Sing me a story, laugh me a lullaby

Hello folks! Happy Almost Mother's Day for those of you who are mothers and/or mentors of any kind.

As usual, Things have happened around here. Mr Pax has been under the weather. He was vomiting on and off for about two weeks. Every time we thought we had solved the problem, he'd start up again. Otherwise okay, cheerful and smiling and running playing, and then...vomiting. We did the bland diet, reintroduced things slowly, everything would be fine for one or two days, then bam, back to square one. He threw up a hairball (he's a very dedicated groomer and needs a haircut), and we thought maybe that was it, but no, after a day, back to square one. We took him to the vet after we ran out of ideas, and she gave him some anti-nausea pills and probiotics, and that seems to have done the trick, fingers crossed. He hasn't thrown up since we gave him the first pill, and he's about four days after the course of it and is still okay. She didn't think anything serious was happening. She said dogs can get into cycles where they vomit and irritate their stomach and then vomit because they're irritated, which irritates it further. Hopefully we're on the mend. She says if he starts again, we'll do bloodwork to look for Cushing or diabetes or liver stuff, but he seems okay now. Knock on wood.

It's been stressful, obviously. Mum and I have been on 24 hour nursing care handing off report to other another. I'm trying to get out of this burnout I'm in and be calm and indulge in self care, but sometimes you have to put that aside to look after someone else. I just want to climb out of this hole of exhaustion I'm in. I did have another breakthrough though, in that I got a pair of cheap bluetooth earbuds for myself, and I have been using music to help get through stuff my brain hates. Grocery shopping, chores, stuff like that. Giving myself dopamine while draining it to hopefully end up on an even keel. It's been helping a lot. But I am tired.

I took an online art course, just a quick five day portrait thing that was free from the YouTuber I was learning to draw from, Angel Ganev. It was super helpful, really breaking down everything into easy steps to follow. I redid my Pip portrait with his colouring method, and I'm very pleased with the results:


(click to make bigger)

I used the same sketch as the other version, and I think it's cool to have such different results from the same base. I've coloured other people's drawings for years for fun, but when I was trying to colour my own drawings, I just couldn't find a style I liked. This feels like I can build on it.

I'm still writing. I think I've solved the problem I was having where I felt like I didn't start in the right spot and didn't know how to adjust it without having to rearrange an already extremely complicated timeline. It'll still take work, but less so than if I had to start over again. And I've been reading. I got the first two Game Changers books (the ones Heated Rivalry is based on) from the library on my Kobo. I haven't seen the show, it's one of those things I see clips of on Instagram and go 'huh, that looks good, I'd probably enjoy that' and proceed to just never watch. But I enjoyed the books. The first one is okay. Very fanfictionesque, though I know it kind of sort of was Stucky fanfic to begin with (I had fun trying to guess which Marvel people all the characters were based on). The second is a marked improvement in every aspect of the storytelling. I've got the third one on hold, and am currently reading Love in Lowercase by Francesc Miralles which is cute so far. I thought it might be translated from Spanish, and just confirmed it is. It 'feels' translated, if that makes sense? Like, it's not quite written how it would be if it were in English first. Like you're getting told a story secondhand, maybe? Anyway, it's enjoyable. Kind of quiet and esoteric and thoughtful.

Hope all is well as it can be in your neck of the woods. Talk to you soon!

I've been working on trying to learn how to art lately, and I finally have a finished piece where I'm happy with it. Like, there are still areas I want/need to improve, but I feel like I achieved the best I can with this one and will take my knowledge forward in the future to do better.

This is Pip, one of my characters from the stories I've been writing.


(click to see bigger)

According to Procreate's stats, I worked on the canvas for 9 hours, 11 mins, but a huge chunk of that was me trying various colouring techniques and hating them all until I settled on this one, so I don't know how much time it would have taken me if I just went directly with this style. I'd post the time lapse, but I don't know where to host videos nowadays.

Anyway, I feel accomplished. I'm sure I'll hate this in the future, but I'm happy with it now. I find that curve is bigger in art than any other thing I've attempted, that 'Yay, I did it!' to 'this is not as good as it could be' is a constant, ongoing thing. For future me: you did good! You made a thing look like a thing! Be proud of yourself!

Hello there good people! I hope anyone who observes Easter, Passover, and/or Ramadan has had/is having a good/joyous/generous one. We had my brother and SIL over on Sunday for a chill brunch that was very pleasant.

Overall, things have been pretty good here. Mum and I are both suffering from the Spring flare-ups that happen every year. I don't know how kidney stones can have a flare up, but I swear they do. Before that, though, things were going super well and we were getting a lot accomplished and working on projects, and we're still doing that, but less so because we're a little under the weather.

But I've managed to knit two purses for myself. My beloved old one finally could no longer function, so I decided to see if I could just make one for myself. I'm the worst about patterns; I can never follow one to the letter. I start one and if it's not beautiful in, like, five rows, I go 'nope!' and start on something else. About halfway through I decide it's terrible and I hate it and my mum very patiently encourages me to go onwards and then finally I end up with something I like. Here are the products of this hectic, artistic process:



The one on the left is one I kind of winged the pattern for, taking the stitch count and flap decreases from one pattern and making up everything else myself. It's a bit wonky, but overall I like the look of it, and I'm not as proficient in knitting as I am in crochet. You have to be wonky while you're mastering a skill. The other purse is somewhat closer to what the actual pattern I chose for it called for, but I scaled it down and changed the handle and added the top i-cord trim, which took forever and essentially called for knitting with two crochet hooks, but I enjoyed the process. I like the second guy better--I think he's more uniform--but I feel like the first guy is more my style. Well, they both are, I guess. Sometimes I'm boho, sometimes I'm sparkly.

