Archives for August 2007

Confession: I have recently started a writing blog. It’s HERE, and it’s based on the Treadmill Journal idea I stole from PoMo Golightly (through the writing group in Ravelry! Yay!). It’s boring, mostly, and only documents my own writing angst, but the writers among you might like to read it, or try something similar. It’s certainly kick-started my writing again, in a big way. And I just wrote this, and I’m stealing it from myself, so you don’t even have to go over there, but this made me feel good:

I realized something yesterday, something huge. This novel I’ve been working on, it’s a genre romance. There. I said it. I’m writing it for a target audience, and I have writer’s guidelines in mind. I will say, right now, that having read romances for years and years as a teenager and into my early twenties, I knew there were a lot of bad ones out there. But I kept reading them because some of them were good. Well written. Engaging. Romantic. That’s what I’ve been going for. I can write literary fiction and Be Serious; I can and have pulled that off. But it’s been a much more fun ride, this silly romance. Really, really fun.

And perhaps that’s how I got this far, and reached this realization: I’M ALMOST DONE. No, really. Yesterday, I realized that I only had one more big scene in mind, and that it was the denouement. But that couldn’t be! I was only up to 66,000 words!

Then I checked the guidelines, and ahem, that’s above the upper limit for the slim-sided imprint I chose to target.

In eloquent literary terms: Dude. That means I get to write a few more scenes, and I’ll be DONE. Which means I will type the words The End. That, of course, won’t mean the end of work, lots of editing, and apparently, paring down to meet to word count, but that’s a good thing — there are several scenes in the book that strike me as background rather than essential.

But it’s there! The end is coming! It’s reachable! I could hardly sleep last night. Look at me, wasting all this time here. Need to be moving into writing.

Ha! I didn’t mean to post that sweater picture today — I had preblogged it while I was recovering, and I must have put it on the wrong day. What I’m going to post today is this:

**Hours before:

Now this is something I’ve never done. I’m lying on my stomach on Pompono Beach, just south of Half Moon Bay. This is just what I needed.

I spent the early morning driving Lala around, as she was leaving on her tour. And then, unreasonably irritated at having to fight traffic after going back for forgotten and necessary glasses, I decided to just keep driving. Counterintuitive, yes. But I got on 880 and headed south, intending to head for Half Moon Bay but not really remembering which bridge to cross the bay to get there.

I ended up going over the wrong bridge, but turned myself around, and found Half Moon Bay. I spent a few hours wandering, writing at a cafe, fondling yarn at Fengari (got away with only sock yarn and the new Vogue), and book browsing,. Then I headed south on Highway 1, enroute to Pescadero and that ollalieberry pie at Duarte’s I always rave about. 

On the way, I pulled over at Pompono Beach, grabbed my bag and the sheet out of the back of that station wagon, and here I am.

It’s gorgeous. I’m propped up on my elbows, facing the water. I’m typing lying on my belly, just like Carrie always did in Sex and the City, and really, it’s not as comfortable as she made it look. But it’s working.

Just a little cloudy, but with enough sun that I was too warm in my light sweater and I took it off to use it for a pillow later. Cool breeze on my arms, but my legs are warm from sun. The waves breaking at the shoreline are the exact color of the most common green of sea glass, with a deeper azure out toward the horizon. It’s bright enough that I can’t see the screen at all — I’m typing blindly and will fix typos later. The ocean is roaring.

There are a few families on the beach, some of them looking like they planned to be here, beach chairs, coolers. Some of the kids are in swim suits, which in northern California is just plain nuts. But they’re far away — it’s as if they got out of their cars, got on to the sand, and plopped down, not able or willing to walk for two more minutes to be away from the voices of others. The only thing that reaches me from the groups is the slight whiff of cigarette smoke, and it smells so good. I love that smell.

The surfers here aren’t that great, but they’re funny. They’re trying to ride, but the break is so close to the shore that few are getting up, and when they do they have to pump their boards hard with their feet just to stay on top for a few seconds.

OHMYGOD, a huge flock of seagulls is getting closer. Hate seagulls.

