Catching up on a year...
Dec. 22nd, 2021 10:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenayWow, it's been a year since I made any serious update here apart from fic notifications (when I remember, oops). So, this has been another really weird year. I wonder when we'll get to stop saying that?
Summary of the year
The beginning of the year was another lockdown and another round of shielding, which didn't really end for me until after I had my second dose of vaccine in May. Things did start easing slightly in April, so my parents and I spent a Saturday freezing our arses off in my sister's garden on the first weekend we could, so we could see her and my nephew for the first time since October. It was worth it.
Since then, thankfully, we've been able to see them quite regularly - lots of trips down here for them, a couple of trips up there for us. My dad refuses to drive there so Mum and I have figured out a doable route on the train. When they're visiting here, they stay with my parents and trot round the corner to my house for Sprog's bath--mum and dad only have a shower and he's a little small for that yet. But he loves my bath and I have a selection of boats and a turduckle for him to play with. They're all coming out to us for Christmas (plus a my BIL's sister and uncle) and I'll be providing the overflow accommodation and Sprog's bath :D
We're all being paranoid about testing and cutting down on outings to make sure we can do the Christmas thing safely, particularly after I had a scare a couple of weeks ago (positive LFT, negative PCR, isolated for ten days as a precaution). Fingers crossed that we are all negative on Christmas Eve and can get together as planned? I think we all need this. Sprog is walking and his vocabulary is expanding every day: we all really want this time together and the chance to see him enjoy the festivities.
I started cautiously emerging in late May, gradually building up the things I did and went to because it felt so overwhelming after such a long time not going places. In August, I took a couple of weeks holiday for a staycation. The first week was really more of a "working few hours" event rather than a total holiday, but thenbookmonster came to stay for a couple of days and I achieved actual non-working! It was so good to see her. I went up to visit her in October for a couple of days and we climbed a small mountain :D And then she treated me to an amazing weekend in London for my birthday.
Hopefully we'll be able to have more adventures next year *crosses fingers*
So the year was weird, but it had some wonderful highlights to it, so it wasn't all doom and gloom.
A year in writing
This year I wrote stuff! Probably more than I have in years. At the moment, according to AO3, I have published 197k words. This includes my Yuletide fic. Now I'm trying to work out a short fic to bring that up to an even 200k :D
That 197k is split between...three fics. And the Yuletide fic is only 3k. Basically this year I wrote and published two novels. The Untamed fandom has been excellent for my writing and I'm really proud of both those fics.
The Strictly AU is 129k of dancing and Wangxian romance, a feat I honestly couldn't have predicted I'd achieve. Publishing the last chapter on Saturday was a strange and wonderful experience. I've never posted a fic in parts (learning from this: I could only do it because I'd already finished the first draft and was beta/editing as I went) and I had no idea when I started that I'd end up posting the final on the same day as the Strictly final. The comments have been incredible. This may be one of my favourite Fics I Have Written.
I also took part in the MXTX Big Bang and wrote a 64k novel for that. (I'll post links later). The artwork that goes with it is incredible, the artist really captures what I was trying to do with those scenes. The fic itself fought me at times, but it was also a lot of fun to write. I got to combine lots of my favourite things--casefic, worldbuilding, romance--in new ways and so far the reaction has been wonderful. Phew!
I've also got around 10k each on two other WIPs that I plan to finish next year. One of them has a Christmas background (but it's not the point of the fic, it's simply there as an explanation for why a Thing is happening), so that's the first one I plan to finish. The other one is a zombie AU. Uh, yeah, I don't know what's going on with my brain either.
The Untamed is an interesting fandom because the AUs people come up with are so inventive, so creative, but some of the most out-there AUs still feel really true to the canon. I've never exactly shied away from writing weird AUs (I mean, Edwardian steam punk? Match making angels?), but this fandom embraces them and I love it.
Still need to figure out a 3k-ish fic to write before 31 December.
A year in stitching
At the beginning of the year, some friends in Canada suggested getting together a couple of times a month for some virtual stitching. I dusted off an embroidery kit I started back in early 2019 and had to put aside because I was struggling with close focus.
Oops, I acquired a new hobby.
I've now got glasses with a little bit of enhancement for close work (picked them up two weeks before the March 2020 lockdown, phew!) and embroidery has become my thing :D I've got a magnifier to use when my eyes are tired or I'm working on something particularly fine (most embroidery, any cross-stitch on 16ct aida or smaller), which helps, but I suspect that not being constantly exhausted from commuting and having the right glasses are bigger factors in being able to do this.
