electricland

For all you fellow bitches: Andi Zeisler of Bitch Magazine talks about That Word. (Via Salon Broadsheet.)

Pretty good weekend -- surprisingly productive, now I look back on it. I did laundry and changed my sheets and helped order siding and went to a party and to choir practice and played Kill Dr. Lucky and bought groceries and cooked chicken stock and chicken chili and sewed more ornaments. And I had another stab at clearing extraneous Stuff, this time out of the third floor. Much of it is now strewn around the second floor, which is not ideal, but at least it's getting more concentrated.

Something rather appalling happened to a friend of mine, though -- she got home from work Friday to discover that her boyfriend, who'd been living with her for about a year, had decamped with all his stuff. No note, no message. They'd had a nice birthday dinner for her the night before. Who does that? It's making me seriously question my judgement, because I thought he was a really nice, standup kind of guy -- as did she, obviously. I'm having trouble knowing what to think.

Books read this week:

Girl at Sea, Maureen Johnson
Magic's Child, Justine Larbalestier
A Stranger at Green Knowe, Lucy M. Boston (life_on_queen! Gorilla alert!)
Working for the Devil, Lilith Saintcrow (I had some issues -- such as, if she told me one more time that Secondary Character E was large, blond and shaggy, I was going to have to scream -- but not bad for a first novel)
Voices, Ursula K. Le Guin
Pants on Fire, Meg Cabot

[Edited November 20 to add links and the following] After finishing the last -- which, btw, I really enjoyed, so this is not a slam -- I realized that another reason I have come to adore Cecil Castellucci as much as I do is that she doesn't write romances. There is a limited range of happy endings for women in fiction, and I'm all in favour of those who expand them at every opportunity. Not, you understand, that I'm against romances -- I love 'em -- but it's nice to come across a happy ending once in a while that doesn't involve True Love.

Gotta love it. Not my most productive weekend ever, but I puttered around and got a few things done (although I wimped out of a party Saturday night and out of chamber choir rehearsal Sunday, on the principle that neither of these events would be enhanced by my coughing all over them). Unearthed my winter wardrobe. Did laundry. Cleaned the disturbing pink jelly out of the bottom of my fridge. Made a grocery list but did not buy groceries. Searched for sequins, as it is once again Ornament Project Time; I thought I'd hit pay dirt at one of the dollar stores on Queen but although they did have three different sequin assortments, none of them contained the right shade of blue. Bah. It may have to be Wal-Mart. Took apart my desk, although have not yet taken it to the basement. Read more books (Look to the Lady and Danger Point). Did a lot of Killer Sudoku (I am dangerously addicted). Had dinner at my parents' last night with three Cornish poets. Got home in time to watch the end of Where Eagles Dare (aka All Germans are Mortal), featuring a ridiculously young Clint Eastwood and also a special Making Of feature made long before DVDs were ever thought of, which impressed us.

Mostly I spent a lot of time getting distracted by other things. Any day now I will be back into my normal routine, but it hasn't happened yet.

...but it's been pretty good, if different.

Drove moonlightjoy downtown for Day 2 of her conference, then stopped by the Queen's Quay Loblaws to pick up groceries. I am ashamed to say that someone else had to point out to me that my tire was completely flat. Called my parents, who called CAA, and then sat in the van and sewed partridges while I waited for everyone to show up. (I've been getting quite a lot of sewing done in cars -- yesterday my mother and I tried to go to the Royal Winter Fair horse show, but the traffic was horrendous and all the parking lots were full and eventually we just said to hell with it and went to Lee Valley and MEC, stopping on the way for coffee and butter tarts. Exchanged my hot pink thermal hoodie, which was adorable but unlikely to see much use, for a merino pullover in the same colour scheme. I'm wearing it now. I love it. Also exchanged a pair of socks for one that fit. The totals came to exactly the same amount, so we thought that was quite clever.)

Anyway. CAA put the spare on, and then we went for brunch and my dad told stories of other car disasters. Then they brought me home and I've been puttering. I have a flock of partridges lying on my floor; I still have to make them beaks and finish their pears and finish painting their plinths, but the bulk of the work is done. What on earth will I do on the subway now?

