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. )

Every year I make a Christmas card with my Poser program. This is 2007's image:

( Happy Holidays )

My friend Ama asked me to make a picture of the scene from 'Gravel Peril',the third Dresden Files book, when Harry sees Murphy using his Sight.

( Spoilers of a non plot nature and art under here )