Litha, Books and Stuff

Blessed Litha to all of you who celebrate it, and for those who don't, I hope you are having a lovely Wednesday. It's night already and I haven't celebrated my patron gods yet, nor have I done any ritual for Litha, but I plan to. As usual, it will be a simple thing, lighting candles and some incense, and meditating a bit. Just today in the morning, I thought how curious it was that, when I didn't have my own place, I used to set these makeshift altars, with loads of candles, on the floor, and do my rituals. The spread was quite large, took time to set and time to pick it up, and it had happened that a ritual took me up to four hours of just me talking to my gods. Now I have my own place, I don't have to take down my altar and now my spread is much smaller, much simpler, it's permanent and doesn't change much throughout the year, and my rituals are done in less than 15 minutes. I find that curious.

I've been lagging in my spiritual practice lately, and maybe that's due to the fact that one of my morning routines is to do a localized cleaning in my home, and somehow it feels that I can't possibly add any more things to my morning. Not like moving my daily ritual to the night wouldn't work, BUT my energy tends to be different at that moment. We shall see about that.

Property of Stormberry.

For this year, I've already bought my birthday books, and I've very pleased with them. Maybe "The Paris Apartment" may not be as good, but it still caught my attention. And I just realized all the books I've got have been written by women, and except by The Paris Apartment (maybe), all the books I selected revolve around women, with Olimpia, Fedra and The Lions of Fifth Avenue (Los Secretos de la Biblioteca de la Quinta Avenida) being of a more feminist cut. Also, all books save for The Paris Apartment are in Spanish. Normally I prefer to buy books in their original language, when I can read the original language, but oh well, in the end the important thing is the story, and not the language or the edition.

Currently I'm reading a novel by Jaume Cabré in Hungarian. I believe it was originally written in Catalan, but many things I find them in Spanish or similar to Spanish, and that does tend to irk me a tad. It's like when I was reading a Scandinavian noir novel in French and though I don't speak Icelandic, the interspersed Icelandic names and words with the French felt odd. I wonder if other people is sensible to the language the same way I am.

On book topics, recently I've come to a decision I've been pondering for a while: I'll stop supporting a friend's Patreon account. I have this booktuber friend who got a Patreon account where they offer bookclubs and different activities, exclusive content and so on, and I've been supporting them for years now. They are really creative and give so much that I often thought they were overcompensating, giving far more than what they charge. From the start I've got into the higher tier of the account. Also, though we knew each other from before, in passing and as part of the Costa Rican booktube community, I believe we didn't became really friends until after I joined the Patreon group.

From the start I wasn't participating in all the joint readings and bookclubs they held, but went to the meetings, watched all the videos and so on. It was nice and it was worth it. 

However, for a while now I have really been disconnected from the booktube world, I'm not watching their videos, not joining their reading session and haven't read a book with them in over a year. I hardly even go to the meetings, and when I do, it feels kind of pointless because I haven't read the book, nor am I interested in reading the book. Yes, the people in the meetings are friendly, and some of them tend to talk incesantly about other topics, which make the meting more inclusive, but that's not the point of these meetings. I kept paying my membership because I felt sort of like I "had" to support my friend, that I could affort to help them out, even though I wasn't profiting from it at all. I even ignore their chat, and just get into the chat to get the notification bubble disappearing. I don't read the messages nor am I interested in them.

I was in this point, not really thinking about what to do, just ignoring the whole thing, and sometimes checking something... at 1.75x speed. Then recently they posted a video that was quite... strange. It sounded defensive and bigoted, covertly attacking people who have different reading habits than theirs. Funny thing? Pretty much all the things they mentioned as "reading mistakes" are how I read. And this was what finally did it for me. This was the message, the signal I wanted, the one that said: this has stopped being for you.

The video shocked me, not only because it does felt personal, but because I'm not the only person who reads like that, and so it may get a bad reaction from their audience. It was surely a big flop, even though they clearly stated that "this was just their subjective opinion". (Except that, by the way it was worded it sounded like "it is my opinion, but people who do this are totally wrong". It wasn't an opinion, it was a series of judgemental statements, even though that wasn't probably the intent behind it.) After I decided to unsubscribe from the account, I started thinking about how to let her know, because I don't want to just disappear. I do believe that we are friends (maybe). And so I've been thinking about that. I just don't want to waste money on soemthing I'm not using, and there is not point in hanging in there when the Universe is showing me that our literary interests have grown apart. So, why bother?

