Tag Archive | blog

Apple-Picking

Oct21

So, the first year we were in our house, someone came onto the property and just started picking apples.  Claimed they knocked, but T. was in the garage and they didn’t, say, leave a note or anything, they just started picking.

T. told them to Get Off My Property and, as far as we know, they’ve never come back.

I giggle about this sometimes.

Couple years ago, this guy who looked like a hipster except with a thick Eastern European accent stopped by and wanted to photograph our tree.  I told him only if he took some apples. 😉  He took like three reusable-shopping-bags worth and came back later for more.

Last year, a nice guy brought us a gallon of cider BEFORE he started picking apples, and brought us some maple syrup too, and then more cider.  Took a lot of apples – we did not have any shortage, let me tell you.

Just got a note from him the other day and, in addition, there’s a nice older lady who stopped by with her grandkids to pick some apples.  Hooray!  I am super thrilled by people who come to me to get apples.  (Especially when they leave cider behind).

But only if they ask first.

Or, you know, happen to bike by while we’re picking apples.

Or come with a good recipe for something we haven’t done with apples yet.

(And we still have more than enough for ourselves, let me tell you, even without breaking into the weird apple trees in the hedge row).

Also, tonight for dinner: Kale Apple Soup.

Bright Lights, Small City (a blog post)

Sep24

I’m generally the sort of person that likes to have plans, well, planned out well in advance. 

But sometimes a friend drops a link in your chat box and says “do you guys want to go to Binghamton tomorrow?”

And… well.  It looked good  — the link, the hanging out with close friends, the relatively short drive (1-½ hour or so).  And we didn’t have anything urgent to do that Saturday, and…

So we drove to Binghamton. 

Binghamton is… well, let’s start.  NYState is in the Rust Belt, which I’m sure you know if you live around here.  It has a lot of remnants of former glory — for instance, I grew up in (near) Rochester, which is the birthplace of Kodak, Xerox, and Bauch and Lomb (film cameras, photocopiers, and eye care/vision enhancement).  You can see not only, say, the Eastman House (George Eastman founded Kodak) but the old Kodak building, the Xerox tower, the great mausoleums for all these people, then Gleason (works) and Strong… hold on I need to google… oh ha.  Henry Alvah Strong, first president of Kodak. Via Helen Strong Carter, his daughter, First Lady of Hawaii in the early 1900s, go Rochester. 

…Strong Museum of Play, it turns out, is a totally different Strong family.   Continue reading →

The Rain Won’t Come, an experimental Blog post of creative non-fiction

Jun15

Trying: http://amandaonwriting.tumblr.com/post/46236818204

The weather said rain, rain from 5 p.m. on. The sky said rain, heavy clouds hanging overhead. The air said rain; it dripped with moisture, making the moderate temperatures seem hotter, stickier.

And yet it would not rain, will not rain. It sat sticky and icky until sunset, when the drop of temperature brought some relief. And still, the promised rain, the threatened rain, will not come.

It rained yesterday, of course, heavy thunderstorms that knocked out roads in some areas and flooded downtown Watkins Glen. It rained Friday, a wild storm that turned Lake Ontario muddy. It will likely rain tomorrow.

But today, today it will not rain.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/950654.html. You can comment here or there.

April A-Z Blogging Challenge: Reflections Post

May5

The Meme Master Post

I do plan on finishing T-Z; you guys left me some wonderful prompts to play with. In the meantime, however, here’s my Reflections post, as asked for by the Blogging A-Z People.

First impression: I really like doing A-Z challenges, and I really don’t think I’ll officially do Blogging A-Z again.

I’ve talked about this with a few of my readers, but for anyone else who’s interested, here are my reasons. It’s a bit cranky, so I’ve put it behind a cut.

I signed up for Blogging A-Z because I thought it would be a fun way to blog about some new topics and to meet some new people.

I got some good topics, and had a blast writing to all of my readers’ prompts. I’ll probably do that again – or another A-Z Giraffe Call.

But I didn’t find that it got me much outside traffic – I get more from Friday Flash or Three Word Wednesday – and I didn’t find it got me much interesting feedback at all. I get more readers from the Giraffe Calls, and those are about the same amount of writing as a blog post a day for 26 days.

So far, I have gotten three comments from A-Z bloggers, 2 from mods, and one of those has spurred me to consider actually posting my “comments policy.”

(The short version of my comments policy: pls. always be polite to others. In addition, please don’t post criticism or critique, typo catches or things unrelated to the post you’re commenting on UNLESS you’ve already commented on the story/blog post in question).

In addition, looking over the blog posts by mods and on A-Z in general gives me the impression it’s really not for me. I’m not a professional blogger. This is a writing blog, where I sometimes talk about my life, too. I have no interest in being hard-core about posting every day, because my hard-core writing is, ah, not this. And I refuse to take my inability to write an A-Z in 30 days as a negative judgement on myself.

I find the idea very intriguing, but don’t really need a “hurry finish this in xx days” sort of challenge, not unless I’m willing to let everything else fall by the wayside for that xx days. Like Nano, probably not for me again.

And that’s okay. There are plenty of other ways to play with other people on the internet!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/933166.html. You can comment here or there.

April A-Z Blogging Challenge: C is for Costumes

Apr5

The Meme Master Post

C is for Costumes, sewn with a thread

Costumes! I used to sew a lot more costumes – I used to sew a lot more. I mean, there are pictures of me sewing things back when my parents were building their house – so I was about 5 that year. For graduation from college, my mom bought me a fancy Pfaff sewing machine. I like sewing. But time constraints mean I haven’t done much of it recently.

But! A friend has informed me that I AM going to an SCA event with him in June(*), and since I AM going, that means I need to figure out garb. I have my crap-where-did-the-time-go backup plan (A t-tunic>t-tunic over a long skirt I already own). But if I have the time to do something a little more in-period…

…well, Lyn, the first question is WHICH part of period and the second part is location, no? Or the other way around, possibly.

