bismuth209

fannish thought: I'm excited for the new Doctor Who season

what i'm creating: I started playing Fox Curio's Floating Bookshop today, a solo journaling rpg. If you don't know what that is, it's kiiinda like games like dnd, but you play a character alone, and write down what they go through and do based on prompts, cards pulled and dice rolled. It's kinda guided writing. In this one I'm playing a young capybara called Rye who is about to embark on a river with a floating bookshop to sell books and hopefully, discover more about themself. The world of this game is the most elaborate I've seen so far in this type of game, and I'm so excited to discover it and fill in the gaps.
I think my story will have themes related to family, but I'm not quite yet at the playing stage. I'm considering sharing my playing/writing here, let you all join in on the story of Rye. Would that be something people are interested in? please tell me !

i accomplished this! i had fun hanging out with a friend today :)

something i want: to continue playing the floating bookshop game :) but i want to print something to do that and my dad's asleep in the room that has our printer (to be fair, that is his bedroom)

and now, the weather: and heave the capstan round, pitch that flaming anchor up for we are outward bound, we're all from the railroad to [unintelligible] and the old bloke's picking on the banjo

the actual weather: SO sunny!! LOVELY weather

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Location: a bookshop on a river
Current Music: old bloke picking on a banjo - longest johns

fannish thought: I have been watching the 1995 Pride and Prejudice, and I love it. The narrative has more room to breathe due to the increased runtime, compared to the 2005, and I do feel it's good. The casting isn't ideal to me on all fronts, but I do love that a lot of people in it just, look like regular people you'd see on the street, and less so a vogue cover.

what i'm creating: I am trying to write poetry to perhaps submit to a literary journal or several. I'm looking at a couple, I selected them based on words like "emerging artists" and "creative forms" in the blurbs on this website, which lists many literary magazines and some info about them. I avoided all that said things about "highly skilled" and "awareness of the current literary canon" or some such, as I've scarcely written poetry before, however, sometimes I do, and I do like to think it's rather good, and I could. I do have to write new poetry for it though, as all my poetry thus far has been posted to my socials already, and literary magazines do prefer to publish things first.

i accomplished this! last week I did two exams, and while I suspect to get below the usual passing grade for both, I WENT and I got good enough grades prior in the year that my graduation this year is all but guaranteed, and I will likely redo one of them (the other is unredoable, and I am not likely to do better 2 weeks from now. the one I'm thinking of redoing, there's much to gain.)

something i want: I think I want to lie down a little, and read some fic, after I finish writing this entry

and now, the weather: we stand alone with the bones of our father's breath / wretching our souls with the stories of life and death / come pass away on the sinews of our strings / but watch your weary eyes and wipe away those tears

the actual weather: It was SO windy today, I had to hold on to my hat, quite literally.

Current Mood: loved
Current Music: we stand alone - pigpen theatre

I've been learning double knitting!
And instead of the normal thing of doing a couple patterns made by others and then maybe learning how to make my own, I first made a small little test to learn the technique of double knitting.

a picture of my first foray into double knitting

a sort of squished diamond shape in muted pink on a muted purple background

a sort of squished diamond shape in muted purple on a muted pink background

You can see that I was still struggling a bit with the tension. The first tutorial I watched, the one by NibleNeedles, wanted me to use a selvedge (edge stitch), that just Does Not work for me. Knitting through the back loop is VERY difficult when knitting Portuguese style.

And then I made a chart of some fish. I initially wasn't going to do those lines trailing behind the top fish, but then i accidentally made 1.5 stitches the wrong colour. Yes, 1.5, or 3, because I accidentally made 2 stitches on the yellow background side blue, when that wasn't planned, and only 1 stitch on the blue side was yellow.

some doubleknit fishies

a picture of knit fishes, blue background and yellow fish

a picture of knit fishes, yellow background and blue fish

I then figured out how to do it on purpose (and made the random stitches look a bit more purposeful with some other lines trailing behind the fish. nobody will notice)
I first learnt that it could be done on purpose from this pattern. I however have zero attachment to Star Wars, and I don't know who I'd gift it too. So. I made my own pattern. After some figuring out*, I first knit this.

picture of a very simple irregular double knitting pattern and project

knit: a sage green diamond shape on a purple background

knit: a sage green background with a purple square and two purple vertical lines

And that brings us to the present, I'm currently knitting a caterpillar and a butterfly!

