crafty | Member Posts

Tuesday

Walked K to school with the puppy
Chopped ingredients for spaghetti sauce and tossed them into the slow cooker
Washed, hung-to-dry/ dried a load of F's laundry
Put away the advent tree banner and the advent wreaths (from the list)
Watched a bunch of the Mandalorian
Worked on darning a hole in a sock
Closed eyes rest
Played spades, notably won a Footsie tourney

JotD: a Crescent moon and heart that says "mom" that F gave to me one Mother's Day

Wednesday

Walked K to school with the puppy; tried to play fetch with her at the complex on the way back, but she kept getting distracted by wanting to play with other dogs out walking that didn't want to play with her.
Mixed up bread dough and baked bread
Folded and put away four loads of kids' clothing
Watched more Mandalorian
Played spades tourneys: Made it to finals in Option and Blood
Attended stitch in, where I wound a plastic grocery bag full of yarn for washing
Showered
Date night with Pizza delivered, The Wheel of Time, and BG3, where we beat **** and the gang

JotD: (don't remember, will ETA later)

Thursday

Both kids home sick :/
Went for a SDW with GB and puppy
Chopped ingredients for chicken noodle soup and tossed them into the slow cooker
Binged a bunch of Bridgerton with F; K hung out with us a lot of the time
Refilled my LDN
Played ACNL and ACNH
I was supposed to go to K's school caregiver night, but GB didn't go down to horsing,and I was really tired, so he went in my stead
Waited on children a lot, as they were sick
GB made us ice cream

JotD: Beaded lanyard I made decades ago, in blues, greens, and purples

I have been so tired... and hot flashes at night.. and wed morning, back to waking up too early, even though I've been doing pretty well at getting to bed in decent time....

ysabetwordsmith

Today's theme is Leverage.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

greetingsfrommaars

Challenge #7: LIST THREE (or more) THINGS YOU LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF. They don’t have to be your favorite things, just things that you think are good. Feel free to expand as much or as little as you want.

Somehow I have found myself becoming the kind of friend who reaches out first and arranges things, which has been strange to realize. I do my best to wrangle friends into anime/game nights and holiday gift exchanges and that sort of thing. (Time zones are hard.) As my friend once put it, I am good at the "steady burn" aspect of friendship.

This is mostly in a work context, but I put a lot of effort into organizing and maintaining sources of information. I sure do love to document learnings and arrange non-numerical info into tables :)

Since I started living alone, I feel like I have leveled up a lot in general cooking ability. It's nice to be able to look at a dish and think, yeah, I can probably do that, and if I don't know specific techniques, I can learn them. One day I'll obtain an electric mixer and it'll be a real Rock-Lee-shedding-the-training-weights moment.

So, I drafted the above, and then I thought it might be nice to do a fannish angle on it as well.

I think I'm pretty consistent about my posts. Particularly my fic recs and to a lesser degree my gifsets.

I appreciate that I write unusual fics for some of my fandoms. (I am thinking of the couple of weird gen horror fics.)

I'm proud of the way I can drop fic recs of a specific sort at the drop of a hat.

Challenge #8: Talk about your creative process.

( Read more... )

Current Music: gab smolders playing repo

ysabetwordsmith

This poem is the linkback perk for the July 5, 2022 Poetry Fishbowl, originally hosted by Dreamwidth user Dialecticdreamer. It is spillover from the March 1, 2022 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by prompts from Dreamwidth users Heartsinger and Zeeth_kyrah. It also fills the "Colored Pencils" square in my 3-1-22 card for the National Crafting Month Bingo fest. This poem belongs to the series Arts and Crafts America.

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Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

My partner Doug tipped me to "Hordes of the Khan" by Scott R. Brooks, a Johnny Quest fancomic.

Check out the "Quest for Knowledge" page. That is very typical of comics in Terramagne, which often throw in some fun facts about the setting, history, flora and fauna, etc. even if the story is wholly fictional.

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

This poll covers the ideas proposed in the recent call for themes. Everyone is eligible to vote in this poll. I will keep it open until at least Friday night. If there are clear answers then, I'll close it. Otherwise I may leave it open a little longer. If you don't have a Dreamwidth account, you can vote in an anonymous comment or email to me, but include some kind of handle to distinguish yourself.

For this poll, you can vote for as many themes as you find appealing. I recommend that you don't vote for all of them, since that makes it harder to whittle down the list. The themes are arranged in alphabetical order.

Here are your options ...

( Read more... )

Current Mood: curious

ysabetwordsmith

Monkeys With Smaller Testicles Scream Louder to Compensate

It's a "calls vs balls" tradeoff.