I hate conflict, so I'm preparing, and I gave myself until Friday to broach the subject with them, and end my membership next month.

Property of Stormberry

Today, I have also been crafty. It wasn't planned, though I do have thought for a while about making a box of sorts to house my recipe cards. I always take recipe cards from my favorite market, because these often give me interesting ideas for cooking, baking or for fixing an interesting drink. I haven't tried them all, but I never fail to collect them. I rather have duplicates than miss a recipe. As result I have a bunch of them. I used to have them between the covers of one of my cooking books, but the book was already falling apart, so I took them out.

This year, as I was thinking about how to house the cards, I decided to classify them depending on the type of recipe, and then ordered them in a "lattice like" way to keep the cathegories separated, and held the whole bunch with elastic bands. Well, that wasn't very comfortable, but since I don't check them often, it was ok.

Today I thought about baking bread - Brötchen or Semmeln actually - and I was going to get my recipe when I looked at my cards and decided to fashion up a simple cardboard box out of a leftover cardboard piece from a calendar. You know, the type of cardboard used to stiffen the packaged calendars. And so with a piece of cardboard, glue, a ruler, scissors and a cutter, I made it. I also fashioned dividers for each section with colored flashcards, post-it notes, scotch tape and a fountain pen. The box turned out to be a little more snug than I expected, fitting the cards exactly, and not with the 2 mm marging I had planned on giving it. I would actually like to make the box in wood, and carve it with a pyrograph, but that's a project for the future.

Late Post

It's 21:54 and I'm tired. This has been a very productive day, having made several lanwyarns and earrings, most of which are all for others, not for me. Wonder if I'll be able to actually make some money out of them, such as my friend Roo suggests. Well, all I can do at this point is try, right? Many coworkers have already expressed interest for them, so why not give it a shot?

But giving it a shot isn't an easy as the business of beads is a tricky one. I've made myself a new lawnyarn  with little green stars. I wanted to make more, but I didn't have enough stars either in green or any other color. So I went to the bead store and there were no more stars. Actually there were no beads from any kind I used to buy a year ago. They were all new beads. So this time I grabbed a couple of beads (a coworker said she would like butterflies, so I grabbed a couple of three different types) and made some "samples" so if anyone is interested they can pick the type of bead and maybe have them in a different color. We shall see then how it goes on Monday, see if I can sell some or at least get a couple of orders. :-) Then I'll make some more and give those I haven't sold to my friend Lau, so she can wear them and "market" them among her coworkers. I can't really market them myself, for I'm using lawnyarns made out of beads you can no longer get, or beads you wouldn't get in here for I brought them from Hungary or Roo sends me from the States. Oh, the purple butterflies will be shipped to Roo for she loves purple and butterflies and wants me to make her one of these lawnyarns.

Other than that, today I posted a letter to a dear friend (hello Arjen!), as well as the Franklin Covey inserts I offered in y previous post. I also got myself three sleeping gowns. I've one, silky, in Budapest, but other than that I haven't had a sleeping gown in ages. I normally sleep in pyjamas or an old T-shirt and some comfy track suit bottoms. These are long t-shirt type with funny inscriptions. One says "espresso yourself" and the other says "grumpy but gorgeous". Well, both fit me to perfection ^_^, specially the grumpy part. Just ask my boyfriend ^_^ I'm the worse morning person in the world. I bet I'm even murder-capable in the morning.

Then, I also got myself - finally! - a printer, exactly like the one we've in Budapest, except on American code, or Latin American code, I'm not sure, it has TX instead of SX, and stocked up with coloured glue and coloured pilots for the scrapbooking/artbox supply. With nephews like the ones I have, art supplies are consuption goods, they are finished like milk glasses.

However, by 10 pm I'm dead meat, so I'll blog, try a printing and hit the bed.

