Tag: Noon and Wilder

  • Writer Wednesday – write-minded Podcast Appearance

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    Happy Wednesday, writers! I am hard at work on an application for a super sekrit program, which I\’ll share about as soon as I can. But in the process of working on the application, I came across this awesome podcast where fellow author Alexis Daria and I were interviewed on the write-minded podcast. I thought you might enjoy. Take a listen, here.

  • Anxiety

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    Anxiety sucks. It tells lies. It feels true. And it is constant.

    Why is it there?

    That’s a complicated answer. I am not a psychologist, so I can only tell you what I understand about my own anxiety. I am a survivor of child abuse. My mother was mentally ill and my father is a malignant narcissist and psychopath. These aren’t descriptors, in that I am not saying them to be insulting. They are factual statements based on evidence of behavior. While I am not qualified to diagnose either of them, I am able to evaluate their behavior over years of evidence and those two statements fit the evidence.

    Because of their prolonged brainwashing, I now struggle with regular, daily existence. I have a hyper-developed sense of danger, sometimes referred to as “hypervigilance,” which is one of the symptoms connected with Post Traumatic Stress. Anxiety is one of the symptoms as well.

    The thing about anxiety is that it uses all your brain’s faculties to create scenarios that feel incredibly real, yet aren’t. It can take someone’s failure to smile in line at a Starbucks or in the office break room and build an elaborate scenario about how they hate you, want to get you fired, and are dangerous.

    Take the coronavirus situation. I live in Bellevue, Washington State, the epicenter in the United States for the current outbreak. The hospital where the first recorded deaths have occurred (and are still occurring) is five miles from my house. Closer to my office.

    So of course, my anxiety brain thinks I have the virus, even though I have no symptoms and to my knowledge, have met no one who has been exposed.

    This, then, is a conversation with my anxiety brain:

    I HAVE CORONAVIRUS.

    No, you don’t. You haven’t met anyone with it.

    BUT I COULD HAVE.

    Yes. That’s true.

    SEE? I HAVE IT!

    No dear.

    THERE! I SNEEZED! SEE? I HAVE CORONAVIRUS!

    It was dust.

    YOU CAN GET CORONAVIRUS FROM DUST!

    No, you can’t. Dust is dust. Or cat hair. Besides. If you get it, you’ll be fine. You just saw the doctor yesterday.

    BUT SHE COULD BE WRONG.

    Shoo. Go write something.

    WHEN I DIE OF CORONAVIRUS, YOU’LL BE SORRY!

    Yes, that’s true. But in the meantime, write some words.

    NO!

    You could write about coronavirus. Write a romance in a post-apocalyptic world where there’s a continual quarantine.

    …

    Hello?

    I’M NOT TALKING TO YOU. I’M SICK.

    Okay, you go be sick. I’LL go write something.

    CAN YOU WRITE WHILE YOU’RE SICK?

    Yes. It’s a superpower.

     

    If you struggle with anxiety or other issues, I urge you to seek help. Psychology Today has a great therapist finder on their website, here.

  • Flashback Friday – Beneath the Surface

    Originally posted on Aug 17, 2012 , this is a little flash fic that I wrote in response to the prompt, \”unexpected spring.\” I hope you enjoy!

     

    “Holy cow, Monte! What the hell?” My voice carried, bouncing off the side of Monte’s house and sounding louder than it really was. “Hey! Monte!” I yelled and waved my arms.

    “Hey, Louise,” he called back and cut the power to the jackhammer. “What’s wrong?”

    “Look!” I pointed.

    “What the…” He laid the jackhammer on its side and walked over. “When did that pop up?”

    “Monte, you must’ve hit the water main or something!”

    “Can’t’ve. It’s over there.” He waived an imprecise hand toward the other side of the yard. “No idea what this is.”

    I edged closer. Water, brown with the stirred-up silt from Monte’s labors, swirled up from a crack in the fence’s foundation pole.

    “Monte, it’s rising.”

    He knelt on the other side of the fence and I could see his fingers poking around under the fence slats. “Shit.”

    “What?”

    He didn’t say anything right away. “It’s salty.”

    I stared down at the water. “That’s impossible!” I poked a cautious finger into it and tasted. Sure enough, it was salty. “Monte, there’s no ocean around here!”

    “They always did say California was going to break off.”

    “That’s not funny!” I snapped. “I’m serious, here! How is there salt water in our back yard?”

    His knees popped as he stood. I rose and met his serious brown eyes. “I don’t know, Louise. I really don’t. Maybe we’d better call the city?”

    “What do we say? ‘Hi, there’s an ocean in the desert?’”

    He shrugged. “We have to report it.” He glanced down. “Your shoes are about to get wet.”

