Murals

This is another attempt at the short post I tried to write yesterday. But my camera wasn't cooperating. I should be knitting or writing, so I'll leave you with just a few pictures of a mural I found in Baltimore this weekend.

Creativity and Productivity

I've been trying to stash-bust like crazy, so I can justify a trip to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival.

This was a skein that I bought at Rhinebeck in the fall, and under the yellow lights of a semi-dark barn, I liked the colors I whole lot better. When I got it home and took it out under natural light, I realized that it was entirely too pink for my taste. Thus, it will be a gift for someone.

It reminds me of wine coolers, so I'm calling it the Wine Cooler Cowl. The pattern is called Chi-Town Crochet Cowl and can be found on Ravelry.

And as it was a rather large skein, I also made a hat. Which will also be a gift for someone. (Though not the same someone. This is a colorway that one person could definitely wear too much of)

And now I am off to work on my scriptfrenzy script.

Oh, what?

You're right. I DID say that I wasn't writing a script this round.

Turns out my characters are a little more demanding than I originally thought. I'd still like to finish Letters... but that seems to be taking a back seat to my script.

But hey, I'll take whatever burst of creativity and productivity comes my way.

I Should Be Writing

I realize that it's a day late, but, Happy Scriptfrenzy everyone!

I'm not writing a script this round. (Well, I might.) My plan for this month is to finish existing projects. 50,000ish more words, or as many needed until it's finished, on Letters to Myself.

I'm also thinking of resurrecting a very old screenplay and reworking it. By that I mean, keeping the basic plot and scrapping most of the lines.

In other news, Ben took me to see The Hunger Games last night. I was pleasantly surprised. Other than the nauseating cinematography, it was fairly well adapted. I'm still less than enthusiastic about Woody as Haymitch, but he wasn't as awful as I expected him to be.

Lenny Kravitz surprised me as Cinna, too.

And now, before I go write something...anything, since I haven't started yet... I leave you with a pre-blocking teaser picture of my next 12 in 2012 project.

Off to Frenzy now. Good luck to everyone writing this month! May the pages be ever in your favor.

Sock Mania

I FINISHED MY FIRST SOCK EVER!!

I'm a little excited. Here it is as the beginning of the weekend, on my foot.

No, it's not a giant freak baby of a sock. Well, it is, but not because I messed up the gauge. It's because it's for Ben, not for me, and he has significantly larger feet than I do.

Here it is at the end of the weekend, on his foot:

Fits perfectly. I was a little amazed, and very excited.

Finally finishing this sock made me feel like a knitting superstar. It made me feel like "hey, I can make a sock. A fucking SOCK. I can do anything!"

I'm still feeling pretty good about things that I can accomplish, and I plan to do lots of plotting and writing this afternoon/evening. I'm also considering resurrecting an old screenplay and polishing it. And by polishing, I mean keeping most of the basic plot and scrapping most of the lines.

In the meantime, I have a new sock on the needles already- also for Ben.

Yes. I am aware that that is not the same colorway as the first one, and therefore, likely not its mate. It's not. I'll get to the other green one, I swear, but you see... there's this long story about how I don't have enough yarn left, and while I did manage to find the yarn label, it was yarn that I bought on sale at Loop because they weren't going to carry it anymore. The actual yarn company is out of Montana, and while they do have a website, they only sell wholesale. Which means that I have to find  a retailer that carries it. I may have to hop a bus to the city to do this. That of course doesn't make me cry, but it does mean that the second sock may take another six months, just like the first one did.

In the meantime, I'll content myself with the sock yarn that I do have.
And I'm sure I'll have more soon. Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival is coming up in May, don't you know. Who wants to go? 

Onward to the Toes

I did it.

I turned the heel and shaped the gusset of my very first ever sock.

See?

Now I just have to knit 9 inches of foot and then start decreasing the toes.

Okay, so I left this blog in the middle to go grocery shopping. When I came back, the results were up for The Book Doctors' NaNoWriMo Pitchapalooza-

I MADE IT INTO THE TOP 25!!!!!!


Anything else I was going to write about has been forgotten.

PLEASE go to the follow link and vote for me (Elizabeth Browne) to be the fan favorite. The big winner gets an introduction to an agent, but the fan favorite gets a free consult!

http://www.thebookdoctors.com/category/2012-nanowrimo

Why I'm Never Cooking Anything Again

Or, Domesticity Will Kill You.

I tried to be domestic today. We had a bit of leftover baguette that was getting progressively harder by the minute, so I thought I'd make crostini out of it, to go with the hummus and cheese that we have. It didn't sound too hard.

Cut the bread thin, brush some butter on both sides so it doesn't stick, pop it in the oven for a few minutes.

I, however, did not have a way to finesse the butter step, and that was where things began to go terribly wrong. Since I had nothing with which to brush it on, I settled for dipping the pieces in the butter, and then putting them in the oven.

After about 15 minutes, a few of them were good, but most of them were still a bit too greasy. So I took them out of the oven, thinking that I would let them cool off a bit, then stick them in the toaster oven to dry them out the rest of the way.

But, it turns out, when you heat up butter again, it  becomes a liquid. Go figure. And it melts and drips into the all wrong places, and starts a grease fire, making the end result of your domestic attempt at crostini this:

A possibly ruined toaster oven full of baking soda.

Thank you, person that taught me about grease fires and baking soda. I owe you one.

By now, I have cleaned out the toaster oven, and I'm hoping that it will still work, but I'm too scared to turn it on and find out. I'll let the boy do that when he gets home, since it's his toaster oven anyway.

In the meantime, I'll work on something I can manage (sort of) like writing, and eat something that I don't have to cook- cheese and fruit, maybe with the few pieces of crostini that didn't go through the fire.

I will never be domestic.

Heel

Today brings you no finished objects. Except a book.

I'm still on my Artemis Fowl kick, and I just finished the 6th one, called Artemis Fowl: The Time Paradox. Given the title, I should have figured out the twist, but really, I just wasn't thinking. It's nice to read something easy and fluffy just for the hell of it sometimes, and that's exactly what I'm doing now. I'm on a run of fluff. I think that's okay.

Again, it would be silly to tell you all about book six, so I won't say much except that it was good. Go read it. Series are hard to review.

In other news, I have a completed sock cuff.

Now it's time to start turning the heel.

I'm not sure that I want to do that tonight. I haven't been feeling well all day, and part of me wants to start something easy and mindless and put on Glee.

For now, I think that's what I'm going to do. Maybe I'll start that vest I keep talking about later.

Or write something. Since Mondays are supposed to be for writing, too. And I found an MFA program that I'm interested in. University of Baltimore, which I know nothing about. It's a combination Creative Writing and Publishing MFA, and I think it would be infinitely more useful than a regular Creative Writing program.

Head sufficiently spinning.

Now, Glee.