What I'm Doing Wednesday
Dec. 10th, 2025 12:27 pmA Companion to Women in the Ancient World by Sharon L. James (Editor), Sheila Dillon (Editor). 2012. Triggery as hell in the first third. Took a long time to read.
I started Natasha Pulley's Hymn to Dionysus, but it didn't grab me so it's on pause.
yarning
a) Thanks to some links from Petra, I learned to knit a few rows of garter stitch. And yet...it feels wrong. (I'm probably doing it wrong, though my little swatch looks vaguely like it's supposed to.) I found a video on knitting continental, so the yarn is on the correct side for my brain. But it feels weird. Maybe I'm just built for crochet...?
b) I think I've just about got the Vampire Lestat in gold pants crochet pattern complete. I'm testing it, which is a good thing, bc I found some errors. Meanwhile, I'm teasing the art doll on Tumblr (
c) Next up maaaay be creating a red pants version. In the screen grabs from the trailer, that version doesn't have the necklace or microphone...unless I add them. I'm so impatient for more canon to work from! OR a different canon to bite me and demand yarning into being. OR commissions to make dolls of other people from photos. That's a thing I can do & it would be FUN!
d) Saturday evening some lovely anonymouse bought a Made to Order cat stitch scarf from me, but they didn't tell me what colors to use! I messaged them Sunday morning but didn't hear anything all day & hyperfixated on it, as you do. Then first thing Monday, there was a message with colors! So I spent all day Monday working on it, and then part of Tuesday weaving in all the million ends from the 45 color changes. And ouch my shoulder, but I've missed making these, so all in all, it was fun! AND, most importantly, I revised the listing to make it clear that ANY colors are doable, but you have to choose the colors! :g:
e) This is just me being fond, but yesterday someone bought the black sparkly amineko kitty with gold eyes after YEARS of it sitting on my couch waiting for a home. I'm so happy for it! \o/
healthcrap
Thursday's bone scan went fine, though the results weren't great. I may or may not have lost half an inch of height. I didn't stand up straight when she measured me, so I'm hoping not. OTOH, I haven't been exercising, so maybe so. :shrug: Yesterday was the doc appt for filling out transportation forms. I have doubts that it'll be approved, but we won't know til I send it in.
Yuletide
I keep having feelings about my fic, flipping between unutterably anxious and more or less pleased. The betas really helped, and there are many many editing days left between now and Dec 24, so maybe it'll be okay in the end. Monday night, despite my intention to stick it in a proverbial drawer for a few days, I couldn't get to sleep until after I got up and tinkered with it a little more. I keep changing sentences and hoping I'm improving it instead of breaking it. :crosses fingers and toes:
I hope all of y'all are doing well! <333
What I'm Doing Wednesday
Dec. 3rd, 2025 02:31 pm
I love him so much, y'all. I need to make another one to this scale in the red pants; then maybe I can bear to list one or both of them, once I know I can replicate him. I'm also tempted to make a version in the brown shirt, with a fern to go with, but I fear no one would buy it because it was too much a joke. Ah well. Maybe someone will commission it.
yarning
I've made so many cat toys this week! And a 12 1/2 inch cat kicker based on the National Parks Service official Walleye pattern (I added some rounds to make it bigger), only done in bright orange, like a goldfish. :g: I took only the fish to Thanksgiving to work on, which left me with days of nothing to make after I finished it. Doh!
etsy
yay selling things! I held a Black Friday sale to try to move some merchandise out of my house, and it succeeded fairly well. The discount was deeper than I'd quite prepared for, esp with free shipping, but worth it find some things their forever homes. I also figured out (I hope!) how to do Made To Order listings on etsy, so people can request a kickbunny in the colors of their choice without buying them in the wrong colors & sending me a note asking to switch the colors.
healthcrap
had to cancel the pain clinic procedure for lack of transportation, as expected. Tomorrow is a bone scan. I started drinking coffee again at my parents' place over Thanksgiving and have continued making a small amount every day. I hope it doesn't mess up my sleep?
yuletide
I have a draft! And I learned from the Yuletide Discord that there is such a thing as "unenforceable DNWs," which are things that are unreasonable to ask of your match in your signup/letter...which means that I could have written the story I wanted to write instead of the one that I did. Oh well. Good to know that I could have messsaged the mods with my concerns, even though I didn't. Hopefully the story I did write holds together well enough on its own merits? :crosses fingers:
I hope you're all doing well, wherever in the world you are! <333
Me-and-media update
Dec. 3rd, 2025 03:32 pmIn the Subscriptions poll, 27.1% of respondents have cancelled a subscription for political reasons lately, and a further 6.2% are thinking about it. That is a large proportion! Also, 35.4% agreed with "grar at everything".
