Category Archives: Writing

Round One: Done

I just finished the last bird entry in Birds: A Spiritual Field Guide.

This completes my rough draft. There is work still to be done, namely expanding point form information in the first half of the book about historical divinatory practices involving birds into actual paragraphs (yay, haruspication!), checking facts I’ve highlighted, rewriting a rough meditation or two, and that kind of thing. Having had to cut five birds for sure and possibly five more due to art issues has brought me in at almost 8K under my target word count, which is making the most of a bad situation, as from here on everything just gets bigger.

But essentially? That’s all editing and polishing. And then I will obsessively check how I’ve presented the info in each entry, and wibble about how some things don’t fit, and how some entries have piles and piles of cultural mythology and folklore and others do not.

I have an introduction to write for the companion journal over my Easter holiday as well. I should copy my roughs to a USB key right now as well as printing them out to scribble on. And then it will all be handed in on May 2.

Now, if you don’t mind, I am going to go fall over.

Idle Schedule Dreams

Maybe it’s because I’ve felt shackled to my desk for the past couple of months and a horrible winter, but I’ve been dreaming of what I’ll be able to do when this book is handed in on May 2.

– Actually go to the yarn store, where I have not been since early December, to pick up the copy of Spin-Off Spring 2011 that they’ve had aside for me for over a month. Pat yarn. Buy spinning fibre.

– Head over to Debra’s house with an empty box to sort through her little girl clothes and abscond with some. Also, have tea like real human beings.

– Actually shop for baby things. Not that we need a heck of a lot; we’ll be borrowing used stuff from others to replace our equipment that wore out/came back damaged/expired. It’s more the principle of the thing: I’d like to actually have one or two new things for this baby. I do need to start collecting samples of cloth diapers for newborns, though, to have on hand for when the baby comes home so we can test them out and see which brands/style suit her best. Some of this has been dependent on cash flow, as well, so I haven’t been able to jump on excellent used deals on Craigslist and the like for things like infant car seat stroller frames and sets of used cloth diapers when they’ve come up.

– Nap.

– Stare out a window for a while and not feel guilty.

– Possibly do a photo session with Tamu. Do recon on photo studios for an actual family portrait, something we’ve never had done, ever.

– Start spinning the warp yarn for the baby blanket (May), and then weave the baby blanket (see, I am already planning into June!).

– Order the fabric online for the baby’s blanket that the boy wants made for her. Start assembling the bits for the mobile he has designed. (Both of these feature the boy as designer/director and me as executor. Sigh.)

– Schedule a playdate or two.

– Finish knitting the garter squares for the baby booties and origami them together.

– Go to my doctor’s appointments and ultrasounds (the regular and the extra oh-dear-you’re-high-risk ones) without feeling stressed because there’s work piling up at home.

– Play the cello. (I have one. Not that you’d know it if you lived here.) Prep for the June recital.

– Start planning the boy’s sixth birthday parties, Family Edition and School Friend Edition.

– Read.

– Sort through what baby equipment we do have on hand that is usable and needs cleaning/repacking/set up. Not that we can set anything up in our bedroom till mid-July. No, there will be no nursery till around Thanksgiving when the attic office is done.

– Do the tax stuff. That was scheduled for last month; it didn’t happen, nor did it happen this month, because there was too much work. And since we’re first-time homeowners there’s a pile of unknowns that needs to be ascertained, like what we can write off, what receipts or proof of whatevers are required, and so forth.

– And… work. Sigh. Eventually the edits on the bird book will come back, and I’ll have to address those, and I know they will not be the “oh you have six things to handle and that’s it” that the hearthcraft book had; these will need more attention. But I am looking forward to the more regular paycheque that copyediting yields. Pay vs energy/time input, copyediting gives better value than writing, I have found. That’s sad but true.