With all my chitchat about partridges, I've neglected to mention that I've already received two ornaments from people in my ornament pool who are clearly MUCH MORE ORGANIZED than me. One came, like, two or three weeks ago (madness!). It's a clear blue glass plaque with an eighth note on it, from (I think -- will have to check) blueeyedtigress. The other evidently arrived some time this week (our mail setup is not ideal, so I sometimes overlook things for a few days). It's a beaded snowflake from jhayman. I got a postcard from crankygrrl in the same post, together with my Visa bill and my voter information card. A good haul.

(I must make myself an icon for this here ornament project.)

Speaking of crankygrrl -- she's BACK! Hurray! Although sans luggage.

So I have basswood, gold acrylic paint, Sharpies, and glue. (The basswood comes from Aboveground Art, which I pass on my way to choir all the time but had never been into until last night. Love it! Last night was also the first time I'd noticed it coming up McCaul, with OCAD in the background -- an extremely cool view.) Sequins, however, are proving elusive. I may need to try Zellers or *shudder* Wal-Mart.

Fortunately I don't need sequins to get started. I have made a plan and traced the pattern pieces and located my X-Acto knife and sewing box (this is a more impressive feat than it sounds) and am going to start cutting out bits of felt tonight and sewing them together. (Weird discovery: I have like 5 spools of green thread. No idea why. Will have to buy thread in the other colours, but on green, I'm good.)

So I've been flipping through many (OK, 5) books of DIY Christmas ornaments in search of something I could make in quantity without too much pain and anguish. Most of them were somewhat intimidating in spots, but generally they were all intimidating in the same way, if you get what I mean -- requiring large chunks of patience to needlepoint or crochet, for example, but appearing within the range of ability of any reasonably dextrous and motivated person.

Then I came to this. Holy glue guns and glitter, Batman! Not to mention etching compound and pliers and heavy-gauge foil and when I got to the bit about making a beaded fake apple with 900 (count 'em!) 1-cm straight pins I just put it down, because who has the time and energy? (You can see the apple on the cover if you look hard.) I mean. NINE HUNDRED CRYSTAL BEADS AND NINE HUNDRED STRAIGHT PINS. (And a fake leaf.) THIS PERSON IS CRAZY.

In any case, I've pretty much settled on felt as my medium. Felt is doable. I can handle felt. It has satisfying overtones of the kindergarten about it. It's friendly and it doesn't fray. From this book, which has plenty of scary stuff -- tatting, crochet, Battenberg lace -- but also, luckily, felt. In particular, the Twelve Days of Christmas in felt and gold thread and the odd sequin. A little bit challenging, but not so much as to cause me to run screaming for the hills.

Now I just need to figure out where to buy felt in non-scary colours.

Back from vacation for a while, in fact, but too busy to check LJ. What the hell did they do to the interface while I was gone? Vacation was lovely. I'm still living in the house. This is still cool. Choir has started up again (have to be there at 7:30 and eat dinner first, so this will be short) and my high school reunion weekend starts tomorrow but I'm only going to the choir practice and chapel service because, again, busy. 15 years since graduation. Egads. That's a little bit frightening or maybe a little bit cool -- consider how much I've done since!

Part of the busy is I will be taking a course on information architecture that starts Saturday and goes all day. It sounds way cool. I'm also taking part in ohiblather's Christmas ornament exchange so, being me, I have asked the library to give me five books on making Christmas ornaments (hey, I want options here -- I don't have a lot of practice with craftiness lately. At least I decided not to get the one on 100 Simple Ornaments That Kids Can Make. Cut me a break).

How are you all? What have I missed? Bottom line is, I may continue to not read my friends list much -- it's too much of a distraction at work (because I have no self-control) and I don't yet have a working computer at home. I may also have to cut down on the list a bit, because I was regularly getting to skip=120 in a day, and it's too much to keep up with. Will let you know.

I shall now post all the house reports you've been missing, plus a rant about inept use of the Web for marketing purposes. Joyous day!