the charts

the chart used to create the caterpillar and butterfly, containing light grey, magenta, blue and yellow

and the knitting

knit: a caterpillar in off-white on a mixed green background

a butterfly in mixed green on an off-white background

The way it works (which is the same as the simpler irregular double knitting chart) is that I made the pictures for both, and then placed them over each other, using the "difference" blending mode, which made every point where the yellow and blue overlapped, magenta-ish. And now, the magenta and the light grey mean that it's business as usual, every pixel is 2 stitches, and to get green on the front side and white on the backside, I need to knit the first stitch with green, and then the second of the pair with white, and if I'm working on the side where green is the foreground, that means I just did a "magenta" on the chart. And if I need a "yellow" on the chart, so where I just have a caterpillar, I just do 2 white, because that's the background on the butterfly's side.

I'm already swimming with ideas for the next one(s). I want to do more things with matching images, such as the caterpillar that turns into the butterfly, or perhaps things with dualities. So far I've got!

pen / sword

seed / plant

seedling (tiny plant) / tree

dinosaur / meteor

cat (laying /sitting)

light bulb / sun

match / fire

sun / moon

ice (snowflake) / fire

lock / key

ouroboros / something to symbolise broken cycles

very inconspicuous treasure chest / mimic (from DnD)

something with inside / outside
And I want more ideas! I would love people's suggestions! Especially I want to do some fannish things, particularly with Doctor Who if possible. And I like symbolism of transformation and duality and stuff. And If anyone has concrete suggestions for that last one!

*I sent messages like

"thinking out loud now, on side C i want colour X to be the background, and colour Y to be foreground
so where there's pink and yellow i want Y on side C. and where there's blue and grey i want X "
"on side B i want colour Y to be the background, and colour X to be foreground
so on side B, blue and pink are foreground and therefore X, and yellow and grey are background and therefore Y"
"X-X
X-Y
Y-Y
Y-X"

By the way, the reason all the images are behind a cut is because they're mostly rather large images, and if you don't want to load them you don't have to this way. I think.

Current Mood: ambitious
Current Location: comfy in bed
Current Music: Gower Wassail - The Oh Hellos

Decided to come back here after the initial fixation fizzled out. Had a bit where i felt it'd be useless to return after not being here for a while, but that's of course silly. Gonna use this format i thought up last time to get back into it :z)

fannish thought: I am LOVING the new companion in Doctor Who. I can't believe I need to wait until may to see her again. She has a lot of vibes similar to Clara, who definitely used to be my favourite companion.

what i'm creating: I started crocheting a new shawl! A lot of crochet shawls are triangles that have you start at the middle of a long base. I have seen a couple patterns that were like, instead of a 180° angle they had a larger angle at that point. And i liked this, but i didn't like any of the specific patterns of this concept i saw. I also realised that if I wasn't making something VERY lacy, i'd need more yarn to get to a good sized shawl. I have 1 finished crochet shawl.

picture of the crochet shawl

a crocheted rainbow shawl draped over a grey square

This was done with an 800m long cake yarn, and i like the size of it and i loved doing the pattern (it's the fragrant shawl on ravelry, free). Right after I made this shawl in, I think early 2022, I was excited to do more and I decided to buy more yarn cakes, and I even started a shawl with a 1000m cake. Two days ago I frogged the 230m I had crocheted (took like half an hour). I decided to finally make one of those shawls with a reflex angle (an angle between 180 and 360 degrees), and it'd be best to do it with the 1000m cake, because this will take more yarn. I'm using the same pattern as my first shawl, but altered. If anyone is curious about how I did that, feel free to leave a comment.

it looks like this now

i accomplished this! I did some homework! made flashcards. Colourcoded per topic :)

something i want: I want to do all of my hobbies at once

and now, the weather: ...clawing at the air / now it's curtains for me / and i'll spend eternity / doing joyless cartwheels. in the void

the actual weather: rather windy!

