Backwards progress

This one’s gonna be short, faithful readers.

I have come to the realization that I need to get the gym back into my routine. There are things I can do to mitigate the paralysis that seems to come over me after the gym—but there’s no way to mitigate the stiffness, muscle loss, and declining energy levels except to start the body movin’.

In other news, I have been playing around with Blender. Although my current rendering of Jane Lane from Daria looks like a horrifying monkey-slash-nightmare demon, just doing it really strips away the terror related to trying something new. I’ve also finished all of the Christmas stockings for the spouses. Now I just need to do the chibis; but first I gotta decide on a design for them. Also I need to take a break from knitting for a while.

Gnar turned one whole year old yesterday. Little miracle kitty! So glad he picked me.

I’m actually making slow progress with my Cassidy outline again! The story keeps changing on me. How’s it ever going to hold still long enough for me to write it all down?!

Gonna hop on writing now. Else I’m wasting my time at Cafe 44 with my fellow writista Bridget. Buon viaggio!

It moves so slowly you can’t see the change

I find myself in an uncomfortably unfamiliar situation. It’s a good situation, to be sure, but it has its own dimension of stress.

As of now, I have too many creative outlets and projects.

Ever-looming, Cassidy glowers at me from the top of the fridge. We’ve agreed that she’s allowed to stay there until she wants to come down. I’ve made progress outlining my Supernatural fanfic. I’ve made a lot of progress on the first Christmas stocking. And...

There has been a zygote of an idea implanted in my brain.

Myself and a cadre of creative people have begun dipping our toes into the tidepools of creating a point-and-click adventure game. One writer, two artists, one (two?) coder(s), one producer-ish-thing. I play the part of artist and producer, huzzah! And in an effort to really sabotage myself as hard as I possibly can, I’m trying to learn 3D animation.

Good thing this game won’t be coming to real fruition for a few years, given that our 4-person team can only work on it in our free time (and everyone but me is employed). Because let me tell you, teaching yourself 3D animation is not easy or quick. The problem I’ve been running into is that the tutorial I was using was for an earlier version of Blender. When I installed the earlier version of Blender, I still wasn’t seeing the things I needed to be seeing to get the tutorial to work. Ugh.

I think I need to check out Lynda.com.

In other news, we have gotten to a place where there are no more treatment options for my kitty Squish, who has been my constant and loyal companion and friend since 2001. He’s not exactly on death’s door or anything, but the word is in: he’s in the twilight of his life. He’s only on Cirenia now, to keep him from vomiting—essentially for his own comfort and our convenience. He’s scarily skin-and-bones. But the bright side is that I am shamelessly pampering him now, which is nice for both of us. He’s already eaten most of a pound of raw chicken since last Thursday.

I’m gonna be wrecked when he goes, but I’m doing my very best to keep from being sad while he’s still here.

And off I go to knit and watch The 100. Ciao!

Creative update

Hey nerds!

This one’s gonna be a shortie, since I don’t have a whole lot to say. But I wanted to share my excitement with the public! Everyone should know!

Thing one! I started knitting Christmas stockings for the new members of my family (spouses and nephews), and got ¾ of the way done with Branden’s. Then I realized I have to start over.

This is not the end of the world. I know that crafting can take many iterations to get things right, and I am just happy that yarn can be reused and reused and reused. Hooray. But I do need to figure out a way to make my stitches tighter, for the main problem with the stocking is that it’s too loose. Maybe I should pick up smaller needles?

Thing two! I have entered into a creative covenant with my favorite people to make a point-and-click adventure game. At this point it’s a twinkle in its parents’ eyes, but everyone involved has displayed symptoms of having the Brain Worm, so there’s a tiny, tiny chance this might actually happen. If so, I am the High Mucky-Muck Producer and a lowly minion of the art team.

So, please to be crossing your fingers for us! And I shall see you in the funny pages!

Finding my voice!

I return to the world of blogging full of motivation and enthusiasm. Sadly, I’m a tad light on content right at the moment. However, I will find some, and all my readers will be full of milk and honey and other forms of happiness!

On this, the last day of 2014, I’m thinking about Christmas with my family over the years and how our traditions have grown and changed, as our family has grown and changed.

For as long as I can remember—possibly for as long as I’ve been alive—my whole family has had Christmas stockings that were hand-knitted by my dad’s mom. (I suspect my dad and his brother had theirs before they can remember.) They were decorated with reindeer, Santas, trees, snowflakes—many Christmas/winter images. They also had each of our names knitted along the top rim of the stocking. Allow me to emphasize that: every bit of the ornamentation was knitted. Nothing was glued, nothing was stitched, nothing was painted. It must have been an incredible amount of work.

They were such an institution in our household that I remember being baffled at other kids not having elaborate, handmade, personalized stockings.

Christmas in my house has always been so full of love and acceptance and warmth. My older brother could rarely visit home (starving college student followed by starving actor), but he would always make it home for Christmas. And yes, we gave presents and we’d usually all “get a haul,” but especially once we became adults, that wasn’t the point. We loved being together.

Sitcoms and movies make family holidays look like a chore full of drama and no small amount of racism. That humor has always been lost on me. There may be stress related to Christmas shopping or Christmas travel, but come Christmas day, no one ever got out of their pajamas, metaphorically speaking. And usually, we never got out of our physical pajamas, either.

Our family has grown in the intervening years: All three of us kids are married and my younger brother now has a son of his own. Our Christmases include spouses and, very occasionally, in-laws. And the spouses and grub, who are just as much family as the native Lymans (obviously), are nonetheless lacking in handmade personalized Santa/tree/reindeer/snowflake stockings. My grandma just turned 90 this last Christmas, and her days of knitting have passed, unfortunately.

This is a true sadness.

So, one of my goals for 2015 is to start (and hopefully complete?) knitting stockings for the three spouses plus baby.

Our mantel is getting crowded.

The more, the merrier.

Do any of you have Christmas traditions you want to share? Comment below!