current crafting: jewelry

As you can see, I've been tinkering with jewelry this month. The earrings above are off a pattern in 101 Wire Earrings. Naturally, they look different than the picture because I had different beads and chose a different type of wire, but hey, what's the point in making it look exactly like the picture?

I have plans to practice making Byzantine chain, but haven't gotten to it yet. I didn't exactly want to take my jewelry-making tools with me to Mexico, and the crafting area I have in the corner of the bedroom was more than a bit disorganized. So, in lieu of Byzantine chain, I went with Moebius knot earrings instead.

They make a chiming noise when I wear them and happen to shake my head. Which is kind of fun. Working with jump rings is fiddly but I think it will get easier with practice, just like knitting on DPNs did.

And finally, I made this bracelet during an episode of NCIS (I'm into season 6 now) and it was fun, though it did convince me that the next thing on my tools list should be a collapsible eye needle. The beading needles I have now (from a packet of crafting needles I bought years ago) don't have eyes big enough for the silk thread I used to string these beads on. I got enough of it through to make it work, but not enough to let me keep it on the needle to make knotting between the beads an easy option. So I skipped knotting after every bead just to make my life easier.

I used potato-shaped freshwater pearls, round amethyst beads, and round adventurine beads (I think - can't remember precisely what stone the green ones are - they look a little like jade but definitely aren't). I've discovered that I really like freshwater pearls, particularly the ones that aren't perfectly round. I originally fitted the bracelet with a barrel clasp and then realized that I wouldn't be able to fasten it myself with that, so I switched that out for a toggle clasp.

And that's that for now. I've made a few other pieces here and there, but I just pulled these ones out to show off for the moment. I have some plans for more earrings and some more bracelets and anklets, and probably a few necklaces.

crush time

So, I just watched this video from Sexplanations:

I love this channel; she has so many good things to say and share, and it's interesting and she's so excited and yeah...maybe I have a tiny crush on Lindsay.

Anyway, I felt like writing a bit of a response to this video because, well, my experience with crushes hasn't always been fun. It is now, but for a while, crushes were a source of shame and anger directed towards myself.

My family is Christian, and while we weren't exactly evangelical (being Lutheran and all), we did intersect with evangelical Christian culture in a number of ways. We homeschooled (not for religious reasons, though we did use some religious textbooks), so that meant we had quite a bit of interaction with more conservative evangelical families. I spent a couple of years at a private Christian high school, and that's where I learned about Christian pop culture. I worked a couple summers at a Christian retreat centre, and that's where I got exposed to heavy-duty purity culture.

I'd run across purity culture in various forms before. My parents did the promise ring thing with me when I turned thirteen, but unlike other iterations of that tradition, it was not public and I signed no contracts. I got to pick a cool ring from the jewelry store (I selected one that looked like it wouldn't be out of place in the Lord of the Rings and I still wear it, albeit on my middle finger), and we talked about the consequences of sex and why my parents felt it was important to wait to have sex until marriage. I was uncomfortable with the thought of sex, so I was happy to promise abstinence. We prayed about it, I got to wear my cool ring, and that was about it.

At fourteen, I started high school and found myself with a painful crush on a boy. The really painful kind - blushing, stammering, freaking out, completely obsessed with him kind of crush that makes you embarrass yourself and your friends and family. My parents sort of sighed and went with it, letting me rant about my feelings and never telling me they were inappropriate. My mom told me to enjoy him as a person and not to worry, though I mostly ignored that advice. For all my interest in this particular boy, I didn't really want to have sex with him. Just the thought of kissing him kind of made me want to explode; sex was absolutely unthinkable.

It took a couple years for my feelings for that boy to run their course. By the end of it, I felt horribly embarrassed about how I'd behaved, ashamed that I'd let my feelings run away with me, and determined to not make a fool of myself again. Some of this was related to the reactions I'd gotten from people. It was perfectly acceptable to them that the boy I liked was trying to pursue a girl who'd made it clear that she wasn't interested in him, but not acceptable for me to pursue him (yes, the double standard is alive and well, more's the pity). Some of my anger at myself came from bits and pieces I'd picked up from purity culture. And then I developed another serious crush.

