HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!

It’s That time of the year again, one of my favorite holidays. But you know what? I’m not doing much to celebrate this year.

I’ve had dreams the past three nights. I can’t remember what I dreamed last night, but the night before’s was interesting enough to warrant the kernel of a story idea. (I was a student at Darkbrook whose talents had yet to show up. A member of an old magical family. But I stunk at everything, and then one day, a potion blew up in my face and blinded me. I ended up running away after being picked on by a bully, and discovered that I could talk to trees.)

This morning I’m working on bears. I’m doing a bit of an assembly line, just to see how it goes. I have seven more cut out, four already sewn, and three remaining to sew. Then I move to my other desk and stuff them, sew the heads, etc. So we’ll see.

(I have red cashmere, blue plaid, mauve heather wool, patchwork (from a skirt, not a quilt), very subtle plaid fleece, ‘read me a story’ vintage polyester fabric, and wide-wale royal blue corduroy.)

I’m working on them until noon, and then I’m going to take a shower, get dressed, and do something else for a while. I have clothes to put away, laundry to do, and a floor to sweep and mop. And I haven’t written all weekend, either, so I need to get back into that.

(I know it’s November 1st tomorrow. But the idea for The Seventh Secret is still gelling. I’m going to aim to do that in December. Since HD is working so well at the moment, I don’t want to lose that momentum.)

I’m tired!

But I just finished Bear #3–Bernard:

He is made out of my J. Crew 80% lambswool, 20% cashmere sweater. The one that kept shrinking every time I washed it. His scarf is a portion of a mostly angora sweater that will become a white bear eventually.

Here they all are together:

It’s interesting how you can use the same pattern and come up with three very different bears. And notice that Bernard’s even shorter than Fenella! What’s with that?

I had a heck of a time deciding on Bernard’s nose. I had intended to use a round purple button, but then, I had intended on Bernard being female, too. He is most definitely not. So much for planning ahead…

I’m going to bed. No more bears tonight!

And because I was having so much fun and Jonathan was lonely:

This is Fenella. She is made from a 100% wool sweater (from The Limited, I think) that I wore once, washed, and it shrunk to about size 10-12 in kids. I’ve had it in my fabric stash for years.

Incidentally, each sweater so far has enough fabric for two bears. So that’s kind of nice–I can make another one like Jonathan or Fenella if I want to.

Her head actually isn’t crooked. It just looks that way in the pictures, for some reason. And I cut her legs right, so she doesn’t have that mistake either. I started her around 2:45pm and finished her at 5:05pm. So, an improvement.

At the moment, I have three cashmere and two wool sweaters felting in the washer (and the dryer, eventually) so I’ll be busy for a while. I also have the bright purple fuzzy mohair sweater to felt as well, since I think that one will make a great bear. I’ve already raided my shelves (and came up with two possibilities, but since the one has a pattern, I’m not sure it will work. The second one is my J. Crew sweater that shrinks every time I wash it. I think it’s too short now to wear, so it will be a pale blue bear.

I think I have found my true craft calling.

Since my office is done, I decided to celebrate by doing something I thought up a while ago but didn’t have the space to do it in. And since we all got up really early this morning (normal time, really, but still, that ‘extra’ hour is nice), I thought I could finish something, too.

Well, without further ado, here’s Jonathan:

He is my very first Recycled Sweater (100% wool) Button Bear. He stands about 13″ tall, which is a good height for a bear, I think, and a size I’m quite comfortable with. This was, incidentally, my first attempt at sewing a bear with a head gusset. I think he turned out quite well.

I had initially downloaded this pattern (pdf file, so slow-loading on dial-up) for him, but after thinking about it, decided it would be easier just to draw my own, since I plan on selling these, and I don’t like using other people’s patterns to sell.

All in all, he took about three hours to complete. I’m not counting the hour and a half it took me to find the beads for his eyes, nose, and joints, because if I had been smart, I would have gotten them out earlier.

And I might make another one today. It’s still early, after all, and half my list is already crossed off. (And I should make some stuff for the craft show. One container of stuff isn’t all that much, in truth.)

It will be hard to part with him.

Note: He does have a couple of mistakes. His head’s on crooked, but I tried to make it look like I meant it that way. I cut the hole for one of his legs on the wrong side, but you can’t really tell unless you look closely.

He is machine sewn except for his head. I started out machine sewing his head, but I couldn’t figure out how to do it properly. Oh, and my sewing machine needle finally broke. After that denim pillow for Mabel, I was expecting it to break. I’m sure sewing through double thicknesses of a thick sweater didn’t help, either.

So I’m thinking about marketing these so people could mail me their motheaten/worn-out/shrunken sweaters and I could make bears out of them. How does that sound?

It feels very strange to say what I’m about to say. I mean, I’ve never actually had an organized/everything put away place to do my stuff. There’s always been piles, boxes, and containers full of things where I couldn’t find exactly what I wanted to use at any given time.

This is a picture of my bed this morning, before I dumped the last two 20-gallon containers of fabric on top of it:

This is a picture of my bed as of ten minutes ago:

It feels so strange to say this, but–

I’m done!!!

Every last scrap of fabric has been put away. This has never, ever actually happened before in my entire lifetime. I mean it. This is an enormous accomplishment! AND IT ALL FIT!

Okay, so it’s kind of hard to see detail in this picture, but these are my ‘whites.’ I’m working on trying to get them into a drawer, because there’s just too many little pieces to stick on the shelves.