    I stepped back, amazed. “Monte, what if it doesn’t stop? It’ll flood our houses!”

    “We’re on a hill, Louise. Calm down. It’ll flood downtown first.”

    I had visions of a wall of water sweeping down the Las Vegas Strip and almost laughed. He smirked. I realized with a slight shock he was trying to cheer me up. “Thanks, Monte.”

    He smiled, his teeth very white. “No prob. I’ll call my guy at the Water District. Let’s see what he says. Maybe it’s a pipe or something.”

    “A pipe.”

    He shrugged. “What do you want me to say?” He looked calculating. “You got anymore of that meatloaf?”

    I laughed out loud. “You need a wife,” I said without thinking.

    He looked intense suddenly and then turned to his equipment. “Yeah, that’s what my mom keeps saying,” he said over his shoulder.

    For some reason, my heart was pounding and I felt hot. “I’ll go make us some lunch while you call.”

    He waved at me without turning around. I walked back inside to the air-conditioned hush and got out the meatloaf. Truth was, I had made it for him. But not to flirt, I just knew he liked meatloaf. At least, that’s what he always told me. What if there was more to it?

    This was silly. I hit the lights half-angrily and set about making a salad and sandwiches. I set everything up on plates, got down my tray and the pitcher for tea, and made sweet tea. I glanced outside and saw him pacing back and forth by the fence, his portable house phone glued to one ear. He didn’t look happy.

    I walked out and set out the tray on the table. He saw me and walked through the gate between our properties and sat down.

    “Thanks, Mal. I’ll let you know.” He hung up and met my gaze. “They’ll come tomorrow at ten,” he informed me. “He thinks I’m crazy, but he owes me for some work I did on his pool last fall.”

    I looked over at the water. “What if we are crazy?”

    “We’re not,” he mumbled through an enormous bite of sandwich. “It’s still rising. See the trickle? There, on my side of the fence?”

    I craned my neck. Sure enough, there was a little brook forming, trundling along the fence toward our neighbors down the hill. “What if it floods?” I asked, afraid again. “You know how fast flash floods happen, Monte!”

    He shrugged. “What do you want me to do? Sandbag it?”

    He had a point. What could we do? I ate some more sandwich and worried.

    “Louise. Stop worrying. It’s going to be fine.”

    I heard a splash. Monte froze, and I could see the hairs on his neck wave a little bit. Weird. ‘Hairs rising on the back of your neck’ was actually visible.

    “Crap!” he blurted, spraying bread crumbs. “Did you see that?”

    Truthfully, I had been staring at his neck. “No, what?”

    He glanced at me, irritated, and then focused on the bubbling water. I looked over too, wondering what could capture his attention so fully.

    A black tailfin peeked up out of the water and then disappeared.

    I was on my feet so fast I didn’t remember moving. “Monte…” My voice sounded breathy and weird.

    He joined me a second later as another ripple disturbed the water. “Get in the house, Louise. You got your keys?”

    “Right here,” I said, patting my pocket. Another fin, black and pointy, emerged slowly. By the time the eyebrow ridge appeared, we were cowering behind my kitchen curtains.

    “Where’s your phone?” Monte whispered hoarsely.

    “You calling the police?”

    “No, the paper!”

    We had a brief wrestling match over the phone, which he won. He flipped it open and thumbed the camera button. He snapped two shots of the glossy black head as the thing climbed out of the hole. It was bipedal, covered in scales, and had dark purple eyes covered with some kind of web. It blinked vertically, opposite of a human, and stood about as tall as Monte.

    We watched it walk down the hill, following the water trail.

    “No one is ever going to believe this,” Monte murmured.

    It was then that I realized we were holding hands. Monte didn’t seem inclined to let go, so I didn’t either. I watched the black creature disappear as the sun set over Sin City.

  • Happy New Year! – Thoughtful Thursday

    \"\" I\’m glad it\’s the new year. It\’s an election year here in the States, finally, and I am optimistic about our ability to get ourselves back on the right track. It\’s funny, though; many years I feel called to set intentions or resolutions and I\’ve felt none of that this year. I\’m more interested in taking it easy and working on my mindfulness practice, which ultimately seems to be helping me with productivity. I feel like that\’s logically backwards but I\’m also superstitious enough to not want to mess with it if it\’s working.

    Writing

    This is still like pulling teeth. I trust that fallow periods are necessary, and things are starting to crack loose slowly, but man. Slow sucks. 🙂

    I\’m working on drafting Ambush, and playing with a couple other things. One involves crow shifters and that\’s got both Rachel and I excited. I\’ve been messing around a little with poetry and memoir, and those are satisfying. I\’m re-reading Deena Metzger\’s Writing For Your Life, and it\’s been a good thing to revisit the silence of my own mind and thoughts. I like her ideas about writing and life, self expression, and psychology.