I finished that first embroidery kit and went looking for more. I also started cross-stitching. For my nephew's birthday, I embroidered an adorable hoop with an astronaut. I've got a couple of hoops hanging in my house. I cross-stitched two cards for Christmas. I've been working on a large-ish cross-stitch kit of a bee and flowers, which has been set aside for Christmas to spend time with a pretty festive design. My stash isn't huge, but I've got a couple more embroidery kits waiting for me and another cross-stich kit.
I knew it was getting serious when I bought a lap stand and a needle minder. It's much easier to do French knots with a hoop in a stand :D Last weekend, I ventured into my first embroidery project using long and short stitch, which came out better than expected.
I've got my eye on some courses to take with the Royal Needlework School - Jacobean crewelwork and silk shading both really appeal to me.
I've learned that metallic thread is the devil but manageable with thread conditioner. I don't enjoy stitching with black thread. Or stitching white on white. So blackwork and whitework definitely aren't in my future as stitching techniques. I also don't love doing cross-stitch designs with large areas of very similar colours because it's so hard to work out where I am in the design.
I do love stem stitch, reverse chain stitch, and satin stitch. They're effective and soothing to work. As long as I've got my hoop in a stand, French knots are easy to do and I'm quite proud of how neat they look now. I want to do more long and short stitch so I can get better at it. For me to enjoy a design, I have to like what the finished design will be and enjoy the process: the colour choices and the level of detailing play a huge part in my enjoyment. This year has taught me a lot about what I enjoy stitching and what I don't, so hopefully I won't ever end up in a situation where I'm death-marching through a project I don't love.
The embroidery designs I'm most attracted to tend to be botanicals, while the cross-stitches I'm most attracted to usually feature animals. I wonder how that will change as I get more experienced?
In recent weeks, I've figured out a setup to enable to me to stitch on my sofa instead of at my kitchen table, which means I can now stitch and watch telly (as long as it doesn't have subtitles). Guess what my plans are for the Christmas break? :D
So yes, in a year I've gone from no stitching to being a little obsessed. It's rather nice.
A year in telly
Speaking of subtitles, I have continued to watch C-dramas and I'm making a start on K-dramas, too.
bookmonster and I started a tradition last year of watching dramas together, settling down most weekday evenings to coordinate pressing play and chatting on Whatsapp. We finished Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty at the end of last year and then spend the first months of this year deep in Love and Redemption. Highly recommend that one - it's long but never drags and has such a fantastic set of characters.
We followed that up with Handsome Siblings which...wasn't great, tbh. We finished it because we're completists but I think we were both in a death march mood by the end.
Just as we were finishing Handsome Siblings, bookmonster discovered My Roommate is a Detective. I caught up to where she was in a couple of days, we got to watch a couple of episodes together when she visited, and we raced through it because it was excellent. Possibly my favourite of what we watched this year? Highly recommended.
And now we're working on Nirvana in Fire, which is incredibly dense and plotty, but I think we're getting the hang of things. Twenty episodes in. The characters are excellent and we've got favourites we care about, which is what keeps us coming back to dramas that are trickier to watch.
When our brains can't cope with NiF, we are watching Leverage Redemption, which is also excellent.
Independently, I watched Maiden Holmes and loved it, probably my second favourite C-drama this year. Word of Honour was also brilliant, although the ending wasn't quite the same "fuck yes, this is the best!" that I got with other favourites. The Wolf was...a thing that I watched. Uh huh.
I'm watching Hotel Del Luna right now and it's fantastic. My first K-drama :D It's absolutely gorgeous and I love the entire set-up. The characters are compelling and I'm really enjoying the slow reveal of the backstory. The only small downside is that K-drama episodes are so long - I find myself either putting off watching one (because I won't have time to finish) or watching the episodes in parts. So it's going slower than I'd like, but that's no reflection on the drama itself.
One thing that I've noticed is that the subtitles make me really pay attention when I'm watching dramas. If there aren't subtitles, it's got to be really absorbing for me to not pick up my phone and start fiddling or itch to pick up some stitching. What was absorbing enough? Well...
Doctor Who: I thought Flux was brilliant. The long-form suited Chris Chibnall's style much better than trying to fit a whole story into one episode and Jodie Whittaker was wonderful. Everyone was wonderful. I loved this story so much and I'm going to need to rewatch it to take it all in.
