Saturday, February 21, 2015

Rambling: Weekend!

Bwa! Ha! Ha! Weekend!

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival season is starting. We just went to the first preview of Much Ado, and it was fabulous. Just, well, fabulous. In all sorts of ways. And it solved The Problem Of Hero. I might explain what I my by that later in the season, but right now it feels like explaining would be a spoiler. But you want to see it. Really you do. It blows the Branagh/Thompson movie version, among others, out of the water.

Tomorrow is Fingersmith. Sunday is Guys and Dolls. By the end of the weekend my brain will be full of new images and characters.

I'll also be dealing with creative jealousy, which really isn't a healthy reaction to witnessing world-class creativity.You'd think that it would inspire me, rather than making me look at my own creations and say "blergh." I'll work on that.

Right now, my creations don't have a lot of creative. I'm still working on getting The Farm ready for next year--covering a lot of square footage with weed barrier, in anticipation of a low-maintenance mostly-food garden with most things planted at a very wide dry farm spacing. Like beans eighteen inches apart in all directions rather than three inches apart in the row.

I'm also planning some fairly prosaic, rather than creative, sewing. Slips and tap pantsesque things from Bemberg rayon. Skirts to replace jeans--two in denim, two in two different types of chambray-like fabric. Pajama pants in cotton voile in gaudy patterns. For those, I already have the fitted patterns; I'm ready to just cut and go.

My next sewing priority is to get a  loose summer top pattern fitted to that same cut and go point. We'll see if that happens.

As usual, I should be writing fiction. As usual, I'm not. Characters are wandering around my head in a satisfying manner, but that doesn't really count. In-head movies don't translate into words in any straightforward process. I've said more than once that I don't like writing fiction, I like having written fiction. But I do love having written it. Even the itty bitty blog bits. So I really need to kick myself and write more.

I remember explaining, somewhere sometime, that I have trouble getting past the expectation that I should be able translate from the movie in my head to words, like taking dictation. And it doesn't work that way. I have a movie in my head, I watch it for a while. I write words that are "inspired by" that movie. The words are a sort of black and white cartoon pencil sketch. Then I push those words around and rearrange them and buff them. Then I come back later and read the words, and the words make a movie in my head. Which may or may not have any resemblance whatsoever to the original movie they were inspired by.

If I analogize it to sewing, it's a little like imagining a velvet beaded cocktail hat and ending up with a corduroy cardigan. But they're both red. And they have pile. So it's the same thing, see?

Um.

That seems to be all.

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