So, I was recently reading this very excellent post/lecture/essay by Brandon Sanderson about the innovations Tolkien made creating the genre of High Fantasy, when, near the end, he mentions an interaction he had once with the mother of one of his fans. Just after he had signed the daughter’s book, the mother stopped and asked him something like, ‘Not to be rude, but how do I get her to stop reading all of this fantasy drivel?’. Sanderson then goes on…
Well here is another cross-stitch I recently completed. It’s Lilly of the Woods, by Mirabilia Designs (whose designs I am indeed a bit obsessed with). First, here are a couple ‘glamour’ shots, and then after those I’ll show the sequence of how I stitched this. Here’s some of the stitching-in-progress (amongst my cluttered work area(s)): Also, sometimes the stark contrast of different colors trapped in the hoop just looks kind of nifty: And some close-ups of more-finished sweetness, with and…
Or, really, the title of this post should probably be ‘Stop Expecting to be Creative When You’re Sick, Anna’. I’ve been sick for the past two weeks. I think I’m starting to get better, or at least I can now sometimes go a half-hour at a stretch without coughing, versus the two-minute stretches that were the best I was managing half-a-week ago. Huzza for progress! So, mostly for the past two weeks I’ve been working a little bit, sleeping a…
Sometimes my daughters get very exasperated when I forget something they’ve told me, like whether they talked to their teacher about turning that homework assignment in late, or that they have a planned social engagement this week, or that they already took the test on The Great Gatsby and don’t need to think about it anymore. I try to tell them that it is hard to remember everything everybody is up to, and that furthermore, being older, my memory banks…
I have a lot of aspirations to have, not exactly a fancy house, but a nice house, one that matches my own sense of aesthetics and personal preferences. But, as anyone who has a house but does not have a personal decorator and the budget to match knows, getting there is a lot of work and time and effort. Since I’ve got lots of other things I also want or need to spend my work and time and effort on,…
Once again, I’d like to explore a little more of the idea that encountering an example of bad writing by someone else can actually provide an excellent opportunity to improve your own writing. (My previous discussion about this is here.) As a writer, it’s always important to read plenty, both for enjoyment (of course!) and to have a lot of examples to draw from of what sort of writing is to your taste. But when you come across something that…
I promise this is a post about writing, but first I have to start here: In the martial arts in general, and more particularly in the martial art that I practice, TaeKwonDo (TKD), there are a lot of principles students are required to learn about and encouraged to follow. Some of these are like the student oath (e.g., ‘I shall never misuse TaeKwonDo’) or the tenets (e.g., Integrity). Others are frameworks for learning and conceptualizing the core values and lessons…
Hello. Hello. It looks like it is time for another round of Quirky (True) Stories, where I regale you with a small selection of random (but true!) stories, apropos of basically nothing. Like the last round of stories, this round has a theme, which is: Random, wild-animal stuff that has happened in my back yard. That sounds vaguely exciting, but you will have to decide for yourself whether these stories live up to the hype. I will warn you ahead…
Alright, for this post, I really want to tell you about this awesome Netflix show called The Big Flower Fight. But first, I also need to tell you about how much I love the fairytale “Rapunzel”. It’s possible that this will turn mostly into a post about fairytales (in their moving-picture incarnations), but I’m hopeful I’ll be able to stay on track enough to also tell you about The Big Flower Fight. Stay tuned. So, “Rapunzel.” Classic, famous fairytale. It’s…
Hello! and happy 2026! I have just had a nice, long Christmas vacation, and it is amazing how nice everything seems when one is rested. Last year about this time I did a 20 Questions post, made up as a new style of post for me because my brain was just about the consistency of luke-warm soup and I was out of oomph for writing entertaining words. Now, a year later, I think I am slowly starting to recover my…