scratch.

mid-may goals recap

All right, rather than trying to catch up on (what feels like) months of missed blogging, I'll just jump in today as if nothing happened. Kinda like I tried to do for my 366 project, which has flickered out yet again.

Rewrite (at least) one of my novels.
I've decided this is a June goal, since that's when the createspace offer from last year's NaNo expires. So, I haven't made any progress on this front recently. I finished another novel though, and at 48k words it's definitely my shortest. Might be a good one to start a rewrite on.

I could have been working on it this month, but I was planning to do Story a Day in May. That's also kind of fizzled out. I suppose I could still try for it this last week, but I have almost no motivation to do so. I feel kind of blah overall, regarding my writing. :/

project 366 - another dose of highlights

I finally got caught up on my 366 project again. I'd been taking photos, and even processing most of them, but without actually putting them on my flickr, it didn't feel like I'd been keeping up on my goal. I even felt like calling it quits again. But now that I have them all up, I feel better about this project. So here are my favorites since the last update (going to be a long post, since it's been a while):

leave a message after the (text) tone

Okay, that title really makes no sense. But basically, this blog is to highlight the latest project I did for my design class, where we used text as value (tone). Here's a link to the picture, which you can click on to make it huge: http://armyofgnomes.deviantart.com/art/text-tones-self-portrait-290078115

There are five values (six, if you count the background). This is where you're supposed to guess what they all are.

Tone 1: paper white
Tone 2: katakana
Tone 3: script
Tone 4: kanji
Tone 5: black

Extra tone: background kanji