(As I said before: I'm making a quilt. Quilt will be flogged to raise money for Clarion.)

So as not to drown people in Quilt Updates, I'll post updates here. The goal is to get the main body done over the weekend.  Tidying, embellishments (glass eyeballs, XKCD-style hot-air balloon appliqués &c) come next, then backing and oversewing. 

Update 1: 7PM

Beginning: 

I'm starting with darker colours -- for the simple reason I have more of them.

The first block is sewed. The rest is laid out loose, waiting to be pinned.

 

Update: 2: 7.30 PM

About that pining? Yeah, I'd forgotten how much my machine hates pins and broke a needle. Happily, older Singers (Mine is a 1949 EF model)  are quite happy with modern needles.

Update 3: 9.30 PM

This is still the first block, though I am drawing in more blues than black. Have discovered my pinking sheers are blunt as heck. Have also made a great deal of mess under the billiard table.

(I need to start using the flash)

 

Update 4: 11.30 PM

I love my sewing machine. It makes the crank makes the most satisfying chuth-thunK.

Moving right along. Currently having a word/patch war with shweta_narayan.

Last year, I attended the Clarion Workshop in San Diego. I had a wonderful time and met some truly fantastic and talented people. Going was an amazing experience. 

I would not have been able to attend if it had not been for a scholarship.  It made all the difference.  A year on, I want to do something that might help future students.

And I want to do it Now.*

I did think long and hard about selling some of my plum jam and rhubarb chutney, but glass-jar postage? Not so fun.  Instead of jam,  I'll make a quilt.  And auction/etsy/etc it.

This is my sewing machine and supplies:

                                      

We've got cotton, cotton velvets, sari silks, and denim. Also, for final touch: glass eyes, because 99% of quilts are tragically blind.

My quilts tend to be more robust and, um, chunkier than traditional quilts. 

Starting time: 5.00 pm 

Onward!**

- - - - -

Footnotes

* Now -- because I've got the Motivation. I'll confess an extra, selfish aim: since I'm doing this on LJ, with people are staring at me, I won't be able to slink away and become a Soay sheep farmer in the distant Outer Hebrides. :)

I gave by computer away in December while I dealt with Unspecified Awfulness. The plan rather backfired. Unspecified Awfulness fallout tangled with avoiding the computer, and somehow turned me embarrassingly technophobic.

- - - - -
**Afterthought EDIT: Um, I haven't actually told anyone in San Diego that I'm doing this yet. I should possibly do that soon.

This week, I am trying very very hard to Stop Being a Pumpkin.

Mr Toad disapproves of pumpkins.

It's November now and I am truly BACK ON THE INTERNET*. No more false alarms.

It's time to catch up.

1. An overdue thank you.

Somewhere there is a wonderful person that made my Clarion time possible by donating a scholarship. I don't know who you are yet, but I hope the good people in San Diego will tell me soon so I can write to you personally. Thank you so very much.

2. To my classmates.

You are all so wonderful. I can't get into our board at the moment, so this is me waving frantically while I slide off the shed roof** How are you all? Where are you all?

3. My long-overdue Clarion Blog starts now: (I'll insert link soon)

4. If I owe you an email (and holy wow, I owe a lot), look for it soon. If you don't get one, come here and kick me. Glancing at my inbox, it also looks like some messages I *thought* I'd sent, didn't get where they were headed. It's very late here and it's cold, so email is tomorrow morning's mission.

- - - - - 

_{*With a few hours exception, my internet access has been non-existent since August.  Just when I was about to get one thing fixed, another bloody thing broke.}

_{** Um, the only way to connect to the network at the moment is to climb onto the shed roof and tilt an umbrella at my neighbour's house. Chilly, but the early 5th/Nov fireworks are terrific.}

My computer died in a very dead way and there was much despair. Thankfully, I'd done a backup a few days before, and when Clarionite Shweta passed through London, we wiped the corrupted Windows and installed Ubuntu. I'm a bit not happy about this, for reasons I won't go into, but at least I have a working laptop.  (Thank you Shweta and Nathaniel!

Result: after several failed attempts, I am now back online properly for the first time since Clarion. Which is a blessed relief.   My workshop log is coming in the next few days. It is something like 1,500 words for each week + pictures, but work, unfortunately, comes first, closely followed by email-checking, which I haven't really done since June.