    Community

    One of the local writing organizations here has put out a call for Writer In Residence and I\’ve decided to apply. I think it sounds like a lot of fun and a great way to give back to the writing community while having a more structured place and time to specifically write.

    This weekend, we have our first Soulwoman Circles of the Salish Sea event and I\’m excited. The SoulArt Pocket Vision Journal session still has spaces open and we\’d love to see you there on Saturday, January 18th. More info is on the link.

    We\’re overhauling the Writer Zen Garden website and have a new forum and chat function available, which I\’m stoked about because I want to move off of Facebook. I don\’t like their practices or interference in our elections here in the States, and want to have an alternative for our members when we offer workshops and other events.

    Day Job

    I think working writers don\’t talk enough about working and writing, and it leads to the persistent myth that a) writers can easily make a full-time living by writing and that b) if one isn\’t doing so, one\’s writing isn\’t successful. Most of my colleagues who write full time have spouses who support them and pay the mortgage and other bills. It\’s rare that a writer can make a full time living. The Author\’s Guild just did their annual earnings survey and earnings have sharply fallen due to the consolidation of publishers, rise of independent publishing, and many other factors.

    I work a day job in the insurance industry and have found it useful from several standpoints, one of the most important is that it grounds me on the left side of my brain. I can go to work and when I leave, I can leave my work at the office and not drag it home with me.  That allows me to focus, without pressure, on my writing and other creative pursuits, knowing my bills are taken care of. I like to write in the mornings before work, and I used to write extensively during my commute on transit. I no longer commute that way and am trying to figure out where to fit that writing time in my current daily round.

    Art

    I\’m knitting like a fiend. I\’ve got a blanket going as well as two sweaters and a shawl. I find that deeply satisfying and meditative.

    What about you, Dear Reader? What do you like to do to fill your creative well? What\’s new in your world? Tell me in the comments; I\’d love to know.

  • December Begins – From the Archives

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    This was originally posted on our publisher\’s website back in 2013. It\’s still relevant! Enjoy.

    And so it starts.  Thanksgiving and Halloween are over, and the Superbowl is coming.  (Hah.  Bet you thought I’d say something else, huh?)

    So here we are, on the second day of December, the twelfth month of the thirteenth year of the second millenium of the current era.  As the year winds to a close and we approach the end of the year, it’s a good time to think about our bodies.  We’ve just stuffed ourselves silly with the Thanksgiving feast, if we’re in the States, and with all the goodies Chanukah brings.  Christmas and New Year’s approach; what’s our poor overfed body to do?

    Why not end the year on a high note, instead of hitting January with remorse and the resolution to get to the gym and not just pay rent there?  I have two suggestions for you:

    Try walking.  Even if you live in a cold part of the world, you can walk indoors; walking doesn’t require much investment, just a pair of shoes and some clothing.  You might enjoy getting yourself a pedometer; you can focus on the things you can control (how many steps you take a day) and let the rest take care of itself.  It is recommended that you take 10,000 steps a day for good health; between 12,000 and 20,000 steps for weight loss.

    Another idea is to eat root vegetables throughout the winter to keep your body strong and to nourish yourself.  Beets, Carrots, Turnips, Onions, and Garlic are especially good and are used as healing foods for chronic conditions of the body (Jeanne Rose, HSC, pg. 56).  Try a mustard sauce over them:

    • 2 cups standard white sauce to which has been added
    • 1/2 cup Dijon or other type coarse Mustard
    • Mix together and serve over Cabbage, Cauliflower, or Broccoli.

    What other tips have you found useful over the years for surviving the whirlwind of December?  Favorite books to read, movies to watch?  Foods to share, rituals of relaxation?  What keeps you sane?  I’d love to know in the comments.

    Happy Holidays!

  • Happy December! | Samhain Week Five

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    And just like that, it\’s December. Poof.

    I\’m actually glad. I feel more optimistic now, and the start of a new month leading up to the start of a new year gives me hope. I realized I\’m ending the year like I began it, with pin loom weaving: this time, with some acid-overdye and vintage artifacts from my grandmother\’s button collection.

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    The first of our new sites is up! The Noon & Wilder site is live – and so is the bookstore! I am so excited. Thank you so much to Crystal Jordan for making that happen. She did a fabulous job, don\’t you think? You can click the image and go visit the new site, too!

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    We have our free master class – but note the date change; it is SUNDAY, 12/15/2019. 11:00 PST; you can ask Auntie Google what time that is in your valley. Jonni has been my creativity coach since 2013 and I highly recommend this course. You\’ll be glad you did – whether or not you journal, you\’re sure to find something helpful in your creativity journey.

