A Fan's Playground

whoops I drafted this for crossposting but then never got round to it - just discovered the draft while cleaning up some files!

two question/answer memes I did over on mastodon! reposting here so you can see my answers too :)


( shipping meme )


( fic writing meme )

what if we play a game where you provide me with two characters who it's implausible to imagine them getting together, and I'll come up with a scenario that might actually result in them having sex

I played this game earlier this week on mastodon and it was SO fun! ships I came up with answers for were:

- ling wen/guoshi
- qiu haitang/ning yingying
- lan xichen/xue yang
- lan wangji/xue yang
- su she/xue yang
- yao-zongzhu/song lan
- yue qingyuan/sha hualing
- xie lian/shi wudu

but I welcome more! and absolutely feel free to go beyond the mxtx fandoms that all the above ships are from!

For #DecRecs this year I will be recommending a hobby or craft each week!

Today at verity's suggestion I would like to recommend quilt-making as a hobby!

I recently sewed my first ever pieced quilt top and it was so much fun. I'm about to start the second half of making it into a quilt, which is quilting the top together with the batting and the backing to make a proper blanket sandwich, and I'm really pumped about doing that too!

One of the cool things about this hobby is that it can be like a whole bunch of different hobbies masquerading as one, but also, it doesn't have to be. Depending on which aspects are enjoyable to you, you can pick and choose your approach.

1. You can design your own patterns from scratch, for both the piecing and the quilting! But you don't have to, you can also make liberal use of the many, many patterns that are available by looking in the library for books or by searching the internet for options. Quilt-making is a hobby with SO many resources available, seriously.

2. You can put effort into choosing the perfect fabrics that create the effect you want! But you don't have to, you can purchase quilt kits with everything included, even the fabric, if you don't like that part. Or just find approximate matches for the fabrics used in the original pattern. Or just use whatever random scraps of worn clothing and linens and leftovers from other sewing projects you want!

3. You can carefully sew together a pieced quilt top! But you don't have to, quilts with a single-fabric single-colour top to show off the quilting design are a classic as well. And if you do want to do piecing, then the pieced top can be any degree of simple or complex. You could do a single massive nine-patch, you could do a top made entirely of postage-stamp-sized triangles, you can do all the complex curves of a double wedding ring design, you can do a scrappy quilt, you can do a freeform art quilt, you can do applique (where you sew pieces of fabric down onto a backing to create the design, instead of piecing the fabrics together), and so much more!

4. You can hand-quilt the entire thing, but you don't have to, you can also learn how to machine-quilt with a long-arm machine, or if you don't want to do that, there are places where you can pay someone else to do the long-arm machine quilting for you. And if your quilt isn't too big you can quilt it on a regular home sewing machine even. And this isn't technically a "quilt" but I won't tell if you don't - you can turn your pieced top into a knotted comforter, as a much faster way of connecting the layers of the blanket sandwich at home.

5. You can make lots of different things with piecing and quilting, it doesn't have to only be for bedspreads! Yes you can make a quilt for your bed, or a lap-quilt, or a baby blanket. But by using one or the other or both of piecing/quilting, you can also make pot-holders and wall-hangings and coasters and postcards and pillow covers and clothing and more!

6. The world of different aesthetics is also wide open to you. There are plenty of traditional quilt patterns and fabric choices you can make, but there's also SO much more out there beyond that, doing incredible things, in so many different styles.

7. You can even go extra hardcore and dye your own fabric if you want. My aunt used to do that and made the most amazing gradient-colour quilts because she had complete control over the shades of colour in each of the squares on her quilt top! Heck you could even weave your own fabric to make a quilt out of if you really wanted to.

All of this means that there are always new aspects you can choose to explore if you want to increase the challenge for yourself, but there are easy ways to approach it that don't have to be intimidating if you haven't done much of this kind of sewing before. A choose-your-own-adventure where the results will be beautiful and the process will be satisfying regardless!

For my current quilt project, here's how I approached it:

1. I searched the internet for free baby quilt patterns, and found one where I liked the underlying pattern and thought it would be doable with my level of sewing skills - but the way colours were used did not bring out aspects of the pattern in a way I found attractive. So I took that pattern and plotted out a variety of other colourways using the highly sophisticated tool of microsoft paint and figured out an approach that I thought worked much better.

2. When I had the design plotted out with the intended colour choices, I went to the local fabric shop and browsed their quilting fabric section for honestly hours, searching for fabrics that complemented each other, that worked in the design, that were fabrics I thought were pretty, and that were the right degree of light/medium/dark (the usual advice for traditional quilts is that they generally look best when you have a combination of all three!). I think it would be easier to come into a fabric store less attached to an exact specific colourway for a quilt pattern and be open to rejig it as the spirit moves and as the fabric options allow, but for this particular quilt I had a colour mandate as it is a gift for a friend whose nursery has a colour theme, so I worked hard to find the right colours.

3. Then I cut and sewed and ironed and sewed and ironed and sewed and ironed some more a whole bunch! I was very intimidated getting started on this part because I am a very particular sort of person and I wanted to be sure I was doing things Right, but once I got going I was amazed at just how fun it was. It turns out that piecing a quilt satisfies the same part of my brain that looooooooves to put together jigsaw puzzles, only with quilt piecing, you come out the other side with a useful creation you can do things with! This is like, a revelation. I'm breaking up with jigsaw puzzles. They're fun but they can't outcompete piecing quilt tops.

4. My plan is to hand-quilt it; I love hand-sewing, I find it very peaceful and meditative. I'm looking forward to doing this part, once I've basted everything together and borrowed a sufficiently enormous embroidery hoop from my sister! I'm going to quilt "in the ditch" (basically, just quilting alongside various seams instead of making any fancy patterns with my lines of stitches). It's a complex enough pieced top that quilting patterns aren't needed to add visual interest, so quilting in the ditch is easiest and most straightforward.

