Tag: A. Catherine Noon

  • The Keepsake Tour: Join Me At Robyn Bachar\’s For an Interview

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    Another stop on the Emerald Keepsake Tour is ready for you.  C\’mon by and join me at the amazing Robyn Bachar\’s blog for an interview.

     

  • Day Seven of the Keepsake Tour

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    Happy Almost-Spring!  It\’s warming up, finally, and I actually got to walk home from work yesterday!  Very exciting.  Almost all the snow is melted, leaving what hardened rime of muck there is to hulk like a menace in the shadows.  (Hmm.  Must be feeling poetic, lol.)  We\’re going to the zoo today.

    But first, I wanted to show you the lovely scarf that Rachel is making for the Keepsake Tour!  This is the second of the two grand prizes.  It\’s a little less GREEN in real life, but it\’s hard to get the digital camera to cooperate.  She used a large needle, so the fabric is nice and cushy.

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    This next image is a different angle, but you can see the honeycomb pattern of the half-double crochet stitches that she used.  She likes this pattern because it crochets up quickly and makes a nice, lacy fabric that\’s warm.  She used a soft, synthetic yarn that\’s easily machine washable so it\’s not fussy to care for.

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    The lovely quilt underneath it was made by Anna Xavier, who is an amazing textile artist in her own right.  Rachel handed me a pillow when I said I was cold and I just stared it her, thinking, what the heck am I gonna do with a pillow?  Wear it on my feet?  She came over and flipped it open and it spread out into a lovely blanket.  Magic!  🙂

    So, Dear Reader, here\’s my question to you:  now that the weather is warming up in the Northern Hemisphere and not yet too bitterly cold in the Southern Hemisphere, what outdoor activities do you like to do?  

    Remember, all commenters during the Keepsake Tour will be entered to win some neat keepsakes, including this Emerald Keep Scarf, hand-crocheted by Rachel Wilder!

     

  • Join Me At The Divas of Desire, and Why I Knit

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    I was invited to visit The Divas of Desire to share a bit of why I knit. I hope you\’ll join me!

  • Thoughtful Thursday, 3D and Writing

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    Welcome to Thoughtful Thursday, where we chat about 3D and writing.  Today I have a bit of a twist on the topic.  Since Book 2 of the Persis Chronicles, Emerald Keep, is out on April 8th, I figured I\’d share a little bit about knitting and 3D and use the opportunity to share about the book, too.

    When Rachel and I created Persis, we wanted a world that valued handicrafts and the home arts.  The job of a homemaker has become invisible and thankless, thanks in part to the fact that it\’s largely women\’s work.  The women\’s liberation movement in the United States did a lot to emancipate women from being chained to the kitchen sink, but as a consequence, their traditional work of raising children and caring for the home became less than laudable.

    I have a friend who is about thirty-five years older than me.  She decided to stay home and raise five boys of her own, as well as twenty-nine foster children.  She told me that she\’s endured a lot of grief from women friends who said that she wasn\’t living up to her full potential, and that she was oppressed.  That made me sad, because she\’s an incredible mom and creates a home in which people enjoy spending time.

    Because of that, we wanted the home arts to be elevated in importance such that they were considered to be a critical part of society.  The job of the Keeper is a desirable part of the fabric of life.  Developed to support miners and livestock farmers, the Keepers are trained to manage household bookkeeping, cooking, and various arts.

    For our book release, we\’ve both made scarves.  The picture at the top of this post is the Emerald Keep Scarf.  I knitted it because I love to make things, and this was fun to do because it was referential to my own book.  I felt closer to the world we created by making something for the book, which is an unexpected side benefit.

    So tell me, what do you like to make, whether it\’s a meal or something artistic?

  • Announcing Day One of the Emerald Keep Keepsake Tour – Celebrating the Release of Book 2 of the Persis Chronicles!

    \"emeraldkeep\"Welcome to my new home on the web! Over the course of the next month, I\’ll be migrating here permanently. The Blogger blog will still be available in the archive, but we made the decision to move to this one because it makes it easier to keep everything in one place – all the writing, the knitting, coffee, and chocolate you could possibly want. And of course, cats. It\’s the internet. We must have cats.

    But for today, rather than cats, I\’ve got something even better for you, Dear Reader!  It\’s the brand new cover of Emerald Keep, hot off the presses – well, at least hot off the cover artist\’s computer.  The artist is Brandon Clay, and you can see more of his work, here.

