Archive for December, 2009

Today was longer than yesterday.

Thursday, December 31st, 2009

I did it again. Remember that shot of the river from last week?

Snow on the river

It snowed today, for a few glorious hours.

I don’t plan to go on about the year just past – it doesn’t seem noteworthy enough, and I’m afraid that if I do I’ll get all maudlin and depressed. Suffice it to say that it was, as usual, a fascinating collection of  three hundred and sixty, give or take a handful, days. Some of them were good. Some of them were bad. As usual.

On the year ahead, though, I have some thoughts. Mostly inconsequential, mostly vague: but thoughts that I believe to be worthy of pursuit.

For starters, I was reading along on the internet and somebody said “We really ought to have done a lot.” (Ariana Osbourne, in fact, whose blog I’ve been reading because of a particularly fascinating scheme of Warren Ellis’s…) Well, geez. That does rather put it in perspective. It has been that kind of year, a bit. Possibly even that kind of decade, but there’s a lot of years in there I definitely don’t want to dwell on. All right, then, I think I’ll try to finish some things. It’s not like I don’t have plenty of projects to work on.

There’s no reason everything has to be perfect. Perfectionism is an excellent excuse not to finish anything, and it works wonders in contributing to unreasonable laziness. I say this because I’ve been lazy, the last couple of years. Not in terms of making things, but in terms of getting them finished and free in the world. Sure, there are some things I make for myself, and those don’t go anywhere … but there’s got to be more to it than that. I mean, among other things, by this point in my life … I don’t know, I feel like I can take some matters into my own hands. That’s what the internet is for, after all.

Yes, I’m being intentionally vague. I feel as though every time I make a clearcut statement about what I’m doing – or what I am going to do – I trip all over my expectations and screw it up. This year, I am doing, and maybe I’ll talk about it and maybe I won’t. Trust me, the one key goal I have here is focus. Well. Focus might not be the right word. But a little more dedication to what’s important, and not so much on the everyday grind.

How’s that sound?

Fun. Games.

Tuesday, December 29th, 2009

Well, I have to entertain myself somehow. Occasionally it seems like a good idea to take a picture from the same place at different times and see what happens. Too much exposure to Monet as a child, I expect. At least it’s not haystacks.

Backdoor light

This is my favorite square of sunlight, most days. Until it goes dark, and then it’s something else entirely.

Evening

Mostly, it’s just that I look at the silhouettes of buildings, and see the potential for other designs.

I remembered what the project I need to be working on is. Unfortunately, I also found a rather delightful book on inkle looms. I am torn. Quilting, weaving – so much potential. So little time.

I love my blue-collar crazypants streetcar suburb town.

Saturday, December 26th, 2009

Duck Village

Bracketing the day:

Thursday, December 24th, 2009

Light on the Charles

This morning, I walked along the Charles for a ways. And then, this evening, it finally occurred to me to capture this scene, which I see nearly every day at one point or another, in front of one of the Harvard libraries.Outside Widener

Quite a bit of snow.

Sunday, December 20th, 2009

One of the few times I’ve edited a photo for posting here. My camera ignored my framing and gave me a photo that was not at all what I thought it was, so  … well, I had to do a little cutting.

bvmsnow

Sunset over snowAnd I turned around while I was waiting for a light to change, and saw this brilliant dark pink sunset, so of course I had to catch some of it.

Fresh snow!

Saturday, December 19th, 2009

Snowpocalypse

And an angle most people probably don’t spend enough time on the stairs to see:

Friday, December 18th, 2009

Also, in which I get long-winded with post titles.

CeilingAnd I saw an ad for a place showing Brazil, which is one of my favorite movies. Ducts are pretty entertaining. Maybe somebody should paint them interesting colors. Stripes, perhaps …

Is December really half-over?

Monday, December 14th, 2009

On one level, I find that sort of upsetting: I wanted to get something accomplished by the end of the month. On the other hand, so far, December has been pretty harsh, so I’m all right with it being over with already.

In order to make myself feel better, I’m going to list some things I’ve done this month.