It’s a long-held belief that loudmouths overcompensate for something, but in the case of howler monkeys, science has confirmed it’s a biological fact. A landmark study by Dr. Jacob Dunn at Cambridge University, along with 2026 follow-up research, has established that monkeys who scream the loudest effectively “pay” for that volume with significantly smaller testes and lower sperm counts.

You gotta wonder if this applies to humans and some of their absurd behavior.

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

sef1029 shared a picture of a tiny bulletin board for neighborhood poetry. This is the kind of thing that anyone could put up, a riff on the Little Free (whatever) concept. It would work just as well for any kind of creative writing that fits on one page, like nature writing or drabbles, as well as things like copies of a journal page with a sketch and description of local flora or fauna.

No poem? No problem! Sponsors of my work get nonexclusive reprint rights. I'd be happy to write one-page poems for neighborhood use. See something of mine that you already like? Chip in, you're a cosponsor, you can pass around free copies.

Also keep an eye out for local poets in your area who might like to participate. Watch for bookstores, libraries, coffeehouses, etc. to host an open mike night, poetry reading, author signing, etc. where you can meet poets from your area. These also make good places to put up a poetry post, indoors or outdoors.

Of course, you could also look up classic poems in the public domain and use those.

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

Today is mostly sunny and cold.

I fed the birds. I've seen a flock of sparrows and a starling.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 1/15/26 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 1/15/26 -- I did more work around the patio.

EDIT 1/15/26 -- I did some work around the yard.

I've seen a downy woodpecker drumming on a branch, and a pair of cardinals flying away.

EDIT 1/15/26 -- I dumped out the cloverleaf pots and stacked them upside-down on the patio. Last year I tried growing wild strawberries in towers. This didn't work great because 1) the berries weren't very good, 2) the towers were difficult to water, and 3) they were prone to falling over. However, I learned some things so it wasn't a wasted effort. I'm not sure what I'll try next. Certainly I could plant better strawberries, either my wild ones or the pink-flowered Toscano that produced excellent berries last summer. Watering should be easier with a hose. Stability, hmm, I might try stakes or just spread them out.

.

Current Mood: busy

maryquitecontrary

✖ Read 45 min. per day.
✖ Drink something while reading.
✔ Log reading/thoughts on DW.
✔ Read an owned, unread book.

I almost didn't read yesterday, even my 10 minute minimum. 😬

Current reading: "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (10th Anniversary Edition)", by Michelle Alexander
Minutes read: 10
Pages read: 5
Progress: 5.2%

( Read more... )

maryquitecontrary

✖ Read 45 min. per day.
✖ Drink something while reading.
✔ Log reading/thoughts on DW.
✔ Read an owned, unread book.

I've only been meaning to read this book for...15 years? Oops.

Current reading: "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (10th Anniversary Edition)", by Michelle Alexander
Minutes read: 15
Pages read: 17
Progress: 4%

( Read more... )

ysabetwordsmith

Snowflake Challenge 8: Creative Process

Talk about your creative process.

This challenge looks at what goes on behind the scenes to produce all the wonderful fannish contents that come to be in the world. By ‘create’ we don’t just mean fic or art or videos -- there’s a process behind every blog post, comment or any other kind of fannish engagement. We’re all creators -- and every creator loves to know about other peoples'.

Snowflake Challenge: A flatlay of a snowflake shaped shortbread cake, a mug with coffee, and a string of holiday lights on top of a rustic napkin.

I write fanfic "derive in, extrapolate out." This means I look for something in the canon that could use more explanation, think about how it could have gotten that way, then consider how that could influence further stories.

My biggest fanseries is Love Is For children (The Avengers). Several of these entries dig into the backstory of the characters, starting with a scene in canon that shows something already developed which must have had a way to get started but that part is never mentioned. So I used the character as known, and the context, to build something that would logically fit into that gap.

In the first Iron Man movie, we see Tony Stark build the Mark I suit in a cave, with a box of scraps. Specifically, we see him swinging a hammer, like Hephaestus at his forge. Now blacksmithing is one of those things that cannot be learned entirely from a book. It requires muscles and muscle memory; you actually have to do the work, a lot, over a long time. If you want to learn efficiently and also not set yourself on fire too much, it also requires a master blacksmith to teach you the tools and techniques. But the movie says nothing about how or where or when Tony learned any of that; it shows the end result of a mastersmith building a supergizmo out of junk.

