Category: Uncategorized

  • Walking In This World – Snow

    Walking In This World – Snow

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    The snow has started.  They\’re predicting gusts up to 50 mph and 4 to 10 inches of snow, but most of what will be to the south of us if the weather reports are to be trusted.   It\’s started to snow now, which you can\’t really tell in the foreground but that hazy bit down the alley shows it better.  The alley isn\’t usually this strewn with trash, but the wind has been hellish the last few days and blows all sorts of crap everywhere.  It\’s got to drive property owners nuts, because no sooner do you clean it, than it\’s littered again.  Grr.

    Weather is strange.  It\’s one of those things we can\’t change, but we like to bitch about it just the same.  \”It\’s snowing!\”  It\’s February.  In Chicago.  \”It\’s cold today!\”  It\’s Winter.  In Chicago.  I\’d be more worried if those two things weren\’t happening at this time of year in this town.  No, this isn\’t a rant about global warming, though that is a rant that needs to be had and a problem that faces all of us who live on planet Earth, but my point about the weather is that it is out of our control.  If ever there was an answer to \”Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,\” weather\’s it.

    So I take pictures of it.  I like weather, by and large, because it reminds me I\’m a physical body, not just keyboard operating fingers attached to a brain, and I have to wear clothes and make sure that I\’m fed and have emergency supplies if we get snowed in.  (And, while I\’m on that subject, how come I never get snowed in?  I want a snow day, damn it!)

    What about you, Dear Reader?  What are your favorite weather coping strategies?

  • Sunday Box Talk – Getting Back To Basics

    Sunday Box Talk – Getting Back To Basics

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    Getting back to basics – what are the three boxes of life? It’s an idea from Richard Nelson Bolles, author of What Color Is Your Parachute. He points out that the three big boxes most of us deal with are education, work, and retirement. Bolles proposes something that’s nothing short of revolutionary – why keep the boxes in the traditional order of school when we’re young, then work for most of our adult life, then retire in our “golden years?” Why not mix it up a little?

    I’ve talked about the idea of changing things up and the objections I hear amount to one thing: fear of challenging the status quo. What does following the status quo give us? Don’t reject it out of hand: predictability, stability, and familiarity. Those things aren’t trifles, and they’re not to be sneezed at. In times of great stress, usually it’s one or more of those three things that are impacted that causes all the stress. Why would we want to bring that about ourselves?

    Here’s why: when we do things out of order, such as work as youth, or go back to school in later years, or take a year or six months off as a sabbatical, it teaches us things about ourselves that we would learn in no other way. By challenging the patterns that have become routine, it engages parts of our brain that aren’t usually in use as we go through life on auto-pilot. While it can be scary, it can be exhilarating and allow us to see things in new ways.

    We also have a myth that we’re supposed to be good at something before we even start it. I can’t tell you how many people argue with me when I suggest they go back to school to study something that interests them. “Oh, I’m no good at such-and-such.” Being good at something is what you aim to be after education, not before.

    If we open our minds to the possibility of changing around the order of things, what might happen? We might go back to school after forty, or fifty, or seventy. We might take a sabbatical and go live somewhere rural to study sustainable farming. We might take a gap year before going to college, to give ourselves time to cool off after high school and get some needed life skills.

    What about you, Dear Reader? What might you try if you shook up your status quo?

  • Friday Funnies

    Friday Funnies

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  • Join Me at Torquere Press Today!

    Join Me at Torquere Press Today!

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    Join me over at Torquere Press today, where I\’m talking about my free workshop in February on writing M/M romance.

  • Stash Sunday

    Stash Sunday

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    Rachel and I wander around a lot, and as part of that, we search out local yarn shops, or what knitters like to call LYS\’s.  During Rachel\’s last trip here, we visited The Knitting Pot in Elmhurst, Illinois.  Rachel fell in love with some lovely overdye purple yarn, but there was only one skein of it.  It\’s been sitting on my idea board for the last two months while I try and figure out what to make with it.

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    I like Cascade yarns.  This is a nice, chunky yarn that\’s soft and has a nice hand.  This colorway is interesting because it\’s so understated, all plums and grey.  It\’s a lot darker than it seems in these pictures.

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    Here\’s a shot of the back of the yarn band.  The colorway on the left tells you what the manufacturer\’s color it is.  The lot number on the right tells you which batch it was dyed with, so that if you\’re using more than one skein, you can make sure all the pieces are the same lot number.

    Here\’s the tough part:

    I don\’t know what to make with it.

    So, here are my ideas:

    1. A stuffed elephant/truffle.  (A truffle is an imaginary creature that Rachel and I invented for our Persis series; it\’s a cross between a cocker spaniel and an aardvark.)
    2. A lace table runner.
    3. This is currently my favorite:  an Amazeball.  Here\’s my idea:  make a large ball, stuffed and cushie.  Send it to a friend when they\’ve done something amazing.  They get to hang onto it, kind of like a trophy, until they feel like it\’s time to pass the award on to the next person.  Ooh!  As I\’m typing this, maybe include a pocket, and each person giving the award can write a note to put in the Amazeball to pass it along to the next person.
    4. A set of tree ornaments.
    5. Use it in a woven piece where I wind on a continuous warp, and use this as one of the weft pieces.