    The Keepsake Tour is a little different – instead of giving away gift cards or other electronic media, we decided to give away something tangible.  We also have a double Grand Prize – since we\’re Noon and Wilder, we figured that it made sense to have two prizes.  I\’ll be making a hand-knit Emerald Keep scarf, and Rachel\’s making a hand-crocheted Emerald Keep scarf.  Two lucky winners will be selected from a drawing at the end of the tour.  How do you enter?  Well, that\’s easy!  Simply leave a comment along the tour and you\’ll be entered in!

    Check back for the rest of the tour, daily between March 8th and Release Day, April 8th.  We\’ll have behind-the-scenes tours, outtakes, peaks at research and hand-drawn maps, and excerpts.  If there\’s something in specific you\’d like to see or read about, tell me in the comments, below.

    We\’re glad you found your way to to us.  Thank you for reading!

  • Lines of Lights – A Poem

    Lines of Lights – A Poem

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    Image © 2015, A. Catherine Noon
    All Rights Reserved
    Lines of Lights
    Moving at speed past the window, reverse parallax.
     
    Facing backward on the train, the lights receded.
     
    Facing backward on the train is a title.
     
    A good title for a memory, even.
     
    Metaphoric.
     
    Like Benjamin Button, living backwards to get forwards.
     
    When everyone is walking in the other direction, sit down and get still.
     
    Follow the still, small voice insight and listen.
     
    What does it say?
     
    I don’t know, I’m still listening.
     
    What about now?
     
    Shh. You can hear it too.
     
    Listen.
     
    Rhythm.
  • Manic Monday – Startcher Engines!

    Manic Monday – Startcher Engines!

    It\’s Monday!  I feel like I should say something uber-motivating, that makes us all jump out of our chairs and make something massively awesome.

    Feel motivated yet?  🙂

    We\’re almost ready to go live on the new site.  I\’m so excited.  It\’ll have a home for my blog (i.e. this one) and my Knoontime Knitting blog, as well as a section for books and promo stuff and bio and everything.  I feel like such a little kid.

    Every iteration of my online presence has brought new things to learn and new fun stuff to play with.  This time, it means I\’ll be leaving my beloved Blogger platform behind and migrating to WordPress.  The coolness of the website functionality overwhelmed the familiarity and ease-of-use of Blogger, so that\’s ultimately what made the decision easy.  You won\’t notice much of a difference in terms of what you can do on the blog, meaning you\’ll still be able to comment and share stuff, but on the back-end it makes it much easier for me and my webmistress.

    I have some neat newsy items for you today, as well:

    First, my workshop \”Unleashing the Creator Within\” is in full swing over at Coffee Time Romance.

    While it started on the 1st, you\’re very welcome even now, at the mid-point.  We\’re having a lot of fun with some non-traditional tools like music and word art.

    Second, the BDSM-a-palooza is from Feb 17th to the 19th at the Smutketeers!  I\’m participating with 50 other fabulous authors and the amazing ladies of the Smutketeers – there will be daily prizes, a grand prize with gifts from all of us, and more fun than you can shake a whip at.

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    Third, the Nice Girls Writing Naughty will be hosting a very special event – Fantasy Date Night with the Nice Girls and their friends, Feb 21st, on our Facebook group from 6:00p to 11:00p Eastern Standard Time.  I\’ll be teaching at that time, so I can\’t join you, but I know you\’ll have a ton of fun without me – just save me some chocolates and a date, and we\’ll be fine.  ~grin~

    Happy Monday!

  • Make Something Monday – The Emerald Keep Scarf

    Make Something Monday – The Emerald Keep Scarf

    Now that I\’ve sorted out the design and simplified it, the Emerald Keep Scarf is coming along very nicely.  Last week, I talked about the difficulties I was having with it and how the design process was coming – or, as it turns out, not coming.  This weekend I got almost 18 inches done.  At this rate, I\’ll be done by the end of next weekend or the middle of the week following, well in advance of the start of the Keepsake Book Tour.

    The stitch is a simple pattern from Barbara Walker\’s A Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns called Two-Color Star Stitch.  I find her books invaluable in designing projects because she puts the knitter in the driver\’s seat.  Through teaching how the fabric works inherently, to how geometric designs are created by the yearn, a knitter can go from a basic student of the subject to a designer in very short order.  I have a long way to go before I\’m a master knitter, but I am a lot closer to the goal because of her books.  I highly recommend them.

    I\’ve made this stitch pattern a couple times before, and I like its simple beauty.  This time, I selected an emerald green dark tone for the main color and a light mint for the accent.