See you tomorrow!

Arts, Crafts and Wonderful Nephews

Weekend at last! I already missed one of the programs I had planned - a yoga class held outdoors - and the second program of the day also seems to be falling through the cracks. I won't be taking my nephews to my favorite library for some children activities they had prepared. But no biggie as I've been relaxing, and getting the supplies I need for a little project of mine. Shhh! Those are still top secret. You will know when the time is right, and it they come through well.

It things come out right, I'm planning a crafty weekend for myself, with a good dose of fun. I've added a few crafty things to my list of 13 - things I've done in the past and weren't half bad at it - so I want to see how they go now. Maybe I've got bold and confident about my dormant skills after my "smashing success" with crocheting my cloche hat. (Yeah, I haven't added a picture of it finished, right?) As result, I've felt emboldened to try out my hand at some of my old hobbies. One of them is drawing. Yeah, I'm a complete disaster now, but I intend to keep giving it a try, see if I can get at least to the level I used to have, and then maybe try my hand at painting. You worry not. If my paintings are not good, then I won't make our apartment in Budapest ugly with hanging them on the wall. I'm consistent in that: the amateurish crap of others won't disgrace my walls, but neither will my own attempts unless they get to be good.

My inspiration for this renewal of the crafty hobbies comes basically from my eldest nephew. Sharing time with him playing with my scrapbooking supplies, trying to find new artistic uses for different things (he has a thing for corks, so he has been collecting them from the discarded wine bottles we keep in the shed), and then playing with things he normally don't have access to, such as stamps. My rubber stamps are all in Hungary, but there are some foam stamps I kept here, which he has discovered and he loves. I showed him once how to put different color inks on a stamp to get a colorful picture, and since then he has been enjoying trying out new ways to color his stamps.

Since my supplies are running low (and I still have much scrapbooking to do), I've decided to make him an arts&crafts box. There isn't much in it yet, just some plastic, gluey tubes of paint (the squeezing type), some inkpads and foam stamps on blocks, and then added also some painting brushes, water colors and a couple of supplies for water coloring. I want to see if I could take him a bit from the craft-side and towards the art-side. Perhaps I can interest him more in painting and drawing, and if so, I'll ask dad to make him an easel, so we can set him out in the backyard to paint to his heart content, and slowly get him more serious supplies, depending on what interests him more. If he rather leans towards the craft-side, then instead of an easel, we could fill the box with other materials, and maybe even try out other crafts.

The arts&crafts box is currently an old shoebox, but hopefully with time it will evolve to become a chest of wonders. I don't have my own box of wonders yet, but have a new drawing pad, pulled out my jewelry making supplies and readied my sewing box (don't have a basket for my knitting and crochetting supplies). I guess I am getting there too, and all thanks to one fabulous young guy in my life. Aren't nephews just a blessing?

We Have Sheers!

Our apartment looks different again, better, if I may say so, and the reason is simple: we hung our sheers from the windows. And Goodness Gracious! The difference it makes! Light isn't harsh in the room, though that has never been a problem, but the windows themselves have smoothed as well. The ugly gas pipes get somewhat better hid from sight, and the unslightly, discolored window frames are also discreetly taken away from the view.

We had bought the sheers perhaps a month ago, but didn't get to hang them, since it demanded time. We have three windows and for each of them there's a pair of sheers that need to be fitted. My boyfriend's job was to get on the ladder and hang the sheers twice - one for measuring them up and once when they were finished. My job was to measure the sheers, calculate the exact lenght with the expected 4% shrinkage (I totally love that IKEA tells you about this!), and then mark the lenght by ironing the part that would be the edge on each of the six sheer panes, then put in the fixing strip (a sort of plastic strip that sticks to the fabric when it's ironed to it, normally used to stiffen the fabric, but also to make a hem without stitching), and cut the excess fabric. It wasn't a short job, but we made it today at last, and I'm pleased with the results.

After visiting my penpal Trish on the weekend, I must admit that I'm quite ashamed of our apartment, as it isn't as taestfully arranged as theirs, but then again maybe I'm just being silly. There's no way, after all, that an economist who has spent most of her life in the tropic, could possibly compete with a consumed, professional interior designer and furniture connoisseur who happens to live in an artistic, tasteful town, where everything is just delightful.