This crush was on a boy who was really into purity culture. Like seriously into it. I found myself reading I Kissed Dating Goodbye (the book that projected Joshua Harris' issues and opinions about dating and sex onto an entire generation of North American Christian youth) and checking myself in the mirror before I left in the morning to make sure my shirt wasn't too low-cut. The irony of trying to attract a boy that way is not lost on me. Again, my parents tolerated my latest fad, but weren't particularly enthused by it (I remember a conversation with my mom regarding her opinions on parent-directed courtship - she did not approve. I thought it sounded safe, which, of course, is the attraction - it promises a perfect relationship if only you follow these specific rules).

Crushes, in hard-core purity culture, are a failing. They're a sign that you're not focused enough on God, and that you're letting bits of your heart be captured by others, never to return, and therefore depriving your Future Spouse of your entire heart (total BS, yes, but convincing when you know you still have some fuzzy feelings for that guy you used to like. Love isn't a finite resource, which the fundies are happy to tell you when encouraging you to skip on birth control, but they conveniently ignore that when it comes to romance). Experiencing attraction to others is cast as lust, which is bad. That might lead to pornography use, or kissing, or even premarital sex. Or just fantasizing about people. Or masturbating. Though that last one was mostly for boys, since girls totally don't care about sex, they care about romance, which is why romance novels are bad. (And yes, it just keeps getting more ridiculous). And of course, all this is focused exclusively on heterosexual relationships and sexuality.

Eventually, one of what felt like way too many crushes (which weren't really all that many) led to a boyfriend, and kissing and marriage and sex and the realization that crushes aren't bad, and they aren't going to go away just because I'm in a committed monogamous relationship. The crushes that I acknowledged as a teen and a young adult on boys weren't wrong. They just were. The crushes on girls that I ignored, that I tried to rationalize as something else, they weren't wrong either. I wasn't ready to see them for what they were, but there was nothing wrong with me or with my feelings.

It took me a while to be comfortable with crushes, and even longer to learn to enjoy them, but I'm finally there. Crushes are fun now. I can have celebrity crushes, or crushes on fictional characters, or on people I know and admire, and it's not a bad thing. I let myself have crushes now, and I enjoy them. I don't try to ignore them or stuff them down. I don't try to rationalize my crushes on women as something else because I was finally ready to come out to myself and then to others. I can talk to J. about them and he can talk to me about the crushes he experiences, and it doesn't detract from what we have together. It adds to the intimacy we have with each other because of what we can share.

So the advice my mom gave me, years ago, when I was a teenager with my first difficult crush, is the advice that I have finally taken to heart: Enjoy it. And enjoy the person you have a crush on. Don't worry about it.

jinx?

The problem with writing, with making bad things happen to characters in stories, that occasionally, when bad things happen in your own life, you start to wonder whether or not you have inadvertently cursed yourself.

In my case, it's gone down like this. In Comrades We, when Aiyen received Clarity's Sight, she sometimes suffers from headaches from the visions she has. By the time we hit Ley Lines (planned release: November 30, 2015), Aiyen's headaches have just gotten worse. She's living with chronic migraines, essentially. Whatever potions Maris, Brannan, and the rest of the healers' team at the university can cook up only work for short periods of time before becoming ineffectual. And the visions (and thus, the headaches) just keep on coming.

I'm not dealing with visions, but I am dealing with headaches. About a month ago, a nasty headache precipitated itself into a full-blown migraine on the way home from a trip down to Bellingham. I puked until there was nothing left in my stomach; my eyes and light were a really bad combo; the rest of my digestive system decided it needed to be grouchy, too; and my head wouldn't stop hurting. The next day, I had what essentially is a migraine hangover.