    The more I work with this pattern, I find that I like the reverse of the fabric just as much as the front.  It ends up looking almost beaded in texture, with neat edges on each side.

    I cast on 30 stitches, since it\’s multiples of 3; on size 7 needles the fabric is quite wide.  There\’s a lot of horizontal stretch to it and it will curl (which is why I had such difficulty with edging it).  I don\’t mind the curl in the finished design, it has its own beauty; I\’ll still play around with some possibilities for edgings in future projects but since I needed this done for the book tour, I didn\’t have the time.

    I did have an interesting breakthrough as I was working it.  It finally it me that the colors are tied to the stitch order; meaning that row 2 is always Color A and row 4 is Color B.  I don\’t need to keep track of the row count because I know which pattern row to work based on the color on the needle.  All wrong side rows are purled, so it\’s an easy pattern to memorize – even for me, with the difficulty I have with 2D to 3D translation.

    Keep your eyes peeled for the Keepsake Tour; it starts March 8th.  Emerald Keep is out on April 8th.

    What are you making this Monday?  Please tell me in the comments; I\’d love to know.
  • Sunday Box Talk

    Sunday Box Talk

    I get asked, \”Why do you do all that?\”  The person asking is usually looking at my crafts or my writing when they ask the question, and I answer with some variant of, \”This is my passion and I make time for it.\”

    What I really want to ask is, \”Why aren\’t you?\”

    The boxes of life that Richard Nelson Bolles talks about in his book The Three Boxes of Life and How to Get Out of Them are arbitrary.  We create them, collectively, and we accept them, individually.  But when we take a step back and stop to reconsider where we\’re headed, we can get out of them.

    Stephen Covey said once that you fight and claw your way up the ladder of success, only to find the ladder is on the wrong wall.  I use that anecdote liberally in my essays and when I teach and am continually puzzled that its message doesn\’t fill others with the same dread it fills me.  Why wouldn\’t we care that we are wasting the days given to us?  Why wouldn\’t we make changes?

    Because we feel disempowered and blocked, not to put too fine a point on it.  We don\’t do all that, because we believe we can\’t do all that – we don\’t have the time, the talent, or the permission.

    This breaks my heart.

    So what I\’m really saying in these Sunday essays is this:  take up your pen, Dear Reader,  or the paint brush, tap shoes, clay, or whatever is in your heart to do, and do it.

    Beginning has grace and power in it.  Goethe was right.

    “Whatever you think you can do or believe you can do, begin it. Action has magic, grace and power in it.”
    Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
  • Stash Sunday

    Stash Sunday

    I am working on the Emerald Keep scarf for the Keepsake Tour, which of course means that I instantly want to play with something from my stash. Doesn\’t that always happen?

    So here\’s what\’s on my desk right now, that\’s not the Keepsake scarf:

    Top left is my character binder for the novels currently in progress, (Sealed by Duty and Sapphire Dream, in case you\’re curious).  Under that is my Franklin Planner.  On its side is some pretty Caron Simply Soft Paints yarn, which I bought when I bought the yarn for the Emerald Keep scarf but am not using in it.

    Which begs the question, what shall I make with it?  ~rubs hands together~

    Next is my keys.  This is important.  Hard to get into the house without them.

    Don\’t ask me how I know that.  I don\’t want to talk about it.

    Moving right along, we come to the Caron ball band for the light green yarn in the Emerald Keep scarf.  The glue failed and it fell off, so I brought it in here to make sure I have it up on Ravelry before I discard it.

    The grey is for a possible pair of Quill\’s Socks, which were featured in Emerald Fire and remarked upon by every editor who worked on it as well as several fans.  Yes, Teeka finished the socks, yes, Quill liked them, and yes, I\’ll feature a pattern for them when the website redesign goes live – and I might even make a pair of them to give away at some point.  Though, in all honesty, I probably won\’t have time to make them for this Keepsake Tour.

    Next is the yarn I bought to make Rachel a pair of fingerless mitts she can use in the hot climate of the Nevada desert.  I\’ll use some kind of lace pattern on them, probably but right now I\’m just sketching with it.

    I realized I caught the edge of my little post-it note with Rule #11 from NCIS:  \”When the job is done, walk away.\”

    On the right of my desk, I have two needlework kits that I\’m looking forward to starting.  One is a ladybug which is in honor of the fictiious Ladybug Bed and Breakfast.  The other is a lovely peacock I bought while visiting Rachel last month – I adore peacocks.

    What\’s in your stash?