I started a Babylon 5 rewatch a couple of months ago and I'm in season three now. It's so good! Did you know it's so good? It is! It's slightly depressing to see how relevant some of the plotlines feel (the entire Earth conspiracy/Santiago/Clark/rise of Nightwatch is just...too real) but the whole thing is still fucking brilliant 20+ years later. If you haven't see it yet, don't wait for the reboot. The original is amazing.
The Wheel of Time adaptation has me hooked, it's brilliant. Multiple amazing queer women, showcasing and building on the worldbuilding, great casting...I love it. Jordan's books weren't as bad for misogyny as some of his contemporaries, but the adaptation has made some changes to fix things that crept in. They didn't need to build up extra women characters with power and agency--they already existed--but there were attitudes from the male characters that they've either eliminated or allowed the text to critique, and I love it. So glad they've already got a season 2 order.
Marvel shows were a bit of a mixed bag for me. I loved Wandavision, it was so creative and managed to be a fascinating exploration of grief and recovery while also providing mystery and adventure. LOVED IT. I also really enjoyed Loki because it was so different from other Marvel things and it wasn't at all what I'd expected. Falcon and Winter Solider was...I just couldn't keep myself interested. Sorry, but I don't think it was made for me. Lots of people loved it so I'm sure it did what it needed to very well. I haven't watched Hawkeye yet and I'm still unsure whether I will. It feels, again, like something that hasn't been made for me but at the same time, KATE BISHOP. So I may give it a try over Christmas.
In addition to all that, I've been on an eternal Untamed rewatch cycle and I have a habit of watching silly murder mysteries whenever I need some low-stress telly or stitching time. Honestly, Untamed and silly murder mysteries are my comfort places and this has been a year where I needed a lot of comfort stuff.
And that's it! My year in reading was mostly fic or rereads of favourite romance novels. I need to go into my AO3 account to do a commenting spree and bookmark lots of favourite fics. The downside to reading longfic on my Kindle is that it's easy not to do that step, so I need to get better at it. The only new to me novels I read this year were romances from trusted authors. It's been that kind of year. I can't promise it will be any different next year, but who knows. It's impossible to predict anything right now.
Except that I appear to be in The Untamed fandom for the long haul and I have my writing mojo back right now :D
Summary of the year
The beginning of the year was another lockdown and another round of shielding, which didn't really end for me until after I had my second dose of vaccine in May. Things did start easing slightly in April, so my parents and I spent a Saturday freezing our arses off in my sister's garden on the first weekend we could, so we could see her and my nephew for the first time since October. It was worth it.
Since then, thankfully, we've been able to see them quite regularly - lots of trips down here for them, a couple of trips up there for us. My dad refuses to drive there so Mum and I have figured out a doable route on the train. When they're visiting here, they stay with my parents and trot round the corner to my house for Sprog's bath--mum and dad only have a shower and he's a little small for that yet. But he loves my bath and I have a selection of boats and a turduckle for him to play with. They're all coming out to us for Christmas (plus a my BIL's sister and uncle) and I'll be providing the overflow accommodation and Sprog's bath :D
We're all being paranoid about testing and cutting down on outings to make sure we can do the Christmas thing safely, particularly after I had a scare a couple of weeks ago (positive LFT, negative PCR, isolated for ten days as a precaution). Fingers crossed that we are all negative on Christmas Eve and can get together as planned? I think we all need this. Sprog is walking and his vocabulary is expanding every day: we all really want this time together and the chance to see him enjoy the festivities.
I started cautiously emerging in late May, gradually building up the things I did and went to because it felt so overwhelming after such a long time not going places. In August, I took a couple of weeks holiday for a staycation. The first week was really more of a "working few hours" event rather than a total holiday, but then
bookmonster came to stay for a couple of days and I achieved actual non-working! It was so good to see her. I went up to visit her in October for a couple of days and we climbed a small mountain :D And then she treated me to an amazing weekend in London for my birthday.Hopefully we'll be able to have more adventures next year *crosses fingers*
So the year was weird, but it had some wonderful highlights to it, so it wasn't all doom and gloom.
A year in writing
This year I wrote stuff! Probably more than I have in years. At the moment, according to AO3, I have published 197k words. This includes my Yuletide fic. Now I'm trying to work out a short fic to bring that up to an even 200k :D
That 197k is split between...three fics. And the Yuletide fic is only 3k. Basically this year I wrote and published two novels. The Untamed fandom has been excellent for my writing and I'm really proud of both those fics.
