Klosekraft

50,017

Holy crap! I'm done!

I'm not going to even open the file until January, then I'll start thinking about revisions. I might get a jump on research in December though. Obviously, the "write the book, then do the research, then rewrite the book" strategy is not the most efficient way to turn out a novel, but at least I have a rough draft to work with.

Wow.

Also, this made me laugh a lot harder than it probably should have:

Day 29

NaNo count
Have: 48,841
Need: 48,343

Almost there... I'm going to try to finish up this afternoon because The Man With Two Tiki Bars is having a party tonight so A) I won't be home tonight to write and B) it'll be a good way to celebrate finishing. I told him that after a drink or two, I might very well start telling people that he threw the party for me and the co-worker who also did NaNo (she hit 50,000 a few days ago) and he said he was fine with that. I think he's really throwing the party to celebrate his pain-in-the-ass girlfriend finally moving out and the sale of his most recent book but, regardless, everyone's going to be in a festive mood.

I have a busy, busy weekend ahead of me (happy social busy, not annoying errand busy), but I'm hoping that I'll have time to pick up stitches for the ribbing on Geraldine. I finished the sleeves this week and really like the fit on them. Unfortunately, I made an as-yet-unidentified gaffe (I suspect that I didn't account for a fraction in the row gauge) and the body is too long. Rather, it's currently the perfect length, but I still need to add 4" or so of ribbing. That's easy to fix though. I'll snip off the last 4" or so of the body (seamless knitting makes that a doddle), short row down to curve off the corners and get on with things.

Day 28

NaNo count:
Have: 46,722
Need: 46,676

A book recommendation: Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn. Hands down, one of the best books I've read this year. It just floored me, one of those books that I found myself unwilling to put down and devoured in under 48 hours. And we're talking weekday hours here, with work and sleep and NaNo writing and cooking and eating and attending to at least basic hygiene that all had to happen too. I read while I was brushing my teeth because I didn't want to stop for those few minutes.

We had an interesting conversation around the office the other day about where the line is between deeply flawed characters and irretrievably unsympathetic ones. I hadn't read this yet at that point, but it's a perfect example of a main character who is profoundly damaged and makes fairly tremendous mistakes, but who the reader (or at least this reader) supports without question. The basic plot is this: a Chicago newspaper reporter with a long history of self-destructive behavior and who is recently out of an institution is sent to her Missouri hometown to report on the unsolved murders of two young girls. While she's there she has to deal with the bizarre and creepy family she hasn't spoken to in years as well as become involved in the investigation.  It's all so rich and beautifully written, and intensely creepy in a way that is sustained throughout the book, growing imperceptibly until the final reveal.
Excerpt here.

Day 27

NaNo count:
Have: 45,068
Need, 45,009

Some more photos from this weekend:

This year for Christmas, I'm going to give my immediate family members nicely framed photos that I've taken. The bottom one is definitely one for my brother. Over the weekend, I was on the phone with a friend, telling him about my plan and trying to remember what it actually said. I emailed it to him later and got this response, which I think I may write out on the back of the frame:

What I like best about this piece of writing is the use of the plural "you" as in "All of you, everyone, GIVE ME SOME BUTTER!"

Day 26

NaNo count
Have: 43,711
Need: 43,342

I've been getting better about bringing my camera with me when I'm out and about. I took a couple of long walks this weekend around brownstone Brooklyn and some industrial sections of Queens, which are both just incredibly rich visually. It's all about color and pattern for me. And, apparently, gnomes.

 

Day 25

NaNo count
Have: 41,694
Need: 41,675

I had a really lovely long weekend, most of which I spent away from the computer, with the exception of yesterday, when I had to write five days' worth of NaNo book. And I did it too. I'm so ridiculously deadline driven — I would normally never consider writing 8,000 or so words in under twelve hours. But let me get up to the wire on an externally imposed deadline and I will perform feats of superhuman power. That's how I managed to eke out a living as a production knitter at one point when I was in grad school. And also how I have written every single article, paper and story that I have ever produced. It tends to annoy bosses and editors, but it's how I work best. I think that's why I've been doing so well with the whole NaNo project. I have a specific word count to hit each day, people I see daily who ask about it (and also give me a sticker if I do it) and an internet to report to. Writing for the blog itself seems to be curiously immune to this phenomenon, but it's likely just ego, since all I'm doing here is babbling about myself.

Speaking of me, I went to see the parade balloons being inflated Wednesday night. It was insanely crowded, just this teeming mass of people for blocks approaching the floats. I don't know why Tae and I thought we were the only ones who would think to check it out, but we weren't. Not by a long shot. It's one of those New York things to do once and then never, ever do again.

Dinner itself was lovely and low-key. Since we were a smallish group and all more interested in the side dishes than the meat, we just roasted a chicken. With it, we had a big bowl of mashed sweet potatoes, stuffing, roasted green beans, carrots and parsnips with honey and rosemary, cranberry relish and I feel like I'm leaving out a dish or two...