Two weeks of nearly-constant, nasty headaches later, and the doctor was telling me that I had classic migraines. It also turns out that the semi-frequent headaches I've had for years that I thought were sinus-related were actually migraines, so this is not a new thing. The severity is the new bit.
He gave me a trial prescription of some heavy-duty migraine medication, recommended getting enough rest, no skipping meals, and avoiding stress. Caffeine helps a bit, so I've been going through tea and coffee at a much quicker rate than usual. I've discovered that exercise helps moderate the headaches in my case, so more long walks and more yoga have been my answer for the moment. I'm also avoiding alcohol, since red wine triggers the headaches, and other alcohol briefly dulls the pain but doesn't really help (i.e., not a smart coping strategy). The fancy migraine medication works, but it exhausts me and comes with a couple minor side effects that I prefer to avoid if I can.

The migraines have tapered off enough that they respond to Tylenol better than before, and I survived our annual Halloween party with nothing more than a mild headache (unlike a birthday party the week before, where I found myself wearing sunglasses indoors). I keep feeling like I'm fighting a bad one off, though, so E. and I are currently indoors with the curtains drawn, the lights off, and my computer set to "very dim."

I keep wondering if Aiyen's complaint has jumped from the pages of the book into my brain - if writing about it in her story made it so in my own. Oh, I know - magical thinking - absolutely ludicrous - and yet, the power of the human mind is not to be underestimated. If I get the rest of her problems - actually reliable visions of the future - I'll let you know the lottery numbers.

New sewing things!

My new-ish serger

So, back in August, my parents came to visit. They brought the above with them. It's a serger. To be accurate, it's a Janome MyLock 204D. It was my grandmother's.

I finally gathered the courage and time to pull out it earlier this week and try working with it. The manual is poorly assembled (Language A on page 1, Language B on page 2, Language C on page 3, Language A on page 4, etc), and not as easy to follow as I would like, but I did okay. I've determined that I find it easiest to manage when the cutting blade is disengaged, and I haven't tinkered too much with the tension settings yet (that did become necessary, though, as E. saw the dials and immediately went for them).

When I was a kid, sewing with Grandma, she would usually handle the serger, or she would let me use it with her guiding my hands so I wouldn't slice my fingers on the blade. If the machine she used then had the option to disengage the blade, I never saw her use it. It went very fast and it was very noisy, and I was a little scared of it. She offered me that one when she upgraded to this one, but I was living in a studio apartment at university then and just the regular sewing machine was plenty for me to handle.

This serger doesn't seem as intimidating as the old one did. It's newer, a little lighter (still heavier than my sewing machine), and the threading guide makes more sense. It's still noisy and fast, as that seems to be typical of sergers, and it does the one thing really well. It serges. There's a few other things it can do--serging and gathering at the same time, pintucking, some special hemming options. There are a few other feet I could purchase for it so it would make piping and do beads and gather more easily, but as is, it does what I need it to do.

I set it up on top of my dresser so I can stand and sew at the same time. This option actually works well with my standard machine, too, I've discovered, which means the backache from hunching over my sewing can be a thing of the past. Plus, standing desk. It does go back into the box between uses. I have a climbing toddler, after all.

I used the serger to finish edges for a dress for E., and the next project is either a t-shirt (to see how the serger handles the inside seams) or a pair of jeans (top-stitching and precision sewing on the regular machine, inside seams that need reinforcing on the serger). It's going to take a little practice to get used to using a different machine, but it's not nearly as scary as it was in my head.

True, the serger is obviously not practical for everything. A top I have slated to make for E. next week only requires finishing on the shoulder seams, since the rest is trimmed with bias tape, so I'm going for French seams there. I don't really want to haul the serger out for everything. But it will make some of my sewing with knits a bit easier, and it gives the "how do I finish these seams?" question an additional answer to work with.