I can’t remember the last time I was on my stomach on the beach, playing idly with sand in front of my face, napping a little, waking and thinking a little. Pie soon. Yes.

**I wrote the above, then I took a little nap, and then I watched the clouds overhead. More like a very light, broken fog. It looked like, and I can’t help it, white cashmere fiber. Clouds of cashmere, all short fibers, poofing out above me. 

I can’t tell you how relaxing, how unexpected the day was.

I had a crab sandwich and a pint of beer and my pie, and I read my new Vogue Knitting at the counter at Duarte’s. The waitress liked me. I went a little farther south and explored the Pigeon Point Lighthouse (which is also a hostel and has a hot tub on the cliff edge — hello, private room!). (My cell phone was dead, so no photos, I’m so sorry. I would have loved to have shown you my day.)

I stopped and bought apricots and beets from a roadside vendor. I drove home singing.

And a bonus! Picture of a baby kitty! Smallest, wee-est, seven-week old baby too young to really be separated from his mother, but she was feral, and took off, leaving him behind:
Guess who?

My Digit! 11 years ago.  He’s doing so well…. his balance is still strangely off, but we’re watching him closely. He’s all healed, and he is NOT going out of the house. Nope. And that is all. Me, I’m recovering well but I’m tired from my long day. Still can’t talk for that long without throat pain, but the rest of me feels great! Hooray! 

Got tired of hairclip, and I like this way of closing it. What do you think?

(I think this is my last preblog. Hopefully I’ll be back among you real-time-bloggers soon.)

You would think I would have blogged this before, but I kept forgetting.

But if you’re in the southern California area, you HAVE to go see the girls this week — they’re fantastically fun, and great musicians, and they smell pretty good, too. They’ve got quite a knitterly following here, and if you go up to them and tell them The Knitter sent you, I will get even MORE street cred. Help me out here.

Thursday night (tomorrow night): The Silverlake Lounge, Los Angeles
Friday night: The Whiste Stop, San Diego
Saturday night: Muddy Waters, Santa Barbara

More details (and mp3s) on their site (with links to venues).
Go! Tell ’em I sentcha!

I have a new coffee-shop! That is just so exciting to me. I’m well enough now to ride my bike there, which is thrilling to me. Maybe you’re a bike rider, so you won’t understand, but ohmygod, riding a bike is SO COOL. I’m still kinda terrified of it, so that adds to the thrill, but I heard through a friend of La’s that there was a good coffee-shop in San Leandro, called Zocalo. I looked it up, and it was only 2.5 miles from our house! Totally do-able, even in my still-recovering state. And it’s a flat ride, with a BIKE LANE all the way there. I am in love with bike lanes. I don’t think I’ll ever ride on a street without them, really. They’re so polite! They give the impression of safety! (Although I trust nothing and no one, don’t worry.)

So it’s a sweet ride there (kind of through the hood for a while, and then suddenly, you cross the border from Oakland to San Leandro, and there are trees! Gardens! The line of demarcation is so sudden and obvious it’s mind-boggling, really), and then the cafe is just so nice: It’s big, open, lots of tables that seem constantly full, free wifi, really good coffee, nice people, music quiet enough that iTunes on my computer drowns it out, couches, a kid’s play area, the roaster actually roasting beans in the same room with you, putting up that heavenly smell…..

And I’m writing. Still not well enough to go back to work, can’t talk for 12 hours straight although a couple of hours is okay, so I’m using this vacation-like time to write. And I’ve got a new method — called the Treadmill Journal, I stole the idea from here. Basically, you write your plan of action and how much time you’re going to spend on it, then you do it, then you write about how it went, and then you plan the next day’s writing. Granted, I’ve only done it for four days. But it’s been successful in that I have to plan when exactly I’m going to write the next day. I never do that, never plan in advance, and every day I expect to find time to write, and then I don’t, because days fill up and go by, don’t they? But if you have a plan, it’s easier to write. I’m lovin’ it, and I’m loving getting actual writing done. I’ve plotted to the end of the novel I’m working on, and OH LORD LET ME FINISH A BOOK. With three novels more than half-way done, one 500 pages long and ALMOST done, it’s frustrating never to be able to finish. It’s just a mental block — always more fun to start something new rather than finish the old — and I know if I just finish one, that will be the kick I need to finish the others. I don’t even care if they’re good endings. Just as long as they END.