Weekend Roundup Etc

I was disappointed in the debate last night. I was hoping for actual adult discussion of policy and platform. What we got was people pointing fingers at one another. Snarking about it on Twitter with Canadian friends helped me get through it. All I really got out of it was an odd dream that I was an environmentalist active in avian preservation, and Stephen Harper personally promised me that he’d build a new habitat for penguins at the Biodome if I’d vote for him. I think the bird book is getting to me.

We had a whirlwind trip out to Rowan Tree Farm on Saturday for our annual spring equinox ritual (affectionately referred to as OsTaras) with t! and Jan, which was very enjoyable, and the next day we did a late equinox/early Easter brunch and egg-decorating session with the Preston-LeBlancs:

The bulbs HRH and the boy planted all over the place last fall are coming up, and we have discovered naturalized crocuses (crocii?) in the back garden, to our delight:

(Hello, lovely macro setting on my camera. You make crocuses look very, very nice indeed.)

I did a preliminary dye test to tint the Falkland warp fibre green to better match the Manos weft yarn. The green dye really turned the fibre an emerald, Astroturf-y green despite me using a half-saturated solution, gack. So I hauled out the hackle and blended the emerald fibre with undyed fibre in two different proportions, spindle-spun both samples and plied them, et voila; a pretty decent match, I’d say. The left photo shows the Manos at the back, a sample skein of a 2 white:1 green yarn in the middle, a sample of 1 white:1 green yarn on the right, and on the far left is the emerald dyed fibre, just for kicks. The photo on the right shows the two sample skeins laid over the skein of Manos, showing just how close my two hand-blended yarns got.

There’s so much variation in the kettle-dyed Manos that either of these blends would work, I think. Or rather, I could be a bit less precise about how much of each colour I’m blending in as I go, and it will still look lovely. Now I know that I can blend it, I could dye up about 4 ounces of green at this solution and trundle down to Ariadne Knits with it and another 4-6 ounces of undyed fibre to crank out 8 to 10 ounces of batts on the drum carder there… or I could further experiment with a much, much weaker solution of emerald green on a larger amount of fibre. Which I may still have to card with undyed fibre; who knows? It’s academic at this point, though, because I need my order of undyed Falkland to arrive at the shop first.

The bird book proceeds apace; deadline is in two and a half weeks, five days of which I am away for Easter. We had a bit of a setback last week when we discovered some of the art wasn’t available, which led to a three-level list of birds to be cut, and unfortunately I’d already written over half of them. It was somewhat demoralizing so close to the finish line, especially because I immediately assumed I’d have to find about twenty replacement birds from among the available art, but it turns out I won’t, so I’m still on track. I do mourn the loss of the research and time spent writing those entries I’ve already completed, though, especially since a couple of them were extensive. I am very tired, and I am aware that this manuscript will not be the shiny, polished thing I prefer to hand in. It’s somewhat uneven in that some birds just have a pile of folklore and superstition attached to them, and others don’t. Generally, birds that are found both in the Old World and the New World have more; New World-only birds have a lot less. It’s simply a question of the amount of time that the lore has had to accumulate. The proposed cover for the book is just wonderful, and I’ve been signed to write the intro to the accompanying birdwatching journal as well.

The book has been wringing me out, so I’ve been restless without a lot of mental focus to apply anywhere. I’ve been spinning a bit, and because I can’t seem to gather enough energy to select music I actually want to listen to I decided to try downloading free audiobook recordings. I’m working through the Librivox Sense & Sensibility right now, and I’m of two minds about it. Librivox switches narrators every two or three chapters, which is fair, but also jarring. I’m lucky in that there’s only one narrator I’ve really disliked so far whose reading isn’t very good at all (her recording level is low, in mono, and her enunciation isn’t great so a lot of the time it’s mostly a murmur). On the other hand, it’s kind of neat to have different interpretations; the change in narrator really wakes you up and makes you listen a bit more closely. I do about five chapters in a session and get through almost a half-ounce of fibre in that time. I wish my library had a decent audiobook selection.

