Vanity Post!

Blog posting is largely a place I can go to take a break from my stories. When you spend 8+ hours a day writing, sometimes the last thing a writer wants to write about is writing.

Vanity posting seems like a fun diversion, so why not? I've done a post on the basic of crochet and if you dig around you can find some of my side projects floating around, but I'll throw some here and talk about them a little.

 

First up, a blanket I made for my Mommom (grandmother) for Christmas a few years back. Using a series of patterns and stitches, I designed this blanket especially for her. Seemed like the proper thing to do since she was the one that taught me basic crochet when I was 16.

 Ah, the dragon neckwarmers... Advanced amigurumi (crochet sculpting) 101. 6 of the maybe 10 I've made; very popular. I've had requests to do a tutorial video on the wings and snouts since I designed the wings myself and the snouts are the hardest part of the pattern for a lot of people. I'm not a vlog kind of person, but I may do it in the future.

 Yup, that's the slime from Dragon Quest, for those that were asking. This is actually made as a hat but holds up well even when it's not on a head. Another one I designed after making a Hershey kiss hat and the shape reminded me of this so I adjusted it.

 Dresses are one of the most time consuming. Even doll dresses take 3-6 weeks if you work on them at least 8 hours a day. Hell on your hands if you don't take breaks either. This is a 100% cotton beach cover-up.

 Another popular one, the Galactic Shawl, a Red Heart pattern. Noticing the stars in a night sky shapes, I used silver and black yarn to make the shapes really stand out.

 Again, for my gamer friends, yup, it's a Moogle! I used armature wire to create the little head bauble. Didn't use a pattern, but it would be easy to duplicate. I'd do the eyes and nose a bit differently too (stuffing the nose and bringing the eyes in closer, for one).

Eh, I have a ton of doll outfits I did, but no decent pics of all of them. I'll have to do a little photo shoot and come back to it...

Thanks for being my break between the wonderful world of editing! Not that I don't love revisiting my story, but this is the part that amounts to running through it with a chainsaw so it can get the anxiety going a bit.

Not that it's not terribly fun running around with a chainsaw, but this is the place where I make sure I'm not treating my stories like they're too precious for change. I'm not sure I was ever an overprotective sort of writer (I've thrown away ridiculous amounts of my old stories without thinking twice and from what I can remember, it's for the best). Until I wrote the first book of The Truth about Heroes trilogy, there were few things that even made it to halfway finished. I did have one story I had been calling Tiger Eye that got a decent roster of characters, a hand drawn map with a few locations, and a decent beginning, but every time I got stuck I'd throw in a new character and eventually it just became a story with a chain of characters that never came up again. I might salvage it-- it's a story I started when I was 15 so it would need a total makeover, but I still have the sketches in a green binder. I don't know if I'll be inspired to go back to it, but I left it as a possibility. Castles in the Sand, Purple Moon, and The Curse of Amanita were comics that filled a notebook or two; my friend Liz and I also did one called the Legend of Nibichi that I still have just the script for, but not the comic. I have Son of a Devil, but that one is probably the most recent too. Still remember them well, but they were among the many that were lost to time. If I had a time machine, I'd go back and save all of my drawing notebooks from thieves and forgetfulness.

So much for not talking about writing, but there are few things more tempting than going back to what you love even when it frustrates you. Or maybe especially when it frustrates you, because the tug-of-war is sometimes the right kind of drama for the task. It still stings a little that I lost so much of the work I did in the past, not because I would publish them even if I had them, but I wouldn't mind redrawing and reworking them from more than my spotty memory. It still might be fun to go back to a lot of them, but I'm almost moving forward with new ideas and that feels better than nostalgia right now. The ideas just keep coming and I'm going to keep encouraging myself in that direction.