The cranberry relish is one of my favorite things: just grind up a bag of cranberries, an apple and an orange (peel and all, just slice to check for seeds). The apple and orange sweeten it enough that I only needed to add two or three tablespoons of sugar. I made it last Wednesday in Liz's fancy new food processor while we were watching Project Runway.

I don't have a whole lot of PR snark, really. I liked the winning outfit. I liked the almost-winning outfit. I liked the middle-of-the-road Frenchie ensemble. I'm liking Victorya more, even though I haven't forgotten that terrible, terrible silver flower. I don't know why everyone was freaking out about Elisa's spit marking. For one thing, it's an easy way to mark a spot that will disappear without washing, using material that's always close at hand. That's how I hang pictures, actually — figure out where it needs to go, lick my finger and touch the wall to mark the spot while I grab the hammer and nails. It looked like that was what Elisa did. She wasn't spitting ON the fabric, she was touching it with saliva. Also, I can't imagine that with their time restrictions that any of the designers are washing their fabric before they're sewing with it. And when you consider what it's come in contact with at the mills, warehouses, shipping containers, trucks, Mood itself, the designers' own grubby little hands... I think that a drop of spit is probably the least nasty thing on any of their fabrics.

Thanksgiving

I'll be away from the computer for a few days, spending today with friends and then most of the weekend housesitting. I'll post about what I'm contributing to Thanksgiving dinner once I'm home, but in the meantime, I'll share my traditional Thanksgiving Day breakfast: pie crust trimmings baked with a sprinkling of cinnamon and sugar.

I didn't grow up with the 'go around the table and tell what you're thankful for' routine, but I love it. I have so much to be thankful for: good health, the good health of the people I love, a loving family, friends that I both adore and admire, hobbies and interests that fascinate me, that my basic needs are not just met, but exceeded to almost an embarrassing degree. And I'm grateful for my many flaws and my problems and the areas of my life that aren't what I want them to be, because working on them lends a dynamism and depth to my life that would be missing if I had everything I wanted.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Day 20

NaNo count
Have: 32,280
Need: 33,340

How do we feel about Helena Bonham Carter's hat?

On one hand, I really kind of love it and its chic ragamuffinery. It reminds me of some Yohji Yamamoto hats from several years ago. However, I'm concerned it might be a little too...

What say you all?

Day 19

NaNo count
Have: 31,674
Need: 31,673
Aw, yeah.

I made a big pot of this healthful and deliciously spiced kale and chickpea soup over the weekend, recipe here, copying Juno.

It's going in the keeper file: warming and soothing, virtuous yet tasty, quick to throw together once you wrangle your shrubbery-sized bundle of kale. That last part might have just been me. I made a couple of minor tweaks — used (low-sodium) chicken broth instead of vegetable broth, swapped out the saffron, which I didn't have on hand, for tumeric, which I did, and, added a large diced sweet potato. And I topped off each bowl with the juice from a quarter of a lemon.

The only word of warning I have is that the leftovers were much better the first two days. After that, they tasted, well, left over.

Day 18

NaNo count
Have: 29,611
Need: 30,003

I ended up not buying myself the sneakers as my midpoint reward (decided they were too practical to be a treat) and bought myself this print from Oh My Cavalier instead:

I love the image as well as the story behind it:
"This drawing was inspired by the story of Eugene Schieffelin, the man who tried to introduce all the birds mentioned in the plays of Shakespeare into the Americas. On March 6th 1890 he released a few cages of starlings into Central Park, and now starlings are among the most common birds in the US."

I did a fair bit of knitting this weekend.

Here's what the Hex Coat looks like now:

I sewed the sleeve caps in, but am holding off on sewing the side and sleeve seams. I think the row gauge is going to relax a bit when it's washed and I don't want to deal with the seams pulling.

I made a shocking lot of progress on the black cardigan, which will henceforth be known as Geraldine, in honor of the blogger who inspired it. My goal for the weekend — which I wasn't even expecting to reach, I might add — was to knit up to the armholes and do the calculations for the upper body shaping. But look! (I still have to add several inches of ribbing around the whole opening, so the fronts are super-narrow to account for that.)

I love the seamless short-row sleeve cap. It's so perfect and tidy. I used the directions in Knitting From the Top, which were clear and easy to follow. If you aren't familiar with short rows, it might take a little extra concentration, but it's certainly well within the reach of anyone who can knit, purl and count. Since my yarn is kind of bulky, I didn't like the look of skipping stitches when I was picking up the initial row. It was puckery, lumpy, generally crappy and unacceptable. So I picked up all of the stitches and knit one round before I started the short rows where I decreased down to the number of stitches I needed. It gives a much smoother line.

My project notes for this sweater, in case anyone in interested in information about my process. When I'm designing stuff for myself, my notes typically look like this: a (really) rough line drawing or two with dimensions, some math, some diagrams that illustrate how I'm dividing up the stitches, a few legible pieces of information, random circled numbers...