Crime can too pay

Agatha Christie was one of the best-paid women in the world after all.   And she deserved it!

Go here for details of the Coastal Crime Wave at the Greater Victoria Public Library and a link to the Crime Writers of Canada website.

Velleity is rearing its monstrous ugly head yet again as I remember writing a whodunnit one Labour Day for the “Write A Novel in a Weekend” challenge.

I need to stay more focused on the other creative things in my life.   Too many ideas, possibilities, and projects are all competing for limited time, energy, space and brain cells!

Does anyone have any tips for staying focused?

With work I do stay focused, but with creative things I tend to start “just one more thing” and set aside the previous one.

Over the last week I’ve worked on the baby quilt challenge (the one that has to stay secret until November so I can’t post pix), and silk fusion which is not ready to be posted yet (but I’ve been most organized and took a series of photos of how I did the first project).  I put in a total of just under 30 hours.

There are two garment projects I plan to do, but they are both quick and simple, two seams and a hem type deals.  At least everything LOOKS like that from a distance and then all of a sudden you’re knee deep in alligators!  I need a ballpoint machine needle for one (knit fabric) and I still have to pick up the fabric for the other one at Fabricland hopefully tomorrow.

Theme Thursday ~ Moving Day

For some reason, a number of the cool links I’ve noted over the past week are moving or changing.   So these are duly noted.

Laurence Martin is a fibre artist living in Saskatchewan whose works reflect her (yes, Laurence is a unisex name in France) childhood in Morocco.  I’ve admired her work for years and am sorry that she is currently facing major health challenges.

Sewq is moving (mentioned last Thursday).  Once I know where she’s going I will repost.

To see an example of what Wordle does, click here. This can lead to cool journaling for those who just like to jot down a bunch of words and thoughts.  Plus you can play with other people’s words too.  The Wordle website can be reached from the link and has some striking examples.

And another great spot for playing around is at the Behr Virtual Home Color Center, where you can try out wild colour schemes with the click of a mouse.

Here’s my current concept of a lovely living room, and you gotta love the names they give the colours:  rose sorbet, sweet vanilla, and Carolina parakeet.  Mmm, I’m hungry, I could really go for a parakeet right about now (tastes like chicken!).

The same software is also at the Home Depot paint department. I love mooching around there helping myself to paint chips; the program enables that because a person using it looks more like someone who is about to order large quantities of paint than a person who is pocketing all the cool metallic paint chips for collaging!

Graphic Novels & Diet

At the Pacific Festival of the Book event yesterday, I enjoyed a slide presentation by Martin Springett, an illustrator and author whose work really does have a magical touch.

He’s working on a three-volume epic graphic novel, The Wixletree, for which he is still trying to find a publisher.  The subtext is his belief that the creative artists are the underclass of society and do all the heavy lifting.  I suspect that growing up in Britain informs this awareness of class structure.  Without a doubt, Britain is the most caste-conscious society outside of Asia, and is something that stays with those who grew up there.  Speaking from personal experience there.

Seeing his illustrations and hearing his stories tickled my intermittent desire to tell more stories.

I recently enjoyed reading The Big Skinny, by Carol Lay, a graphic novel about diet and body image filled with good advice.  As a family we are trying to reorder our diet, and I find myself thinking about this book often.  There’s something about the combination of words and pictures that makes a deeper impression than words alone and is more engaging than passively watching a movie.

Neat gizmo

Susan Purney Mark told us about this at the silkscreening workshop, as a possible way to generateimages for t-shirts, et cetera. 

To try creating your own, just go to www.wordle.net and type (or paste!) away to yourheart's content.

This is a family recipe for lemon pie which almostgot lost in the upheaval of moving and the demiseof my old PC ~ I thought I had backed up my recipefile which dated back to 1986 and had beenmigrated through every PC I ever owned, but I wasmistaken.  The only reason I had this recipe wasbecause I had played around with fonts toincorporate it into a collage.