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    In other goings-on, we took a hike in our local nature preserve, the Mercer Slough Nature Park. There was actually ice on the river! That surprised both of us, because it didn\’t seem that cold out. But down in amidst the trees it got pretty chilly.

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    There were ducks out wandering on the river. I tried to snap a picture of one, but it dove into the water right when I took the shot and all I have is his tail feathers. Brat. About a mile and a half in, there\’s a lovely bridge that goes over the water and affords a lovely view of the water. It\’s hard to believe this area is just south of downtown in the second-largest city in the state of Washington.

    Tomorrow I head back to the day job after an entire week\’s vacation. I\’m looking forward to re-establishing my routine. I have some creative projects to work on, some gifts and some just play. What about you, Dear Reader? What\’s in your intentions for this week?

  • Saturday Summary | Samhain Week Two

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    Work! No, Rest! No, Read! No, Make! Wait…

    It\’s Saturday, Dear Reader, and the end to a week in the life. The full moon was amazing this week; I tried to capture it on my phone\’s camera as it sat on some clouds but the picture didn\’t quite do it justice.

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    I\’m not even sure I actually managed to capture the moon, because she was really big over those clouds and I wonder if she\’s behind the greyish smokey stuff, or if I just pointed the camera in the wrong place.

    Which, when you think about it, might be an apt metaphor for some of this past week, Dear Reader. Ugh.

    On the other hand, there\’s a lot of growth and movement going on, and growing pains are called \”pains\” for a reason. So I\’m going to deliberately focus on the growing part of things, and the good, and the triumph statements, in order to train my brain what to look for.

    And do a lot of meditation. Anyone else tried Yoga Nidra yet? Love that stuff.

    Books, Books, and More Books

    I may be late to the bus, but have you been to your local library lately? Holy cats, they\’re amazing places. The one in Bellevue has a makerspace complete with 3-D printers and sewing machines! And you can check out ebooks. I knew that, but never really played with it much. But for some reason, I\’ve been going nuts at the library. I mean, come on: you\’ve gotta love a place that lets you walk in and walk out with seven or eight books without paying.

    Body – Adventures In Moving

    My husband and I went over to our local wildlands area, Mercer Slough, and had a wander. My gosh, this area is lovely – and it\’s hard to believe it\’s smack in the middle of the second-largest city in the state of Washington! The slough is a wetlands area, home to many species of animals and birds as well as an abundance of plant life. And, as we discovered this past summer, lots and lots of bugs.

    Luckily, bug-season is over so we were able to wander around unmolested this time and took pictures to our hearts\’ content.

    My swimming buddy is off to France for ten days, so I\’m left to my own devices as far as the gym goes. There\’s been a bug going around the office so I didn\’t swim yesterday, but I\’m determined to get outside and wander around today and get my butt to the gym next week. Anyone up for some accountability partnership? I mean, it\’s the week before American Thanksgiving (wait, what???), so I don\’t know about you, but my body sure could use some moving around.

    Mind – What I\’m Reading

    Craftfulness: Mend Yourself by Making Things*, by Rosemary Davidson and Arzu Tahsin*

    The subtitle of this is what caught my eye – I have been fascinated by this aspect of maker culture since I first started knitting in Y2K. Julia Cameron, in The Artist\’s Way*, points out that art is therapeutic, not therapy. This book takes the idea further by blending current understanding of brain science and mindfulness with traditional approaches to craft. There\’s something magical that happens when we make things, and this book explores what that \”something\” is and how to encourage it to happen on purpose.

    Fire Cider! 101 Zesty Recipes for Health-Boosting Remedies Made with Apple Cider Vinegar*, by Rosemary Gladstar and Friends

    Did you know that herbalism is a radical act? Well, it turns out this is literally true as regards \”fire cider,\” and after a long court battle to protect the name from being trademarked by greedy corporate interests, this book celebrates the history and modern applications of traditional remedies and recipes. I have been studying herbalism for nearly forty years and this book makes my heart sing. Plus, it\’s got more than one recipe for toasted nuts that sounds amazeballs. (Yes, I\’ll post pics when I make it.) Definitely worth checking this one out.

    Spirit – Mindfulness Practice, or Where Does Writing Come From?

    Those of you who have been with me for a while know I\’m an adult survivor of child abuse. The journey to healing can be a long one and frustrating, but ultimately I can say that it\’s rewarding. I don\’t want to sound like the inside of a greeting card with syrupy prognostications of \”You\’ll get there, Little Birdie,\” but I have to believe that healing is possible because my personal survival depends on that sure and certain knowledge.

