Another pretty productive month for making stuff, despite a lot of weather (in LA, but how?). I chalked a square of my front walk, loosely inspired by a self-portrait by Mabel Alvarez (1891-1985). I worked on an ensemble for Amy Bauer’s Trashion Show in Long Beach in June, mostly using holey stained or otherwise undonatable t-shirts in various ways, assembled with sewing and crochet. More on that as it develops, but I can post an in-progress photo of one piece now. I started about 30 new articles for Wikipedia, focusing on folklorists, Francophone writers, educators, and Ukrainians, for various Wikipedia events.
Busy month! The dyed clothing project spent a week on display in Long Beach as part of the Fun-a-Day LA show. I went to Gallifrey One, but sat outside the whole time crocheting a Meep. I do miss seeing the panels and such inside, but it’s not worth the health risk; the patio has become my convention. I chalked 37 hearts for Valentine’s Day, between rainstorms. I wrote 25 new biographical articles on women for Black History Month at Wikipedia. On the day this posts (which is also St. David’s Day), I’ll be getting my new DMV license photo taken–first one since 2008, so it’s about time, definitely.
Well, I liked writing up my projects once a month in 2023, so I’ll continue that into 2024. I’ve mostly been working on my Fun-a-Day LA wardrobe–10-12 wearable items I’ve made since mid-December, crocheted or sewn, will be dyed this coming weekend. I have no idea how they will turn out. So that’s exciting. I made one more dress and hat, not in the image below, that I’ll wear while I do the dyeing, then dye with any leftover colors, then wear at the Fun-a-Day show in Long Beach on February 24. Otherwise, I wrote 25 new Wikipedia articles (all but one were biographies of women, see image). I did a little chalk (third photo), but this is our rainy season and not the time for big chalk projects. Soon.
December is usually a pretty busy month for crafting, I guess, but I don’t make a lot of gifts in December–if they’re not made by Thanksgiving they’re not getting made. However… I made a crocheted tote from a bag of “bonbons” (mini skeins for trying new yarn in new colors), lined with an old flannel pillowcase. I’m working on making some dyeable clothes for the Fun-a-Day LA show in early 2024–so, light or pale cottons, wools, silks, etc. I am mixing materials and leaving a lot of room for dyeing disasters or surprises, because I like the suspense. 😉 Daughter visited for Christmas–hooray!–so I mended a few things for her. And we had a chalk Angel Gabriel for about half the month, wishing happy birthday to people with mid-December birthdays.
It was a very good year for reading here! Almost forty books finished. I stop reading books without guilt, and go through spells where I don’t finish any books, for weeks at a time; so you can assume I also didn’t finish a dozen or so titles, and it probably wasn’t any fault of theirs. I have continued to enjoy audio books through Libby and cloudLibrary and Hoopla. I get most of my paper-and-ink copies of books from PaperbackSwap; I used to get more from thriftshops, but I don’t do that so much now (or any other indoor shopping, because #covidisnotover). Reading (by ear and by eye) has improved my daily early morning walk, and given me some mental space to roam beyond my house’s four walls.
Notes: Just because I read a book and listed it here doesn’t mean I liked it or would recommend it. By my count (corrections welcome), 21/39 books listed are by female or non-binary authors this year. 35 are novels (including science fiction, fantasy, historical), 4 are memoirs, nonfiction, or essay collections. Some are classified as YA, but that’s not something I always notice.
These are numbered in more-or-less chronological order (sometimes I read more than one book at a time), from January to December.
Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow
Blake Crouch, Dark Matter
Kathleen Rooney, Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk
Megan Hunter, The End We Start From
Josh Bazell, Wild Thing
Ben Aaronovitch, Rivers of London
Olga Tokarczuk, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead
Maggie Shipstead, Great Circle
Colson Whitehead, Harlem Shuffle
Alice Wong, ed., Disability Visibility
Annalee Newitz, The Future of Another Timeline
Gabrielle Zevin, The Hole We’re In
Stefan Merrill Block, The Story of Forgetting
Jen Gunter, The Vagina Bible
Margaret Atwood, The Testaments
Nell Zink, Nicotine
V. E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
Lisa See, The Island of Sea Women
Blake Crouch, Recursion
Kevin Wilson, Nothing to See Here
Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Celeste Ng, Our Missing Hearts
Andrew Sean Greer, Less is Lost
George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo
Rebecca Makkai, I Have Some Questions for You
Charles Yu, Interior Chinatown
David Lodge, Deaf Sentence
Jo Walton, Lent
Temi Oh, Do You Dream of Terra-Two?
