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[kbk]

Parentals are returned. They apparently have a hundred pictures of cherry blossom. I have managed to avoid these so far. I was quite sociable last night. Go me.

Stained glass class is not happening because nobody else signed up. Boo.

Today a man came to the door to ask about one of the cats. See, we have two, Brock and Cruikshanks. Brock is bigger and sometimes bullies his brother. Cruikshanks goes off for days at a time. Now we have found out where. Apparently Cruikshanks has been living at their house a fair amount of the time. They call him Tiger and thought he was a girl cat (well, he has been snipped). I now feel less guilty about going away and leaving him here. Hah.

Going to flat with paternal tomorrow. Hopefully will also do shopping, get stuff to finish bathroom. May just paper walls, though. Dammit I am impatient!

Comments

[edithmatilda.livejournal.com]

Why is no one else doing stained glass? What is wrong with them? Maybe you could do it at home for Mad Artist cred.

[kbk]

I know! People are weird.

It is a bit worrying, though, the outlay to get started when I don't know how it would go. I may just wait for the next class - there is a two-day thing in July, I think, or once-a-week starts again in September. I do have a number of crafts that I can do in the meantime.

[edithmatilda.livejournal.com]

It seems like a thing you can read up around and plan for a bit and sometimes that is fun although nobody could have as good a name as Manly Banister. I was looking for the Thames and Hudson Manual of Bookbinding for non-mad amounts recently as it is out of print but instead got some things on ethics and another typesetting book. I have no plans at all to typeset even slightly unless I do some of Yak's poems in TeX but that makes it more fun to read in a weird way.

I have still not bought any proper bookbinding stuff but am instead shamelessly borrowing Ken's and Tim's. It is not just the outlay it is the fear that acting like I can do it properly and it is worth spending money on it will jinx me somehow. I need a scalpel since using other people's does blunt them awfully but I think I would leave that at the library for now as, well, yes. Maybe you don't need all the Stuff to get a feel for bits of it and could get some things you could always rework into something different? There are, um, many uses for lead.

[kbk]

I know that fear. I know it so well.

Hmmm. I think I will get a book and start the reading phase. Also I might buy an ebook I have seen about making chainmaille jewellery. Yes, that's how they spell it. Or I could leave it, because Lara and I start jewellery class this week. And I do have a bunch of knitting planned. Hmmm.

[edithmatilda.livejournal.com]

Chainmaille? How could you possibly improve on that?

Your Kraft Korner could have its own bookshelf. Mine is not a real Kraft Korner but just the home of the Kraft, erm, Khest, but the bottom shelf beside it has knitting books on it and makes me feel as though I am more serious and proper.

Oh, another thing I did not do last night was cut up my knitting with big scissors. I am quite pleased about that.

My grandfather has an excellent pair of pliers for jewellery-making. They had one rounded tip and one flat one so you could make a loop and then neatly square it off where it became the main bit of wire and it looked great for earrings and such. I believe Cousin Rachel's husband thieved all the good stuff out of the garage but those may have been missed. Or maybe they can be bought in a decent hardware shop if I describe them or produce a sketch. I am always surprised that craft pliers tend to come with two round ends and ones like that aren't there more because they are very nifty.

One of the funnest things about reading is doing a class that tells you totally different things from the book. The Arts and Crafts Manual is very scathing about commercial bookbinders' terrible practices (ie the ones I'm being taught) and how wrong they are, because it reeks of rich-enthusiast privilege as was to be expected. And then the book on typography I was reading was really rude about the Kelmscott Press's books in terms of readability although it thought they were very pretty as things, and it's like watching fandom wank extended over decades.

John Baskerville's missus was a woman he took in and employed after her husband ditched her. He treated her children as well as his own, and married her as soon as said husband was proved dead. That made me quite happy, like a Thomas Hardy story not written by Thomas Hardy. I shall not investigate him more because I like him at the moment and do not want to be tragically disillusioned.

I'd be really good at being a rich artsy-craftsy type who didn't have to worry about affording food. I'd make about one thing a year but it would be fine because nobody would expect me to be productive and I could open a craftsy shop that ran at an awful loss and sold vast homespun unwearable jumpers and hand-painted silk shawls that were fug but really good silk and thus sold, and I would have customers because I would have an automatic Network out of poshness. *is a bit jealous of Lalla Ward who practically does that*

[kbk]

Hmm. Where should the shelf be, I wonder? I suppose it depends what I do about storage. It is an old bed recess, and one end will have a work surface and the other end will have something. Probably a chest of drawers or cabinet of some kind. A proper shelf would be more fun than just putting them on top of the storage thing. Hm.

I am glad you did not destroy your knitting.

Those do sound like excellent pliers. I suppose if such are not available, you could buy a pair of round-ended ones and a pair of flat-ended ones of the same make and size, and then attempt to cross-breed them.

The Kelmscott Press books are really freaking pretty, though. I saw one at the Mitchell and I oohed and ahhed a bit. I guess it is the difference between books as functional things and books as art. Which, well, books are for reading, not for sitting around looking pretty, I suppose.

Imagine if there was no fandom wank. Maybe everyone from there would instead be wanking about their own individual interests. I am sure there is knitting wank somewhere, but I don't want to look.