- - -
Moving on:
 
Today, in a few minutes time, this year's IUCN Red List is officially released officially. The embargo actually lifted at 1 pm, so by the time I post this, I'll only be a few seconds early.

Top news: Western Lowland Gorillas have been raised to Critically Endangered.

I hope (and expect) the media to pick up on it.

Now, the Red List has its faults, but it’s decent way of highlighting species for  conservation and research attention. I don't always agree with it, but it's better than nothing.

 It isn't all that easy to qualify for Critically Endangered status. For any category, there are five criteria (A-E) a species could potentially meet, covering factors including as population declines, geographic range and quantitative analysis. If you have a (Criteria A) 80-90% population decline (observed, estimated or inferred) in the longer of 10 years or 3 generations, that doesn't happen by accident— and for many animals with short generation times, it can be hard to do.

And most of the critically endangered species have us to thank. There's a thought for the day.

And now, lunch.

Clarion is over! :-(

One flight later and I am on Long Island, NY.

Things to do next:

Step 1. Rest.

Step 2. Buy new external hard drive and emergency backup all data. Something has gone funky with my poor laptop.

Step 3. Flight #2. Back to London. Return to ZSL.  Do a literature search on my next lot of species and commence classification.

Step 4. BLOG CLARION LIKE CRAZY.





step ??. profit!

Shh! I'm not really updating.

While I am keeping a Clarion log, I'm carefully not posting it for the simple reason that LJ will suck me in and I'll post EVERY HOUR because EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE HERE IS SO SO AWESOME!!

Stay tuned for a massive posting frenzy in the last week of Clarion or so. :)

Well, my transcontinental flight was not as bad as I feared.  Plane change in Chicago went smoothly, I landed in San Diego early, and my baggage was not lost (ripped, but not lost).

Airport-UCSD travel consisted of me pulling a map out of my bag, pointing at the small red circle and saying, "Get me there."

He did.  I am at Clarion. And it is clearly all kinds of awesome.

So was Dr Who's latest episode "The Sound of Drums", but that's a different story.

Now I will shut up and go back to bed.

New York is warm, sultry and I do rather suspect that brain is melting out my ears and evaporating.  It is 11pm (4am) and I am playing the jetlag defeating game "How Late Can I Remain Awake &  Lucid?"

If I start making burbling noises, pleae do not be alarmed.

My cross-Atlantic journey proved boring and uneventful (ie. very pleasant; I do not want things getting exciting at 24,000ft) and I've spent the last two days teak-oiling my parents deck furniture, ripping up ivy, and making a list of everything I accidentally left in London.  (One of the things I discovered that I didn't leave behind was sharp-edged and metal and in my hand luggage . . . and has been for at least three other transatlantic/transpacific flights.  Consider me coloured a pale shade of concerned.)

- - - -

Have acquired copies of Baker's "Gods & Pawns", CJ Cherryh's "Collected Short Fiction" and Bear's "New Amsterdam", none of which I will have time to read before I set off at 7am tomorrow morning. 

Have not acquired "Red Seas Under Red Skies" by Lynch (UK release 21 June). Am mildly peeved. May be good thing, however, as "Lies of Loch Lamora" rocked my socks off to such an extent that I may wear nothing but sandals for the rest of my life. If the sequel is as good, what will I do for footwear?  

- - - -
. . . . right,  time for sleep.

Right, time for Spot-the-laptop to go inside  the pillowcase, inside the computer bag, inside the hand luggage rucksack.  Of course, when I get to security, I will have to excavate everything remotely electronic. . . .


 . . . .

And we're off!

San Diego, according to the BBC.

Day & night temperatures (*C)

Wednesday	32	17
Thursday	33	17
Friday	33	17
Saturday	29	17
Sunday	31	17

17? At night? I am going to melt!

Repack time!

Isn't it good I quite like packing. :)

What you do is take the contents of your wardrobe and dump it on the bed. Then dump half of that on the floor. Push it around a little to make pretty coloured cloth-mountains.

The next step is to scratch your head and wonder about your taste in clothes.  Also, why do you own five black t-shirts and exactly zero shorts or swim suits?  Doesn't matter-- put it all in the bag. 

First rule of packing: To save space, wear bulky things on the plane and your biggest pair of shoes.
Second rule of packing:  if you forget anything, you can probably buy later.
- - - - - - -

Updated:

Dear Customs People,

I am not a tea smuggler. I just happen to have six different types of leaf tea in my bag.