In ticky-boxes, hard copy media came second to hugs, 39.6% to 68.8%. Lemurs got 31.2%. Thank you for your votes!!
Reading
Still reading Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy L. Sayers (an engaging shaggy dog story, so far). Nothing really in audio.
Kdramas
A few episodes into Knight Flower and enjoying it very much. The male lead is whatever, but the female lead is 100% delightful.
We finished Typhoon Family. Unfortunately it felt like it got shaggier and more shambolic as it went along, so that was a little unsatisfying. The least good Junho drama of the four I've seen.
Pru and I are making our way through Family by Choice, ahhh I love this show!!
Other TV
It feels like we're watching a ton of currently airing things, but now we've finished Typhoon Family, it's really just Down Cemetery Road (excellent) and Pluribus, which is a metaphor for half a dozen different things (Covid, grief, AI, et al).
We also still have Prehistoric Planet on the go, and last night we watched the first two episodes of the new season of Stranger Things, though I ended up colouring in and just looking up from time to time. Not super in the mood for watching people in peril. (At some point we'll probably watch the whole show right through, so I can always catch up properly then.)
Audio entertainment
Letters from an American, Cross Party Lines, some 99% Invisible. And a bunch of episodes of Shell Game, in season 1 of which, the podcaster makes some AI agents with his voice and deploys them at various people (including at his partner and friends). I thought this might be interesting because, while I've listened to a bunch of stuff about how AI is personally, politically and existentially terrible for our selves, societies and planet, I hadn't heard much about the experience of using it. I expected Shell Game to document the fact that it's just kind of crap. But although an "AI agent" is just a voice simulator reading ChatGPT outputs full of made-up nonsense, the podcaster seems weirdly invested in seeing them as mini-mes. Ot1h, using it to engage with scammers and spammers? Sure, why not? Otoh, sending his AI agent to AI therapy?? And then real therapy with a human therapist?? Very strange choices. I kind of want to shake him and remind him that there is NOTHING IN THERE!! (Maybe he reaches that conclusion in the final episode? I'm not there yet.) In season 2, he creates a start-up that is staffed entirely by himself and a bunch of AI agents. I'm not sure this is for me.
Guardian/Fandom
( Rambling about Guardian. )
Writing/making things
Working on my Yuletide fic. It's slow going, but I'm enjoying it. Need to think of something for the new
Link dump
ChatGPT May Be Eroding Critical Thinking Skills, According to a New MIT Study (Time Magazine, Jun 24, 2025) | New Zealand chant (Reddit). :D :D :D
Good things
The boy, the cat, the house. The public health system (what's left of it). Online and offline friends. All the media, everywhere, all at once. Fandom, Guardian, Yuletide, squee. Starting and finishing this post all in one day.
How vivid is your mind's eye?
IMAX
13 (22.4%)
pretty vivid
12 (20.7%)
I can visualise if I work at it
15 (25.9%)
it's a bit patchy / vague
13 (22.4%)
no mind's eye (isn't that just a metaphor?)
8 (13.8%)
other
2 (3.4%)
ticky-box full of detective fiction
22 (37.9%)
ticky-box full of paper drifts all over my desk
18 (31.0%)
ticky-box of being able to easily name most of the characters from Winnie-the-Pooh
23 (39.7%)
ticky-box full of nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger and cloves
33 (56.9%)
ticky-box full of hugs
39 (67.2%)
My fandom tree is live!