    What about you, Dear Reader?  What would you make with it?

  • Sunday Box Talk – The Toolbox

    Sunday Box Talk – The Toolbox

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    \”Success doesn\’t come to you, you go to it.\”
    – Marva Collins

    It’s easy to lament the things we don’t have yet. The media bombards us with images of more successful, more slender, more athletic, more successful people every day. New media come online every day, methods of distracting us from ourselves: even the dollar store as the “dollar store radio network” to talk to you while you hunt for bargains. Is it any wonder we feel bombarded? Or, worse, bad about ourselves because we’re not where we want to be?

    I offer a thought for a beleaguered mind: gratitude.

    Give thanks for the good that exists in your life, right now. Even if there doesn’t seem like much you could possibly be grateful for, the fact that you are alive and reading this newsletter is enough. Imagine if you were in Baghdad right now, sitting in the bombed-out shell of your temple, trying to pray with the sounds of mortars booming in the distance? What if one hits your neighborhood? The fact that we live in relative peace and calm, pursuing making a living and our hobbies, is a subject we can offer much gratitude for. Sure, not everything is perfect. But much of it is good.

    Try numbering a sheet from one to ten, and write down ten things you’re grateful for. See if you can’t go past ten. How do you feel?

    Now I propose that we become pilgrims on the path to self. We will do this together, side by side, shoulder to shoulder. Our tools are our bright minds and our love for each other. The first item in our toolbox is Gratitude. Learn to say thank you with an open heart. If you need ideas for how, go grab a copy of Sarah Ban Breathnach’sSimple Abundance, one of the best books written in the last two decades. Try her Gratitude Journal. Select a small, pretty book. Each night, just before you go to sleep, write down five things you are grateful for from the day. That’s all. Just five.

  • Saturday Stashbusting

    Saturday Stashbusting

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    I\’m working on busting my ginormous stash.  In order to do that, I need to work on the projects I started.

    The Stash List

    1. Block the Jewel Scarf
    2. My hat
    3. The red cable bag
    4. Line the Uglii Bag
    5. Bind off the Uglii Afghan; decide if I’m adding to it
    6. Buttons to the red blouse

    This was originally a list of 5 things, but I realized I need to block the Jewel Scarf too, and that\’s something I can do on Sunday.

    Oh, and here\’s Boria keeping the Uglii Afghan warm for me.  I know, I featured him a couple days ago, but it makes me laugh so I figured I\’d share again.

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    What about you, Dear Reader?  What\’s in YOUR stash?

     

  • The Splish-Splash Page Hop

    The Splish-Splash Page Hop

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    Bubble, bubble, toil and… welcome to the trouble!  It\’s #NationalBubbleBathDay, and I\’m joining my #NiceGirlsWritingNaughty sisters all weekend long to help celebrate with a steamy fun PAGE HOP!

    Hello there.  I\’m A. Catherine Noon, and I write hot-hot-hot stuff such as Sealed by Magic.  As part of the Page Hop, I\’m giving away a copy of one of our books, either Sealed by Magic or your choice to one lucky winner on Sunday!  All you have to do to enter my giveaway is like my Noon and Wilder page on Facebook, here.

    After you do that, be sure to comment below about YOUR fantasy bath mate below, so I know you\’ve been by!  After you\’re done, hop on to the next Naughty Girl waiting to say hello to you!  She is ANGEL PAYNE!

  • Friday Funnies

    Friday Funnies

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    So.  What\’s on YOUR social media plan?

  • Thoughtful Thursday – 3D and Writing

    Thoughtful Thursday – 3D and Writing

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    No epiphanies this week.  Just a hat.  I decided to try making one with lace, rather than straight ribbed stitches, and like how it\’s coming out so far.

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    Boria and Kolya both keep sleeping on my Uglii Chair Afghan, which is annoying.  Kolya wants to chew the ends of my knitting needles.

    I think I\’ll make him into a hat.

  • A Writer In Her Library

    A Writer In Her Library

    \"2016-01-07When I teach, students often ask me for books that I recommend.  I like Debra Dixon\’s GMC: Goal Motivation & Conflict; The Building Blocks of Good Fiction.  Debra breaks down how good stories work and why, and helps us create compelling characters that will drive our story forward.

    Her grids are helpful for evaluating our own stories and making them stronger.  I particularly like how she uses several popular movies as examples, and breaks down where they work and where they don\’t.  It makes it easy to see her points and figure out how to apply them to our own writing.

    Highly recommended.

  • Tue Cent Twosday – Why Gratitude

    Tue Cent Twosday – Why Gratitude

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    Happy New Year!

    I know that there\’s a ton of focus right now on New Year\’s Resolutions, but I want to throw a curveball.  Rather than focus on what we don\’t have, let\’s focus on all the good that we have in our lives.  No matter what\’s going on in our lives at any given moment, we have something for which to be grateful.  Even on awful days, we have the ability to be grateful that, at the end of the day, that day is over and we get to put it behind us.

    I challenge you, then, to join me in writing a gratitude journal.  Each night before you go to sleep, write down five things for which you are grateful.  I\’ll start:

    1. My health.
    2. My husband.
    3. My kid.
    4. My cats and dog.
    5. My safe and warm home.

    What about you, Dear Reader?  Tell me in the comments.