Rosemary Kirstein

The boreal forest, just before the trees end…

I have this strange impulse to go north. My father had it, too. “I’m going to Labrador,” he used to grouse when he felt particularly miserable in his later years.

The older I get, the more I want to go north.

looks like equinox to me.

I imagine that the air is clearer there. And the sky is surely bigger.

and distant mountans

North is still there, even though I’m still here… I think I’ll visit it next year.

This is one of my oldest Darlene scarfs

The real thing

I acquired this one not by paying money, but by trading one of my books to Darlene.

The tones are so rich....

She calls it a “color test” — just experimenting, to see what happens. It came out gorgeous, as you can see.

How can colors this pure blend into each other?

At several points today, when thing got absolutely dreadful (computers down, phones down, urgent messages from suppliers via our answering service, having to recite our entire payroll over the phone so we could get paid this week — all numbers, no words, all urgent, no excuses) I just leaned back, pulled out one end of the scarf, picked a color, and gazed.

Just color

I’m indifferent to fashion, really — but I understand the impulse to want to own, and show, and carry with you, true beauty.

That’s not fashion, that’s art.

The internet was down at work, due to the snowstorm mayhem still in effect in Connecticut, so I couldn’t post this until I got home today.

I think Autumn because of the orange edging...

It’s become traditional that I take these pictures when actually at the DayJob, as proof that I wore the scarf to work.

My work computer was also non-fuctional due to being blown out when they hooked up the huge emergency generator. It happened to my boss’ computer, too. So between partial power, partial computers, no phones (we do Voice Over IP, so no internet means no phones), the place was a zoo. I postponed my weekly discussion with the Boss…

It’s a shame, because the scarves with complex images inspire me more! More power! So, I hated to waste Autumn Koi.

Check it out:

both ends together

The fish have raised edges, like the leaves in the Forest at Midnight. I spoke to Darlene once and mentioned how much I admired the technique, and she told me that it was an accident! The raised edges were not supposed to remain, in the original concept. But I think they look great. These edges are silver, instead of the Forest’s gold.

Dated and signed in gold.

I needed all the serenity I could get today.

I'll use this one again soon.

Ha. Exactly as I wanted, we have power in our town, but the DayJob is in one of the many areas with no power.

Of course, it would have been nice to know before I drove all the way there.

I tried to get to the Funky Monkey to do some serious writing there, but alas, that town is blacked out too. I also swung by the town with the Tibetan imports, but they too had no power at all.

So I’m home, making Miso soup. And reading and writing. Sooo nice.

My sympathies, of course, to all the people who are suffering seriously because of the power outages. But I gotta grab the happy where I can.

I told you that I had a set of Wind Horse flags somewhere at home, and that I was going to put them up in symbolic acknowledgement of the difficulty of the task before me and declaration of my determination to persevere. However:

Worst. Wind Horse. Ever.

I do know that the idea is to leave the flags up until they become weathered and tattered and faded with age. However. It’s cheating to have them start out that way.

I know it looks like they’re printed on taffeta (already a bad idea), but no self-respecting taffeta looks like this!

They are obviously printed on the sort of material called “interfacing“, which garment makers use to stiffen up cloth in clothing. And particularly cheap interfacing at that. I remember in the dim and dusty days of my youth when I actually went through a phase of making my own clothing as a way of saving money. At the fabric store, there were several levels of quality available for your interfacing. In those days, not understanding the concept of “You get what you pay for”, I’d sometimes opt for bottom of the line. Which was so badly woven that as soon as you ran it through the sewing machine, it would immediately unweave itself around the stitches, and simply flop to the ground, possibly in an attempt to escape.

And clearly, the factory workers responsible for these flags had the same problem, as they’ve done multiple fold-overs, and run some of the flags through their machine several times in an attempt to get the so-called cloth to stay attached to the string.

c. unacceptable

Hmpf, say I.

I shall acquire a better-quality set of Wind Horse flags in my copious spare time. I think I know where to get some locally…

(Daily scarf still to come. It’s too early. Note bed-head above.)

