melannen: The words "yuletide" in fancy script against a blue watercolor wash (yuletide)
melannen ([personal profile] melannen) wrote2011-12-05 07:00 pm

This entry is not about yuletide.

I want to post but I am all full of yuletide! And I can't talk about yuletide! yar.

So instead you will have to make do with a post that acknowledges the existence of Christmas. Sorry.

***

Next, here is my Christmas wishlist, mostly for RL people who sometimes read this journal:

1. Anything from my LibraryThing Wishlist (or anything else you think I might like that isn't already listed on my LT - the wishlist is far from comprehensive)
2. ...more bookshelf space.
3. A gyroscopic wrist exercise ball.
3. Short pieces of feltable yarn (anywhere from a foot up to not-enough-for-a-sock), for naalbinding and/or felting (I can't bring myself to cut any of my own wool yarn into short pieces! So I need some outside source of scrap wool yarn for this, I guess. Color doesn't matter, weight doesn't matter, I mostly just want to play. If anybody on the internets has been hoarding this, I would totally pay a couple dollars' postage.)
4. A small skein of plain black wool yarn, sport weight/baby weight/sock weight ish (I have looked at both the nearest yarn stores and neither of them had plain black wool sock yarn. Which kind of encapsulates everything I find wrong with current knitting culture, really...)
5. Tiny clear glass bottles or vials (less than 1" height & 3/4" diameter) - and no, all the ones in the current AS&S catalog are too big, although the small Peculiar Injection Vials are close, if they weren't so peculiar.
6. An old iPod shuffle cord (don't go buying one, because the Shuffle in question was free even when it was new, but if anyone has one lying around...)
7. A new cheap mp3 player with fm radio, recorder, and AAA battery to replace the one [personal profile] stellar_dust broke. :P (preferably one where the firmware won't conk out in the first month.)
8. Candy. Or other non-perishable sources of easy calories, I'm not picky.
9. To actually get the library job I applied for last month.
10. Snow. Although if you can hold that 'till after everybody is home from the archeology conference that would be great.

And of course in general I am overjoyed for anyone to write anything under the "bunnies" tag on this journal, or to mix/transform/illustrate/sequelate/etc. anything on my AO3 account, or to do anything involving any of my favorite tiny fandoms.

****

Meanwhile, there was a list of things I promised myself I could do if I won NaNo this year (which I did! sort of! after ten years of trying!), and since the Scrivener winners' discount still isn't up, I'm going to have to settle for another one:

I would like for Dreamwidth to have a community called [personal profile] showandtell which is exactly what it sounds like: a place where people can make entries to show off that really interesting thing they own! And talk about it! And have people ooh and ah about it! Because I don't know about you, but there is a lot of interesting old junk crammed in this house that I would love to have some justification for continuing to hold on to. :P I'm visualizing that we could assign people weeks to post but have it also open to anyone who wants to post, kind of the way [community profile] poetry works.

So would anybody else be interesting in taking part in a community like that? I don't want to make it if I'm the only one...

The following is the sort of thing I would visualize as belonging there, plus if I started a comm I wouldn't have to post this sort of thing here :P


I had an entry a few weeks ago that I titled with "I have an actual angstbunny of my very own now!" and apparently some people thought I meant Tony Stark, as if the title of the entry actually had something to do with its contents or something?

No, no, Tony Stark is a fictional angstbunny. This is what a RL angstbunny looks like:
a very lopsided and clearly made by a small child plush bunny in magenta paisley upholstery fabric.

Her name is "Bunny" (after a minor character in one of the books-I-can't-talk-about-because-yuletide-dammit, obviously.) The picture doesn't really do her justice: one of her ears always flops completely backward, her eyes are two different shades of yellow, her tail is an actual medical cotton-ball poorly sew on, and she is the most huggable stuffed animal I have hugged in ages!

You will note that she looks awfully perky for an angstbunny - that is because she isn't angsty herself, she's an angstbunny because she eats angst for dinner, because she has been through everything she's been through and she still has that lopsided grin. I defy you to hug that and still feel angsty afterwards. She lives on my writing desk now and I think she's the main reason I made it through NaNoWriMo this year!

