1.

Still slow going.

2.

Thinking about what I do know about my sooper woman.

And realising that I made her weak.

She is strong because she fights for her beliefs, and her belief is absolute.

3.

Haven't started anything for June yet.

But I want to finish at least an entire row on Mother Maya first.

4.

Incidentally, I'm giving away a copy of Tabitha Suzuma's Forbidden on my other blog.

Quilts 1700-2010

1.

First, I want to say this isn't as well-written or as in depth as it should be.

But then, I didn't plan on procrastinating this quite this long either.

2.

Quilts commemorate stuff. That seemed to be a central theme of the exhibit anyway.

3.

The other central theme is that Quilts tell a story. I guess Paperback Writer had it right.

The story about the quilt the V&A commissioned from prisoners at a British museum, in particular, stands out. It has finer stitches that I could achieve, I am almost ashamed to say.

4.

I really want Diana Harrison's Box I and II.

Gail Baxter writes and has pictures of them.

5.

On Twitter, I mocked the idea that a Scripture quilt could protect one from illness.

But now I look at it in a different way.

A handmade quilt as protection. As something to snuggle up under. It's a different kind of protection, for one's heart and soul, but protection all the same.

6.

I don't normally go for the ones that try to make a statement about the world, but I really liked Stockwell's money quilt.

It is called A Chinese Dream, and here's what the artist has to say about it:

I’ve stitched and crafted almost 1000 Chinese money notes into a
patterned, quilted map of the world. Like most of my work the piece
refers to trade, ecology, the present economic crisis and the shifting
global economy. For me personally it’s a beautiful, hand-made quilt
stemming from a tradition of women recycling old clothes, passing on
keepsakes and sharing in a familial process that transcends generations.
Ironically the ritual processes involved in making a quilt seem to
counter the crassness of money and consumerism.

7.

There's more stuff at the Victoria & Albert Museum page for the exhibit here.

Thanks to Jacqueline Holdsworth of Needleprint for the recommendation!

8.

Despite my love of geometries, quilting never really interested me. Too much effort -- like making thousands of little stitches on linen isn't effort... 

But now I really want to learn flat quilting. Go figure.

1.

I really should write up the Quilts 1700-2010 exhibition I went to at the Victoria & Albert.

2.

I've never felt this defeated.

Not even with my novels, not even the ones that I have consigned to a place so deep, that they may never see the light of day.

I can't even bring myself to think about it any more.

3.

Writing was never an escape for me, not the way it seems to have been for so many of my fellow writers.

It was just something I did. I wanted to be a writer, enough to earn the discipline.

Now it feels like all I have left, and I don't even know how I got here.

1.

Word by word, Hurricane Forever becomes increasingly...I hesitate to use the term political, but that's as good a word as any.

2.

I need a new name for my 'race.' Talk about a giant pain in the ass.

3.

I've begun working the first of the reproduction samplers I plan to stitch in red, henceforth known as The Girls in Red.

Meet Miss Rhoda Morley.

It is the biggest Bristol reproduction sampler I've seen anywhere, which I did not know when it became the first and only Bristol sampler that I have fallen in love with.

She will hopefully soon have companions Miss Metta Putfarckens and Miss Eliza Trusted.

1.

I am uncertain as to whether I'm madder at my body or my mind right now.

2.

I'm taking a trip back in time in Hurricane Forever.

It's kind of nice. I think I'm going to have another one of those 'OH! So that's why....' moments after I finish.

3.

I'm thinking of taking another trip back in time.

I have a few vignettes that happen before my magnum opus's timeline. I'm thinking of expanding them with a more erotic flavor.

I blame Nadia Lee for erotic flavor bit.

4.

I'm moving my stuff to DropBox. For one reason or another but primarily because Ovi Files kept giving me fits. :P Do sign up via my link so we both get an extra 250mb, though why I need the extra space, I don't know.

5.

I have started Sampler Cove's Thriller.

If you don't click on the link, here's the verse on the sampler:

Moonlight casts an eerie glow
in shadows terror hides
Searching for the haunted souls
On wicked wings she rides

It is definitely not what I planned to start this month, but I did kit it up completely from stash. I used up the remaining Spyro Aida I had, and the floss is from the mountain of silk I ordered with a bunch of pals a few months back, which is quite the accomplishment. More so than actually starting it.

1.

I've updated my synopsis some. Re-worked some key points.