Dec. 3rd, 2025 11:39 am- Guardian (TV) - many and various pairings and characters
- Guardian (novel) - Shen San/Shen Wei & Da Qing, Shen Wan/Shen Wei & a previous incarnation of Guo Changcheng/the wick
- 김과장 | Good Manager - Kim Sung-ryong/Seo Yul, team (especially Choo Nam-ho and Yoon Ha-kyung)
- 당신이 잠든 사이에 | While You Were Sleeping - Han Woo Tak/Jung Jae Chan/Nam Hong Joo
- 내 손끝에 너의 온도가 닿을 때 | The Time of Fever - Go Hotae/Kim Donghee
- 기름진 멜로 | Wok of Love - Dan Sae-woo/Doo Chil-seong/Seo Poong
- 왕은 사랑한다 | The King in Love - Eun San/Wang Rin/Wang Won
- Desperately Seeking Susan - any combination of Roberta, Susan, Dez, and Jim
- Bluey (TV) - Bingo (art only, incl. crossovers with Guardian)
(As may be obvious, my romanisation of Korean names is wildly inconsistent. I have hyphenations, no hyphenations, smooshing, u = oo, or eo = u. Idk! I mostly get names from asianwiki.com and AO3, but where relevant, I tend to change the second part of a hyphenated name to lower case, for aesthetics.)
(As may also be obvious, I got rather carried away. Hi! :D)
(As may also also be obvious, my preferred solution to love triangles where they all care about each other is SMOOSHING. :D)
Me-and-media update
Nov. 29th, 2025 02:25 pmIn the Making friends with chatbots poll, 66.1% of respondents hadn't used AI in the last seven days, as far as they were aware, and 8.9% had used it for work. A quarter of respondents had used it against their will. Once again, I'm left wondering how representative Dreamwidth denizens are. My people!
In ticky-boxes, alpine octopuses practising their yodelling came a distant second to hugs, 41.1% to 67.9%. Thank you for your votes!!
Reading
( Read more... )
Kdramas
( Read more... )
Other TV
( Read more... )
Audio entertainment
Tons of Tech Won't Save Us, which is really good. Argh, everything. /o\ Most of the available episodes of new Aotearoa NZ political podcast Cross Party Lines (in the vein of and inspired by The Rest is Politics), which is really good -- intelligent and informed, of course, and I appreciate that the right-wing representative has zero time for our current government. Writing Excuses. Letters from an American. One episode of Fansplaining. A couple of episodes of The Life Indigenous, and the start of an episode of The Tongue Unbroken: Language Revitalization & Decolonization.
Online life
Constantly running to keep up, partly because I haven't been around as much. | I need to not compare my Yuletide productivity with last year's -- finishing my assignment is enough! Anything else is jam. | The
Writing/making things
A few bits and pieces inspired by the Slo-Mo Rewatch, a few flashfics. It's time to roll up my sleeves and dig into my Yuletide fic: so far I have 360 words and a scene list. I'm in a reasonably good writing headspace, so I expect it to be fun
Life/health/mental state things
( Read more... )
Link dump
Ryan Coogler gives a speech at Chadwick Boseman's posthumous Hollywood Walk of Fame star ceremony (via
Good things
Meerkats and kangas and lemurs, oh my! Sunshine. TV. Dumplings. Biking. Yuletide and Guardian. Dreamwidth. Haircuts (I had 8 months' worth cut off, and when I stood up, there was a MOUNTAIN of clippings on the floor). Coloured pencils. Podcasts. Libraries.
Have you cancelled any subscriptions for political reasons, lately?
yes
13 (26.5%)
no, but I'm going to
0 (0.0%)
no, but I'm thinking about it
3 (6.1%)
no (too hard, don't have any, or other no)
26 (53.1%)
other
2 (4.1%)
grar at everything
17 (34.7%)
ticky-box full of hard copy media
19 (38.8%)
ticky-box full of instant gratification takes too long (Carrie Fisher)
18 (36.7%)
ticky-box full of lemurs locked together like lego pieces
15 (30.6%)
ticky-box full of the dishes are done!
14 (28.6%)
ticky-box full of fairies "helpfully" filling all your cups and mugs with snowdew and honeyflakes
15 (30.6%)
ticky-box full of hugs
33 (67.3%)