Finishing a Scarf

It took me awhile to finish this scarf, I just set it aside and forgot about it for some reason. So as I watched LOST last night I twisted fringe, it took several hours but I washed the scarf this morning and this is the result.

I am putting another scarf on the loom while I spend the time figuring out how to do my color sample fabric. Its another chenille one. It will be black with some lines of blues to make a window pane check. It was a warp I wound years ago and forgot about. I seem to be finding things lately and bringing them back to the forefront. Not sure what that means but it can't be a bad thing. The last time it was art supplies and this time weaving, hmm I wonder what will be next.

Last night I had writers dreams, first I there was the dream about Neil Gaiman(no ladies not that kind of dream). I met him somewhere and at first he was at the table and I wasn't aloud to go approach him or talk to him. A restriction was put on me. Then later we are having a conversation. When I mentioned that I was a writer and a weaver and a mixed media artist he was interested in talking to me. I guess I was not one of those hapless writers looking for advice or perhaps its the whole me that was interesting. Then I had a dream about Laini Taylor and it was something about being at a venue with her. I went and touched her hair and said wow your hair really is pink. Yes it was a stupid thing to say, but this is a dream. I think that was a result of reading her blog lately. She had been at some writers event and looks like she was having a blast with a whole group of other writers. Perhaps its something I want to experience.

I loved this question and answer on Neil Gaiman's blog today.

"What do you think is the best way to start writing a novel?"

I think the best way to start writing a novel is to start writing a novel.

I got a chuckle at that one because it is so true. We spend so much time thinking about doing it instead of just doing it. On that note I think I will go do some writing.

Its a wonderful day

I am having a wonderful day so far. My husband sang me Happy Birthday this morning. Then I started the day writing in my journal and then Yoga and made my cake. Soon I will be off to enjoy the beautiful day with my camera. Skies are blue and the sun is out.

Here is a treat for you today: Neil Gaiman reading his new book.



I spent the yesterday with my friend Kate. She wants to learn to draw faces so we had a beginning lesson. We also celebrated my birthday.













We had a wonderful lunch. I made Fettuccine Alfredo and she brought these birthday cupcakes too. Carrot cake and chocolate, they were yummy. I also had an opportunity to use my new tea cups so that was a lot of fun. I had her pick the teapot we would use and made tea the way my Irish mother taught me to. I had a feeling she was there with us.


















Now what else might a girl want... well presents of course. Here is a close up of the scarf she gave me., It is really gorgeous. Thanks to Kate for making the day special.

Coraline

Stop what you are doing and go out and see this movie. It is so incredibly awesome that I can't believe it. I have been following Neil Gaiman on twitter and he had said it will only be available in 3d for the next 2 weeks. That is due to another movie coming out. I figured I had better get to the theater right away. Having read the book and being fan of his other books too I wanted to see it. I was stunned visually. The 3d aspects are so amazing that they are even hard to describe. I think the movie will still be wonderful in 2d but you will be missing out on some amazing footage. The creativity in this piece is boundless. On top of all this it is truly a visual treat for all artists. Of course I love the idea that the heroine is a girl with smarts who has to save the day.

Here is another interesting tidbit. The sweaters in the film were knit by a woman sorry I don't know her name. She specializes in micro knitting and had a blog about it. The producers found her on the web and that's how she got the job. The star sweater that Coraline wears took 2 weeks to knit and she had to make 14 of them. Here is a fun clip with Teri Hatcher who plays the mom.

Excited about writing again

Finally a post with writing content. First i was really delighted to hear that Neil Gaiman has won the Newbery Award, the country's highest honor for contributions to children's literature for the Graveyard book. If you haven't read it check it out, its such a fun story and I heard it will be made into a film. That will be fantastic. I have been reading some great posts on Neil's blog that have really gotten me back to working on my novel. This is a great post about where he gets his ideas.

This past week I was at the villa coffeehouse with my friend Kate for a writing date. For some reason the internet was down so I was forced to really work at writing instead of being seduced by the wonder of the net. I am working on a scene in the book where I have several things to do that I really don't know how to do well. I ended up making a list. One of the things was writing a dream sequence and my idea had to read some novels that have dream sequences in them to see how it has been done. Then I thought maybe someone on the net has blogged about this subject. I looked it up when I was back at home and discovered that several people had posted information on the subject. I like it when you can find answers so easily.

I have been using a free software program called yWriter to organize my novel and I really liked it. It became difficult when I put more than one manuscript in it. I had difficulty finding files and so forth. It became really frustrating. So then I found this Noveling Writing Software on the net. I looked at other ones too and this seemed to have great reviews. I wished they had a free trial online or something like that. I ended up going to PC magazine reviews and discovered yWriter has a new version and this time I found a users manual, user group and more. So I decided to work with the free software for now. yWriter5 can be found here I also found that I could import my file from word directly to yWriter and it will put it into chapters and scenes automatically. That was pretty cool. You might want to check it out.