erin

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.

By erin, ago

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.

By erin, ago

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.

By erin, ago

flax-golden tales: buoyant solidarity

buoyant solidarity

I like to let my balloons go. Release the string and let them fly.

They clearly want to fly.

I know, it’s bad for the environment. They likely end up broken and sad, tangled in trees.

But I hope that they don’t.

I hope they fly towards each other. Lost balloons and released balloons and rogue balloons, all finding kindred souls on untied strings.

I like to think somewhere they cling together, in a kind of buoyant solidarity.

Tangled bits of rainbow on blue sky.

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

By erin, ago

floppy kittens, etsy sale

It quite suddenly decided to be proper summer around here. In the last week of July. The Kitten Flop Barometer is at Very High Flop.

(Or should that be Very Low Flop, since the floppiness is very low to the ground? Though Bucket is flopped on the table in front of the fan, while Tessa is flopped by my feet on top of a pile of papers that need to be shredded. The Kitten Flop Barometer is not a precise device.)

I seem to be in the middle of all sorts of things which involves a lot of thinking and waiting and not necessarily a lot of interesting blog fodder. Also, it’s hot, which is demotivating.

Things I am waiting for in the mail:

  • BPAL order including bottles of Belle Vinu, Imp & Lawn Gnome
  • DVD of Watchmen
  • New bank card, to replace the unfortunately compromised one.
  • Notice from the bank about all that fun bank fraud stuff. It’s like a money adventure, but not as fun as shopping. When all this is done I am totally buying new shoes.

And of course, I’m keeping an eye on my my e-mail inbox for agent responses. It’s been pretty quiet lately on that front.

I’m writing bits of all sorts of things. I have two big works in progress plus a fairy tale for my writing group and I’m pondering the queens for the tarot deck.

Also, I’m having a sale on original art over on Etsy. Breakdown of ridiculously low prices is over on the art blog. Here, have a very pretty widget to click and go check stuff out:

By erin, ago

flax-golden tales: safe passage

safe passage

The train is the only safe passage through the forest.

The conductors are armed and trained in combat should there be any… incidents.

(It is a rare journey that passes without incident.)

Looking out the window is inadvisable. Not because of what you might see, but what might see you.

There are things that lurk on the ground and in the trees. There are the trees themselves, which will not let go if they catch hold.

The river, should you make it that far, is cold as ice and deep as death.

During the day, the train is the only comparatively safe passage through the forest.

After dark there are fewer options.

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

By erin, ago