I think the storyline could work as things stand, but I'm sure things will change.

2.

I've just hit the 20k mark, which is a nice little milestone.

In terms of plot, I'm just about hit the meat of the book. Which will be nice because I haven't gotten this far before with a first draft. Which is a more significant milestone, if you ask me.

3.

It's May. I need to contemplate The Year of Starts again. Thinking of starting Rhoda Morley, unless I get my act together enough to find a decent pair of scissors in this house to cut the fabric for Metta Putfarckens.

I hardly stitched last month. I doubt this month will be much better.

4.

The war of being is not going so well.

Sometimes I wish I could take out a piece of my psyche, swap it out for a better, less dented version made of titanium that will not rust or corrode and is sturdy enough to take a few hits.

1.

I am still on the wrong continent.

2.

Hurricane Forever is also still on the wrong continent. I thought my sooperwoman would already be in her new home by now. Bah.

3.

I started Northern Expression's Celtic Leaves. Such a lovely piece.

But I desperately need to either stop talking about my needlework on this blog, or to somehow reconcile this identity with my other online identity.

The latter would be preferable, but I am also certain that it is a problem to which there is no solution.

4.

I think my Monday posts are going on temporary hiatus until I get my act together to start blogging again. It makes me feel very lazy, but hey, I am very lazy.

1.

Working on Hurricane Forever. It is going wonderfully well.

2.

No 'actual' post today because I'm a nitwit, and I'm a nitwit who is extremely busy.

I did try. But I think anything I put up would be worse than last week's Monday post, which was generally a waste of time altogether.

3.

I do need to start something for this month, however, and I really ought to do it soon.

1.

I tend to blog a lot on Sundays. Hmm…

2.

I’m unwriting again. Bah.

But I did read over what I have today, and I see that I’ve begun the slow process of jargonizing TLOL.

Jargonizing probably isn’t a good term for it. More along the lines of my worldbuilding is beginning to actually appear inside what I’ve already written.

Kinda, I think it is beginning to be recognizable as the world that exists in my head.

3.

I am working on Nadia’s wedding sampler again.

I did finish The Charleston. I’ll put up a picture of that at some point. Probably means when I get back to Singapore later this month.

I need to contemplate what I’ll be starting in May, June and July. The Year of Starts! Whoot!

4.

I should probably post about my trip to the Macclesfield Silk Museum yesterday, but somehow, I just can’t be bothered.

1.

This re-write has run into another snag.

My sooperwoman needs a new sooper dooper power that still meets the parameters I’ve already set out.

I could fiddle a bit with the parameters, but I don’t think I have much breathing room. On the other hand, the alternative is to throw this out altogether and start over.

2

I do have a partial solution that I can use if I can’t come up with something better.

It’ll tie everything up better with another book that I may write someday, but I’m not about to toss a significant amount of plot out just to make it fit better with that book – which, in any case, stands alone.

There’s never anything such as a perfect solution though. Or rather, they exist in your head but cannot be applied exactly so in real life.

Rather like economics.

3.

I’m not looking forward to yet another period of unwriting. Don’t think I have a choice, however.

4.

I suppose I can always stitch in the interim.

I am half-way through Winter White, and have just started Prairie Moon’s The Red and the Black, which puts me happily at 3 starts into The Year of Starts.

Habituating

1.

How perfect would it have been if I had managed to make this the first post with this tag.

Alas.

2.

There are a lot of studies that have concluded that willpower is a finite resource.

I won’t link to them here, but I do believe it is true.

It makes sense. Everything else is finite. Why wouldn’t willpower be too?

I do, however, also think that willpower is like stamina. If you use it enough, if you work it enough, you’ll have more of it. Similarly, if you use it for running mostly, your stamina goes longer if used for running.

That is, you can also use efficiency more efficiently.

For instance, once you get used to writing every day, it’s easier to write every day. You need less willpower to write every day, so you can have more willpower left over to do other stuff.

3.

Efficiency can also be achieved in another: setting attainable (but not too attainable) goals that are well-defined, i.e. not nebulous.

You don’t want to waste willpower fiddling over how you are going to achieve your goal.

If you say you want to write x amount of words a day, that’s easy. BICHOK.

If you say you want to read more craft books, make that…I don’t know, one every month. I think one every two weeks would be pushing it, but what do I know? I read economics blogs for fun.

4.