Be it as it may, my boyfriend wants me to take pictures of the apartment, so he can upload them on the Real Estate web, to get a feel of the price our apartment could get. Realtors, you know.

I had plans for today, but none of them got completed. I was supposed to go to the Post Office, since I so brightly forgot to give my postcards to Trish - living with her kind offer - so she would post them for me from Braunau to my penpals. I think it is about time I start thinking about going to the doctor to get some "old people pills" prescribed. My memory is really, REALLY bad (maybe I sould start thinking also about getting a pillbox, so I can keep my medication in order for the future). Then I wanted to go to IKEA on a double mission. For once, the new collection would enter in August, so what better chance than right not to get a feel of what pieces of the old collection are leaving the scene and thus being sold at reduced prices. And we need two desks. Urgently.

The other reason is to search for small bottles. I'd like to take with me a few elements of Hungary that will accompany me wherever I am. Since the traditional elements (Earth, Air, Fire, Water) are kinda hard to get - due to the air - I was thinking about the five elements of Chinese philosophy (Wu Xing: Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water). The idea of it came to me the other day, when I was once again marveling at how different the soil is from that of Costa Rica. I guess I can't get over the pale, sandy type of earth we have here. I've already located the source for all of my elements, decided on each of them BUT I haven't found the bottles. Naturally plastic bottles won't do it, because I kinda want to keep the "organic", old, natural feeling to them, AND I need them also to contain water, so wood boxed wouldn't do it either. Now, the bottle you see in this picture is what I'm thinking about, in a small size, say 7 cm (3 inches) high, or with a 1dl capacity. That's all I need. I don't want to take the whole Danube with me, along with half of the Roman Excavations. But you know what? Getting these small bottles is impossible. I'm not kidding, it is impossible!

Upon this, and having bought in February some spice jars, I thought about making it happen with spice jars.

Well, the trip wasn't made, so we shall see if I can unglue myself from bed in time to go to IKEA and take a quick check around the kitchenware and see where can I hunt down my bottles. It doesn't help my case knowing that Amazon.com has them and sells them. :-( Why!? They wouldn't make it in time! (Not like I won't buy them! I will).

I'm packing - I just finished my first packing try out today - but I still have a lot of stuff to pack and to get. I at least want a mini cauldron (you would too, if you would have eaten that FABULOUS bogrács stuff I had! Wish I could pack a real size one and tons of venison... that would make me happy), and then some replicas of medieval time swords (mini!) and jewelry I saw being sold at one of the museums I visited. I'll still visit my favorite museum, but I doubt there's anything left for me to buy there, as I've bought all the Empress Sissi books and souvenirs I could get my hands on.

Well, tomorrow is a new day, and the cleaning lady is coming, so I'll have little time and plenty to do. ^_^

Can't Settle Yet

This blog has changed faces quite often and quite dramatically in the past days. From black to white to brown again and a small window of time trying out some of the themes and proposed formats. No, I'm not one to easily fit myself in a pre-formed, pre-thought, pre-emptied scheme. That ain't me! I'm jumping on one leg, tilting to the side and rubbing my chin while saying "nope, that's not it either". A mix of pictures of colors of... je ne sais quoi that's missing, that's stating my current state of... me. Thing is that so far neither combination hits the mark, but one thing is for sure: I want the shot of the bathtub.

That godly bathtub! Has ever a picture ever described you so totally, so fully, so perfectly... what you feel you are, what you yearn to be, the absolute balance of in and out, of past, present and future... the very essence of you... that's the picture of the bathtub. And it's not even my bathtub! It's not even the best and most wonderful bathtub I've ever experienced (that's a tie between Sofia and Paris - for real! - though I believe that the one in Venezuela was also pretty amazing!), but that's the picture that contains me, describes me, summons me and resumes me. It's an icon not so much of luxury, as it is an icon of comfort, of time for oneself, me-time, and just chilling out. No worries in the world, no schedules to keep, no appointments to rush to, no deadlines to honor, no bills, no work, no pressure. Some may say they work better under pressure, but I'm not one of them, and though I'm perfectly capable of pulling my weight, stick my nose to the paper and do the job, this state of no pressure, or relax and enjoyment is what reflects me better the most. But how to splash it across the blog?

