Soledad's Journal

... and when I finally woke up, twenty minutes later than usual, it was already 28 degrees outside. Then the workmen scheduled to change the flooring in our building have reached our level and started taking things apart. I decided to postpone my grocery shopping for tomorrow. The only thing on which we were running low was milk, but we still had enough for our breakfast latte, so everything else could wait.

After breakfast I started filling the rest of my lavender sachets - only to run out of lavender when I reached the penultimate one. Not a tragedy per se, I hopefully can get more lavender with the help of Erna, our art teacher, but annoying nonetheless. I so hoped to get this step done today. Ah, well. I've fixed H's crocheted Santas, Christmas wreaths and hearts on their keyrings instead, so that's another step done.

By then temperatures were up to 32 degrees, so I decided to take a break. I needed to put my feet up, as they looked like overgone yeast dough. I still had to make lunch; fortunately, Topfenknödel and Tütensuppe are easily done. I'm very opportunistic when it comes to cut back cooking time and efforts and have no shame about it.

We watched some telly and rested some more in the afternoon. Mum then heroically shuffled into the kitchen and did the washing-up - something I can't talk her out of. Not that I mind the help, but by this heat she should take things easier. Yeah, good luck telling her that!

Now we are in resting mode again, waiting for "The Repair Shop" to start.

Oh, and before I forget: picowrimo starts tomorrow, everyone is welcome to drop by even if only for reading. :)

I've squeezed in about 40 minutes of crafty time in the morning - way too little, TBH, but at least I've finished Page 3 to both baby books. Frigging Pinterest still refuses to accept my pics, so I'll upload it to the LJ scrapbook and hope not to run out of space before I can get some help with Pinterest and with acquiring paid LJ time.

Here are the pages, pink the girl version and blue the boy one, as always. First closed, then opened.






The inscriptions are the same in both versions.

In other news, the insurance lady paid us a visit - having arrived 2 hours later than originally agreed - and will return tomorrow to finalize the contract. I'm soooo looking forward to it - NOT! But if everything goes well, we'll be paying a little more than half of what we've been paying for years, so it's worth the suffering.

Also, picowrimo starts tomorrow. You are all welcome to drop by, if only to lurk and read the snippets and fire on the poor writers who desperately need some encouragement.

... or Paranüsse, as the Germans call them, is something I never did before. But last week I saw Brazil nuts at ALDI and decided to give them a try. Granted, they were outrageously expensive, but still not as much as pine nuts, so I allowed myself to be a bit irresponsible. I buy everything else when they are price-reduced (saving for craft supplies, which hardly ever are), so I thought I'd give myself a treat.

Surfing the internet, I found this recipe at chefkoch.de, my favourite go-to website in things baking. Surprisingly enough, it doesn't require whole pounds of butter or dozens of eggs or whatnot, plus I've got some 8-year-old plum jam in the fridge that needs to be used up, so these biscuits will have a go. As the dough has to chill in the fridge overnight, I've made it already - the first step to victory (it actually cooperated!). I hope it will allow me to roll it out properly tomorrow. *fingers crossed*

Having spent the morning in the bank and at the supermarket/craft shops, respectively, left me with fairly little time for actual crafting. Nonetheless, I managed to finish the first one of the three identical baby book pages, with all the bells and whistles, so I'm content. Besides, the trip to the craft shops resulted some amazingly beautiful paper pads (with hot foil, too), which I absolutely didn't need at the moment but couldn't resist. Mum liked them, too, so I got the nod afterwards. ;))

In the afternoon I talked to my goddaughter who has her name day today; and with her mother first, to find out when she'd be available. I could have saved myself that step as E. has caught the flu from her 7-year-old son and was at home, but I didn't know that. Anyway, we had a nice chat.

Fortunately, we had leftovers, so no cooking was necessary. Tomorrow I'll have to improvise some kind of soup between two batches of baking, and we'll have Wiener Würstchen with a salad and perhaps mashed potatoes? We'll see.