Stopping By To Say Hi

I am swamped with work. I have a month to deadline, and hospitals and doctors have eaten up a lot of work days in the past couple of months. I have to add April to my list of Months In Which I Will Have No Time To Do Anything So Please Don’t Ask.

Here’s a scattershot report of the past week:

1. You know that whole “maybe now that I don’t have to visit so many hospitals for tests and consultations I can get work done?” Yeeeeeah. Guess where we spent Tuesday? That would be checking out the emergency ward of our local hospital, because HRH got ambushed by a wicked kidney stone. The hospital and staff seem very nice. HRH is bruised and recovering from medical trauma.

2. We went in to Le Melange Magique this morning to bid farewell to Debra, the owner, who after nineteen and a half years decided that she had other things to do in her life. From the moment she told me of her plan to sell the store in January I have been behind her one hundred percent. She’s pulled off some pretty amazing stuff in the past twenty years, and deserves her retirement from the metaphysical business and eventual refocusing on a new career. I admire her immensely, both for what she built, and for moving on when the time was right. And I am thrilled that a couple of my friends have bought the store; the administration team is going to be terrific. The store is in good hands.

3. The boy attended his first group cello class on Sunday, and it went very well indeed. He saw seven or eight other kids, ranging from his age to late teens, playing, and was thoroughly energized. He played open strings that fit into whatever the other kids were playing from the Suzuki repertoire, and I saw him imitating their bowing rhythms and pretending to move his left hand fingers on the fingerboard like they were doing, too, which is huge because he’s been resisting left hand work; he just hasn’t been ready yet. My teacher lent us a basic first cello performance book that uses the Twinkle Variation A rhythm for the young “soloist” along with a piano and second cello accompaniment, which sounds like “real music,” and we have played “Wintertime in Russia” and today we played “Carnival in Rio.” Sure, the young soloist in question is playing an open string over and over, but the piano and second cello move around and use different keys, and as a result different moods are created. “Wintertime in Russia” really sounded Russian; “Carnival in Rio” sounded like a gentle samba. He loves playing with me, and I think the fact that we’re playing “his” music makes a big difference to him. And he’s doing a good job maintaining the rhythm, and watching for cues to stop, too.

4. We’re in the last few days before the spring concert this Saturday. There are some things I still can’t get, mostly cues that feel sudden to me, and I can’t do any more work on them on my own because it’s about fitting in with what’s happening in the orchestra. I can play the stuff on my own. It’s understanding where to come in that’s throwing me. And as usual I feel awful, because I’m right in front of the conductor, and I feel like I’m personally letting him down when he suddenly turns and cues me and I miss it. I know it’s coming; I know, and I’m physically prepped, and then whoosh it’s gone. I am definitely proud of conquering some stuff I was struggling with up till last week, though.

5. The baby (whose code name is Owlet, dubbed thusly by the boy) is big enough to be visibly bumping my tummy around from the inside. It is amusing.

6. Yes, the baby has a name, or one so far, at least. No, no one’s getting to hear it until she’s born. Partly because, well, it’s ours right now, and partly because if it really doesn’t suit her when she’s born, we don’t want to have to explain that we’ve changed it. She has actually had a name since a couple of days before she was conceived, when the boy casually mentioned to us at the breakfast table that he was going to have a baby sister, and this is what her name was going to be. Two weeks later I showed HRH the pregnancy test, and when the boy asked what it was, we told him it was the baby he’d ordered. It’s an unusual name, too, one we’ve never heard before. We have no idea where the boy found it; we know no one with that name, there are no kids at school of that name, it hasn’t been in any books or films we’ve seen or read. We suspect he made it up, although HRH has since found it online as a variation or diminutive of another name. We really love the fact that he’s so voluntarily involved with this baby. He’s taken on the task of designing the nursery theme as well, and has proposed several crafts for us to do to create mobiles and blankets and so forth.