I wrote "What Little Boys Are Made Of" to fill in that part of Tony's backstory. The earliest sections describe, also inspired by canon, examples of Tony's relationship with his father and Howard Stark's A+ parenting. Then it covers college, Tony's boredom because it's too easy, and his continuing efforts to get Howard's attention. The real key comes when Tony revisits Museum Village in Monroe, New York. There he meets a blacksmith and hits on the idea of working as an apprentice for the summer. And the rest is history.

Consider the Six Layers from Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. With fanwriting, a creator necessarily starts at the surface of the canon element, in this case a movie. "Derive in" means picking a point on the surface, then delving underneath into the structure which supports it, and often consulting the idiom. To create something new requires an idea, which is the first or core layer. From there, "extrapolate out" simply works back up to the surface again.

There in a nutshell is the process for most of my fanwriting. It works equally well with all sizes and media. I use some other methods, but I usually pair them with this one.

Current Mood: busy

badly_knitted

Title: Losing Hope
Fandom: The Fantastic Journey
Author:

badly_knitted
Characters: Jonathan, Varian.
Rating: PG
Setting: After the series.
Summary: They’ve been travelling for so long that Jonathan is beginning to lose hope.
Written For: The prompt ‘Blend’ on my

1character table.
Disclaimer: I don’t own The Fantastic Journey, or the characters. They belong to their creators.
A/N: Triple drabble.

( Losing Hope... )

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: my desk

badly_knitted

Title: Rest In Peace
Author:

badly_knitted
Characters: Owen.
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1116
Spoilers: Fragments, Exit Wounds.
Summary: Trapped in Turnmill nuclear power station, Owen faces the end of his unlife and realises he’s okay with it.
Written For:

raisedbymoogles’ prompt ‘any, any, diving in, I'm reaching for the core of a nuclear reactor / I wanna melt away all these useless memories and finally rest in peace tonight’, at

threesentenceficathon.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Torchwood, or the characters.

( Rest In Peace... )

Current Mood: tired

ysabetwordsmith

This year I'm doing Community Thursdays. Some of my activity will involve maintaining communities I run, and my favorites. Some will involve checking my list of subscriptions and posting in lower-traffic ones. Today I have interacted with the following communities...

* Replied to a post by

fox_in_me on

addme.

* Posted "How to use habit science to help you keep your New Year’s resolution" in

goals_on_dw.

* Commented under the January 14 Just One Thing post in

awesomeers.

Current Mood: busy

fourohfourrealitynotfound

A bit late on my roundup, better late than never!

Here's the stats:

Read 51 books
Watched 88 movies
Completed 9 TV shows
Completed 1 podcast
Wrote 93,034 words across 101 hours and 39 minutes-- That's an average of 15 wpm!
Completed 43 hours and 40 minutes of crochet.
Completed 13 hours and 45 minutes of Tunisian crochet
Completed 27 hours and 51 minutes of tatting.
Baked (at least) 38 items (that I counted)

Breakdown of my goals:

1. Write the 50 chapter keith/lance/hunk vld college au
Yeah... that was too lofty a goal LMFAO. I did get 23 of the chapters done! 80,084 words long so far, across 78 hours (~86% words, ~70% time) of my writing.

2. Crochet a new temperature blanket for my first full year in this new state
Obviously there was no way that this one was going to get fully done, since I'd still have to join stuff together after finishing the last day. But I did fall a couple months behind on this along the way, so I've got some finishing to do in 2026.

3. Draft 4 poems
I'm not sure I fully got 4 to a 'drafted' state, since I meant to imply a full first draft. I completed two that I shared with my IRL writing group. I have two more that are missing a couple pieces before I'd consider them 'drafted', that I worked on at the tail end of the year. Still a lot of progress!

4. Outline a specific original story I've had in the back of my mind
I made decent progress on this, considering everything! There's still a lot of bits in the middle that need to be filled in before I can start writing it, but I'm happy to take my time with this to get it right.

5. Make at least 3 projects I'm proud of, outside of the things mentioned earlier in this list ✅
I think I definitely achieved this, between my quote/art canvases, the slippers I Tunisian Crocheted for a friend, and a tatted split ring bookmark!

6. Finish / catch up on a podcast (probably welcome to nightvale, but it might be this tumblr podcast I lost track of a while ago) ✅
I listened to all of Once Upon a Time at Bennington College, which was a fascinating look into Donna Tartt, an author I've come to appreciate in recent years.

7. Get as many geochaches as I can ✅
Apparently this number is 2.5! As in, I officially found 2 and I know where a third one is, but last time I went and was able to reach it I didn't have a pen for a log.