Mysterious and lovely.

I don’t know if Darlene has names for her creations, but that’s what I call this one.

I love this moon.

It reminds me of when I was a kid, and I’d wait until everyone was asleep, and then sneak out of the house, across the fields, and into a nearby woody area.

Note the raised edges of the leaves

There, I’d hang out in this one open field edge with an old crumbling stone wall, surrounded by trees on all sides, with one big bare tree in the center. I’d think moody, mysterious thoughts. Often there was a full moon.

I think my plan to inspire myself is working…

Don't mess with me, when I'm wearing the moon.

This is one of the newest to me, even though it was done in 2008. I think I might have got it at Boskone this year, when I went on a bit of a spree…

photos just don't capture the colors

This one isn’t batiked like yesterday’s — the background colors are dyed, but the stars are hand-painted.

Stars and nebulae... a wearable universe

Of course, I had to dress in black to make it work — NOT THAT I MIND.

That's it. I'm ready.

(Darlene’s website)

I am still in overtime, forget-about-the-rest-of-your-life mode at the dayjob. Upside: I’m continuing to have discussions with my boss about whether or not this state is permanent, and he does sympathize. Downside: We have no answer yet. Until it’s sorted out one way or the other, I’m still working too many hours.

I generally try to keep my writing life and my DayJob as separate as possible. People around here don’t read much, and it’s more trouble than it’s worth to teach people who already aren’t interested in books that there’s more to SF and Fantasy than UFO’s and vampires. So I tend to just clam up, do the job, get the paycheck and health insurance.

I even dress differently, and there are certain items that wear at conventions and in my personal life, things I haven’t worn at the job because to my mind they are specific signifiers of my Writer persona.

Chief among these being: my collection of gorgeous silk scarves hand-made by Darlene Coltrain:

The center, here seen as the top

I first started buying them in, I think, 1998. They’re filled with images that remind me of the things I love best: stars, skies, water, the natural world, anything both clearly seen and mysterious.

further down

This is one of my favorites, and one of the ones I’ve had the longest…

moving downward

And yes, I am wearing it at the DayJob. Looking at it reminds me of what’s important, what I love, and makes me feel strong.

Thing are really hard right now, and it’s been going on too long. And I realized that instead of leaving my writer self outside, I need to keep her right here, right up front and center. This so that can I stay focused on fixing things on the job so that I can HAVE TIME TO WRITE AGAIN.

Therefore, for as long as this is going on, I’ll have the same conversation with my boss every Monday, asking what the plan is to fix this — and I shall wear one or another of my beloved scarves to work every single day.

As a reminder to myself — and to everyone around me.

as much as I could fit in the picture.

Yah, situation has not much changed yet. Still in overtime, and now taking antibiotics for the whatevertheheck that has me coughing.

Cool thing seen recently: How your brain processes time! I’m absolutely fascinated by how the brain works, how the brain generates the mind, how consciousness operates. (Useful information in creating believeable aliens.)

David Eagleman is an excellent speaker and a cutie patootie really seems to know his stuff. Also the author of Incognito which is currently lurking on my Kindle, waiting for me to have some time to give it a reasonable portion of my attention.

Instead, I’ve been doing some serious comfort reading, by which I mean things I’m pretty sure ahead of time that I’ll like. For instance: Terry Pratchett’s latest — Snuff! If I had the time, I’d post an actual review, but I’ll just say that I was not disappointed, and that I believe I’ve come to like the Sam Vines thread of Discworld the best.

Also finished listening to the audiobook version of Scott Westerfeld’s Goliath, the final volume of his steampunk YA trilogy that began with Leviathan and Behemoth. Damn, I wish there had been books like these around when I was of the YA target age! Still, fortunately, I’m perfectly capable of getting swept away by a good YA, and Westerfeld is a favorite of mine.

Ack! I’m still at the office, and I’d better get to that #$##@#@# stack of work…