    I\’ve talked a lot about The Artist\’s Way and have done workshops with others since 2007, and used it personally since 1995, so it\’s pretty obvious that I think there\’s something to it. It works. So I use it. It\’s as simple as that. But in January of this year, I came across iRest Yoga Nidra with Molly Berkholm and it\’s quite honestly been life-changing. I\’ve meditated my whole life, but the protocols in the iRest method are easy to use and implement. I highly recommend it to everyone but particularly those of us recovering from trauma, of whatever source, and working to heal PTS.

    I\’ve been journaling all year like it\’s going out of style; I\’m averaging between 150 and 200 pages a month now. But Story has been slow to come. I\’m pleased to say that I sat down on Thursday and got some movement on Ambush, which is Book 4 in the Chicagoland Shifters series. I REALLY want to get this book done and out the door, but it\’s been a very slow process. So getting forward movement is so very exciting.

    Space – or, They\’re Replacing Our Roof

    Ugh. I don\’t like strangers in my space. A couple months ago, they painted the exterior of our complex. While I like having fresh paint, it was a pain in the neck. We thought the fuss and bother was over but nope! Fresh joy awaits. We\’re now into week three of roof replacement, because they\’re doing three of the buildings, ours included. Last night, my husband and I went out for date night to a local drive-in eatery (if you\’re in the area, check it out, it\’s super fun and really yummy; Burgermaster). We came home to find that the ceiling had leaks in the bedroom (three last night plus a fourth that happened during the night) and one in the living room over the couch. Thankfully they didn\’t happen over the piano, any of the electronic equipment (computers and such) or art collections (like, say, my journals that are stored in one of the closets) or, gods forbid, the bed! (Blarg.) So all in all, the damage is relatively minor, but holy cats I\’m cranky. It\’s amazing how de-centering having things go wrong with one\’s home can be.

    The Week To Come

    This is the last full week before American Thanksgiving, and the last round of chelation therapy for my husband, (who has heavy metal poisoning with mercury, barium, and lead). Then comes Thanksgiving week which we had hoped to spend in Philadelphia, but due to price gouging by the airline industry tickets are over $750 USD – PER PERSON – for the holiday week, and that\’s not even the whole week. We\’d leave like Monday and come back Saturday, not the whole Saturday to following Sunday thing I\’d wanted to do.

    So, enter Plan B: we will go out to visit family in February/March, weather depending, when tickets are more reasonable – and it\’s my husband\’s birthday in February anyway, so there\’s that. We will still take the week off, as originally planned, only spend it doing an actual staycation – since we haven\’t had a vacation in three years, we\’ll spend it being tourists in Seattle. We\’re taking a friend from out of town to Bainbridge Island to explore the shops and have lunch – and ride the ferry, of course! – and then an underground tour of Seattle. We\’re planning a whale-watching ride and some other things as yet to be determined. But I plan to be a tourist the whole week – complete with camera and travelogue. I\’m so excited.

    What about you, Dear Reader? What\’s going on in your world?

    *Affiliate links.

  • Saturday Summary | Samhain Week One

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    NaNoWriMo* is in full swing and it\’s a chilly, rainy day in the Seattle area. I\’d say peaceful, but they\’re replacing the roof on my building and the roofers started at 08:30. That\’s in the ay-em. On a fucking Saturday.

    And I didn\’t kill \’em. Not even once.

    Happy Celtic New Year! I\’m so grateful that it\’s a new year and new beginnings, because it was past time to put the old year in the ground. Man, what a couple years it\’s been, huh? We live in a brave, new reality that bears very little resemblance to the one we were living in a few years ago. The world is waking, and it\’s a good thing, but chaotic, nu?

    As I\’m doing over on my Knoontime Knitting blog, I thought I\’d check in on the week and share a progress report. For one thing, I realized I REALLY miss blogging. I happened to look back at some posts that I wrote for a group blog \”back in the day,\” and realized there\’s some good stuff there! (Which, for those of you wondering, I will post here as throwback posts just as soon as I can get my fingers to type up the post links and things. Never fear, Dear Reader, I\’ve gotchoo.)

    But fallow periods are necessary. As Dr. Mia Rose points out, nothing blooms all the time. And so for us, we need to remember, and by \”we\” I mean \”I,\” that sometimes rest periods, fallow periods, dry spells happen. I am also learning that I need to celebrate the small steps I take in the direction of my goals/dreams/inspirations/squirrels. And as for squirrels, sometimes I just need to chase them because doing so brings me deep and abiding joy.

    Take this post, for instance. It\’s a bit of a squirrel. How I got there was, I met with my accountability partner this morning, had a fantastic meeting with her. Then I met with my web designer and technology advisor, and WE had a great discussion. As part of that discussion, I was trying to find a post written by a colleague on a group blog and poof – I found some posts I\’d written, one of which is still relevant today as it was five years ago. And poof, I said to my designer, I miss blogging, and she, very reasonably, pointed out, \”Well, you can blog now.\”

    Hmph. Way to puncture a really good pity party there, chica.