7. I got the mock-up of the cover for the bird book, and it is absolutely exquisite. It’s easily my favourite of all my book covers. It looks like an old botanical illustration, but with birds. The tentative release date for the book and the companion journal is January 2012. (If I ever get it finished, that is. I’m going to have to start adding another work day on weekends, probably Sundays, to hit my deadline. Stupid doctor appointments. At least I only have two scheduled this month.) (She said with great emphasis, glaring at the universe.)

8. I need a new laptop. The borrowed iBook is running Panther (2003, boys and girls!), Safari crashes on it repeatedly when I try to access half the research pages I need to access, and it is, alas, very slow. I can write a rough draft of one entry on the iBook in the time it would take me to write two polished entries on the desktop. My original plan to buy a secondhand iPad on which to write has been morphing into a less-exciting plan to buy a secondhand Macbook, which will serve me better in the long run for switching between documents and online research. Not that I can buy either until my delivery cheque is issued to me after I hand the bird book in. (The point that I will not need to switch back and forth so often once this research-heavy book has been handed in has not escaped me. I have three months to decide which to choose, in which I may be able to borrow an iPad for a day or so to test it out.) Yes, I do have an old Windows laptop, too, but it dates from about 2003 as well. I should see if I can update its browsers and such.

That’s all I’ve got right now. I have to go turn the oven on to bake today’s bread, and get at least one bird done today (this morning and early afternoon were errands and such). I got four birds done yesterday, which was heartening. I’m looking at the number of birds I have left, and at the remaining space within my allotted word count, and thinking that I need to stop going into so much detail. But I’m still stuck on the “can you flesh this part out more?” request that came back after I handed in a sample with my proposal, so I’m adding as much as I can. It can always come out later, but as time is beginning to be of the essence, I may have to dial back to basics.

Catching Up

There’s family-related health stuff going on that isn’t for public discussion, much of it stress-inducing, so I’ve been kind of quiet.

Still no call from the luthier about the mini cellos. I’m hoping we hear from them this Thursday or Friday so the boy can go to his first lesson this Saturday. If not, then hopefully they’ll call next week and we’ll get it in time for a lesson on the following Saturday, then the group class on Sunday.

I handed in the edits on the repurposing project. The editor said very nice things to me, which made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside after struggling with the project; she apologised, too, because she hadn’t known I wasn’t the original author till after she’d done the edit. All’s well that ends well. I accepted a new copyedit project, too, due at the end of the month. Because you know, what I really need is something else to take up my work time when I’m trying to get half of the first draft of the bird book down for a review in mid-February. Actually, the way I seem to work these days is doing editing in the morning, then research and writing in the afternoon; it allows my brain to shift gears and I’m more productive.

Oh, right; I’ve contracted to write another book, this one on the symbolism and folklore associated with birds. It’s due at the beginning of May. I have no idea when it will be released. There, now you know everything I know. I’ll do a formal pro announcement when things are less nebulous. I have half a dozen secondhand research books coming my way from the US and the UK, all ordered about ten days ago. The only one to get here so far? The one from the UK, on last Thursday.