(I don't know her history, except for the fact that she was almost certainly hand-made as somebody's first sewing project ever. My church gets stuffed animals donated which we then donate along for a nursing home enrichment program; they appear in a closet which several dozen people have a key to, and then Mom and I pick them over and do any required minor cleaning and repairs. It was pretty clear that Bunny would never get picked by a nursing home resident though, so I got to take her home. \o/)

***

There's a yuletide write-in at a Teaism in downtown DC this Friday which I am very seriously considering, because I haven't been to a local fannish meetup in ages ([personal profile] synecdochic has been very carefully cancelling every one of hers that I might be able to get to :P) and if I went I could, I dunno, TALK ABOUT MY YULETIDE. Also it's quite near the National Geographic Museum and I do kind of want to go to the Staffordshire Hoard exhibit while it's there, so I could go in earlier and do that before tea... and I could even drop by the local Occupy encampment, which is also within a couple of blocks. Anybody else thinking of doing any of those things?

***

And finally, here are some Yuletide-ish icon bases that I made for sharing last year and never posted, some of them from a very old greeting card and some of them from Alan Mendelsohn, The Boy From Mars book covers, and also one of the giant chicken of Hoboken (you can probably figure out which are which):

Alan and Leonard relaxing on a subarban lawn Alan relaxing with a flying saucer parked behind him Alan and Leonard in odd outfits and worshipful postures The Great City of Lenny in Waka-Waka close-up of Alan's face close-up of Leonard's face

the word yuletide in fancy calligraphy over a painting of a creek in a wintery forest yuletide in fancy calligraphy over the tops of fir trees against a pink sky yuletide in fancy calligraphy over a wintery creek with trees reflected in it yuletide in fancy calligraphy over a hand-painted light blue gradient yuletide in fancy calligraphy against a plain manila background a giant chicken menacing the skyline of Hoboken, New Jersey
sara: S (Default)

[personal profile] sara 2011-12-06 01:03 am (UTC)(link)
Aw, my kids are reading The Hoboken Chicken Emergency right now. The boy keeps looking at the cover and crowing, "The Hoboken Chicken Emergency has a chicken on it! A giant chicken on it!"
thatyourefuse: (Default)

[personal profile] thatyourefuse 2011-12-06 01:03 am (UTC)(link)
I have a few balls of Lamb's Pride yarn (I think the colors I have are Fresh Moss, Roasted Coffee, and maaaaaaybe Rust, but the labels are long gone) I bought ages ago for a project that is probably not going to be finished, and I certainly wouldn't object to sending you a hank of any of them. It is on the bulky side, so I don't know how it would work for crochet, but it's very nice to the touch.
thatyourefuse: (Default)

[personal profile] thatyourefuse 2011-12-06 01:12 am (UTC)(link)
Honestly, I am never going to finish this scarf, I didn't buy enough to make anything else, and the dye lots are vanished into the West. I don't mind subdividing them for a worthy cause; it's great yarn, and someone should get some use out of it.
thatyourefuse: (Default)

[personal profile] thatyourefuse 2011-12-06 01:48 am (UTC)(link)
Helping someone acquire a skill = worthy enough. I'll send along a bit of each.
siegeofangels: The angel from Guido Reni's "The Angel Appearing To St. Jerome" (Default)

[personal profile] siegeofangels 2011-12-06 01:15 am (UTC)(link)
1. showandtell sounds like a pop-up museum, sort of! And it does sound pretty awesome.

2. I have a nonzero amount of feltable yarn bits that I can send you, if you remind me of your address. I also have some yarn bits of uncertain felting capability, if you would like those as well.

3. I <3 your angstbunny. She looks very huggable.
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)

Hmm...

[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith 2011-12-06 07:46 am (UTC)(link)
I like the idea of a show-and-tell community. I'd love watching it. I might be interested in contributing, but I can't upload photos to DW. Maybe someone could do that part. I have all kinds of cool stuff ... a wildflower garden in summer, a collection of linguist dolls, scrapbooked poetry, etc.
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)

Re: Hmm...

[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith 2011-12-07 04:59 am (UTC)(link)
Ah, okay. I don't use any of the photo-sharing websites. I do have use of a digital camera, though. I've been putting some of my pictures on LiveJournal.

Text descriptions would be cool too.
lady_ganesh: A Clue card featuring Miss Scarlett. (Default)

[personal profile] lady_ganesh 2011-12-07 02:17 am (UTC)(link)
I would just love to got to Teaism, lol. Smillaarq tipped me off when I was in DC last November and mmmm, salty chocolate oat cookies.