Hn, well maybe I need a hot shower, a Smirnoff Ice, snuggle in bed in comfy clothes and a good book (or manga) to figure that out. :-)

Post Note: Yeah, yeah, yeah... I changed it again. It seems all I needed was the thought of "comfy" for it to come to me. ^_^ I sunk in my mental bathtub, read my mental Kindle and mental magazines, paged across the mental glossy paper and... it happened. ^_^ I'm liking it, so it's staying... most likely. ^_^

Handmade Gifts

I may have not been able to send my Christmas Cards this year (and I not to myself that I will plan this better from now on), but I did manage to make some jewelry for some of my friends. Here are the pictures.

Nautica: Blue and Gold

Heart-in-Heart Lace Choker and matching Heart Pendant Earrings

Sunbead Flower: Amber Glass Flower necklace and matching earrings

Angel: Blue bead, pearl-like beads and wire angel "concept" with wing earrings.

Peaceful Sunday

It seems that letters keep scaring me away. My head is filled with things to say, but instead of writing them down I stare at my sheets of red paper and am afraid of screwing up the critical first three lines. Sometimes I think I should just let it go and chose lined paper, but each time I take one of those I end up throwing the sheet to the wastebasket because the lines bother me. Then, though I've a letter to answer, and am not writing the first one, that first sentence is getting to me. How should I start? It's driving me bonkers. However I'm determinated to write them today and send them away tomorrow. At what time I've no idea, as I'm seem booked all day, but I'll sure find a moment to send them all.

The day started incredibly well. I was up early morning, washed my hair and prepared my breakfast before sitting down to Skype with my boyfriend and tweet away my morning tweet. Picked up my clothes and made myself a good, tasty breakfast with the bread loaf I brought from Limón and a fried egg sided with coke, Béres drops and my financial paper. I was looking for a glass I like, which looks much like a whisky glass, when I found it occupied by this adorable flower. It probably fell from one of the hanging baskets of the yard, and Mom decided to rescue it and keep it living in the whisky glass. It was simply so beautiful that I had to take a picture of it. I still promised Mom to help her buy something she wants on the Internet, taking advantage of the Black Friday, so probably a lot of books on Optimization Theory and some Chomsky ones will be making their way to my "smart address box".

My main tasks for today are replying to my letters and making my Christmas cards. I actually bought the materials for the cards yesterday in the capital city. The main supply, the construction paper, came in a package of 96 sheets in eight different colors. The sheets where interlayered, which I hate, so I opened the package and put all colors together and then ordered them by chromatic order. (Slightly control freak, as you can see.) Thanks to this I realized that the sheets were too thin to make cards out of them, which is why I had to go today to get thicker cardboard for them. I've been working on a few ideas, and I've came up with the main "topic" of this year's cards. Kari asked me to take pictures of them when they are ready so that he can see them here too.

It's been a while since I last prepared something handmade (other than a few pieces of jewelry) so I'm a bit aprehensive, but I wanna try. ^_^ After all, if I screw it up I can do it again, right? Nothing to lose and all the fun to have!!

Today wicked kids dressed up strangely gathered up at my old Highschool. It was so henious I took another route on my way back. Today the day has been warm and the breeze refreshing, the coke was good and the lunch indulging. Today my tasks are beautiful and the day is absolutely peaceful. Today is a good day.

I Drawing I Made

Today I wrote another letter to Dragonfly, intending to mail in the afternoon, but didn't get it the Post Office in time. Like in many letters, I often sign making a little drawing that represents me. Sometimes I draw cat ears or bunny ears (since one of my nicknames is Bunny). This time, though, it kinda got me thinking, since I wanted to change my Twitter image for something other than my picture (I don't like people on Twitter, where evidently people doesn't care enough to read more than 140 letters, to know my face), I though, why not to do the drawing for my Avatar?