This year, there are two things I would like to add to my daily life. 1-2-3 is one of them, and the other is stitching pretty much every single day.

Primarily, the reason is that I need to relax more. I just don’t like waking up about a quarter of the way to a panic attack. Or sitting in a lecture and trying to Zen my heartbeat into a more normal rate.

Now combine the two, and exchange lecture for exam? That’s called a catastrophe waiting to happen.

5.

So new and better habits.

So I can be a better, improved version of me.

1.

Morning pages have yet to happen.

I am thinking about turning them into night pages. To empty out my head so I can start afresh in the morning. Maybe it’ll help me sleep.

For now, lunch pages seems to work. We’ll see when my schedule fills up a bit more.

2.

TLOL continues to percolate. I’ve essentially reworked the plotline for the third act, but I still need to fix the first.

I have found my not-so-pretty protagonist’s defining trait, so the first act must change. The plot works, but not the way it is currently written.

3.

MO has titles. Now it needs writing. I will probably work on this in parallel with TLOL, because it has so much in common.

Themes, worldbuilding, timelines even. I think the characters in MO will appear in TLOL and vice versa.

4.

The weather…OMG the weather!

It was freaking chucking it down yesterday. An actual Snowgasm in February! What. The. Fuck?

Talk about January-in-February! Which is, thankfully, going much better than the weather.

Self-Improvement

1.

I have a fetish for it.

I like to be able to say ‘I’ve done this in ____.’

It’s less that I want to be a better person, but I want to be better prepared to take over the world to seize every opportunity that comes my way, and just to do things better.

2.

In 2007, it was learning to be more extroverted.

That one was hard.

But it was a good year for that. I think it made my first year away from home a lot easier than it would have been otherwise.

3.

2008 and 2009 was meditation.

The reason why it was the same in 2009 was because 2008 was a bust.

So was 2009, come to that.

4.

Which is how we ended up in 2010.

I’m looking for my replacement for meditation, if that makes sense. A way for me to clear The Space in My Head. Hence 1-2-3 and The Year of Starts, to enable more Stabbing Fabric with a Needle.

I decided that this year, I am going to attempt a multi-pronged approach. 1-2-3 is active, whereas stitching every day is passive.

We’ll see how this one goes. 1-2-3 is a lot more difficult than I thought it would be. *bangs head*

5.

I periodically do this with my gadgets too.

I have given up on Outlook. Chrome has to go. Word doesn’t quite fit my writing needs so now I have WriteWayPro. Twitter is better with a Twitter client rather than on web. So forth.

I may settle for Google-izing my laptop in the short-term*, but I doubt I’ll actually do that. I don’t like Chrome. I really don’t like Chrome.

6.

I think that everything can be improved. It’s just a question of whether the improvement is worth the time you spend getting there.

I am, after all, an economist. Marginal marginal marginal!

*Defined as for the next year to eighteen months, as I’ll almost definitely switch out my current laptop for another, or at least get a secondary.

1.

I did get around to 1-2-3. Just at lunch time rather than the planned breakfast time.

I expect that I’ll be doing it at the same time tomorrow as I have a 9 o’ clock start and I’ll be out late tonight.

2.

TLOL still suffers from the Heebie-Jeebies.

3.

I may start messing around with my M.O. Which because I think I’m funny, I have tagged Modus Operandi.

Even though it actually stands for Magnum Opus.

4.

But I’m still in social butterfly* mode, so you know, unwriting and not much work will be done.

*That’s why the start mentioned in yesterday’s post has yet to happen.

Starts

1.

I like to start things.

Starts are fun. They are bright and shiny and new and they make you feel all happy and excited.

2.

I love to start new stitching projects. So I am having a 2010: The Year of Starts.

I aim for at least 12 starts, but I can start anything and everything I want. I have at least 12 projects kitted up (meaning that all I have to do is put the fabric on the frame and go go go!). That is how much stash I have accumulated over the past few years.

I have begun my January start, which is Sampler Cove’s Taking Flight.

Tomorrow, I shall start something new.

3.

I have discovered that I don’t enjoy starting new writing projects nearly as much, however.

Writing projects, especially big writing projects,  require mental preparation. A lot of mental preparation.

I used to like starting them. But that was because I didn’t do any mental preparation – I could and would literally start something new just because of a pretty new sentence. I never, and haven’t, finished anything.

And that absolutely has to change.