The other thing we've been working on is trying to grow some milkweed for the monarch butterflies. We want to make a butterfly/bee garden in the backyard. A friend of my mum's from her exercise class gathered milkweed pods from around where she lived and my mum gave me them for Christmas, along with a little indoor greenhouse. It's a process to get them going, and our first batch produced only two seedlings, one of which spontaneously died for unknown reasons, but our second batch looks a little healthier.



My much put upon kalanchoe has also decided to perk up. Mum got me one as a Valentine's Day present a few years ago and despite my loving care, she grew mould on her and I genuinely thought she was dead, but in completely ignoring her, she somehow fought off the infestation and recovered and has been slowly getting bigger and bigger by me sneaking up behind her and putting a little water in her and then ignoring her so she doesn't get too overwhelmed. Now she's growing a flower again! She's very nervous about it, and hasn't opened it yet even though she's had it for quite awhile now, but I hope she'll work up the courage to bloom soon. If she does, I'll take a picture. I think she's very pretty even without any flowers, and I'm very proud of her working through her illness to shine again, so whatever happens, I will support her life choices.

We've been having good TV around here lately, though, as always, the only three shows we watch in a week are on on the same night, so we DVR them all and spread them out through the week. We've been watching Sullivan's Crossing on CTV, which is new this year and based on books Mum and I have read. It's very enjoyable, very Canadian, a little bit cheesy, but in a good kind of way. I prefer cheese to angst. We're also watching Sanditon and Call the Midwife, but the DVR had a meltdown one night and refused to tape them, and we couldn't find Call the Midwife anywhere to catch up on it, so we'll have to wait until it comes to Britbox. PBS wants you to think you can use Passport, but if you're in Canada, you can watch, like, two shows on it and the rest are region locked. Sanditon we were able to buy from Apple TV, at least.

I have some new glasses on the way. I had my yearly check-up and mentioned I was still having trouble reading, especially when I'm tired, so my doctor suggested reading glasses with a higher prism than my multi-focals to try to get my eyes to align together since my lazy eye is such a bitch about teamwork. You can't put more than one prism strength in a single lens, unfortunately, and I need a different one for distance, so I'll have my multi-focals for most things, then the reading glasses specifically for...you know, reading.

I think that's all! Happy Spring, I hope you will get some good weather soon if you have not already. The sun has abandoned us here. It's been the darkest winter in 78 years, apparently, but we made it through.

Been on a icon making kick lately, so if anyone would like some Agent Carter icons, I've got 116 of them from Season Two.



EPISODES 1-5


EPISODES 6-10

I made more character Coat of Arms. Because it turns out to be quite fun.

( Steve Rogers )

( Peggy Carter )

( Edwin Jarvis )

I recently leant out my Merlin dvds to someone, and it reminded me of Merlin stuff, and I decided to do some Merlin daemon portraits. Probably the biggest project I've tried to do with this sort of thing, but I feel like I get better at it as I go along.

Brought to you in part by a binge listening of The Unbelievable Truth, a few Nerdist podcasts, and much Postmodern Jukebox.

( Many images. Many animals. Many Knights. )

Now, to write fic!

Made some Agent Carter icons for my own purposes, but I thought they might be useful to others, so feel free to take if you want.

Credit isn't necessary, but if you want to credit, you can use songstressicons and/or citadel_icons. Feel free to edit (add text, resize, change colours, etc.).




Screencaps and promo images are from Screencapped.net, lovely textures are from midnight_road, and satine_violet

If there's a character or combo of characters you'd like, please let me know. I'm always happy to make pretty things!

All right, I've done my daemon portraits up now. It was good practice, and a lot of fun. You can see them below the cut. There are characters who haven't appeared in my stories yet, but for whom I have headcanon. Including Q. Just 'cause. The sizes and styles vary depending on what photos I could find of the characters and the animals they have. All character images are from Cumberbatchweb. The animal images are just google search results.

They were all sort of inspired by the portraits that inspired Phillip Pullman to create the concept of daemons. Here's one from the daemon page on wiki. I saw it when I was researching daemons back in the day.

( Portraits. )

I'm done now. Probably.

My annual holiday card - generically winter-themed (because I have a pretty new dress for Victoria :p).

( Under the cut. )

In other news, I went to make tea last night and found that the water in the kettle was frozen. In the tea kettle, on the stove. That's how cold it is around here. The snow is so high, the Scotties disappear behind the drifts. Also the kitchen sink is blocked and the plumber is coming tomorrow. I also have a cold.

Happy Christmas!

This last weekend was CNAnime in Toronto, which is an anime/sci fi con. I was going to go, but ended up not being well enough for long distance traveling yet. Amalie went, however. She cosplayed Kaylee, with a parasol she painted and it looked great (I haven't seen pictures yet to know how the rest of the costume worked out). She had tried to lure me there with promises of Jamie Bamber but he ended up canceling (I had feeling he would, I don't know why), so I didn't miss out on anything. I gave her some money to pick me up something, though, and she brought me the Doctor Who Encyclopedia of Time and Space, which is basically everything from series 1-3 in handy alphabetical order. It has characters, phone numbers, songs playing, places, planets, monsters, years, everything. It'll be great for fanfic. Also, should anyone need to know what the name of that character in that scene in that episode is, I may be able to help.

In other Who related matters...

Ever since I saw a scene in Journey's End, this idea for a wallpaper has been in my head. I started it and it'd taken me this long to really sit down to get it right. I thought I'd share it here, since there are Who fans around and I'm going to wait for a icon post to post it on my graphics journal. I'm being vague about it's contents for fear of spoilers, find out more under the cut.

( Header and wallpaper, spoilers for Season 4 Journey's End. )