I mostly keep starting posts and then not finishing them lately, which is why I haven't been blogging. The brain, it doesn't always concentrate the way I want it to. Some of that is the process of trial and error involved in finding the right combination of anti-depressant/anti-anxiety meds, and some of that is just me being scatterbrained (I doubt I'm officially ADD, but there are some tendencies. Plus, I live with a man who actually does have ADD, so I'm sure some of that just gets absorbed due to living together).

So, updates: Ley Lines is still in progress. It looks like my cover artist won't be done with the new cover by my initial planned release date, but the bonus of doing this myself (and of having such a minimal following at this point) is that I can reschedule things without a hassle. So we're bumping Ley Lines to a November 30, 2015 release date, contingent on my cover artist getting the cover completed and me getting my act together and finishing stuff. Which means, of course, that I won't even be attempting NaNoWriMo this year (it's a fun idea, though, so I'm going to give it a go another time).

I haven't been blogging in part because I have been feeling unmotivated about writing for no specific reason, and I've been reading a lot more than I've been writing. The reading is good, don't get me wrong, but it does distract from the writing. Add a sometimes grouchy and always bouncy two-year-old, the aforementioned anxiety and depression, the migraines that have been showing up lately, the attempt to knit more socks to replace the ones that are falling apart, and my recent interest in Criminal Minds, and you have a world-class set of distractions. (I mean, Spencer Reid and Penelope Garcia? So distracting. I've been forced to wait for Season 2 to show up on the hold shelf at the library for me, and now I get to go pick it up tomorrow. But I will make myself do some writing before I'm allowed to watch "Fisher King, Part 2" and find out what happens).

This weekend is Thanksgiving, and as we have the largest space and the most place settings, we're hosting again. Cooking a turkey grows less frightening every year. So, on Saturday, my sisters-in-law and their partners and my mother-in-law and possibly my aunt-in-law are descending on us. I've committed to doing the pie and the cranberry sauce, J. is doing the potatoes, and we're doing the turkey together. (Wait, that looks dirtier than I thought it would...). The others are bringing assorted vegetable and side dishes and booze. And I have to make sure to have some kid juice for E. so she won't get too grumpy about not being allowed to share.

My anxieties about E.'s language development are slowly disappearing, as it seems like she adds new words all the time, and is putting them together more frequently. Her first sentence using the first person pronoun was "I poop." It's hard to express just how excited I was about that. Now I mostly get to worry about the way she climbs things. The other day, we were in the kid's section at the library, and I was reading a book. Suddenly one of the librarians calls, "Ma'am, that's dangerous!" I turn to see E. dancing on top of a table. I wasn't terribly worried, since it wasn't a high table and she does this all the time, but rules are rules, especially at the library. If there's one place I never want to get banned from, it 's the library.

So, time for me to go make a grocery list and think about getting the chutney started tomorrow. At least chutney's an easy one to make. And I have a sock toe to finish tonight, and edits to incorporate into a short story so I can actually send it out again. Time to try being productive!

grief

Some nights, I dream that she's still here, that she didn't die after all. That she just went away for a bit and then came back, her heart healed so she's finally well again. And those dreams hurt, because I want them to be true.

I want to be able to share things with her. To tell her stories about E. is growing, to tell her what I've been sewing lately, and to apologize for forgetting to call as frequently during these last few years where my life and mind got busy and frantic. I want to see her again. I want to thank her for the friendship with her cousin who lives nearby, something that feels like the last gift she gave me. I want to hug her again. And I can't.

I sort of believe in heaven. And I sort of don't. I want desperately to believe that I'll see her again, that all that she is and was isn't just gone. And I think I believe that. Sometimes. I don't know.

I love you, Grandma. And I wish you were still here.

new review for "Comrades We"

My first review! Lady Licata of As I Live and Read has posted a review of Comrades We. The review is available here.

She liked it and it was great to read what someone else had to say about the book. I'm still waiting on some of the other reviewers to work through their backlogs to get to my book, but I'm looking forward to seeing what they have to say.