I promise that herbal leaf tea is not anything particularly illicit.   Also, those 3 jars of marmite?  Ignore those. They're not for me, k?

Love,

me

I have not been on the internet properly for some time. I have not answered emails, not returned phone calls and, generally, have been nowhere to be found.

The reason for this is: a work deadline from hell. 8.30-7, seven days a week.

The reason for the deadline: um. . .yeah, about that.

I'm going to Clarion.

This Clarion.

_{I am an idiot}

I finished the WORK THING yesterday afternoon; my first flight leaves in less than twelve hours.

I have the fretting, pacing, omgwhatamidoingohthehumanity! nerves like you wouldn't believe!

Packing starts now. So does the Official Clarion Log.


_{aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh}

So far today I have mis-typed

Roster
Analytical
Robust
Proposal
Train
The
Popcorn
Bumblebee
Distribution
Threatened
Marzipan
Prodigal
Of
Argentina
Binoculars
Russia
Character
Sentence
My name

This is possibly because I have had nothing to eat today besides massive amounts of  sticky pink candy floss and toffee apples and tea.

Yes, today is the 671st annual Pinner Fair and the supermarket is closed.

I popped into a secondhand bookshop over the weekend: a little place that looked small and cramped and miserable . . . and turned out to go back for miles. I picked up:

Flowers of the Field.Rev. CA. Jones (1911) --> pretty flower book!

British Wild Flowers In Their Natural Colours and Forms. Professor Henslow (1910) --> pretty flower book. ('cuz I really need more pretty flower books.)

The Eye of the Heron -- antho, ed. Virginia Kidd (1977) --> anthology by female SF writers, including Ursula Le Guin.

Four For Tomorrow -- antho, Roger Zelazny, (1973) --> four Zelazny shorts.

Merchanter's Luck -- C.J. Cherryh (1982) -- > early Alliance/Union universe novel.


That last one -- Merchanter's Luck -- is the one I'm most thrilled about. I remember reading it when I was 12-ish, loving it, then promptly losing it. Coming back to it after so long is like discovering an old friend. . . a vaguely cliché phrase that happens to be absolutely true.


My complete and irrational love of this little battered paperback is complete and irrational!


I'm only a little way into the 'The Eye of the Heron' anthology. Two word description: weirdly dated. The introduction muses, "Will the year 2000 free women to reclaim the earth and explore space? Or will it bind them more tightly in unending oppression by the unrighteous?"


Half a story in and I already want to slap the sissy, whining, conflicted, pseudo-future protagonist and tell her to stop pretending she's not a doormat when she obviously is.


The Family left not long ago, so I should have time to sample my new book-friends.

I've had a wee bit of a temper tantrum at a computer this week. Not my computer, I hasten to add.  My computer, Spot, is mild mannered and very well behaved.  No, this is a new, gleaming, bright and glorious Dell. . . . which is running Microsoft Vista.

 Yeah. So never upgrading to Vista. Partitioned harddrives, here I come.

I'm afraid I've had such a temper tantrum, that Spot is currently running Linux off a flashdrive.  We may have a few teething problems along the way -- I've only just managed to work out the internet settings and I still find myself completely unable to access all my files on the main harddrive -- but I predict that Linux and I will get along well.
It lets me control my own machine and that is always a bonus.

Also: sooo shiny!

Pretty thing for Today:

Heliotrope Magazine,  Issue 2,

The new issue is out and beautiful and includes poetry by Sonya Taaffe, stunning illustrations by Liz Clarke and stories by Gerard Houarner, Vylar Kaftan and, um. . . me.

loooook! go, now!

Pretty thing for Tomorrow:

After 303 days and a rewrite request, Aeon SF Magazine decided to adopted Brighton Bay, or, to give the story its full title:

Brighton Bay: being an account of sorcery, kidnapping and blackmail conducted by a young lady of quality in the month of October at the Brighton Bay Hotel, 1910

It should be appearing this summer in issue 11.  Many thanks to the various people -- they know who they are -- who critted early drafts!

I am wearing my happy hat.   Which, incidentally, is blue.

A quick post full of glee.

Some times things go rotten.  And some times things miraculously come together right before disaster.

Now, for various reasons, the Family has all arrived from New York/India.

It's been a good day so far.