I just finished a nice log cabin quilt in blue and light tan, with red centers, for a little boy sort-of cousin in Russia–it’s to be a nice ‘American’ present, so I made it as traditional as possible, all scrappy and stuff. Otherwise I have lots of fabric I want to turn into nice things, but little time, and I promised to sew up a quilt for my church for humanitarian aid, so that’s what I’m doing right now. It’s amazing how they take perfectly decent fabric and turn it into hideous nine-patch blocks, which I now have to wrestle into submission.
I’m considering doing a quilt for my sister, who’s off to college this fall. I was thinking it would be fun to get some Japanese-style fabrics in suitably dark colors for her taste, and just running up a simple quilt. If I’m going to do that I’d better hurry up…
Also I’m doing a cross-stitch of the seasons, pretty small, which I hope will look nice in the dining room. It’s going pretty quick. After that I have a tiny grid of flowers, with a quote about sisterhood around the edge, for my daughters’ room.
I just recently retrieved a couple of antique muzzle-loading rifles from my father’s house in Wyoming and brought them back home.
One is a .54 caliber percussion cap rifle, and the other is a .32 caliber flintlock; both made by my grandfather shorthly after he returned home to the states following WWII.
The flintlock is in pretty good shape aside from a few silver inlays in the stock coming loose (I’m not sure yet how I’m going to secure them… I’ll have to do a little research on that). The only other thing is that it is very hair-triggered; not necessarily a problem as long as you know that when you are loading it and preparing to fire, but I’m considering taking it apart to see if I can’t make the trigger pull a little harder.
The .54 caliber rifle also has a few inlays that need to be secured, and some other problems that need to be addressed before it can safely be loaded and fired; namely the ramrod needed to have its brass tip secured before I’d dare try to use it to load the rifle (I fixed that today), and for some reason the hammer will not stay back in position when cocked… as you might imagine, this could be a problem! I’m going to have to take it apart to see if I can fix it or if it’ll need an entirely new firing mechanism.
Once I get them both fixed up I probably won’t fire them very often, but they are both beautiful guns to hang over a fireplace.
I have several ongoing projects. When I get tired of one, I go to the next one, so it makes for works-in-progress all the time. Eventually, I’ll be finished!
I’m declicking, denoising and pitch correcting 30 gigs of records that have never been issued on CD, for transfer to CD. After that, it’ll be more of the same.
I’m designing CD jewel case inserts for all of my CDs that have no inserts, so I can tell what’s on them. (Hooray for CD-Text!)
I’m working on the databases of my record collection. I still have about 10,000 entries to go.
There are several recordings of songs on the computer on which I’ve played all the instruments, that are in varying stages of completion. They are awaiting more overdubs, but I need time, a good digital keyboard, and a set of drums. The latter I can borrow at some point. The rest is a bit harder to come by.
That’s about all for now. It keeps me busy, that’s for sure!
Mostly I’m still remodeling, but really, the bulk of that is done. I still have a lot of painting to do, but that’s not the kind of thing that requires moving every stick of furniture we own into the garage for a fortnight (which is what happened when we had the floors done.)
I have a sort of commissioned project going - some pins with a band’s logo, some pendants with the same logo but different from the pin design, and some MORE pins for the frontman’s side solo effort. When I get the studio cleaned out and find my desk again, I will be able to whip them out pretty quickly.
I have to make a new bodice for my daughter’s Ren garb, and a new bodice for a friend, both of which have to be done by the second weekend of July. I’d like to make a new one for myself, but that is just self-indulgent and has no deadline.
I have to finish the afghan I started crocheting for my friend Kathleen for Christmas 2004…fortunately, she’s patient.
Last but not least - I’m doing faux stained glass windows in my studio. I just bought the last of the supplies today.
I’m working on writing a beginner fantasy novel. As I’m generally disappointed with the state of the genre right now, I’ve instead turned to 60’s and 70’s paperbacks for inspiration. It’s about a computer programmer who quits his job and then gets a new job in a magical universe, helping a princess and a wizard retrieve a magic sword that’s been lost for generations … that sort of thing. Ideally it will end up having more attitude and more appeal to adults than most of what’s on the market today.
Man, it’s tough to write good sex scenes. Really tough.
I’m crocheting Martha Stewart’s Prison Poncho. It’s for my sister, who once dressed up in a blonde wig and jumpsuit as “Martha in Prison” for Halloween. So, now she can be “Martha out of Prison”!
It’s actually quite soft and cuddly, and while the color of the yarn looks gray on TV (and the internet), it’s actually a greenish color and quite pretty. So, it’s not just a gag gift.
Maybe I’ll make a mock ankle monitor to go with it.