Smith Henderson, Fourth of July Creek
Harry Turtledove, Three Miles Down
Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
I’ve been a little busy this month, because I traveled to Japan to visit my kid there (and greet some new blog followers there, hi folks). I made her a Pikachu bucket hat before I left, from a pattern by chikuchikutianqingre, using leftover denim and some quilting cotton scraps I got from Buy Nothing. I made myself a big pumpkiny wool hat on the trip; started it on the plane over, and finished it in time to wear on my last day in town. Early in the month, I remade a linen-blend pinafore dress into a top (preserving the pockets, using the lining for the sleeves, adding embellishments at the neckline and hem, and a silk panel across the chest), and dyed the whole thing a deep bricky red. (This might be a preview of my 2024 Fun-a-Day project–still ruminating about that.) Will write up the zipcode adventure Jake and I finished in early November as a separate post. No new chalk since the last haunted portrait on Dia de los Muertos (but that was fun)–will try to fit in something for December, if the weather allows. Read books, wrote articles for Wikipedia, and otherwise survived the month. Onward.
Not my most productive month, for various annoying reasons, but some fun stuff to show. Our chalk for the month was limited by the shorter days and MOSQUITOES which made even a short session outside a risky hassle (got bug spray, even wore plastic bags on my ankles, but they’re merciless). But I made a haunted portrait, which changed faces every few days, which was fun. I found a handknit top in a thriftshop, and unraveled it to make a crocheted top instead; I also crocheted a couple new phone pouches. I wrote new Wikipedia articles, of course, and our candy zipline was fun again last night for Halloween. Jake and I are finishing up another adventure, but that’ll get its own post soon. Oh! and my kids’ picture was projected on the huge NASDAQ screen in New York City.
In September, I completed two tessellated chalk drawings on our front walk: colorful hexagons as a “disco beehive” (with two big bees), and tessellated lizards a la Escher, because those are based on hexagons. (As of the evening of September 30, the lizards have been mostly washed away, so something new will take their place in October.) And I crocheted an amigurumi version of Torobe, the mascot of the Toro ruins in Shizuoka Prefecture, for Nell. (And hello to my blog’s new fans in Japan.) I haven’t done much sewing this month, nothing finished except a pair of pants for Jake, from second-hand fabric someone gave me. I can make those pretty quickly now. I wrote a bunch of Wikipedia articles, as usual, and we walked in the 5K at Shane’s Inspiration in Griffith Park, as we do most autumns.
Got both sewing machines back from the shop–the newer one that broke first, and the sturdy old Singer I dug out of the closet which hadn’t been touched 25+ years. Now both work better than ever, and I spent our Hurriquake Day making myself an improvised top from some trousers I always liked, while the chalk outside (last month’s Ophelia, and this month’s 2 Cool Cats) was washed away. I also made another nine-square tote (this one from discarded home decor samples), and crocheted a very colorful acrylic hexagon cardigan (definitely not the time to wear that yet but it will be fun to have in a few months). We delivered my old rainstorm costume downtown last weekend, to be part of A. Laura Brody’s Enter the Goddess(es) show at the Makery for the month of September. And I wrote a lot of Wikipedia articles, as usual.
In July, I crocheted two sweaters (but there’s little chance I’ll be wearing the wooly one anytime soon); I chalked with inspiration from Waterhouse’s Ophelia (1910), because Hamlet was the tragedy this summer for Shakespeare by the Sea (I went to both shows at Polliwog Park, always a treat). My pandemic hats were featured in the Plague Wear Gala (on youtube; my segment starts at about the 34:00 mark, but the other projects are interesting too). I sewed a few more nine-patch totes, so I currently have six of those made, hoping to have a few more for holiday gifting. And I wrote a bunch of Wikipedia biographies, as usual.
Pennamite 
