Tag: acatherinenoon

  • November Is NaNo Time! Join Us For Tips, Tricks, and Prizes!

    November Is NaNo Time! Join Us For Tips, Tricks, and Prizes!

    Today kicks off our NaNoWriMo extravaganza at the Nice Girls Writing Naughty blog.  Your first post is by the fabulous Leela Lou Dahlin.  Leave a comment and be entered to win a prize from her as well as a chance at the grand prize, a $25 gift certificate to All Romance eBooks.  We have other prizes throughout the event, including a copy of Sealed by Fire by Rachel and I (or a choice of our backlist).

    What are you doing NaNo this year?  If you\’re not yet tempted, what might you write if you decided to?
  • Torquere Tuesday

    Torquere Tuesday

    Join me over at the Torquere Press blog, Romance For the Rest of Us, and share with me your angstiest songs!

  • Sometimes, Only a Quickie Will Do! (In the kitchen, that is…)

    Sometimes, Only a Quickie Will Do! (In the kitchen, that is…)

    Join me over at the Romance Cooks today for a quickie recipe – because, after all, sometimes only a quickie will do!

  • Yarnglee

    Yarnglee

    So, I\’ve been on a major yarn hiatus.  I\’ve been doing calligraphy like a madwoman; I\’m filling notebooks with the stuff (and no, that\’s not a typo; yes, I mean more than one).  Let\’s just say I had to order a second set of practice markers because I used up the ink in the first set.  See what I mean?

    But I\’m feeling the bug again.  I\’m beginning to see that this is part of my normal pattern (which only took me fourteen years to figure out, but let\’s not go there, kthxbi).  I seem to set knitting aside around May or June and pick it up around September or October.

    We celebrated our tenth wedding anniversary this year – yay! – and went down to southern Illinois and St. Louis to poke around.  One of the shops had some lovely Lana de Oro and I had to get some.  I\’m thinking socks.  50% wool, 50% alpaca.  Michael picked heather grey, I picked heather lavender:

    The lavender has bits of other colors in it, more as shading than a true ombre.

    The lighting is weird because I took these outside.  I tried to get a close-up and the camera changed the coloring.  Sigh.  Must.learn.Photoshop.

    Can you tell I\’ve been playing with the grey hank?  ~blush~  But this is the grey with the lavender; I\’m thinking that I\’ll use a small mosaic in the cuff of each sock in the opposite color.

    It\’s really not as pink as it seems in this picture.  But I\’m excited.  I may even use the toe-up technique, though I think I should do the first set with practice yarn first.  We shall see.

  • November Is Coming, and With It, NaNoWriMo!

    It\’s official!  I was accepted as one of the Chicago region\’s Municipal Liaisons.  I\’m very excited and can\’t wait to get started.  First order of business is planning a kick-ass kick-off party.

    Hmm.

    Shame I can\’t just call it the Kick-Ass Kick-Off, huh?  Must stay family friendly.  Rats.

    Well, whatever we decide, and it\’s not just up to me, will be awesome.

    Get ready, internet.  November is coming.

    WRITE ON!
  • Sunday Box Talk: Gardening

    Sunday Box Talk: Gardening

    I\’m over at the lovely Nice Girls Writing Naughty blog today with a recipe for Mint Syrup.  It\’s the last day of our contest, so please stop by and enter to win several awesome prizes, including a book from yours truly AND a gift certificate for $50 USD.

    Apropos of that, I thought I\’d chat about gardening a bit for today\’s Sunday Box Talk.

    I saw a button once that said, \”Gardeners plant gardens to relax and then spend all their time working in them.\”  There\’s a lot of wisdom in this saying.  The \”in the moment-ness\” of gardening, or any hobby, is what provides its sense of peace and \”now-ness.\”  By tending to the garden, we tend to ourselves and allow our bodies to experience grounding in a literal sense as we play in the dirt.

    Do you garden? Even a potted plant can be magical if approached with the right mindset.  It\’s a lot cheaper to by a pathos plan than it is to pour a drink, and the plant won\’t pack on the pounds or make your mind fuzzy.

    If you garden, what\’s your favorite plant? If you don\’t, yet, what would you like to have growing in your daily round?
  • Friday Funnies

    Friday Funnies

  • Thursday 13 – 13 January Images

    Thursday 13 – 13 January Images

    It\’s snowing.  My husband is not amused.  🙂

    Boria napping in our new living room.  We had to get rid of the beanbag chair, but the cat loved it.

    Here comes the train.  It\’s snowy and they don\’t put salt down on the platform, but sand.  Yes, it\’s slippery.

    This is a path that leaves the corner of my usual lunch park.  Where does it go?

    This is the viaduct.  I love the cave-like hold under the train. Gorgeous.

    Waiting for the bus to the Purple Line to go downtown.

    Moon over train. Or, wait… is that a glare on the camera?

    Cloud ceiling under the plane.

    Peeking over the seats at the people ahead of me on the plane.  I am NOT creepy.  Just curious.

    Red Rock Canyon.  Actually, I think this is a canyon south of it.

    Bird.

    Creosote?

    Knot?
  • A to Z Challenge, Day 26: Z Is For Zen

    A to Z Challenge, Day 26: Z Is For Zen

    Image © 2014, A. Catherine Noon, All Rights Reserved
    Zen Koan

    Chao-Chu fell down in the snow

    and yelled, \”Help me up! Help me up!\”

    A Zen Monk came and laid down beside him.

    Chao-Chu got up and went away.

    Thank you for visiting and traveling with me during the April A-Z Blogging Challenge.  I\’ve enjoyed making new blogging friends and collecting new followers.  It\’s readers like you that make writing such a pleasure.  I appreciate your support!

    Happy blogging!

  • A to Z Challenge, Day 25: Y Is For Yesterday

    While the past can sometimes drag you under, and it\’s important to stay rooted in today, our yesterdays teach us about where we\’ve been, who we are, and where we want to go.  As author and filmmaker Julia Cameron puts it, in order to create original work, we have to be the origin from which it comes.

    Today, instead of letting the past haunt you, make peace with the fact that it happened.  It\’s over, and can\’t be changed.  Its story, however, can be told:  it can be written down, made into a poem, painted, sculpted, cooked, cleaned and ordered, any of a hundred other interpretations – and all from the same root material:  our own lives.

    In what city did you live when you were twelve?
  • A to Z Challenge, Day 24: X Is For X-Ray

    A to Z Challenge, Day 24: X Is For X-Ray

    The development of X-Ray technology meant that we could look inside things.  This revolutionized all sorts of things, from medicine to astronomy.

    But I\’m not going to talk about X-Rays in specific; I\’m going to talk about the Scanning Electron Microscope!

    While the SEM doesn\’t use X-Rays to see stuff, it actually uses electrons to bombard an object and then take a picture, it\’s a tool that allows us to see the surface of really small stuff – which is almost as cool as seeing inside stuff!

    Pumping Station: One has the only working SEM in the country, that we\’re aware of, that members of the public can see and that members of Pumping Station: One can be trained to use – and just for the price of a membership, which is only $40 or $70 a month depending on the level of membership you select.

    Curious?  Check out more at our website, here.

    What tool would you love to play with, that\’s usually at big fancy institutions or in another part of the world from you right now?
  • A to Z Challenge, Day 23: W Is For West

    A to Z Challenge, Day 23: W Is For West

    Sorry, folks.  My brilliance is on hold on account of I have a cold.

    I hate being sick.

    What\’s your favorite simple joke? 

    Humor is the best medicine, after all.