Knitting. Knitting a top-down raglan, knitting the Lara sweater from Debbie Bliss Alpaca Silk, knitting the Unbiased bag from Knitty (and needing way more silk than the pattern calls for.)
I’m writing a Sci Fi/Noir multigenre…thing. It’s going to be Star Trek with a Fedora, Casablanca with a 1920s style death ray, and Plato’s Republic in a skeevy bar at the very edge of the universe. I intend to take elements of pulp fiction and a few arguements to their extreme limits with the sci fi setting in various intertwined short stories which all take place in the same seedy bar. Many of the stories will star different characters exclusive to one story, but will include regulars of the bar who’ll pop in and out of the shorts. It’s up to 7,500-8,000 words right now. It would be a bit more than that, but I’ve got to wait untill this school semester ends before I can flesh out what I have in my outlines.
Writing good dialgue is very, very difficult. I mean, you wouldn’t believe how much time you can spend staring at your computer screen before typing out a single sentence because you don’t know how to approach a conversation.
Right now, I’m not working on much of anything really. I mean, there is the one thing, but it hardly qualifies. Really, it’s nothing. Just taking 20 credits towards an undergraduate physics degree, is all. Nothing hard.
I’m desperately building a Cthulhu mask for a comic book convention. I leave in less than a week, and the horrible cracked mess I’ve come up with so far is sitting in the oven while I decide what to do with it. If I don’t get this finished in time, a picture of my face is going to be splashed all over the Internet, and trust me, NO ONE wants that to happen.
Just finished a huge load of porcelain pins of one of my own designs, and deciding how best to unleash them on the world.
Trying desperately not to sculpt the new piece that coalesced in my brain and is fighting desperately to get out of my head. I hate when that happens at an inconvenient time.
I have a few boxes of writing that I’m s-l-o-w-l-y typing up on the computer. It’s very bitsy - snatches of dialouge and ideas, and a lot of it’s crap, because I’ve got stuff in some of the boxes that date from, say, fourth form. I’m cringing as I’m typing some of it. Still, I’m finding some good sentances, so it evens out.
A simulated Energia rocket, with a 100-MT “payload”; researching and writing a handful of stories—one, a science-fiction short story I hope to sell, and a few fanfic; some fanart; studying for my fencing final and, shortly, upgrading my computer’s DVD drive into a DVD/CD burner.
Ha-ha! Prepare to revel in my overwhelming number of concurrent projects.
The Flowerbasket Shawl from the Fall '04 Interweave Knits. I’m five repeats of the upper chart in – the end is nigh. Two and a half more repeats and then ten rows of the final chart and I’m done with the knitting. I block it, and then I have a white shawl to go over my black dress for concert dress for community band this summer.
Heathery Duo from the Fall '04 Interweave Knits in dark red. This skirt freaking rocks. Pictures from the patterns for it and the shawl are available at the above link. The one problem is that the finished size of the largest given size is 40" and my hip measurement is only a half-inch smaller than that. I’m going to have to do a single wide cable on each seam to get some ease, I think.
A cabled tote bag that I designed myself. Knitted, of course. I’ve been working on this since the fall. Once I finish it, maybe I’ll write the pattern up and submit it somewhere. It’s a great bag, in my humble opinion.
An Elizabethan gown based on this portrait. I just ordered the fabric for it yesterday, so right now I’m embroidering silver ancanthus leaves and pearls on black velvet for a caul and drafting patterns on graph paper. I’m still kind of in the research phase for this – I’m dyeing the fabric myself with period dyestuffs (madder in a new garbage can in the backyard, whee!), and I’ve never done that before, so I’m reading up on mordants and pH and all that stuff. Oh, did I mention this project involves knitting?
An Italian renaissance gown for my sister, 1490s-ish. Camicia, gown, and tabard. Very Ever After. Also still in the research stage, mostly gathering pictures and reading about theoretical construction. She’s not as crazy as I am, so her dress fabric is all going to be supplied by Joann’s and the ilk. Fifty-percent off one item, what can I say?
A couple of short stories. The less said about them, the better. Also some fanfic that is languishing.
I might have talked some friends into going to Bristol Faire with me in late August, so I might have two more costumes to add to the sewing list. None of the costumes have to be done until the beginning of August, so I’ve got breathing room yet. All of these are learning experiences. Figuring out how to do new things is why I have any hobby I’ve ever had, really.
Winding yarn from skeins into balls for my first sweater that I’m too nervous to cast on, so it’s a good thing I still have six skeins to hand wind.
I also need to get some homework done before my monday night Chinese painting class, the class is kind of an ongoing project, though none of the outcomes are more than exercises. Sometime after the class I will perhaps feel qualified enough to sit down and think about beginning a painting that isn’t an exercise. All other (western, acrylic on paper or canvas) projects are on hold while I give this some creative space.
