flax-golden tales: five easy steps

five easy steps

five easy steps

Fantastical Expeditions in Five (Comparatively) Easy Steps

1. Draw a ship. It is wise to add sails or oars for ease of travel.
2. Pack for your journey. Be sure to bring extra shoes, a towel, a lucky penny, and a journal to record your adventures.
3. Believe your ship is real.*
4. Climb aboard, very carefully.
5. Politely tell the ship to go wherever it wants to go.

*This is the most difficult step. Practice is recommended.

About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.

flopsy yawning kitten sort of day

yawning tessa

Tessa looks how I feel right now. Maybe without the yawning. But she’s been sprawled out in front of the fan all day and I would really like to be able to do the same but I don’t think I’d fit on that table and I have work to do. Lucky kitten.

I know, I should have the a/c on when it’s this humid. But we’ve had such a mild summer that we haven’t put the air conditioners up. It’s really not that bad with the fans, but it’s uncomfortable enough that I don’t really feel like doing much and would rather flop like Tessa. But I’m trying to be good.

Tarot Queens are going slow, mostly because the humidity makes it hard to paint. I still should be able to finish them by the end of the week, the base layers are down already and they mostly need detailing.

There will be sharable news on the literary agent search soon. I’m still playing the waiting game so nothing is definite yet. I think I’m actually getting better at the waiting game because I stopped biting my nails and I don’t freak out quite so much every time I have new mail.

I am not a summer creature, despite being born in July. I’m craving autumn already, with crisp leaves and pumpkin spice lattes and apple picking and none of this horrid humidity.

flax-golden tales: the yarn merchant

yarn merchant

the yarn merchant

She spins her yarns from dreams and hopes and forgotten wishes on a wheel made of alder wood and dragon bone. She sells them every third Saturday at the market, unless there is no moon. Prices vary by color and content and valor of customer.

The yarns made with nightmares cost extra. Nightmare yarn is volatile and must be handled with great care.

If you are not worthy of her yarn she will turn you away, regardless of what you are willing to pay. She will appraise you in a single glance and there is no arguing with her once you have been dismissed with a wave of a many-ringed, wrinkled hand.

There are other places to purchase yarn at the market, and they have fine yarns, but nothing to compare with these.

Oh, the things that can be knit with these yarns! Provided you have proper needles.

About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.

on uncertainties and crystal balls

I finally updated WordPress (thanks Paul!) and now the shiny new interface is freaking me out. I am easily distracted by shiny things.

This has been rather a crazy week, and I’m kind of surprised it’s Thursday already. Lots going on in the great literary agent search but nothing I can really talk about yet.

(There should be So You Think You Can Dance for agents. I have nowhere to go with that thought that doesn’t end up someplace weird involving sequins and spandex, so maybe I just want an option for call-in agent voting. And a panel of judges to critique everything for me. Wouldn’t that be great, for every decision you ever had to make to be able to consult a panel of experts that would give you advice and pithy remarks and scream a lot when something exciting happens? I’m going to close this parenthetical before it gets out of hand. )

Anyway, everything at the moment is kind of uncertain and I’m still playing the waiting game, though I do have a sort of vague time line now. I really don’t know which way things will go from here, but it should be somewhere interesting.

I think this is the point where I would ask longingly for a crystal ball, were it not for the fact that I could easily walk down the street and purchase one if I wanted to. I’m not very good at scrying of any sort, though.

I could get one for decorative purposes, though. They are pretty. And I do have that weakness for shiny objects. This one was sitting in the window of a shop on Essex Street.

crystal ball

I think I’ll stick with my tarot cards for now. Queens are being painted at the moment, in deserts and oceans and mountains and night gardens. They should be finished sometime next week.

i *heart* my city

I think one of my favorite things about living in Salem is that you can walk by things like this on your way home from dinner. On a Monday. In August.

There were two of them, and they also had potted plants and a fog machine, but this was the best photo I got. We also passed a candlelight ghost tour and got to overhear anecdotes about executions. No rogue black cats tonight, though, alas.