erin

cocktails

I’ve been a little bit obsessed with cocktails lately. I’d always been more of a red wine person with the occasional gin & tonic and I knew I preferred Manhattans to Martinis but I hadn’t ventured very far into the often intimidating world of the cocktail.

I’ve been venturing for over a year now and I’m still pretty sure I haven’t gotten that far, but it’s been very fun and educational. I’ve found gorgeous speakeasy-esque bars and developed a thing for coupe glasses (if anyone knows where to find good ones let me know, I have a few I got from Pottery Barn that I love but they no longer have them, hrmph.) My favorite cocktail that I can actually manage at home with some decent flair is a Bee’s Knees, a prohibition era concoction of gin, lemon & honey. (I have made something of a sub-hobby out of trying them with different gins and different honeys.)

(It is worth noting that in a strange sort of way this is all book research. If the circus with all its chocolate mice and Midnight Dinners was a food book, the new one is most definitely a cocktail book.)

(This post has too many parentheticals already.)

This is the first of what will likely be a series of cocktail-related posts as I continue to research and explore. I may include favorite recipes as we go on, but I have something fun for today.

A few weeks ago I discovered (via Twitter, of course) Julibox, which is something like a cocktail of the month club where you get ingredients and instructions for different cocktails sent to your door in a box full of boozy wonderment.

So of course I pondered for all of a few hours before I signed up. I got my first box (collection #7) in mid March.

Everything arrived gorgeously wrapped in pretty paper with matching stickers and I am such a sucker for an aesthetically pleasingly wrapped package that I almost didn’t want to unwrap anything.
julibox wrappedBut I did, because cocktails.

julibox unwrapped

This month’s collection was elderflower liqueur themed which meant lots of St Germain which was happy making because I love St Germain. I suspect I love it even more because it comes in the most beautiful bottles.

There are fancy, incredibly easy to follow recipe cards:

julibox cardsIt includes 2 different cocktails and there’s enough to make 2 of each. (4 drinks total.) They email you beforehand to let you know what you’ll need that’s not in the box, which was lime, lemon & grapefruit for this box. (I always have limes & lemons on hand but I did have to go out and get the grapefruit.)

Both of the cocktails in this box were lovely, one was a spin on a Hemingway daiquiri and the other was a lovely fizzy pear vodka concoction, and of course both had St Germain. I’d give the very slight edge to the fizzy pear one just because it was more in line with my tastes but it was wonderful to try something with light rum that was different than the rum drinks I’ve had in the past. (I tend to be a gin girl, I’m thinking this will be a good exercise in trying things I might not order off cocktail menus or create from my own bar.)

julibox pear flower

I’m already looking forward to next month and I can’t wait to see what cocktail surprises are in store.

By erin, ago

flax-golden tales: deer

deerdeer

I should have made his legs shorter, but other than that I think I did a pretty good job considering he’s my first deer.

Well, he has antlers so maybe he’s a stag but he’s small, so deer seems more appropriate. Also he’s made of logs and sticks so it probably doesn’t matter.

I also forgot to give him a proper name but he responds to “Deer” and seems to like it.

I could have added hinges to his legs, maybe, that might have helped. He walks with a wobbly, uneven gait on his too-long legs. I worry he’s going to fall down but he always manages to right himself.

We’ve been practicing in the yard and I think he’s getting the hang of it, though sometimes he just jumps in little circles.

I asked him if he would have preferred shorter legs but he said no.

When I asked him why he said he likes his long legs because they let him jump higher so he can see more of the world.

 

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

By erin, ago

on absorbing story inspiration in non-prose form

So Bioshock Infinite came out yesterday and I am being really good today by not playing until I get everything else on today’s to-do list checked off. I just got to “blog post” so here we go. It has a theme and some points, I promise.

I will preface this by (re)stating that I’m not much of a gamer. I am picky about games that I like and I am not widely versed in all the video game wonderment that is out there, but I have dipped my toes in and splashed around in my not-terribly-skilled way. (I remain annoyed that you can’t marry the Khajiit characters in Skyrim, do I at least get some sort of geek credit for that?)

To make everything ever somehow relate to Punchdrunk: I first became acquainted with Bioshock when I heard Sleep No More referred to as “live action Bioshock” which is a fairly apt description for something that’s almost impossible to describe. I’ve been waiting for Bioshock Infinite since 2011 when the first trailer came out, even though aesthetically the first two games are much more up my art deco alley, because floating city = swoon.

This brings me to my (first) point: I love this entire series largely because I am overly fond of architecture. The level of detail is amazing and I seriously spent about two hours playing Infinite yesterday and I’m barely past the intro because I keep stopping to look at things. (I really wish you could play in spectator mode and not have to worry about, you know, shooting things or getting shot at, which I understand is the basis of the game but it can be distracting when I’m trying to look at windows and statues and figuring out how the building docking systems work.)

It is immersive visual world building on an epic, gorgeous scale and still being somewhat in the architectural world building phase of writing a novel it is giddy-making for my storyteller brain.

