Finncon is fini. Parris and I have just staggereed back to our hotel room from the dead reindeer party. The party is still going strong and we would love to have stayed longer... till sunset, at least... but we have to be up early tomorrow to catch a ferry to Estonia, where I'll be doing a signing in Tallinn. Then the next day it's back across the sea to Helsinki again, just long enough to set off for Turku, where I've got another signing.

Finncon was terrific. The warmth and hospitality we've found here has completely ruined my image of Finland as a frozen wasteland. Who knew? The sauna was fun too. And then there were all the cute anime girls in costume offering free hugs...

Thanks to all my Finnish friends. Now off to Estonia!

In my continuing exploration of the wide world of tea, I have invested in some good quality matcha tea from Kyoto, with the appropriate equipment-- I do love equipment!





Matcha, for those of you who don't know, is made of the powered leaves of the tea plant, which are drunk, rather than just steeped, so you are getting the entire goodness of the beverage, with all its tannins, vitamins and so forth. The powder is measured out with a curved bamboo implement called a chashaku into the tea bowl, or chawan. Hot water is added and the tea is quickly whisked to a froth with a bamboo whisk called a chasen. It's quite delicious and not at all bitter if you use a good quality tea and the water is the right temp.

It's a very pleasant process, visceral and tactile, and I find that matcha really perks me up. The caffeine content is on the high end.

We are the House of Yark.

Not to be confused with the House of York, in which there was probably a lot less barfing and popsicles.

I came down with this thing last night, hated life thoroughly for about 12 hours and I think am climbing out of it. Everyone's had it now but my wife and our poor houseguest, thank god.


Meanwhile, before I succumbed yesterday I realized there is one really good thing about PMS and it is this; the creativity. There's a discernible moment, like a day or two, when in the middle of all the angst and paranoia and combing the house for chocolate that I get unbelievably inspired to do art. Writing sometimes, but also other things, and yesterday I jumped headlong into the corset project and OMG it was awesome.

As most of you know, I've done Elizabethan corsetry for-fucking-ever, but hadn't wandered into Victorianland until now. A friend was complaining that her fairy wings were too heavy to really wear properly on her shoulders, and flopped around, and wouldn't it be nice, she said, to have clothing that had enough structure that she could just attach the wings to it.

Corset, I said.

So we hunted around and the one she wants is a sweet, sort of modest Victorian one, and I figured what the hell.

Wrapped her up in a T-shirt and duct tape to get the basic shape, and then have had the two duct-tape T shirt halves hanging around the house for two weeks because I was too chickenshit to actually cut them.

Yesterday I got out sewing machine, sewing dummy, found my fabric scissors (yay!) and dove in. It takes courage to make that first cut, you know? Into 80 dollar a yard shantung silk, into imported Swiss lace, into a pink and red duct tape model where you've got a basic concept of where seams on curves should go - and how corsets go - but not really.

It went fine. Cut my pieces until everything lay flat, made my pattern, and got about three quarters of a mockup pieced and sewn.

So those of you who costume and sew.

Fess up.

Unless the fabric is slippery, I never pin, and I never baste. Ever. I get better results, far far better results cutting patterns and sewing seams if I simply lay pattern on fabric or fabric on fabric and use my hands to keep things lined up. Pins create weird bunches, they keep me from being able to coax convex curve against concave curve, they make artificial stiffness in fabric that's supposed to be flexible and fluid.

Do you pin? Do you baste?

If you do historical costuming or other sewing where there aren't as many patterns available and we tend to make our own, do you think it makes you more or less cavalier in how you sew?

Thanks to christianscott for the awesome icon!


* * *

And our houseguest has now succumbed. Wash your hands after reading this post, what.

So who should I run into at the top of the Art Museum steps yesterday beating people with the remnants of a cardboard tube?



Rodney Anonymous, from the Dead Milkmen.



Who might be the funniest person I know.

"BATTLE!"

(warrenellis.com is not safe for work. Conan! posts are not safe for your perception of 21st Century society.)

(Hello to anyone coming here from Observer Music Monthly. The post they were citing is very short and is here.)

(tip of the hat to Jordan at ModBlog, doing a fine job)

(Automatically crossposted from warrenellis.com. Feel free to comment here or at my internet church at Whitechapel. If anything in this post looks weird, it's because LJ is run on steampipes and rubber bands -- please click through to the main site.)

The auction for the submission copy of Agent of Change and assorted goodies has ended. The winning bid was $511 USD.

Congratulations to the lucky winner!

I leave the day after tomorrow (Tuesday). Burglars, put down your tools--Amanda and Chris will be home, and they are armed and dangerous. Especially dangerous as they will continue to work on clearing out the study while I'm away.