Some Reflection on 2025

Last year was rough for me. My ongoing health issues continued to see little improvement, as I struggled to jump through the hoops to get a doctor to take me seriously, know what I was talking about, and agree to treat me.

In therapy, I've been struggling a lot with the feelings of disappointment, shame, and grief that have come along with having fatigue-causing chronic health issues continually get in the way of my goals-- or even anything that I wanted to do for myself. It's been work and exercise and chores and a looooooot of sadness. Part of the reason it's taken me so long to getting around to doing this wrap-up was the fear of seeing just how little I completed of my goals-- even though, realistically, I did a lot.

I've got some ideas for how to alleviate this pressure while still having aspirations I can work towards in 2026, but that's for another post. It's going to take me a bit more time to get it set up. I'll be back when it's ready to talk about.

If you're here reading this, thanks for following along with my journey over the past year. I know I'm not super active on here-- you can see why-- but I'll be back for more monthly check-ins in the year ahead. I can hope for that much, at least.

Current Music: Vienna by Billy Joel

ysabetwordsmith

These are the content notes for "The Most Dangerous Animal in the Zoo."

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Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

The Call for Themes is still open if you want to suggest topics for early 2026. Now's the time, because I hope to post the poll on Thursday.

Current Mood: busy

aflaminghalo

So I watched Heated Rivalry.
And I think the main selling point is obviously the two very good looking men having a lot of sex on screen, because i think they just didn't have enough time to make it better than decent (fwiu the creator got as much as he could though, hopefully they can get more next season). 6 episodes was a whistle stop tour when really romance needs a bit more time to breathe. It was enjoyable though (they are very good looking young men), and got me thinking about being young, and the choices I made then - and really, do keep making. I think I made the best choices I could but I really wish I'd had better options.

white_aster

Still not dead yet!

Major stuff I've read lately:
- Plot and Structure by James Scott Bell - A somewhat dated but solid book on plot and structure. It's kind of genre-oriented rather than literary-oriented, and very much toward the mystery and thriller genres, but it's got some very good advice on plot and characters, which I imagine many subsequent books on plot and characters have repeated and reworked in the meantime.

- The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel - A really good book to read early on when you're investigating the personal-finance-o-sphere. This is not a cookbook, 'do this' sort of personal finance book, but more a "seriously think about how you THINK about money before you set your goals" kind of book. I've read a lot in this sphere, and still I thought this was an excellent and fresh take, highlighting how some serious introspection can help you avoid serious mistakes.

- How to Change: The Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be by Katy Milkman - ...meh? I dunno, maybe I've read too much in this area to find this particularly thrilling. Also, it suffers a bit from being too "explain the experiments" to really appeal to the average reader while at the same time just rehashing things that actual informed readers already know. So, it retreads some common ground, I felt.

- Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots - I've now read this book three times, and still love it. A witty, exciting story about a former hench who gets injured by a superhero and uses her considerable data analysis-fu skills to calculate the cost in property damage and human life of deploying superheroes/WMDs for basic crime. This gets her hired by the world's scariest supervillain, and away we go. A neat world mashup of super heroes and corporate drudgery, with a lot to say on exploitation and capitalism. Also I loved the main character's voice and I am WAITING (not so) PATIENTLY for the sequel that's set to come out in a few months, as I really, really want to see how Anna's arc progresses and how her relationship with Leviathan evolves.

Reading now:
- Reading the next Morgan Housel book, The Art of Spending Money. Am less impressed than with The Psychology of Money, mostly because i'm about a third of the way in and it's making the exact same points. It also seems, more than Psychology of Money, focused on the problems of rich people (all the ways super rich people fritter away their money) rather than issues seen by more average folks. I've also started reading Little Bosses Everywhere, which...someone here might have suggested? Interesting book on MLM/pyramid scheme history.

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A community for craftsters

Member Posts

Yatta! for 2026 01 13-15 Highlights

Follow Friday 1-16-26: Leverage

snowflake challenge #7+8: self-positivity and creative process

Poem: "There's an Art to It"

Read "Hordes of the Khan"

Poetry Fishbowl Themes for Early 2026

Wildlife

Neighborhood Poetry

Birdfeeding

75 Booked: Day 24

75 Booked: Day 23

Snowflake Challenge 8: Creative Process

The Fantastic Journey Triple Drabble: Losing Hope

Fic: Rest In Peace

Community Thursdays

2025 Goals - It's a wrap!

Content notes for "The Most Dangerous Animal in the Zoo"

Poetry Fishbowl Update

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What We Weading Wednesday

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November 2025

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