    Ergo, I\’m blogging. But about what?

    Ah. THAT, Dear Reader, is my inner critic, come out to play with me and interfere with me getting in a sentence edgewise. So I decided, I did, to come here and do a blog post for Saturday, a check-in of sorts, and voila. I\’m blogging again. Just like that.

    And sometimes, it really is just that meta.

    What about you, Dear Reader? What was your week like this week? What are you planning for the week to come?

    *NaNoWriMo – What Izzit?

    National Novel Writing Month is every year in the month of November, and participants endeavor to write the draft of a novel, which is defined as 50,000 or more words written entirely during the month. I volunteered for several years to help out with the Chicago Region, which includes the third largest city in the country and over 5,000 participants every year. This is my first year not volunteering in a while and I confess to being a little bereft. The Seattle region is quite large but, though a logistical brain fart, I neglected to get tickets to today\’s train write in and by the time I realized I should do so, they were sold out. So THAT is a cautionary tale if I ever heard one – strike while the iron is hot, Dear Reader, and don\’t be left behind.

    But now, it\’s brunch time. Do tell me, though, in the comments what your week is like; I\’d love to know!

  • Saturday Check-In – News from the Endless Knoontime

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    It startled me to find my last post was in 2016. It\’s so easy to let ourselves be distracted by the shiny things and the squirrels. I\’ve been thinking a lot about that recently, this conflict between output and inflow: output is our own creative production, and inflow is the overwhelm of media consumption. I\’m certainly not the first person to talk about this; Adam Alter did a TED Talk on screen addiction in 2017 that you can check out, here.

    Any veteran journaler will tell you, it\’s the questions that are the key. Asking ourselves good questions can be the difference between skating along the surface of our thoughts and diving deeply into them. WHY do we step away from craft? Why do we stop writing/making/playing? What moves us off our center? It\’s easy to blame something outside of us, but as author and creativity specialist Julia Cameron points out in The Artist\’s Way, we use crazymakers to block ourselves or to stay blocked. At some point, we have to put the responsibility (note I did not say blame) where it belongs, and take it back for ourselves.

    Hence, this post.

    My friend Sunita, over at ReaderWriterVille, does a thing she invented called \”Weeknotes.\” In them, she converses about her week. I love the tone of them: compassionate toward the self, optimistic toward the future, and supportive of positive, outward productivity. It\’s in that spirit I offer today\’s post.

    It\’s not like I haven\’t knit or made anything for three years. A lot has happened in that time: the American presidential election disaster; my husband nearly bled to death (he\’s okay now); all three of our publishers went out of business; we moved cross country 2,000 miles (about 3,200 kilometers); I started a new job that turned out to be a horrible fit and then got a new job (which I love); and I had a cancer-scare (I\’m all right, but found some other stuff and am in the process of getting well). Making, of necessity, became smaller – was it \”of necessity\” because of something external, such as me deciding it to be that way? No. It just organically happened, because I couldn\’t really focus on anything larger. I did nearly finish the Hue Shift Afghan in the Jewel colorway (available from KnitPicks as a kit, highly recommended and I\’m making the main rainbow tinted one next); but need to finish one final edge in black. I made Rachel a vest, but need to finish sewing it together (it literally is half-sewn along one side seem; WTF?). I learned pin loom weaving (which is actually loads of fun and there\’s a fun online community, here; and I just found a rigid heddle weaving school today online, here). I started designing not one but two lace shawls (those of you who know me are probably nodding and saying, \”Of course you did, Noony;\” I get it, I really do), and then stopped, completely, until all I was doing was pin loom weaving.

    Slowly, I\’m edging back toward making. I\’ve learned some things. For me, a stable home and a stable day job are necessary for creative output. I find they settle and ground me in ways I don\’t always understand. I wish I was happy-go-lucky, totally Zen and able to produce in any season, but I have found through long experience I\’m not really one of those people. I do knit, and have done so through serious adversity, but having a stable home (which includes my family) and job (so I am not scared about where rent is coming from) is critical.

    So what have I been making? Well, I don\’t have a ton of pics in one place, which is part of this attenuated interregnum. But I do have a semi-circular shawl I\’m designing on the needles and the name makes me laugh. I was thinking one day recently about vegetables, and manifestation, and how I want to eat more veggies and like them. I want to want to eat more veggies, is probably a more accurate statement. Then I thought about manifestation, and practicing the reality that I want to bring about. I had the yarn in my hands. The yarn is green. Then the squirrels took over and…

    The I Love Broccoli Shawl Is Born

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    It\’s going to need some serious blocking, but this is a semi-circular shawl based on Elizabeth Zimmerman\’s \”pi shawl\” formula. The yarn is from Australia and is a lovely cotton blend that looks like it\’s got mohair in it, but doesn\’t.

