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Walrus-update
"The time has come," the Walrus said, "To talk of many things: Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax-- Of cabbages--and kings--
I've stolen this clever update format from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
alitheapipkin
Doing
One longer walk and one short one today in bright sun under blue skies, plus I filled the garden bin with clippings, which always gives me a feeling of having achieved.
Thinking
Rather guiltily that I meant to try to do a couple of hours or so of work this weekend, but have not. And also that I should have phoned my mother, but I have not done that either. Possibly should rename this section 'vague guilts' as it appears my thoughts are not very profound.
Reading
I just re-read Gillian Bradshaw's Arthurian series, whizzed through Hawk of May and Kingdom of Summer, and have once again stalled on In Winter's Shadow. This always happens. I like Hawk of May(centered on and told from the point of view of Gwalchmai / Gawain), I love Kingdom of Summer (told from the point of view of Gwalchmai's servant, Rhys ap Sion) and by the time I've got to the third book, I am deeply in love with the world and the characters and I just can't bear to see it all fall apart. And of course it is Arthuriana, so it does all fall apart. Plus there is not enough Rhys in the third book. Rhys is full of common sense and at the same time full of idealism, and despite having a job as a servant, he is utterly and convincingly middle-class, which is such an unusual thing in a book with a mostly-historical Dark Age setting.
Watching
The first episode of 'Childhood's End'. Good ending!
Making
Today I have been working on a medieval-ish cat carving forladyofastolat. It took me a while to decide on which wood to use for it. In the end I went for plum, which seemed a suitably domestic wood for a cat, and also it was reputed to be interestingly varied in colour, which I thought would work well for a multicoloured cat.
I am not sure about that bit. The heartwood is a nice deep brownish red and contrasts nicely with the sapwood, which is quite spotty, but I'm not sure how well the shape of it will work with the design yet. Also, plum is a harder wood than I had realised, it is tough on the thumbs! It should make for a nice dense carving that will hold detail well though. And the garden is full of little plum trees, which I imagine were once long ago one plum tree, which has suckered like mad, to the point that it is now impossible to tell exactly where the original tree stood. And none of them ever have any plums, so they might as well be carving wood.
Writing
Well, I edited a few words of Finrod Song translation. I had thought of listening through the whole thing and cleaning up the formatting, but fortunatelyr_blackcat has fallen to the temptation to offered to check through my attempt at another song. (haha, Finrod strikes again!) So I'll probably wait till the words are as right as they can reasonably be before cleaning it up to post.
I can't remember if I mentioned here the line that translates literally as Finrod singing "Trouble and pain away - my legs will not be there !" which is a line that I am sorely tempted to try to draw in cartoon form.
I also read through what I've got so far of this ridiculous modern-day post-Merlin story involving Jormundgandr, and added a few words here and there. I'm having to physically restrain myself from giving too much detail about how I think the UK's Internet infrastructure might be affected once the serpent-spawn of a dark god had taken out the various network exchange points in the London area. Because that's really not the point, and runs the risk of reducing the potential audience to one, ie, me. :-D
I've stolen this clever update format from
alitheapipkin Doing
One longer walk and one short one today in bright sun under blue skies, plus I filled the garden bin with clippings, which always gives me a feeling of having achieved.
Thinking
Rather guiltily that I meant to try to do a couple of hours or so of work this weekend, but have not. And also that I should have phoned my mother, but I have not done that either. Possibly should rename this section 'vague guilts' as it appears my thoughts are not very profound.
Reading
I just re-read Gillian Bradshaw's Arthurian series, whizzed through Hawk of May and Kingdom of Summer, and have once again stalled on In Winter's Shadow. This always happens. I like Hawk of May(centered on and told from the point of view of Gwalchmai / Gawain), I love Kingdom of Summer (told from the point of view of Gwalchmai's servant, Rhys ap Sion) and by the time I've got to the third book, I am deeply in love with the world and the characters and I just can't bear to see it all fall apart. And of course it is Arthuriana, so it does all fall apart. Plus there is not enough Rhys in the third book. Rhys is full of common sense and at the same time full of idealism, and despite having a job as a servant, he is utterly and convincingly middle-class, which is such an unusual thing in a book with a mostly-historical Dark Age setting.
Watching
The first episode of 'Childhood's End'. Good ending!
Making
Today I have been working on a medieval-ish cat carving for
ladyofastolat. It took me a while to decide on which wood to use for it. In the end I went for plum, which seemed a suitably domestic wood for a cat, and also it was reputed to be interestingly varied in colour, which I thought would work well for a multicoloured cat.I am not sure about that bit. The heartwood is a nice deep brownish red and contrasts nicely with the sapwood, which is quite spotty, but I'm not sure how well the shape of it will work with the design yet. Also, plum is a harder wood than I had realised, it is tough on the thumbs! It should make for a nice dense carving that will hold detail well though. And the garden is full of little plum trees, which I imagine were once long ago one plum tree, which has suckered like mad, to the point that it is now impossible to tell exactly where the original tree stood. And none of them ever have any plums, so they might as well be carving wood.
Writing
Well, I edited a few words of Finrod Song translation. I had thought of listening through the whole thing and cleaning up the formatting, but fortunately
r_blackcat has fallen to the temptation to offered to check through my attempt at another song. (haha, Finrod strikes again!) So I'll probably wait till the words are as right as they can reasonably be before cleaning it up to post. I can't remember if I mentioned here the line that translates literally as Finrod singing "Trouble and pain away - my legs will not be there !" which is a line that I am sorely tempted to try to draw in cartoon form.
I also read through what I've got so far of this ridiculous modern-day post-Merlin story involving Jormundgandr, and added a few words here and there. I'm having to physically restrain myself from giving too much detail about how I think the UK's Internet infrastructure might be affected once the serpent-spawn of a dark god had taken out the various network exchange points in the London area. Because that's really not the point, and runs the risk of reducing the potential audience to one, ie, me. :-D
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Coincidentally, I was thinking just last week that I wanted to reread that series, and I was considering making it my next book, until Chaos Walking was so traumatic that I needed humour, so read a fun older children's book about Norse Gods in the modern world instead. (Jormundgandr appeared, but only briefly.) That series utterly broke my heart. I so desperately, desperately didn't want everything to fall apart, that I just wanted to rip out the second half of the third book and live in a nice happy world in which the bad things never happened, oh no, never happened and never will, and let no-one tell me otherwise.
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I look forward to seeing your carving, I loved the yule ornaments you've shared before :)