But I’m not in a great hurry. Heading toward an ending is good enough right now.

And I’d also like to jump on the clutter-purge bandwagon and clean out my writing/yarn room, but every time I get gung-ho about it, I feel tired. This throat of mine lets me do only some of the things I want. By the end of the day, I’m pretty much guaranteed to feel like ass. Riding my bike five miles just took it out of me for a couple of hours. So I think I’ll retire to the couch and continue reading the book I’m LOVING, Dishwasher, by Pete Jordan. Ah, the best kind of confessional-memoir. He’s a guy who spent years attempting to wash dishes in all 50 states. He wrote a zine about it, and this is his book about those years, and something about it is so comforting. And he’s just so damn funny. You might enjoy it.

Off to the couch.

I succumbed. I have NO idea what was holding me back. But I’ve fallen into the Ravelry hole, and god help me, I can’t get out.

For those of you knitters not using Ravelry yet, let me tell you a thing or two about it. I had thought it was something like a knitting Friendster, where you could also log how many/what type of needles you had. Yes, people TOLD me it was so much more than that, but I didn’t believe them. Didn’t want to. Didn’t have time.

But I’m so glad I did! Imagine, if you will, having ten balls of Rowan Kid Classic in your stash, and not knowing what the hell to do with it. You go to Ravelry, punch in Rowan Kid Classic, and come with 124 projects that current members have used to make things. Pictures. Patterns LINKED right there. Notes. Needle sizes. Complaints, praises for the yarn.

Or you’re not sure if you like a pattern or not, just by looking at the two pictures shot in half-shadow (hello Debbie Bliss) in the book. Punch in the pattern name and look at the completed versions worn on members’ real bodies.

I think that may be my favorite part, actually. Seeing real patterns worn on bodies that are a little more zaftig (like mine) than the models in the patterns.

Also, it’s a community — they have groups for EVERYTHING, trust me. I originally only joined because I wanted to read what the group going to Rhinebeck had up their sleeves (yes, I’m going! So excited! Been to Maryland twice, but never, ever Rhinebeck….), and so I used my invite which had been sitting unused in my inbox forever. And then I was stuck. So very stuck.

But it’s better than when you discovered blogs and got REALLY stuck. Know why? Because once you put in your finished projects (or as many as you care to, like I have), and once you figure out the navigation, you don’t HAVE to spend much time on it. I’m not a big group/forum reader, but I’ll use them to gain info when needed.

But it’s inspiring. You see something you want to make, you throw it in your queue. Forever easily found later.

It made me finally cast on for Lala’s next sweater, Durrow.

She’s been due for a sweater for a while, and I already had the yarn, and knew I wanted to make her some  kind of cabled thing. I was going to design it myself, but every time I swatched and thought about all the math involved, I got discouraged. I have to be in a very particular mood to design a whole aran, and I haven’t been in that mood. But I think Durrow is perfect, and that was backed up by a slew of really great looking Durrows already completed on Ravelry. I think I’m the only one I saw modifying it to be knit in the round, though, so I’m keeping notes, and will post my progress so the next person wanting to make it won’t have to accidentally stumble across my blog, but can just cross-reference it in Ravelry.

I’m doing it in Lamb’s Pride kiwi, though, a rather emeraldy green. I love that the sleeves are so interesting, but at the same time you can be working on the body if you’re in the mood for something COMPLETELY mindless.

    In real life MUCH more green

Ravelry’s in beta still, though, so they have a waiting list to get invites. It’s a LONG list, but I hear it moves pretty quickly, so don’t give up hope, and if you’re not on the list, or maybe you hadn’t thought it was for you, get on the list. Trust me, it IS for you, even if you only ever use it to look up patterns.