I'm looking forward to this, although I don't promise I'll be checking in or tweeting while I'm there. I don't have a Blackberry or anything like that and while I'll be taking my laptop, I don't know if there will be any wireless available.

Frankly, I don't think it would hurt to be disconnected for a week. Today's Observer has an article in the magazine section about how utterly worn out we all are. "Spent" is the word they use. Speaking as someone who is exhausted more often than not these days, I can relate. Of course, I will be away from the greatest drain on my energy, which is not the net, my work, or anyone in the house. Nor any of the friends I wish I saw more often.

Spending most of a week at a high altitude without fielding a single call from my mother will probably be exhilirating.

I remember going to Denver when I was about four months pregnant. I felt incredibly good the whole time I was there. Laramie is higher than Denver, so this should be interesting (and I'm not pregnant this time; yes, I'm sure).

Anyway, I'll come back ready to add space opera to my repertoire.:)

Title: Too Close
Author: LTxYx
Rating: FRAO/NC-17/Slash
Pairing: Hotch/Reid
Wordcount: ~ 3100
Summary: He'd almost died tonight. And they both knew it could always happen again. Anytime, anywhere. (Set after season 4 finale. Spoilers for that episode)



( Read more... )

This past week I ordered a book from amazon.com, and I was careful to order a new copy of that book. I needed the full text of Ursula K. Le Guin's short story, "Direction of the Road," in her book The Wind's Twelve Quarters. Amazon obliged as always; the book arrived with amazing speed, and it was the right book. I have no complaints about amazon.com. But I'm outraged by the condition of the book itself, which is one of the shoddiest printing jobs I've seen in a very long time. It's a Harper Perennial edition, and it says "Printed in the United States of America."

You would think, given the stature of the book and the stature of its author, that Harper would have taken at least minimum care with the production. They didn't. On the very first page that a reader sees, where Le Guin has used three verses of Housman's "A Shropshire Lad" as an epigraph, there are four words where the ink has dropped out. And all through the book, on page after page, it keeps happening.

There's no excuse for this. It's an insult to the reader -- who's asked to pay $13.99 for the resulting mess -- and it's an insult to Le Guin. Harper should be ashamed.

Put sunscreen on or put the top up if you're running around all day in the car.

http://justinelarbalestier.com/blog/2009/07/12/writing-not-following-last-few-overs-of-first-test/

http://justinelarbalestier.com/?p=5331

So I have no idea that Australia only need two more wickets and England a handful of runs to make Aus bat again and thus reduce overs and increase chance of securing draw. Only 15 overs remaining.

I AM NOT FOLLOWING IT AT ALL.

Writing, working hard, ignoring the nail biting finish.

COME ON AUSTRALIA!!!

After four trips to junk yards four to parts stores, i got wheels on the front of the 36. They need to be 15's, not 14's but that all for this weekend.

Title: Kyrie, eleison
Author: mingsmommy
Rating: Rated G/FRT
Pairing: Prentiss/Rossi
Summary: Everybody needs a friend every now and then. Spoilers for Demonology 4X17 and To Hell…and Back 4X25

Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds, I am making no profit from the writing of this fic.

smacky30 is endlessly patient with me and gently honest. She did a superb job as a beta but I messed with it afterwards (because I always do), so all mistakes are mine. Also, thanks to my RL friend Kim who helped me with the Catholic Mass parts.

For someone in need of help, he sounded extraordinarily pleased with himself.

I'm making this one of my rare public posts, because I think this could be a lot of fun, and it will be more fun the more people we can get to participate.  Please feel free to spread the word about this in your journal, if you're so inclined.

Imagine you are going on a one-way colonization trip to another planet.  You are allowed to bring with you half a dozen books.  In order to attempt to ensure some variety in your colony's library, you and your fellow colonists agree that your books should be allocated to different areas as follows:

1. Fiction, 20th-21st century.
2. Fiction, 19th century.
3. Fiction, pre-19th century.
4. How-to/survival.
5. Philosophy/religion.
6. History

Assume that a resupply ship will arrive later carrying a complete library, but not within your lifetime.  You are thus relieved of the obligation of trying to preserve the "best" books, and can instead focus on the ones that will be most interesting/useful to you.Also, to ensure your ship stays within its weight limits, these must each be single books - no omnibus editions, no "collected works of".

Here's my list:

1. Friday, Robert Heinlein
2. Sylvie and Bruno, Lewis Carroll
3. Le Morte d'Arthur, Sir Thomas Malory
4. The Boy Scout Fieldbook, in a pre-1990 edition.
5. Escher, Godel, and Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, Douglas R. Hofstadter.
6. From Dawn to Decadence, Jacques Barzun

Imagine that I am one of your fellow colonists, as is anyone else who comments here.  Feel free to ask your fellow colonists why they chose their particular books, what their second choices are in any particular category, or any other questions you might want to ask.