Yeah!

Look at my ticker!  It's moving!  I'm excited.  I love getting past the beginning of a story.  Beginnings are hard.

Thanks to my awesome husband for giving me two uninterrupted hours of writing today (during actual daytime!) as an anniversary gift.  Also, happy six year anniversary, Will!  You are great!  Love you!

More Costume Awesomeness.

Diane gave me permission to post this picture. This is the first costume I've done without being able to try it on the person first. I think it turned out pretty well, and the cuteness of the model doesn't hurt!

Next sewing project: My Little Pony hoodies for the girls for Christmas. I'm excited!

The Rules

You know when you hear bad news?  News bad enough to give you that sinking, curling, sick feeling in the pit of your stomach?

You do what you can to help, but it's not much.  And then you're just sitting around, waiting for news.  So there's the internet, all nice and distracting, and there's something funny so you laugh.

And then you think, "I can't laugh, something awful just happened."  Then the feeling of being powerless again, because there isn't anything else you can do.  But how can you let yourself be distracted when people you care about are going through so much?  Like maybe they can somehow feel you supporting them if you just keep thinking about it.

How do you guys handle it when difficult or tragic things happen to people close to you?

Halloween Costumes 2012: Complete!

Today I finished Chaela's Rapunzel hair!  With that, all of my required sewing/craftiness for Halloween is complete!  I've had some people ask me how I did it.  Well, I took an entire skein of yarn that matched her hair and about 6 spools of gold ribbon, cut them so that they were twice as long as I wanted, folded bunches of them in half and slid them on bobby pins, then put the bobby pins in strategic places on her head.  

To get it all to stay I had to start the braid and then put some of the stuff in as I was braiding.  It wasn't as good as I wanted it, but it was just a trial run, and as far as looks go, I think it turned out really well!  I even had some trim leftover that I was going to put on her dress.  That didn't work out, but since the trim was a sheer ribbon with silk flowers sewn on, I decided it would work really well for this, and I think it did!

The braid with no Chaela attached to it.  It's ALIVE!  Just kidding,
 but it is a little creepy to me even though it isn't real hair.

The whole effect!  And Joci with an apple!  Wrong fairytale, Joci!

Later in the day my neighbors swept/raked all of their leaves and let the kids from around the neighborhood jump in it.  They loved it!

Joci kept running up to me and yelling, "Fun, mommy!  Fun!"  That's pretty priceless.  I love my kids, and I love that they can experience everything I've always loved about Fall.

Progress

I will have you people know that I am almost finished with the beginning.  I've spent the last few days going over what I have and bringing it up to what I want it to be.  Tomorrow I should be writing the last chapter of the beginning.  Then it's on to the middle.

Also, thanks to the email of one certain person in my writing group (you know who you are!) I've done a Stupid Thing.  I have signed up for NaNoWriMo.

"But why is it stupid, Caitlyn?" you, the reader, asks, "You can use that as encouragement to finish this current manuscript!"

Ha ha, you silly person.  Those NaNo people are smart.  They make it into a competition.  I will be competing with myself.  You see, you can "win" NaNo.  Yes!  Winning!  I love to win!  BUT you have to follow the rules, and one of the rules is that you're not allowed to use anything you've already written.  Oh, you can outline and whatnot, but no prose.

"Winners" get cool internet badges that they can put in their profiles.  I want to be a winner!  I could try to finish what I'm working on now before NaNo.  Or I could go along at my current pace while outlining something new for NaNo and just write that while giving my current story a break for a month.

We'll see.  I'd really like the distinction of having completed NaNoWriMo.

Or maybe I'll spend November sewing instead.  I never know what I'm going to do.  Oh, yeah!  UN-PRE-DICTABLE!  (That was for you, Lindsay.)

Probably I shouldn't blog while drowsy.

Halloween Costumes 2012

I'm so happy to be able to say that I am almost finished with the Halloween costumes for 2012.  Whew.  For fun, here's the list:

Tangled Rapunzel - Bodice, skirt, underskirt, hair.  Almost complete; I have to finish cutting the yarn for the hair and do a trial run to see if my idea will work.

Flynn Rider - Vest, pants, boot covers, two belts, small pouch.  Almost complete; I have to sew some belt loops on the vest and both belts need buckles.

Pascal the chameleon - head, body.  Complete, even though Kairi hasn't tried it on yet.

Brave Merida Formal Dress - Dress, shift, wimple, circlet, quiver, and "fletching" for store-bought "arrows."  Complete.

Pirate Princess - Skirt, bodice, sash.  Complete.

Legend of Zelda Link - Tunic, hat, sheath, two belts.  Complete.

Hobbit - I helped my sister make a vest, pants, and cloak for her son's hobbit costume, but she did most of the sewing.

I'd really love to post pictures of all of these with the kids in them, so hopefully around Halloween I'll be able to do that.  I still want to throw together a few fleece cloaks, too, if I can figure out where the pattern got to.

Also, I think I've decided that I'm up for making custom costumes for people if they'd like them, so feel free to ask.  If any of you guys ever need one (or any custom sewing) send me an email or facebook me and I'll give you an estimate for whatever project you'd like done.  If you're thinking of a Halloween costume, ask me by the end of August.  

After this I think I'll stick to writing for a while!

Merida Formal Dress Part 5: Complete for real. Also, Flynn Rider Vest

Breakthroughs

So there was this picture of the Hulk punching through a wall I was going to use, but people are getting all crazy about copyright and whatnot lately, so I decided against.  Imagine it here.


As my mom pointed out to me the other day, my word count ticker has made zero progress lately.  Thanks in part to that one sentence (it doesn't take too much to motivate me, I guess) I have sort of buckled down the past few days and started working on this project.  Why is my word count ticker not moving, you ask?

It had to do with that wall.  I realized that my head was not the best thing to hit it with, so instead of going straight at it and writing from nothing, I went back and did some brainstorming.  Brainstorms are great.  In fact, there isn't anything better for knocking down nasty blank walls.

I got stuck when someone had to go somewhere, because I couldn't visualize it.  So I spent a day (yes, multiple hours) drawing a map.  Why did it take me so long?  Because I'm crazy and wanted it to be believable, so I built that thing from the tectonic plates up.  Not kidding.  I stared at some maps of real tectonic plates.  Then some maps of rivers.  Then I had to figure out the scale and what kind of population was believable.

Yeah.  Research.

Also, I am an idea thief.  Today I was watching Tangled with the girls, and there was one scene where I thought, "How would the movie have gone if this one certain scene had ended a different way?  Too bad I can't write that because I can't use these characters... wait!  That thing that I was thinking totally fits my characters!"  It was a lightbulb moment.  My story now has a place to go.  Tangled isn't the only thing I've stolen ideas from and tweaked, either, I admit.  But I hope I've done a good enough job of making these things my own that you won't see how unoriginal I really am.

And I found something cool that has been so great for generating ideas that maybe other writers may want to try it.  It's simple: make a list of your characters and their goals.  It gives you a really clear view of where you can build conflict, which is helpful to me because I'm bad at plots.  It also helped me to better know my characters.  This plus my stolen and twisted ideas have totally busted through my first wall.  Hopefully now that I've laid some more groundwork you'll see my word count going up soon!

My wall-breaking tools: research, idea thievery, and lists.

Now I am hungry and full of ideas, so I'm going to eat and write.

Merida Formal Dress Part 4: Complete?

Well, it could be that I'm finished, but I'm considering adding a little quiver and gluing some feathers to those arrows if I have the time.

Kairi's Blessing

Thank you to everyone who made it! We wish all of our friends and family could have been there!