Jewel Books and Jewel-Tone Thread

Sorry for the lack of updates. I can say I've been very busy, but when am I ever not busy? At the moment, I am working on turning this:

 Into a whole bunch of traditional European style tiny books for pendants and earrings, and this:

 Into a whole bunch of Japanese 4-hole bound tiny books, also for book jewellery. And, as luck would have it, and with perfect timing, today's mail brought this:

 6 new colours of waxed linen thread, perfect for traditional Japanese-style bindings (and other bindings with exposed stitching, like cross-structure and coptic). The green is not as bright as I had hoped (I just got the sample card with my order, so I was looking at computer screen images), but it's still a great colour I'm sure I'll use over and over. Of course, now that I have the sample card, I want one of each colour! And also, my thread box (a very nice wooden sliding-lid box that used to have a bottle of Alberta Springs whisky in it) is no longer big enough. So I shall have to be on the lookout for a replacement. Or an addition. Or else making a new one will go on my to-do list once the holiday rush is over.



And that reminds me--I went and signed up for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), but after 3 days and only 750 words, I realize I have too many projects to finish and too many things to make for the craft fair to start writing a new novel, so once again I'm going to quit before I've really got going. I have the consolation that I've already successfully done NaNo twice. What I really need to get done is the re-scanning and re-lettering of issue 1 of Fey, as I got a nice letter from the National Library of Canada asking where their two copies were, since they gave me an ISSN ages ago.

Or Falling Off a Bicycle

Well, I managed to do pretty well with keeping up on my NaNoWriMo word counts. Until Friday. I missed a couple of days, but managed to get caught back up again. Then came Friday, and snow, and a full day in the printshop, and driving home in the dark and wind. I was both tense and limp by the time I got in the door. I managed to feed myself some leftovers and then collapsed on the couch next to Bill, who'd had an even worse day of driving than me--his driver's side windshield wiper went on the way in the school and he had to drive leaning over to look out the passenger side. To his credit, he made it to school, did the whole day and made it home again.

And the weekend was full of house things and driving back and forth to Truro trying to get the right bits to install the new faucet, and again no writing happened. So anyway, I'm three days behind on writing, which is really just a point of pride. There's nothing saying I have to complete NaNoWriMo, but I'd really like to. And of course, today is such a perfect day that I've had a really hard time keeping myself inside working. There's a gate that needed disassembling, so I could have the boards to put up a shelf, you see. And now I really want to go out a snap a photo of a mushroom I spied in the undergrowth near the driveway, and I have to move those last couple of gate boards up next to the house, and, and, and.

In other news, I'm working on a fairly large job printing business cards and hang tags for a textiles artist. I had hoped to get started on that today, but getting Bill to school takes precedence over getting me to the printshop. He should have his truck sorted out by tomorrow, though, so I'll head down then. The polymer plates are ready, and they look pretty good. Some of the type is quite small, but I've printed type that small before and haven't had too many problems. So main issue is going to be the pressure on the press. The Vandercook Universal 2 that's in the shop has developed a problem where the press bed won't drop as far as it should, no matter how you crank it. By using very little packing, it's still possible to print polymer plates--as long as the paper isn't too thick. I'll be printing on textured card stock, so I hope that I'll be able to get the pressure to cooperate. Otherwise I'll have to print on the Universal 1 in the Design shop. Which I actually like better, but I'll be more likely to be in the way of some class or another, and the Universal 1 has issues of its own.

(Photo: the Dawson Printshop's Vandercook Universal 2 proof press, before it developed press bed pressure adjustment problems. Photo by Niko.)

Anyway, if I can get that job started tomorrow, I might be able to finish it by the end of the week. Then it'll be back to holiday cards, a 2010 calendar, and book jewelry. And maybe a couple of really fantastic blank journals. Oh yeah, and a binding job. I'll need to start that this week, too.

Like Riding a Bicycle

I haven't written much fiction at all in quite a long time, and that's not a good thing. I've sort of been making up for it by reading a lot, but reading fiction is not the same as writing fiction.

So I signed up for NaNoWriMo this year, hoping to kick-start myself into fiction writing again. With so many other things on the go, I'm not sure I'll manage the 50,000 words by the end of the month, but I'm at 1711 so far, which is just a little over the necessary 1667 a day to reach the goal and "win" NaNoWriMo.

It wasn't until I actually sat down to write this evening that I actually decided what to work on. I didn't really want to work on White Foxes, even though I really would like to finally get it done. I wanted something I could start and finish, not something I was halfway through, even though I'm pretty sure there are well over 50,000 words left to go in White Foxes. I considered writing the second book in the Kentaurs series (I wrote the first one last time I did NaNoWriMo), but I don't really know what happens yet--not even how it begins, except that Octavian goes looking for his brother Archer.

But then I remembered that I had been thinking about making The Fabulous Forays of Aeryn Daring into an illustrated serial novel instead of a comic (hypothetically leaving me more time to work on the long-time-in-progress Fey comic). It's something I already had a beginning for (though in a very different form), notes for the near future of, and a general idea of where it was headed. I suspect it may grow into a series of short serial novels, but I won't know until I get there, I guess. So, 1711 words and it's pretty silly, but I'm having fun and it means that anyone who has actually been reading Aeryn on webcomicsnation might actually have something new to read soon. Cool.

I've attempted NaNoWriMo three times before now, in 2003, 2004 and 2005. The first two times I did really well, ending up with The Secret Common-Wealth (a faery story) and The Madness of Kentaurs (an alternate-world fantasy), both YA novels and both well over 50,000 words. The third time was the year I started at NSCAD and I realized almost immediately that it was a really bad idea to try to do end of term projects, and write a novel. The end of term projects alone almost did me in. So, I know I'm capable, at least.

Here's to hastily written novels!

For Anyone Counting

I've started working on White Foxes, Full Moon again, though I've come to the conclusion that only the first section will have that title; I'm going to need something else for the whole thing. Maybe. I have 44,043 words so far, plus a final chapter I may or may not use when I get that far, and a chapter that is so far only in longhand.

It has been really really weird, and rather distressing to have not written anything besides school things and work things for something like a year. I imagine it must be something like a musician unable to play music. But then, I'm not a musician, so I really have no idea. Anyway, it's a relief to be writing again, though I don't know how long I'll be able to keep it up. I'm actually thinking of trying to do NaNoWriMo this year, if it turns out (as it well might) that I only have 12 instead of 15 credits of classes this fall. But that remains to be seen.

Now if only I could get working on Fey again. I actually have a couple of pages drawn but not inked.