I got the biggest cheque of the four I was expecting last week, which was a terrific lovely surprise. I paid lots of bills and put a chunk on my Visa, and today I treated myself to ordering my new Saxony spinning wheel, which was the plan all along when this particular cheque landed (whenever that would be). I initially tried to order it from the wonderful and incredibly helpful London-Wul in NB last Friday, but the proprietor called me back, quite distressed, because the distributor wouldn’t let her order it in. She directed me to Gemini Fibres instead, and I called them this morning after lots of wibbling because I am phone-phobic. They were absolutely lovely, however, and I’m all set with them now. They don’t keep the unfinished Kromski Symphony in stock (yes, it amuses the musician in me that my wheel is called the Symphony, and I have ordered the unfinished version) so they need to order one in then ship it to me. I’m guessing that ought to take about three weeks. That’s probably a good thing, since I need to focus on work right now. We’ll finish it ourselves with a walnut stain and a nice satin wax. I ordered the extra slow and fast whorls, too, which will give me a full ratio range of 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, and 25 to 1 with the 24″ diameter wheel. (Just for comparison, my Louet S15 does 5.5, 7.5 and 10.5 to 1, with a wheel diameter of 20″; I have a high-speed bobbin that gives me ratios of 6.5, 9.5 and 15 to 1, but I wanted something more efficient overall.) A couple of people have asked if I intend to sell the Louet, and no, I don’t; it spins thick lofty yarns very well, and plies quite efficiently. I can also toss it in the car, which I can’t do with the Symphony. It’s also a single treadle, whereas the Symphony is a double treadle wheel, so if I ever have temporary knee or hip issues the Louet is good to have as a backup. I think the Louet will reside in the family room downstairs so I can spin down there.

I, um, may also have bought two spindles through Ravelry destashes last week. I claim brainwashing by the SpinDoctor discussion group on Ravelry. I am hoping these change my opinion of spindling. The entry-level machine-made spindle I’ve got weighs 1.75 oz, and is a bit clunky; these are much higher quality, handmade, and weigh just under and over 1 oz respectively. I’ve got a Spinner’s Lair reclaimed black walnut and maple spindle at 0.88 oz coming to me, and an inlaid Kundert inlaid oak, English walnut, and black walnut spindle at 1.2 oz, too. I knew I needed a good spindle when I went mildly crazy over the Christmas holiday without spinning equipment at my parents’ house. (The alternative was investing in a real travel wheel, like the adorable upcoming Schacht Sidekick, but it’s probably going to cost more than my new Saxony wheel did, so that’s not in the cards. Two handmade spindles costing a total of $50 is much less expensive!)

I got to see the video of my piece at December’s cello recital at last week’s lesson, which was interesting. My physical technique looked really good, which was reassuring. We’re now working on making my RH fingers longer, as I tend to have a very flat hand from the wrist through base finger joints when I bow. I need to arch the unit more. I came home with a pile of work: the Bazelaire suite, some last review of my final piece from Mooney’s Position Pieces book 1, starting book 2 with Pattern 1 in fifth position (playing this totally messed with my perception of every key I played in afterward, as it goes from Bb+/Eb+/Ab+/Db+ because it’s the same finger pattern on each string), and carrying forward with Suzuki book 3 and the Bach C major Minuet revisited with the new bonus middle section in C minor. We’ll be getting new cello ensemble music the the group lesson at the end of the month, too. I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed with this and orchestra, too, but I now my teacher’s assigning it all for specific reasons, most of it inter-supportive. She put a Stringvision grip on my bow, too, and it makes the frog just grippy enough that I don’t feel like it’s about to slide out of my hand when I relax my grip to lengthen the fingers.

Missed Capricornucopia on Saturday due to fibro dragging me down and HRH recovering from whatever threw his back out. By all accounts it was brilliant, and I’m sorry we weren’t there. Highlights of the family weekend otherwise included sorting eighty percent of the Lego in the house by colour, warping the loom with yarn for two secret swap projects and then having to figure out how to work around the oversight that one project was almost twice as long as the other (lashing a second shorter apron rod to the first to tie on for the shorter warp, and using fingers to beat the weft on the longer one for the first while), dinner with HRH’s parents, and the second episode of Downton Abbey on PBS last night.

Right. Off to punch the first rise of bread down, switch the last load of laundry, and get going with putting more words in the bird book. Or possibly doing the first eighth for the copyediting job. No, definitely the bird book.