  • Work In Progress Wednesday

    Work In Progress Wednesday

    Attempt the First

    It\’s Wednesday.  I figured I\’d share what I\’ve been crafting around with.

    My first item to share is the Emerald Keep Scarf, which will be a giveaway in the forthcoming Keepsake Tour starting March 8th, to celebrate the release of Book 2 in the Persis Chronicles, Emerald Keep.

    It didn\’t work.

    I mean, yeah, it\’s fabric, and it\’s knitted.  But that\’s about it. For one thing, the stitch said WS (wrong side) for both pieces, but either I misread it or it\’s a typo because clearly, it\’s incorrect – the edge stitches clearly are backward from the main lace stitches.

    Attempt the First, Backside

    This is a view where you can see the edge stitches are right-side up, while the lace is wrong side.

    Grr.

    Attempt the Second, Front and Frustration Both Start with F.
    So does my favorite swear word.
    Jus\’ sayin\’.

    Started over.

    And… I don\’t like my idea of the border.  You can\’t really see it well in this shot, but the edges pull in too much and make it look sloppy.  The reason I wanted a border to begin with is that this stitch has quite a bit of bias curl; however, the edging I picked (mistake-stitch rib) isn\’t working.

    I think either I\’ll throw an extra yarn over in to create a sort of gutter, or eliminate the edges entirely.

    Mancooking.
    Why move stuff outta the way when you can stand over it?

    I mentioned to a friend that we made candles last weekend and realized I neglected to take photos.  I planned to take pics of the cold pots, but we have to cook in our kitchen so they had to come off the stove.

    And, apparently, my kid thinks it\’s no big deal to stand over them rather than move them out of the way.  He\’s cooking a very lovely taco salad at the moment, (well, cooking the sausage that will go in the taco salad).  Yum.

    Soap! Curing!

    Our batch of soap that we made a couple weeks ago is curing very well.  It\’s a lovely creamy ivory color now.  We cut it this weekend to allow each of the bars exposure to air, so they can continue the curing process.

    In case you\’re wondering, curing is letting the chemical reaction between the fat and lye to finish.

    This is raw soap and not milled soap, so it\’s not made in a mold.  You can use it as is, once it\’s cured, or mill it again and then pour it into pretty molds for a nice appearance.

    Candles, Dipped 2015

    I only made a half-dozen this year so far; I may fire up the pots once more before I put everything away.  I like the way these came out; they are nice and uniform.  They\’re also really long, which is my favorite (I have four different heights I can make).

    Basket-o-Candles, Bad Lighting.

    This isn\’t a very good shot, but it\’s of my candle stock.  I\’ll see if I can get a better one for you one of these days – but for now, it\’s off to eat dinnah.

    Yum.

    What are you making?

  • Walking In This World

    Walking In This World

    Red Rock Canyon, Nevada
    ©2015 A. Catherine Noon 

    I love the title of Julia Cameron\’s second book in her acclaimed Artist\’s Way trilogy, Walking In This World.  

    When I first did the material in the book, I mis-read the title as Walking In The World, a telling distinction.  I don\’t easily inhabit my body or this plane, having evolved a very deep intellectual capacity as a way of avoiding abuse when I was a child.  I felt that my misunderstanding of the title signaled this separation – that, to me, the world is not concrete and one but ethereal and infinite.  While it makes me an effective writer, because I have a well-developed imagination, it\’s crap for helping me do stuff like, oh, laundry and balancing my checkbook.
    As I take an opportunity to look back on the week and reflect, this week of walking in this world has been filled with a lot of abundance and good things.  Rachel and I finished Sealed by Magic and sent it off to our editor for consideration; we finished the first and second rounds of edits on Emerald Keep; we made a deal for the third book of the Chicagoland Shifters which will come out this summer; and we started work on the keepsakes we will feature in the blog book tour for Emerald Keep.
    It\’s becoming a normal experience for me to have more difficulty the more positive things occur.  I\’m much better in times of crisis, because they are so familiar to me.  I\’m told this is a function of PTSD and of abuse survivors, because we become so accustomed to the chaos and unpleasantness that we don\’t know what to do when it\’s subsided.  So my goal is to become so good at enjoying when things are going well that I make that a habit, instead.  Sounds much more positive to me, doesn\’t it to you?
    I will say this to those of you who have suffered abuse at others\’ hands: there is hope.  Get help, be gentle, and write.  Trust your own memories and not those you are told to have.  You can find your own voice, and you can heal.  It will take time and it will be challenging.  But you can do it.
    Write on!