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    I\’m using a size 3 circular after quite a bit of trial and error as regards needle size. This is a yarn that color pools but even so, is quite lovely in stockinette; however, I think this type of faggotting really shows it to advantage. The predominant stitch is from Barbara Walker\’s Volume I stitch dictionary, and is \”Vertical Lace Trellis.\” It\’s only a four row repeat, two of which are purl across, so it\’s much easier to work than it looks.

    Other than that, I don\’t have a whole lot of insights to share or profundities to drop on you. I just really miss blogging, writing, publishing, knitting, and making all the things. My squirrels got into the grain bin and have pooped on the good sheets in the linen closet. For the most part, I think I\’ve gotten them wrangled, but I\’ll refrain from any sagacious pronouncements of \”I\’m back and this is what I\’m doing;\” I\’ve done that a couple times during this latest interregnum and have regretted it because it presages a dry spell.

    So for now, I\’ll close with this: thank you for visiting, and reading, and leaving a comment or two. I\’m glad to be here, and I\’m glad you\’re here. Now. Let\’s go make stuff, shall we?

  • Buh-Bye May, Hallo June!

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    So, May sort of came, beat up everybody, and left. It feels like it should still be April 17th.

    But it\’s not. It\’s the first of June.

    In 2019.

    How\’d that happen?

    I didn\’t get as much done this year as I\’d hoped by now, certainly not bookwise – I know, I know, the books still aren\’t up. Good gravy, that\’s been a learning process. The two biggest things I learned are: stress interferes with our creative processes, and social media steals time.

    So rather than wax eloquent about writing, I figured I\’d write an update post to you, Dear Reader, and see where we go from here.

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    Our dog, Coyote, died on the Tuesday after Memorial Day. Man, that\’s been hard. We had to take her to the vet to be put to sleep, because she was sick all weekend. I don\’t really want to talk about it, but I figured it\’s important news so I should share.

    My coauthor and partner Rachel came in for a visit earlier in May, but Murphy\’s Law prevailed and pretty much everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. That was the Vacation That Wasn\’t, and again, I don\’t really want to talk about it.

    But as it turns out, stress has an effect on creativity. In preparing some pictures for today, I noticed that I never finished the A to Z Challenge in April, and I still have pictures that I took for it. I\’m not sure if I have any wisdom to share about not posting them, other than to say, sometimes, life gets in the way of our creative plans and we need to honor that. The only way I\’ve found to get back on the page is to, well, get back on the page. Hence today\’s post.

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    Another thing I\’ve observed and talked about in the past is using other creative outlets when one is blocked in a particular one. For me, that\’s typically been knitting. Over the last few months of job upheaval, and particularly at the end of last year when I was in the thick of it, I wasn\’t able to even knit. I just didn\’t have the heart for it. In January and February, I was able to play with my pin loom and learn some pin loom weaving, but it wasn\’t \”real\” creative work. It was solely creative play. I finally got back to the semi-circular shawl I\’d started designing in January, and am now about half done.

    I think that\’s a critical distinction, this difference between creative work and creative play. I don\’t know that I have any answers yet, but I\’m learning there is definitely a difference for me. Creative work is goal oriented: \”get Burning Bright up on Draft2Digital and upload it to retailers and my website,\” which requires me to learn Draft2Digital, Amazon ebook and Amazon paper book uploads, Draft2Digital interface for the other retailers (non-Amazon), and learn MyBookTable, which is a WordPress widget that lets me build a bookstore on the website (I use WordPress to run this and my other sites). Creative play is also critical, to me being happy and contented as an artist. And in order to feel like working on any kind of play, I\’ve found I need to feel grounded, which is why the work-related bullshit was so disruptive to my life.

    On the other hand, my husband and I have had some true breakthroughs this last two or three months. We finally opened a local bank account (which is something on our task list since we moved here last year) at a local credit union, got our taxes sorted out (which is huge since we owe an arm and a leg to Uncle Sam from financing the move with premature retirement distributions). We\’ve been culling our stuff, still, which is honestly a little surprising because I thought we\’d done all that when we moved. Nope. We culled about 15 or 20 paper grocery bags of books, a portable heater, two bookcases, and a copper fire pit last weekend. We completely reconfigured our home office, which really opened up the space. It\’s startling how much of a difference that makes.

    My new employer allows me the privilege of working from home two days a week, and that\’s been a real adjustment. It took a while for me to settle into that new routine, but I\’m finding I really like it. I\’m an extrovert, and I thought I\’d hate it to pieces because it\’s just me and the animals at home. But in fact, I\’m really liking the peace and quiet, and it really lets me hear myself think in relation to my work and that\’s allowed me to be more strategic and intentional. And that\’s surprisingly fun.