The Strictly AU is 129k of dancing and Wangxian romance, a feat I honestly couldn't have predicted I'd achieve. Publishing the last chapter on Saturday was a strange and wonderful experience. I've never posted a fic in parts (learning from this: I could only do it because I'd already finished the first draft and was beta/editing as I went) and I had no idea when I started that I'd end up posting the final on the same day as the Strictly final. The comments have been incredible. This may be one of my favourite Fics I Have Written.
I also took part in the MXTX Big Bang and wrote a 64k novel for that. (I'll post links later). The artwork that goes with it is incredible, the artist really captures what I was trying to do with those scenes. The fic itself fought me at times, but it was also a lot of fun to write. I got to combine lots of my favourite things--casefic, worldbuilding, romance--in new ways and so far the reaction has been wonderful. Phew!
I've also got around 10k each on two other WIPs that I plan to finish next year. One of them has a Christmas background (but it's not the point of the fic, it's simply there as an explanation for why a Thing is happening), so that's the first one I plan to finish. The other one is a zombie AU. Uh, yeah, I don't know what's going on with my brain either.
The Untamed is an interesting fandom because the AUs people come up with are so inventive, so creative, but some of the most out-there AUs still feel really true to the canon. I've never exactly shied away from writing weird AUs (I mean, Edwardian steam punk? Match making angels?), but this fandom embraces them and I love it.
Still need to figure out a 3k-ish fic to write before 31 December.
A year in stitching
At the beginning of the year, some friends in Canada suggested getting together a couple of times a month for some virtual stitching. I dusted off an embroidery kit I started back in early 2019 and had to put aside because I was struggling with close focus.
Oops, I acquired a new hobby.
I've now got glasses with a little bit of enhancement for close work (picked them up two weeks before the March 2020 lockdown, phew!) and embroidery has become my thing :D I've got a magnifier to use when my eyes are tired or I'm working on something particularly fine (most embroidery, any cross-stitch on 16ct aida or smaller), which helps, but I suspect that not being constantly exhausted from commuting and having the right glasses are bigger factors in being able to do this.
I finished that first embroidery kit and went looking for more. I also started cross-stitching. For my nephew's birthday, I embroidered an adorable hoop with an astronaut. I've got a couple of hoops hanging in my house. I cross-stitched two cards for Christmas. I've been working on a large-ish cross-stitch kit of a bee and flowers, which has been set aside for Christmas to spend time with a pretty festive design. My stash isn't huge, but I've got a couple more embroidery kits waiting for me and another cross-stich kit.
I knew it was getting serious when I bought a lap stand and a needle minder. It's much easier to do French knots with a hoop in a stand :D Last weekend, I ventured into my first embroidery project using long and short stitch, which came out better than expected.
I've got my eye on some courses to take with the Royal Needlework School - Jacobean crewelwork and silk shading both really appeal to me.
I've learned that metallic thread is the devil but manageable with thread conditioner. I don't enjoy stitching with black thread. Or stitching white on white. So blackwork and whitework definitely aren't in my future as stitching techniques. I also don't love doing cross-stitch designs with large areas of very similar colours because it's so hard to work out where I am in the design.
I do love stem stitch, reverse chain stitch, and satin stitch. They're effective and soothing to work. As long as I've got my hoop in a stand, French knots are easy to do and I'm quite proud of how neat they look now. I want to do more long and short stitch so I can get better at it. For me to enjoy a design, I have to like what the finished design will be and enjoy the process: the colour choices and the level of detailing play a huge part in my enjoyment. This year has taught me a lot about what I enjoy stitching and what I don't, so hopefully I won't ever end up in a situation where I'm death-marching through a project I don't love.
The embroidery designs I'm most attracted to tend to be botanicals, while the cross-stitches I'm most attracted to usually feature animals. I wonder how that will change as I get more experienced?
In recent weeks, I've figured out a setup to enable to me to stitch on my sofa instead of at my kitchen table, which means I can now stitch and watch telly (as long as it doesn't have subtitles). Guess what my plans are for the Christmas break? :D
So yes, in a year I've gone from no stitching to being a little obsessed. It's rather nice.