Lalla Ward makes ties for her husband.

[edithmatilda.livejournal.com]

Shelf could be, um, near the Korner and made to seem part of it by looking similar somehow? I am not great at visualising places I have not seen so have no idea how viable that is.

Kelmscott Press books would be extra readable by being brilliant things to have and look at and you would read them knowing they looked brilliant which I do not think would be a distraction or a bad thing. But then I am not a 1337 typographer so what would I know. Also I suspect if you are even slightly minimalist in such things they'd drive you insane after a while. I think this guy inclines a bit towards the idea that things should self-efface.

Knitting wank is presumably when the English versus Continental thing gets really nasty, or when people diss Elizabeth Zimmermann and claim she is wrong for liking circular knitting.

You have a very good point there. I do not think I could ever ever be that domestic or refrain from telling him to throttle himself with it if he didn't like it.

[wishfulaces.livejournal.com]

I hate when that happens! You're all excited about a class and nobody else is. Grrr.

You couldn't take Cruikshanks with you to flat? Bad idea?

[kbk]

Grr indeed.

The flat is upstairs and fairly small, and Cruikshanks likes to wander outside, and hunt, and such, and I don't know how he would feel about a litterbox (but I know the idea does not thrill me, because I am quite squeamish about such things.)

[wishfulaces.livejournal.com]

Ahhh, yes, I can definitely see that situation causing a lot of yowling. Probably on both your parts. (I keep *telling* myself I don't have pets because I live in no-pets apartments, but really, I don't want to clean up their messes.)

[kbk]

Yeah. If I have to, I can do it - just like I got used to living with spiders and all kinds of creepy-crawlies - but I'd really rather not. And he is an outside cat.

[wishfulaces.livejournal.com]

There is very little worse than cooping up an outside cat.

[edithmatilda.livejournal.com]

*coughpigpooisnotatallbadcough*

[wishfulaces.livejournal.com]

I think my allergies to pigs are actually worse than to cats & dogs, which...makes no sense to me. I just know I break out in more rashes and sniffling and tearing when petting pigs than with other pet-type creatures (which is very sad as I like them and their squeaking).

[edithmatilda.livejournal.com]

Oh noes!

Lizzerds?

[wishfulaces.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. Had not considered lizzards. However, I can see many problems with lizzard getting loose somewhere in townhome and causing havoc.

I have thought about fish. Mostly, it would be nice to have something alive to talk at, rather than all the electrical appliances & such that I currently talk to.

[kbk]

When I was in Mexico we had lots of geckos - they chirp! it is so odd and cute! - and the occasional iguana. Not as pets, just randomly wandering through. Iguanas are great, they look like baby dinosaurs.

Ooh! You could have one of those freaky alien-looking hairless cats! They're awesome.

I think I am going to get some plants instead of a pet - to start with anyway - because I would feel a lot less bad about it if they died of neglect. I think that is a really comforting thing about bigger animals, especially cats; if you forget to feed them, they will damn well let you know it.

But there is nothing wrong with talking to electrical appliances. I am sure they will remember your friendliness when they take over the world.

[wishfulaces.livejournal.com]

I don't think I could handle a hairless cat. Geckos, though, would be awesome. Even just wandering through the house and not being pets. Obv. I am living in the wrong part of the world.

Plants are good, definitely. I have a very small plant living on a window ledge that I got free at work. It is still alive. Maybe I'll move on to having a second plant.

That only works when I'm being friendly. The laptop will probably mostly remember me cursing it repeatedly and violently.

[edithmatilda.livejournal.com]

Lizzards are probably not that escapey. Unless you engineer a theme park full of giant extinct ones.

Fish seem very soothing although the amount of Effort involved seems a lot for something untouchable. But then Clancy is not very touchable either and he is brilliant.

[wishfulaces.livejournal.com]

I would never build such a theme park. ohhhh no.

...

If I just got a small bowl, not some massive TAAAANK, I think it would be fairly reasonable. I fish-sat for a week once and it was actually quite fun. I talked at him, he blew bubbles at me. Match made in heaven, probably.

[edithmatilda.livejournal.com]

A big enough tank for any fish at all is big enough to be a real Thing, but the good thing is that the size you choose will limit how mad you can go with numbers. Also you could have one of those shitty plastic divers in a not-to-scale ruin. Everyone loves those. Or a Sea Devil. That'd make your fish look HUGE.

[wishfulaces.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, I do not need to go mad with the numbers. I move too often to deal with that nightmare.

Hee! That's so perfect! The fish could knock the Sea Devil over! Fun time for everyone! Except perhaps the Sea Devil figure.

[edithmatilda.livejournal.com]

I am now trying to think of watery fandoms. And can you get secret underwater volcano lairs for fish?

[wishfulaces.livejournal.com]

I can't imagine why not. If I were secretly desiring to be a megalomaniac, this would be the perfect discreet way to act out my fantasies without actually doing anything about them. Which would be very un-megalomaniacal of me, but I never said I was very good at it.

[edithmatilda.livejournal.com]

I'm totally going to rule the world with an iron fist in an iron glove just as soon as I get a work ethic and can reliably leave the house.

[wishfulaces.livejournal.com]

It's good to have goals.