Current Location: the sofa
Current Music: They Might Be Giants - End of the Rope

fannish thought: I should write a fake dating fic. Technically i am already writing one, but it's been with me for 4 years without being finished, and i should write another one. a quicker one. i also love fake dating but to the left from usual. For example, if A and B are fake dating, but B and C are endgame, and maybe even A and C being very close friends (but A has elected to not tell C that the dating is fake), and then C feels massively guilty for being into their best friend's new partner (and may also think that B is hetero- or homosexual when they're not (A and C being different genders), adding to the drama). I read a fic like that once and i want to read more.

what i'm creating: i was writing the answer to the above question, and i realised, it's past 23:00 and i haven't written ANY words for my nano fic yet. So that's what i spent about 20 minutes doing. Not long enough, in a way, i am in the red now in terms of on-scheduleness. Wrote 39 words, also watched a routine by Adam Rippon and listened to some music he skated to separately, for a line about figure skating music and of course Adam Rippon. That was mostly unnecessary. But not entirely!

i accomplished this! ( Read more... )

something i want: to figure out how i'll use capitalisation on dreamwidth. excuse the figuring it out phase!

and now, the weather: 'Cause it's who we are / doesn't matter if we've gone too far / doesn't matter if it's not okay / doesn't matter if it's not our day / stay strong / what we are / don't look back and it's all uphill from here.

the actual weather: somehow quite sunny! it's been a while since we saw the sun <-- what i wrote when i started writing this in the afternoon, the weather got overcast by the time i was going home, and the sun is currently being blocked by the earth on account of the aforementioned near-midnight

my most recent image
a picture of the sky with some trees, some trees without leaves, some with orange-turning leaves

a picture of the sky with some trees, some trees without leaves, some with orange-turning leaves

Current Mood: a bit sleepy
Current Location: my bed
Current Music: Who We Are by Imagine Dragons as it exists in my head

In the interest of having an easy time with posting, i've made a little format to help me know what to post and such. Feel free to use this format or a modified form! feel free to ask for clarification on any of the categories! feel free to comment anything at all!!

fannish thought: i think a nice fic could be made using the changing of seasons as a motif or symbol. Something about change, about decay necessary for growth.

what i'm creating: Some fingerless gloves! Made the first one in about a day, and of course am more than a day into the second one and maybe an 8th of the way through. That's how it goes

i accomplished this! I received my grades from my most recent exam week this week, an 8.2 and a 7. The 8.2 for a subject called maatschappijwetenschappen , which i think is sort of a social sciences sort of thing in english. The grades are 1-10, and 5.5 is passing, 6 is alright, 7 is pretty good, 8 is definitely good, 9 is woah (adding because cultural contexts with regards to grades is sometimes very diffrent. i've spoken to americans who are unhappy with a 70% score, that's basically failing to them at their school, which is very different here).
My 7 was for Dutch, and i'm actually happier with it than i am with my 8.2, because it was spelling and grammar , i have dyslexia and i was very worried i would not get the 70% correct needed for a passing grade. I got way more!!

something i want: I want to make my dnd folder all nice. I got some new stuff for it recently and i really want to make it all nice and updated and good. But that involves wrestling the printer among other things, and that is... difficult.

and now, the weather: autumn's here, and what was green is gold and withered / autumn's here, the summer's at an end / i thought somehow it didn't last forever / i thought i held forever in my hand

the actual weather: rainy!

my most recent image:
a screenshot of the section on dreamwidth where you can add your other socials, with ravelry marked in yellow

a screenshot of the section on dreamwidth where you can add your other socials, with ravelry marked in yellow

this image i saved to show to other yarn crafters to convince them to get on dreamwidth

Current Mood: a little tired, mostly good
Current Location: my bed
Current Music: Harbstlid - Daniel Kahn

my first dreamwidth post! i'm unsure how i'll use dreamwidth, but i'm excited to figure it out. I think i'll probably largely post my art here.

When it comes to art i'm currently crocheting and writing.

Writing-wise i'm doing what i've dubbed "decinano" or "decimal nanowrimo", i'm trying to write 5k in a month instead of 50k. trust me, 5k is a lot for me.
I'm writing a kaleidotrope fic, specifically an epistolary fic. The format is a bit new for me but it feels very natural. And not having to worry about how punctuation works for dialogue is always a relief.

As for crochet, i'm currently making some fingerless gloves. I'm wearing the first as i'm typing, but the second still needs making. My right hand is noticeably warmer than my left.

I'll make a proper post on both of those later probably. For now, I leave you with some pictures of my new dice. if i can figure out how to embed them

A grey die with rainbow glitter, the die has 12 sides and the 5 is facing up