A Faerie Dance, 12.24.13

A Faerie Dance

A faerie fire brightly shone

Far beyond the trees

Their silver voices, laughingly

Came soft upon the breeze

I stood a while listening

And sank beneath their spell

Then found myself quite quickly

Beside their haunted dell

They looked at me in wonder

As much as I at them           

Not understanding they had called

Me to their festive glen

But soon their wonder disappeared

Melting with their laughter

They let me join their merry ring

                   Beside the woodland water                    

I stayed with them for hours

Danced into the night

Even until morning, when

Magic faded in the light

Still I find them, now and then

Dancing through the trees

I can join them, if I will

Our laughter bright and free

More Quilled Earrings

So, posting once a week on here is going to be difficult.  I did well the first two weeks, posting several times, but these last two I've been dragging my feet.  Eventually I need to decide what I want this blog to be about.

Here are a few more of my quilling designs for now:

 I call these ones Gossamer Wings, due to their delicate look.  I'm not hugely fond of them.

 These I designed in a mostly last minute panic.  I was at Camp David, and had been planning on teaching some of the campers how to quill some earrings.  I had thought there would be between 1 and 2 hours, so had planned a design accordingly, but then was told the day before that it was only a half hour.  So that evening I sat in the back of the staff area and designed some new earrings that would take approximately that much  time.

 These ones are super simple, but I like their elegance.  And the mug is cool too.

And, these.  I love these earrings.  I'm surprised I haven't made myself a pair yet, but I'm sure I will someday.  Actually, they are a bit too modern to fit into my wardrobe, but aren't they fun? 

Story ideas

I get ideas for the beginnings of stories often, mostly the beginning of November (thanks, Nanowrimo).  I then write a fabulous page or two, and lose the story.  Positively awful.  My problem is the plot, which I suppose is a pretty normal problem.

I really like some of my beginnings though.  I had one where I was writing from the perspective of a toddler.  I felt like I was capturing it pretty well (ha, if one can capture the thoughts of a toddler...), but then after a page and a half, I decided it wasn't going anywhere.

So I instantly started a new story about a dragon. That was even shorter (only three paragraphs).

Then there is the story I titled "Until the Last Rose Fades", written in first person, and I got four pages into it.  That's basically a record for me. But four pages in I had a love interest, but no plot, and no skill for writing romance.

Now I am writing "Ada".  I'm about a paragraph short of the length that "Until the last Rose Fades" died at, and I'm still going strong.  I've got the whole plot lined out, and most of the story.  I'm a bit shady in some of it (lots of it, rather), pretty much any time that the main character stays in one place for a while, but I do know what I want her to accomplish in that time, so I think it will be okay.  I'm pretty excited about it.  It is nice to be working on a story that I think may actually work.

I'm considering posting it on my blog as I progress, but that might be over-sharing on my part.  It isn't very good (ugh), and I wouldn't want to subject you to it.  However, I'll probably tell you occasionally how it's going, like when I reach page 10, etc.  It's kind of hard imagining me actually getting to page 10 on a Word document....

New Earring Designs

Last May while in Georgia, I was trying to sleep and I had a "brilliant" idea for quilled earrings.  It used an entirely new technique that enabled me to connect rings of paper to each other.  My explaination may not be the greatest, but hopefully it makes sense.  Below are pictures of the earring designs I've made using the technique.

Each ring of paper is several layers thick.  While I wrap the layers around, on the last one, I include a metal ring.  This way, when I hook them each together, it stays exactly where I put it.  This is only really important in the first design and the last design pictured below.  If the metal rings were not stuck in one place, they would slip out and no longer retain it's shape.

These are all the same pieces, just put together in different designs.  

This last one is actually put together the same as the one before.  Then I twisted the entire earring through the biggest ring, then again through the next ring, etc., all the way up.  I was pretty pleased by the result.

Post Christmas Projects

Every year after Christmas I get a sudden burst of creativity, usually spent on making myself something (I tend to call it my Christmas gift to myself).  It normally happens because I spend about four months prior to Christmas making gifts for family members, then the last few weeks before Christmas I'm usually done, but not ready to start a new project, so I sort of dilly dally, and then afterwards the time has come!  This year I planned my project (weaving myself a bed cover), but haven't started it yet.

Why?  Because I'm too busy with other projects, of course.  Since the first two things I made/am making are gifts, I can't elaborate, but they were spurred on by the quilling book that Kimberly gave me for Christmas.  Now I am working on some wool leggings for Ellie.  After than, maybe I will get around to the bed cover.

Except that I've planned another two quilling projects (also gifts, can't elaborate), and I'll be helping with costumes for Fine Linen's next play, and then after that birthday season will be upon me (oh goodness, Charlotte's birthday is a month from tomorrow. O.o).

Even if I do get around to making something for myself, I'm no longer sure about the bed cover.  It is something I want to do eventually, but I just recently designed a new knit sweater pattern that I really want to make, and with all the quilling I'm doing I want to make some quilled wall hangings for my room.  The difficulty with the bed cover is that it is so huge.  I'll spend several hundred dollars on the materials, and then hour upon hour on the making of it.  It is hard to settle down to a project like that. 

Several years ago I remember feeling a bit guilty whenever I made myself something that took a long time to make.  I think I'm over it now.

Decision

I couldn't make up my mind, so here was the final decision:  I'll do challenge #1 (write something every day), and challenge #2 (post something on my blog once a week), and challenge #3 (do an exercise challenge monthly), and try to finish a story (modified challenge #5). 

And who knows, maybe I'll write a play this year too, and get #4 as well. :)

The main difficulty with this that I see, is that there is no way to "get ahead" or to "catch up" as there has been the last two years.  The goal is to write every day, not write 365 things.  This will be hard for me.  I had some problem yesterday even, and I'm only three days in.  But, I managed to write out a quick poem at one point during the crazy day, and thus fulfilled the requirements.

New Year's Challenge

Happy 2014 folks!  I hope you had a great time celebrating however you chose to celebrate last night.  I chose to stay up rather too late at a rather fun party.  I'm happy to say I got home without any sort of car crashes.

If you've been reading my blog, you are probably aware that I had challenged myself to write 365 poems in 2013.  I feel like I talked about it all too much.

I succeeded.  And boy am I proud.  I actually went over 365, but I need a final count to know by how many.  Just four or five, so maybe 370 for the year.  Gah, that's a lot of poems.  There are a whole slew of them that are practically worthless, but I feel that there are also a good deal that are good.  Maybe none great, but good... I hope.  I'll probably keep posting some from this year now and then, I wrote several that I'd like to share in this last week.

So now I have to decide on this year's challenge.  2012 had me writing 104 personal letters, 2013, 365 poems.  What should I do now?  I really need to decide by today, because if it is a daily thing, I can't start the year behind.

Here are my considerations: Challenge 1: write something every day.  Either a blog post (that I post), a poem, a letter, or a part of a story (one that I hopefully keep working on); Challenge 2: write a blog post per week (a bit easier (maybe?) than Challenge 1); Challenge 3: do a monthly challenge related to exercise.  I've already decided to do the "Plank Challenge" in January, so I'm partly committed to this one; Challenge 4: Write a play this year (suggested by my mother.  Not feeling up to this one); Challenge 5: Write part of a story every day (I've got a bit of a plot line lined up, and someday, I will write it).

Any other suggestions?  Any of my suggestions that you like more than the others?  I'm thinking of not doing Challenge 3 as my challenge, and just doing it because I need to do it...

Happy New Year folks!  What are some of your challenges/resolutions for this year?