My bed is covered with fabric for the moment, since I dumped out everything so it would be easier (?) to sort. So far, it’s going well, although I’m still thinking I will end up running out of room. We’ll see.

I just realized that after cleaning the entire office, I have yet to come across my little box of pins that I was missing earlier in the summer. That would lead me to believe that they’re not here–at least not in the office–and I find it hard to believe that they’re sitting someone else in the house. Surely I would have noticed by now.

So, since all my stuff except for the Box is gone from Mom and Dad’s, would they be in there?! It’s not a logical place for them to be at all, but we’ll see. I’ll have to check the next time I’m there.

Hmm.

I’m working on finishing up today, since I didn’t really get anything done all week long. I have a long list. We’ll see if I finish it.

Three strikes.

Well, actually, probably four.

As of tonight (if I really have some extra litter in my car, which I think I still do), Mischa’s back in solitary.

Anyone want a cat? I really think he needs to be an only cat in a quiet house. He’s just not cut out for chaos.

Grrrrrrrrr.

This time, he’s staying in until Thanksgiving weekend. And then we’ll see.

I’ve been storycaught.

Had this idea yesterday afternoon to add a prologue in Emle’s POV, which shows a bit of the dynamic of the Hunt, and her initial request to be allowed to visit Sennet to make sure the baby is healthy and to ensure Sennet’s help once Eri is delivered.

Whoa.

It’s six words away from 9k. Already.

An excerpt:

Behind her, the Hound coughed thickly. Emle turned, dreading what she would see, but the sight that met her eyes was not as bad as she had feared.

A boy–a young man, in truth–lay on the floor, curled in a tight ball with his back towards her. He was so thin she could count every vertebrae in his spine. His unkempt hair straggled across his naked body, far too long for human comfort. His skin was clean, but marbled with fading bruises–and quite a few scars.

Emle snatched a blanket off the back of one of the chairs and draped it across his body. She wanted to say something–to lash out at Gabriel, but she had a feeling he already knew what she thought. “He’ll need clothing,” she said instead, keeping her voice level with an effort. “If he can remember what it’s like to be human again.”

Without speaking, Gabriel stepped past her and vanished through the door. Emle stood, alone, for a moment, hoping that he’d gone to do her bidding, but it was hard to tell. On one hand, he had every right to be angry at her request. On the other, he had told her the Hounds could shift into human shape on his own.

She moved to face Malachi and lowered herself to the floor again. His eyes were squeezed shut–whether in pain or in expectation of pain, she did not know.

“Malachi?” She kept her voice low. “Can you hear me?”

His hands moved under the blanket, and slowly emerged to clutch the folds of fabric to his chest. He shivered violently, teeth chattering together, but he did not open his eyes.

What if he had no free will left? What if his years as a Hound had drained all sense of self away, leaving him an empty shell for Gabriel to fill?

Greatly daring, she reached out to touch his clenched fingers. His skin was icy cold.

“Malachi?” Tears filled her eyes. “Can you understand me?”

She could not bear to have six mindless husks walking around, reminding her of what she had not dared to question.

His lips parted, and some of the desperate tenseness drained from his face. “What did you do to him?” His eyes flickered, opened, then closed again. “What did you do?”

copyright 2005 Jennifer St. Clair

“The thermocouple is a safety feature that determines if the pilot light is lit. The heat of the pilot light flame creates millivolt current in the thermocouple which energizes a magnet that in turn allows the gas control valve to operate. If the pilot light goes out, the thermocouple will not allow the gas valve to operate.”

A common symptom of a faulty thermocouple is the pilot light will not stay lit.

I had every intention of coming home today, working on sorting more fabric, and getting the rest of my list taken care of.

I cleaned out the litterboxes, at least. So I get to cross one thing off.

I also learned quite a bit, like what a thermocouple does, that they can go bad, and how to light the pilot light on my boiler. I also brushed my boiler’s ‘teeth’ (with a toothbrush, even, and flossed with a piece of wire), I figured out why it wouldn’t stay lit after we did all of this, and at the moment (knock on wood–there’s plenty of it around, after all) everything is running smoothly.

Thank goodness for Cingular Nation, and the fact that I have cell phone service down the basement. Thank goodness to the nice guy from church (I’m not going to name him here) who came to my house after I couldn’t get the pilot light to light, ended up staying for over an hour to replace the thermocoupler thingy, and didn’t take a dime (although I did ask Mom to ask him if I owed him anything, or, at the least, if I could bake him something yummy as thanks.)

And yes, thanks to the furnace guy (Yes, the furnace guy who never came back to my house last winter) who said that he would give the guy from church a new thermocoupler if he brought mine to him to match it up.

Thank you Dad, as usual, for your advice, and for reassuring me that the boiler really wasn’t going to blow up (I have this thing about gas) and that I was perfectly capable to clean it and brush it out and relight the pilot light (even though it wouldn’t stay lit.) Since Dad’s in Washington DC at the moment, it was a bit of a long conversation on the phone to do this. But it worked.

And thank you, Mabel, for dealing with the interruption of your supper not once, not twice, but three times, with good grace. (And I should probably thank the cats for not attempting to venture down the basement, too.)

Argh! But at least we have heat. It’s supposed to get down to 34 tonight.

I’m tired. But I said I’d stay up until the boiler kicked off, so I’m going to do just that.