A year in telly
Speaking of subtitles, I have continued to watch C-dramas and I'm making a start on K-dramas, too.
bookmonster and I started a tradition last year of watching dramas together, settling down most weekday evenings to coordinate pressing play and chatting on Whatsapp. We finished Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty at the end of last year and then spend the first months of this year deep in Love and Redemption. Highly recommend that one - it's long but never drags and has such a fantastic set of characters.We followed that up with Handsome Siblings which...wasn't great, tbh. We finished it because we're completists but I think we were both in a death march mood by the end.
Just as we were finishing Handsome Siblings, bookmonster discovered My Roommate is a Detective. I caught up to where she was in a couple of days, we got to watch a couple of episodes together when she visited, and we raced through it because it was excellent. Possibly my favourite of what we watched this year? Highly recommended.
And now we're working on Nirvana in Fire, which is incredibly dense and plotty, but I think we're getting the hang of things. Twenty episodes in. The characters are excellent and we've got favourites we care about, which is what keeps us coming back to dramas that are trickier to watch.
When our brains can't cope with NiF, we are watching Leverage Redemption, which is also excellent.
Independently, I watched Maiden Holmes and loved it, probably my second favourite C-drama this year. Word of Honour was also brilliant, although the ending wasn't quite the same "fuck yes, this is the best!" that I got with other favourites. The Wolf was...a thing that I watched. Uh huh.
I'm watching Hotel Del Luna right now and it's fantastic. My first K-drama :D It's absolutely gorgeous and I love the entire set-up. The characters are compelling and I'm really enjoying the slow reveal of the backstory. The only small downside is that K-drama episodes are so long - I find myself either putting off watching one (because I won't have time to finish) or watching the episodes in parts. So it's going slower than I'd like, but that's no reflection on the drama itself.
One thing that I've noticed is that the subtitles make me really pay attention when I'm watching dramas. If there aren't subtitles, it's got to be really absorbing for me to not pick up my phone and start fiddling or itch to pick up some stitching. What was absorbing enough? Well...
Doctor Who: I thought Flux was brilliant. The long-form suited Chris Chibnall's style much better than trying to fit a whole story into one episode and Jodie Whittaker was wonderful. Everyone was wonderful. I loved this story so much and I'm going to need to rewatch it to take it all in.
I started a Babylon 5 rewatch a couple of months ago and I'm in season three now. It's so good! Did you know it's so good? It is! It's slightly depressing to see how relevant some of the plotlines feel (the entire Earth conspiracy/Santiago/Clark/rise of Nightwatch is just...too real) but the whole thing is still fucking brilliant 20+ years later. If you haven't see it yet, don't wait for the reboot. The original is amazing.
The Wheel of Time adaptation has me hooked, it's brilliant. Multiple amazing queer women, showcasing and building on the worldbuilding, great casting...I love it. Jordan's books weren't as bad for misogyny as some of his contemporaries, but the adaptation has made some changes to fix things that crept in. They didn't need to build up extra women characters with power and agency--they already existed--but there were attitudes from the male characters that they've either eliminated or allowed the text to critique, and I love it. So glad they've already got a season 2 order.
Marvel shows were a bit of a mixed bag for me. I loved Wandavision, it was so creative and managed to be a fascinating exploration of grief and recovery while also providing mystery and adventure. LOVED IT. I also really enjoyed Loki because it was so different from other Marvel things and it wasn't at all what I'd expected. Falcon and Winter Solider was...I just couldn't keep myself interested. Sorry, but I don't think it was made for me. Lots of people loved it so I'm sure it did what it needed to very well. I haven't watched Hawkeye yet and I'm still unsure whether I will. It feels, again, like something that hasn't been made for me but at the same time, KATE BISHOP. So I may give it a try over Christmas.
In addition to all that, I've been on an eternal Untamed rewatch cycle and I have a habit of watching silly murder mysteries whenever I need some low-stress telly or stitching time. Honestly, Untamed and silly murder mysteries are my comfort places and this has been a year where I needed a lot of comfort stuff.
And that's it! My year in reading was mostly fic or rereads of favourite romance novels. I need to go into my AO3 account to do a commenting spree and bookmark lots of favourite fics. The downside to reading longfic on my Kindle is that it's easy not to do that step, so I need to get better at it. The only new to me novels I read this year were romances from trusted authors. It's been that kind of year. I can't promise it will be any different next year, but who knows. It's impossible to predict anything right now.
Except that I appear to be in The Untamed fandom for the long haul and I have my writing mojo back right now :D
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Date: 2021-12-23 03:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-12-24 08:56 am (UTC)