And then I'll just fold the backing fabric over the edges and sew it down to enclose it, and it'll be done! Probably not till after the baby's born at this point, but so it goes, I know someone who regularly does not finish baby quilts until the babies in question are 2 years old, so if I'm even just a few months late I'll still be doing well!

I grew up in the sort of household where quilts were normal and where I was taught the basics of how to sew from a young age, and then as an adult I have done a fair quantity of practical sewing which has strengthened my skills, so I felt pretty confident in diving into a relatively complex pattern my first go. And although it's not perfect, it's still beautiful, so I feel great about it. But you don't have to start at this level of complexity if you don't want to! Start at whatever level feels comfortable or intriguing or exciting to you! and join me in quilting!

Over on mastodon, someone I follow started a thing where for each day in December you post a rec for something. I decided to join in! And now that it's the end of December, I'm crossposting all my recs here in one big long list. It's all mxtx fic, mostly mdzs and svsss but a bit of tgcf, and of a wide variety of tones and ships. I hope you find something in here to enjoy!


( cut for length! )

Rules: If you'd like your own questions, let me know in the comments! I'll ask the first five commenters five questions each. Answer them in your own journal, offer to give the first five commenters their own sets of questions, and let the cycle continue! (Meme originally from ursula.)

I got the following questions from chestnut_pod!

1. What are the birds that signify the seasons for you?

I've finally gone through an entire year of seasons of being a birder, so I can make a stab at answering this question! This might change in future years as I become more intimately familiar with the local bird populations, but here's what I currently have.

I have long associated the fall to early winter season with crows. In this season, crows gather in enormous flocks to roost together for nights, and this can be hundreds or even thousands of birds all together! I love watching them flocking as evening comes on.

Late winter is cardinal season to me - this is when male cardinals will regularly perch on a high branch and sing loudly to proclaim their territory. On my bicycle commute to work last winter I got to be very familiar with the specific territories belonging to different cardinals, and where I could expect to see and hear them!

Spring is the season of the proliferation of migrating birds in fresh breeding plumage who are all singing their distinctive songs, so it's less a season of a specific bird and more a season of "holy shit so many birds to pay attention to, where do I turn first."

Summer is harder for me to answer, since for a variety of reasons I wasn't able to do much in the way of birding this summer, and it doesn't have an obvious answer. Maybe next summer I'll have an answer though!

2. Of all the book formats to ever be, which is your favourite format of book, and why?

There are many wonderful things about many formats books have had over the years/centuries/millennia, mostly the fun aesthetics! But mass market paperbacks are just so very practical that I have to go with that. Lightweight, easy to carry around, comfortable to hold one-handed when reading, a consistent small size to make it easy to shelve lots of them without taking up too much space, they're basically the perfect format. (okay yes ebooks are even more small and convenient, and I value them for certain circumstances, but I really like a physical, tangible book whenever possible.)

3. What do you enjoy about voting in the Hugos? What does it add to your experience as a reader and fan?

...that's a great question. Um. I think paying attention to the Hugos more generally allows me to be in touch with the current zeitgeist of the sff world, especially when I pay attention to more than just the novel category. Which is interesting to do because it allows me to see to what degree I am or am not in a bubble of my own making with respect to the works and creators that get talked about! And introduces me to things that may not have previously ended up on my radar but that have value.

In terms of actually participating in the nominating and the voting, though, I suppose it's partly that having a Goal and a Deadline means I actually engage with the things I'm learning about the current zeitgeist and the other corners of sffdom, instead of just being like, "I'm sure I'll get round to this eventually" and then never quite prioritizing it. Partly, too, it allows me to participate in conversations with fellow sff fans, because there's more likelihood we're reading and having reactions to the same works at the same time. (hi, cahn!) And partly I just really, really like creating ordered lists and completing surveys. Officially submitting my opinion about the quality of a book or story or what-have-you to an organizational body is weirdly satisfying to me! Also then it allows me to get personally mad when the hugo voters make objectively incorrect decisions about what to award :P because at least I did my part!

4. If you had to choose a Memory Called Empire Teixcalaanli name, what would it be?

Ooh I love that! I seem to recall it being against the norms for the noun part to be a living being so I can't go too directly birdy. I suppose the question is whether I want a noun that signifies a more abstract value, or a noun that is straightforwardly a thing I like. The number would definitely be Six though. Perhaps I'd be Six Binocular. Or Six Rectrix? idk!!! a hard choice! If anyone has suggestions of nouns I should consider, please let me know!

5. What's the meal you make when you have absolutely no energy left but want something tasty?

Ramen, with an egg and some frozen spinach tossed in, and the soup base replaced with something tastier (a better quality chicken bouillon, plus rice vinegar and soy sauce and sriracha). Or, cheese on toast, put in the toaster oven to broil the cheese, eaten with pickles or salsa. Or, boil some frozen dumplings and mix up a quick dipping sauce for them. But most of the time I have already done a bunch of batch cooking on the weekend, so I don't need to make things throughout the week - I just pull out a container of already-prepared food and microwave it, which is truly peak no-energy-required.

I was stalking reading through the archives of random people's LJs/DWs, as I do, and came across a meme type thing that looked like fun: name a character, any character, and I will tell you a reason (or several) why they are awesome! Yes, this includes characters from fandoms I am not a part of; I will answer via FANNISH OSMOSIS. And for fandoms I AM familiar with, you will get Actual Opinions(tm). And it will be awesome.

Interested? Go! (and feel free to name more than one!)