So, I made it, filtered it, Photoshopped it up a little, and, well, there you go. ^_^ Amateurish, but 100% me.

Creative Moon

Sometimes, when you do something, like jewelry or any kind of art or artisanal activity, you see something and it gets you thinking. You want to try it, you want to use it, and your mind swirls around it until you find a way to harness it and make it yours.

A shape I love, just like Dragonfly likes, well, dragonflies, is the Moon. I simply love the Moon so much I believe in a past life I must have been a wolf. In the town I live there's this bead shop were I go to get my supplies for my jewelry, and they had these transparent half moons I just couldn't stop looking at. I didn't bought them for a long time because I had no idea how to use them. They were rather big, and I couldn't imagine any way to arrange them without making them look like I just took them from some cheap chandelier from some five-star hotel. (I've been in one too many conferences and seminars to notice that the "beautiful chandeliers" are all plastic and often dusty. All it's pieces can be bought at any bead store.) However, then one day I noticed these metalic rings. At first I had no use for them, so I didn't even picked them up. Later, however, I put both shapes together, and it seemed like something I'd like.

So far I've never done anything dangling from a necklace, and certainly have never done earrings this massive. However, the more I thought about the shape, the composition, I knew I had to try it out. So today, I went back to this bead shop and bought the supplies. The making wasn't easy, and this first attempt have a few problems about the linking, as the hole on the ring is too small for two loops to fit it, but I'd say the result is pretty. What do you think?

Black Fingers

Irregular black spots on the tips of my fingers. Sometimes they reach my nails, which I simply don't bother polishing, unless I were to paint them black, which I don't. The degree of the spots are directly correlated with the amount of writing I've done that day. Handwriting. And well, also a marker about the flowing quality of my pen. Spots not only appear on my fingers, but around me as well. Walls and floors splashed around in an amateur imitation of Pollock. All papery surfaces around are marked with gibblerish, scrapping and scratching from trying every now and then to make the ink run. Old spots, fresh, dark and sticky fall on the old ones, fading away, worn out from the constant hand-washing and hand-cleansing the swine flu forces us into. Alcohol gel the worse enemy of the spots because it takes them out much easier. I have had spots on my fingers from one day to another, that much the ink has sunk into my skin, that much have I written.

Those who know me probably know that I've a "few" fountain pens in my "rather reduced collection". Yes, in this I'm just like my Grandpa, who keeps a wooden box filled with cartidges and pens. So many pens he simply doesn't make it to the once in the bottom. There are loads of pens of all kinds that range from high class Mont Blanc pens to inexpensive Inoxcrom and, like we say in Costa Rica, "marca patito" ("little duck" brand, which means some probably fake brand). I never really invested on a Mont Blanc, pretty much considered it out of my range, so I have always concentrated on Inoxcrom, a very good and fairly inexpensive brand, sometimes entertaining other brands and other styles, playing around with more executive, formal looking pens. (I even got the Nox case, with a wood-bodied fountain pen.) So, mainly all my pens are plastic and rather informal looking. I've vibrant neon yellow Carioca pens, small pens, green pens, white pens, turtle pens, cow pens, tulip printed pens, violet pens, pink pens... you name it.

Seeing my blackened fingers, my beloved boyfriend gave me for my birthday my very first Mont Blanc fountain pen. Well, I haven't used it yet because my birthday is still to come, you mind? However, he made me think about my fingers. So, should I be ashamed for my messy hands? Because they are not white and pristine? Because they do not look like the hands of those who take care of them all day and so do nothing? My hands are not idle hands, and if they are to show who I am, my ink spots, like the spots of a wild cat, talk about my trade, my calling: I am a Writer. Journal writer, novel writer, poetry writer when I feel like it, letter writer, fic writer, slash writer, a crazy little vonnegutian when it comes to mix images and pen-traced drawings and doodles with my words. Words are my life, words are my soul, the scraps of my mind, the shards of my personal philosophy, my emotional and intellectual nourishment.

Which are the pieces of your soul? Which are the blocks that build your emotions and trigger them? What's your craft, your calling, your coven? This is my craft, the pen and paper my tools, and the spots on my fingers are the brand of my calling. This is my trademark.