The stuff that first drew me to the SCA in a theoretical way was 11th-to-1th-century English: Cotehardies. I have wanted a proper nice cote for just about forever, but you can’t really wear them to work. So that’s first option, something like this or this.

BUT I’ve been looking at Viking stuff lately, and I find it very interesting – although the stuff I’ve found doesn’t have that flowing-skirts feel I find so very nice (Actually, some more looking, and I may be wrong on that.)

AND in another line of thought, the clothing closest to the inspiration for Reiassan is Mongol & Turkish. The layers of Turkish, the cut and angles of Mongol clothing – add some ridiculously bright colors and you have Calenyen clothing.

That’s a lot of garb. I suppose I start at the fabric store 🙂

(*) That’s the way to get me past my new-things-are-scary anxiety, IF you know it’s something I want to do AND you are a good enough friend to have that understanding.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/919008.html. You can comment here or there.

Blogging (Etc) from A to Z

Apr1

Thanks to [personal profile] anke and [personal profile] inventrix mentioning it, I have signed up for the April 2015 Blogging from A to Z Challenge.

Please to give me topic ideas? Either microfic or blogging topics are fine!

If I do not get a topic idea by the time I am ready to write that day’s blog post, I shall be forced to ramdomize or make something up myself 🙂

A is for Apoc burning bright
B is for Bondagage, Nice and tight
C is for Costumes, sewn with a thread,
D is for Dragons, with gold for a bed
E is for Elves, for fairer or worse;
F is for Fires of Gobann, of course.
G is for Gifts, both given and got;
H is for Houses – repairs and whatnot.
I is for Islands
J is for Jewelry
K is for knitting and kisses and kites
L is for Lust, in the days and the nights.
M is for morning, the moon, and the mountains.
N is for nereids standing in fountains
O is for octopi clinging to jetty-as
P is for posturing, and peacocks, and poinsettias
Q is for quietness leading to mystery
R is for ritual that helps cement historyS-
S is for the shore, and the sky, and the storm
T is for truth, all embroideries shorn
U – uniforms, umbrellas, upside down cake, unicorns
V – Velocipede, velociraptor, vector, virgin
W – west, wet, water
W for Worldbuilding
X is for xylem, supporting the bast.
Y- Yelling
Z- Zoned

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/916817.html. You can comment here or there.

Five Things….

Mar26

If I were to do a series of Five Things… blog posts, what sort of subjects would you like to see?

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/914029.html. You can comment here or there.

I Live! (Blog post)

Feb5

I’ve been a little quiet the last couple weeks, at least compared to my normal output.

I’ve been working on submissions and commissions primarily – see New Year’s Resolution of 4 submissions/month, which I may have to modify. Currently, I’m working on a piece for a coming-soon project – it involves crows!

I’ve also been working on a commission from Kuro_neko: Year Zero Addergoole!

I’m still playing with Trope-Bingo (Jahnan & Yira) and my for-fun story (Amrit & Mieve), as well as Luke Visits Doomsday, but all three of those are better if posted in longer pieces instead of my normal 250-300-word blorts.

AND I’ve been considering taking some of my older pieces, re-working them, and releasing them as small collections.

Thus, a question for you: * What would you like to see as a collection (Setting, specific character, a story that stuck in your head)?

* And what do you think would sell?

Edited to add: Wyste reminds me that there was another question: * What should I do next/continue in regards to serials? More Edally? Angry Aetherist is nearing its end. More Addergoole? More Inner Circle?

Cheers,
Lyn

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/893371.html. You can comment here or there.

How to End Worlds and Influence People, Part I

Oct29

Do you want to end a world?

Not this world; that would be messy. Not to mention, if you end the world, you don’t have anywhere to sell your stories. Or to buy coffee.

So let’s end some other world, shall we?

When I started writing Monster Godmother, I didn’t need to end the world; I already had the Faerie Apocalypse rather well set up. I already had lots of apocalypse settings, actually.

But say you need a tailor-made apocalypse for a story idea. Where do you start?

That’s a good question: where are you going to start? When is your story going to take place?

Some stories start before the apocalypse – think disaster movies. Day After Tomorrow. War of the Worlds. Some start in media res. 28 Days Later is the only one that comes to mind quickly. Some start just-afterwards, while you’re still reeling from the disaster. The book for Postman was like that. And some are so long afterwards that you’ve gotten new cultures. Waterworld.

Where are you going to start?

Faerie apocalypse, by the way, starts either 2000 years before the apocalypse or even further back, and, as of now, goes approximately 50 years into the future. Past is easier, what can I say?

If you’re going to start before or in media res, you’re going to need to know more about the apocalypse. If you’re starting long afterwards, you can fudge as much as you need to. And if you’re starting just after it, you’re going to need to think about the scope of your story.

Does your story span the whole world? Several worlds? Is it two people in a cabin? Six people in what used to be a city? Each of these requires a different level of backstory – for two people in a cabin, you only need to know that civilization has fallen. For a world-spanning story, you’re going to need to know what cities fell, which survived, and how much destruction is still going on – at a very minimum.

Monster Godmother takes part in the middle of a battle. If I’d been building the apocalypse from scratch, I wouldn’t have needed much – a couple notes here and there about nearby destruction. If I continued her story further… then, I’d have needed to build more.

And you? Well, if you want to ruin a world, you’ve got to do a bit of homework. Where does your story start? How much of a span will it have?

Once you have that (next time) we can talk about how we’re going to end the world.

Monster Godmother is available, along with several other fine apocalypse stories, in What Follows, available in e-book on Amazon, Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/840040.html. You can comment here or there.