Which brings me to my main point, because this post needs to have one before I am allowed to scurry off and play more, about how much I learn about storytelling in non-prose formats.

I suppose it goes without saying that I read a lot of books which are inspiring for my own writing (see this post for a recent example and also another Bioshock reference) but I also watch a lot of movies and look at a lot of art and listen to music and lately, play games.

There is some really innovative storytelling technique going on in games and I find it almost as fascinating as the architecture. How information is relayed and how plots are advanced and learning how a world works through interacting with it.

(I kind of want to do a documentary film about immersive entertainment. Need to figure out how to conjure more of that time stuff first.)

I’m a very visual person so it helps to be able to see things so I can expand my own mental treasure trove of images to include more things to build with. I suppose it is the visual equivalent of expanding your vocabulary, creating a visual media dictionary.

And a step beyond the visuals, games and movies and graphic novels and, oh, I don’t know, let’s say, puppet theatre all touch on telling stories without words which is a useful thing to study and figure out how to do, even if you end up telling your own story with nothing but various combinations of letters and punctuation.

That’s not to say that static visuals can’t be just as nuanced and layered. Take this Shaun Tan print I just had framed:

rabbits print

I know the context behind it because it’s an illustration from The Rabbits by John Marsden, but even as a separate single piece it’s full of detail and wonderment. And rabbits.

I’m losing my points here and instead of trying to pick them up I’m just going to throw them up in the air and let them fall in a visual waterfall of sketches and plush songbirds and inflatable presidents. I was going to include something more about graphic novels but maybe I’ll make that its own post some other day. I also still owe a post about cocktails (next week!) and also when my storyteller brain is in full absorption mode it gets a little weird and spongy in my train of thought.

Also, this is why it is sometimes difficult for me to describe my writing process because there’s so much stuff going on in here.

By erin, ago

flax-golden tales: strange tides

strange tides

strange tides

The pirate ship crashed into the living room. If the window hadn’t been open it probably would have smashed the glass, instead it swooped against the side of the couch and hit the coffee table.

My mom said she didn’t want to waste money on an exterminator because they always charge by the size of the ship and not the number of pirates, and this ship was about as tall as the couch but had a fairly small crew.

I helped her gather up all the small objects and books in the room so they wouldn’t plunder, and then we left them in there with the doors closed and the window open.

I overheard the pirates arguing as they surveyed the damage, apparently they had been attempting to commandeer one of the cars parked outside but the breeze pulled them too far toward the house.

Strange tides, one of the pirates kept muttering, strange tides.

It took them three days to finish their repairs. We left a roll of twine and some duct tape and paper clips on the carpet nearby, my mom says that’s the best way to deal with them because it speeds up the repairs. (If you just drag the whole ship outside again they get confused and start pillaging.)

I didn’t see them leave, but I heard the neighbor’s car alarm in the middle of the night and in the morning the ship was gone and there was no sign of them except the broken coffee table and the tiny empty bottles of rum.

 

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

By erin, ago

this is a random post of randomness and links

I’ve had an insanely busy week and I was going to write a long involved post about cocktails with photos and things but I just don’t have time. So that will be forthcoming. Soonish.

In the meantime, randomness collected in themeless post form. Mostly links.

I really liked this piece about The Importance of Endings over on BookRiot, and not just because The Night Circus is mentioned in it. (Most of it is about Joe Hill’s Locke & Key series which coincidentally I started reading this week and am itching to have the time to get back to it. Tomorrow, hopefully.)

I’ve been posting more on my new(ish) tumblr page, which I’m loving for images and inspirations. I think half of the tumblr blogs I’m following (and therefore lots of what I’m reblogging) are all abandoned architecture, but I like abandoned architecture. Also I find it strange that my spellcheck knows how to spell tumblr.

I’m not caught up on all the episodes but I’ve been loving the BBC Radio adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere.

Also it’s spring, yay, even though it doesn’t feel particularly springy yet and it was snowing the other day.

I really need to go back to working even though this post isn’t particularly substantial. Ah well. At least there are links.

By erin, ago

flax-golden tales: well-intentioned snow coercion

well-intentioned snow coercionwell-intentioned snow coercion 

We tried to get the snow to come inside so we could keep it.

So we would have it to play with on too-hot summer days.

We left the door open but other people kept shutting it.

The windows wouldn’t open so we made paper snowflakes and taped them to the glass.

We figured that the outside snow would see the paper snow and be intrigued and also know that snow was allowed to come in the house.

(We tried to arrange the paper snowflakes so they’d look like they were having a really good time indoors, like a snowflake party.)

When that didn’t work we went outside and talked really loudly about how great the inside of the house was compared to the yard and how snow would just adore the wallpaper in the downstairs parlor and oh, aren’t the chairs in the dining room so comfortable that they simply must be sat on?

(The dining room chairs are not really that comfortable but we did not feel too bad about lying because snow probably does not sit on many chairs and would likely not be able to tell the difference.)

But that didn’t work either and then the snow stopped so we went inside for tea.

We left the paper snowflakes on the windows, so the snow will remember us when it comes back.

 

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

By erin, ago