Finished a pair of socks. Tied a quilt (and it’s awesome, but I still need to put on the binding so it’ll be useful). Embroidered a delightful little trilobite. Made some progress on the banded iron embroidery. Arranged a barter for semi-pro photography of my work. Started a lace scarf in Malabrigo sock yarn (gorgeous, squishy, and so far less prone to pilling than its worsted-weight cousin).

Ok, that’s not so bad. (Now I just need to finish the banded iron, because it’s going to be lovely but it makes me hate satin stitch with a passion.) (Did I mention the truly exciting part about this embroidery thing? No? Well. I re-learned how to make french knots, and they are fantastic.) I’ve been reading about a project at Plimoth Plantation to do a seventeenth century jacket – and it’s too bad that they’re finished with it, but it provides a lot of inspiration to get back into the embellishment and costume habit. We’ll see how long it lasts.

Have a picture of the random spring day we had instead of the beginning of winter:

Harvard Buildings

I think I was trying to capture the contrast between this bizarre cement building and the church across the street. One of these days, I will get back in the habit of carrying a real camera, because “intentional composition” and “cell phone camera” are not really phrases that go together. Fortunately, I prefer accidents of photography anyway.

Words, for once.

Tuesday, December 1st, 2009

Incoherent, probably. A little weird, for sure.

I didn’t quite make my word goal for November, but I got what I wanted – an absolutely terrible zero draft I can tear apart and put back together with some connective tissue and narrative structure and make into a first draft. (Thank you, Justine Larbalestier, for the zero draft thing.)

Which means I’m back to thinking about books and bookselling and copyright and all that fun stuff. In fact, my internet gave me some thoughts on bookselling that I’m going to have to consider: Cory Doctorow made this post, some of which I vehemently disagree with, but I still find it fascinating.

The major point, of course, is one that he almost makes: I don’t think that the Espresso print on demand machine is a great leap forward in the practice of bookselling. I think it’s a great leap backwards. It’s a pretty good idea, for all that it’s a fairly nineteenth century one, but it’s not interesting because it’s new. Actually, one of my biggest problems with the machine stems from its unreliability: what one needs, right, in order to have this model be really stable and interesting, is a machine that is reliable, user-repairable, and doesn’t have downtime while you wait for a part. I mean, it’s probably not unreliable in the context of big fancy machines. I don’t really know. Thing is, one of the strengths of letterpress (particularly the iron handpress, but I understand that there just aren’t a lot of people out there with the kind of patience necessary to print on those) is that a letterpress printer also needs to be able to fix the machine. You’ve got to be able to pull it apart and put it back together. I think that’s a major plus. I might be wrong about how the print on demand machine works, though. Maybe it is user-reparable in a way that’s constructive.

Also, I continue to find the books ugly and poorly made, which brings me back to my rant on books as disposable objects. There’s no reason to have a physical object if it’s just trash, right? (Which is probably an argument for a new model of lending library.) But there’s also no excuse for crappy design. Let me rephrase: (because I am opinionated, and trying to be reasonable) I pick up these books, and you know what I notice? The margins. The type. Stuff I never notice in a book that’s well-designed unless I’m actually looking.

I’m pretty sure that’s related to the lack of … a dedicated design team? People who are there to edit? (So … here’s where we need to think very carefully about vanity presses.)

On the other hand, the public domain stuff from Google (aside from some awful aesthetics) is pretty cool.

All right. So we’ve got this new old idea, which is pretty cool, if poorly executed. It’s probably related to the fact that it’s a pretty new piece of equipment.

The other thing bookstores are still good for: the social hub aspects. Which is another intensely nineteenth century thing, I think, although I could not tell you why I think that. But really, the reason to go to your local indie bookstore is more that there’s a whole network of stuff going on there. And it’s, in theory, locally relevant and everything.

Which I like.

And I’m trying to convince myself that I want to actually do a couple more re-writes on my novels, and see if maybe the possibility exists that I can fit myself into a different niche in the book world.

I’m still conflicted about the specific, internal problems of my particular place of bookselling. I’m pretty sure I’m not overreacting, but I can’t tell. It’s a problem. I’m going to maintain my belief that the behavior that I’ve been objecting to is actually abusive, and see what I can do about it.

… but there’s a bunch of loose ends to think about, and some things to make sense of. If I can manage it.