    So like I said, May was a pretty intense month. I\’m looking forward to June. The weather is brightening up and we have some hiking planned and a weekend vacation to the Oregon coast later in the month. And yes, I promise, I\’m working on uploading the books. And finishing the knitting. And doing the weaving.

    In short, I\’m practicing being in the moment and following my bliss. And that is surprisingly easy and hard, all at the same time.

    I hope you have a lovely weekend, Dear Reader. And if you\’d like, I\’d love to hear about your Spring in the comments, and what excites you about Summer – or, if you\’re in the Southern Hemisphere, your Autumn and Winter.

    Big love,

    Noony

  • J Is For Joie de Vivre, Which Is French for Birds Feeding

    Okay, it\’s not really French for birds feeding; please my French speaking readers, don\’t converge on me. And if you don\’t speak French, joie de vivre is translated to English as, keen enjoyment of life, as in, \”they were filled with joie de vivre.\”

    Well, here: you watch.

    I couldn\’t get them to come back to the seed, because I was standing too close, but I didn\’t want to step back or I would have been in the street. But I think they\’re adorable. I have such mixed feelings about feeding wild birds; everything I\’ve read from a conservation point of view advises against it because it interferes with their natural food-gathering and/or hunting habits. But I confess, I love watching them when there\’s a feeder to hand.

    And more on the \”J\” theme, even though it\’s not AT the botanical gardens, here is a very lovely rhodi, \”Just because:\”

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    Isn\’t she lovely? The centers are a deep, blushing pink, but the blooms are a warm, creamy white.

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    Here\’s another one where you can see mostly the blooms; I\’m astounded that such a deep reddish pink turns white when they open!

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  • I Is For Ivy, That Covers and Hides; The Groundcover of All Things, It Moves Like the Tides…

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    I have a confession to make: I adore ivy. When I lived in Chicago, I moved into a brick \”three-flat,\” which is Chicagoan for a brownstone with four apartments. No, that doesn\’t make sense; this is because the basement apartment was added in the 1960\’s or so in an illegally-made addition done with, get this, plywood. But no matter; I called that little tiny place home for nearly 15 years. In front of our building lay a bedraggled mess that, I\’m sure, the former owners intended to be a lawn, but due to the two enormous, stately Norway maples in front of it, ended up as a sun-choked home for weeds and the occasional beetle.

    My landlady and I were friends, and I lived in that building for one year shy of two decades. In that time, one of my first projects and what ended up as my longest-lasting one was to install a garden. We called them \”The Beehive Gardens,\” named for the building (the Beehive) and the gardens (plural because there was more than one tiny weed patch). Besides. The Beehive Gardens sounds so much better than \”that little tiny garden that you stuffed in between the concrete sidewalks.\” And when you put your mind to it, you can get quite a bit of gardening done in a very small space.

    So into that front yard that had been a sad attempt at a village green went three things: English ground ivy, vinca vine (variegated and plain), and Creeping Charlie. \”But those are weeds!\” you might exclaim and, Dear Reader, you\’d be right: but what is a weed but simply a plant growing where you don\’t want it to? And one thing all three of those so-called weeds do is spread.

    Unlike the grass, you understand.

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    Now this challenge is for the Bellevue Botanical Garden\’s A to Z, but as I mentioned in my \”N\” post, I\’ve got a cold – so I\’m actually writing this \”I\” post on the 16th of April and back-dating it, thanks to the wonders of modern technology. But this further means that these photos weren\’t snapped at the Bellevue Gardens but along my walk today at lunch (\”today\” being Tuesday and not last Wednesday). There is plenty of ivy on my walk, and ivy gets everywhere – including under this juniper bush! – ooh, lookatthat. A \”J\” picture. Maybe I\’ll post that tomorrow… which is to say, for last Thursday.

    And now that I\’ve totally lost you, and just at that point in my walk where I was wondering if I\’d really need all these pictures of ivy, I came across this lovely spot:

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    I wonder who is living in that little shady abode, eh? Spiders and moles, voles and mice, maybe the odd raccoon or duck? Looks like a good place for a nap, but that might just be the cold medicine talking.

    And just as I was thinking enough is enough, I saw this:

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    Now I don\’t know about you, Dear Reader, but I watch quite a bit of British murder mystery fiction. And I\’ve watched American and Swedish ones for good measure, and even the odd French and Norwegian one thrown into the mix.

    Does this not, Dear Reader, look like the owner of this apartment complex might have buried an unhelpful tenant under a bed of ground ivy?

    I shall run back to my nice, warm desk and hide for the rest of the day, because after all, one can never spot a serial killer because they could look like everyone else.

    I don\’t know that I like that ivy all that much now… ~shudder~