Today’s To-Dos

Things I should do today:

    * Practice the cello (lesson tomorrow; I need to look at the final pieces in Mooney Position Pieces vol 1, review the first movement of the Bazelaire and play through the second movement in prep for beginning it, and probably drag out Elfintanz again, too)
    * Run errands: mini grocery order, buy printer ink cartridges
    * Bake a cake for tonight’s coven meeting
    * Finish the first pass on the edits of the repurposing project (This is frustrating because I’m considered the ‘author’ for this part of the process, but none of the manuscript is my words or arguments; I moved someone else’s around. So when the editor asks me to clarify or explain or support my claims, I’m at a loss because I didn’t write it.)

What I could do, or want to do, instead:

    * Reskein my lovely finished singles Merino yarn on my brand-new swift and photograph it lovingly; also, cuddle it
    * Curl up on the chesterfield under an afghan with reference material for book #6 (Have I mentioned that here officially yet? Well, I’ve got a new book due to be handed in in May. More news as I have it and can release it.)
    * Working on my swap parcel for my first swap project ever (My initial plan has to be discarded due to time constraints, alas, but I have a back-up plan that involves weaving.)

What I am hoping for:

    * One of the four freelance cheques I’m waiting for to land in my mailbox (I know there was a holiday in there, but my sense of time passing does not acknowledge that)
    * Any of the books I’ve ordered for research to arrive in the mail

What I have to do:

    * Pick the boy up at school to (a) go to the library to return due-today books, and (b) go to buy his first cello music book.
    * Think about dinner (augh please no I am so tired of meal planning and food in general… oh, hmm, maybe pot roast. There, that was easy. I have to go take it out of the freezer now.)
    * BUY CAT FOOD

Things I have already done:

    * Took the boy to the bus stop
    * Caught up on correspondence and news
    * Paid bills!

It was -20 C this morning, and I woke up incredibly achy. Fibro, I do not love you.

LATER: Go me; I did everything on this list except the finishing the first pass of the editing, and the three things under the could do/want to do list. Well, I did dye yarn for the swap, but that happened while I did other stuff.

No research books arrived, but the biggest of the four freelance cheques landed in my mailbox (YAY!). Ironically, so did our city taxes for 2011. That can be paid in four much easier to swallow instalments, though, so hurrah. This freelance cheque means paying a big chunk of Visa, socking some away, finally buying Amanda’s extra iPhone, and ordering my long-awaited treat for myself, my Saxony wheel.

The Week’s Work So Far

For the past day I’ve been sorting through all the files on my 300 GB external hard drive. I’m prepping it for reformatting to serve as my Time Capsule backup destination disk, so I can set my Mac to initially back up completely then incrementally upon changes. I actually have all those files on my Mac (most of them more current) which is why I only backed up about half of the external music and documents to data DVDs. My external hard drive stuff is about four months out of date, but it’s better to have slightly out of date stuff than no stuff at all. And in fact I am doing this with the intention of being redundant, because I plan to back up the current documents on my Mac to data DVD as well. I added my newer music to the fourth music backup data DVD already.

And I have just realised that I have to back up all HRH’s stuff as well, since we put it on here when he switched computers two years ago. And he has about 10GB worth of files I have to sort out and put on two data DVDs before I can reformat the drive. Sigh.

So far this week, I have:

– done an entire manuscript review and handed it in (there was a bad moment where I thought I had a day less than I did, because I’d typed the wrong due date into my agenda; the day-later deadline was very welcome after the not-much-done day of Monday, when the boy was home)
– got the approval for it and closed the file
– sorted through all 300GB of my external hard drive
– backed up about half of my music to data DVDs (I didn’t bother with the stuff I own on CD)
– backed up the important documents to data DVDs (about half)
– baked foccaccia for lunches
– baked a loaf of bread
– did laundry
– reworked the first five pages of Orchestrated
– wrote about 800 words longhand on the Victorian supernatural story
– had the boy home on Monday, ran errands, went to the library

Now because the heat has finally gotten to me and I can’t focus at the computer any more, I am going to go spin for a while.