Oh, and for anyone who might be interested in picowrimo - I'm just about to announce the March session. If you aren't a writer, you still can drop by regularly to encourage us, poor wretches, who are trying to climb out of the abyss otherwise known as writer's block.

After 17 years, I had to change the address for my LJ mail today. I'm not pleased. I like things the way I'm used to them. Too old to switch to and fro all the time.

Other than that, not much happened today. Mum's stomach pills seem to work, so she finally could sleep and eat with an appetite. Fingers crossed that it stays that way. All that not-sleeping is catching up with her, though, she's more tired than she was before. But I hope that will settle, too.

Tomorrow we'll have a toned-down version of the monthly cleaning frenzy. It promises to be... interesting. But our cleaning lady is flexible and besides, I'll help, too, as always. That way they'll (hopefully) not run into each other with the physiotherapist. *g*

Also, picowrimo starts tomorrow. If you're interested, take a look, even if you aren't planning to participate. We need readers, too; especially the kind that fires the writers on. :)

What is picowrimo? Here is altariel's introduction to the very first session, back in 2006. Yes, the comm is actually that old!

50000 words a completely impossible target? Still want to share the pain?
picowrimo is the answer. 500 or 5000 words in a month. You know you want to.

The idea came in a conversation with edge_of_ruin when we thought:

Wouldn't it be good to have a shorter version of NaNoWriMo for people who really aren't confident about doing a lot of writing, or whose style is more clipped, or who write poetry? They could aim for 500 or 5000 words in a month, and it could be called PicoWriMo.

Then forodwaith encouraged altariel to set up the LJ community. So here we are and going on ever since.

Many of the original participants have fallen out of use of the comm (or LJ in general), so we are a fairly small crowd now. If you know people on your flist might be interested, please repost this to your own journal; but not outside LJ. We've got a feed on DW already, and that's more than enough.

The second round of the Big Painting Job (TM) is supposed to start tomorrow, and it promises to be a lot worse than round one. I might be reduced to the use of my iPad for the next couple of days, and even then, I'll likely to be found over at picowrimo.

What is picowrimo? Here is altariel's introduction to the very first session, back in 2006. Yes, the comm is actually that old!

50000 words a completely impossible target? Still want to share the pain?
picowrimo is the answer. 500 or 5000 words in a month. You know you want to.

The idea came in a conversation with edge_of_ruin when we thought:

Wouldn't it be good to have a shorter version of NaNoWriMo for people who really aren't confident about doing a lot of writing, or whose style is more clipped, or who write poetry? They could aim for 500 or 5000 words in a month, and it could be called PicoWriMo.

Then forodwaith encouraged altariel to set up the LJ community. So here we are and going on ever since.

Many of the original participants have fallen out of use of the comm (or LJ in general), so we are a fairly small crowd now. If you know people on your flist might be interested, please repost this to your own journal; but not outside LJ. We've got a feed on DW already, and that's more than enough.

... picowrimo now has a March season. Last November we decided to split the three months more evenly along the year, and this is our first attempt to have a Spring season.

There aren't many participants so far, as most people have wandered off to other places - although we do have a Dreamwidth feed, too - but we find these virtual get-togethers helpful to unstuck our blocked stories and generally exchange our experiments with other struggling writers.

So, if you want to join the fun, or just to read the discussions, hop over to picowrimo. The posts are accessible for everyone, and perhaps you'll find the one or other snippet interesting.

As for me, I've decided not to put up the next chapter of "Brothers-in-Arms" to AO3 just yet. Usually, I re-post there my older stories one chapter a day, but since Chapter 2 hasn't had a single hit yet, I think I'll wait until my regular readers (all 2 or 3 of them) catch up with me. Otherwise what is the point?

I must admit that I'm a bit disappointed. I know the Cadfael fandom is a small one, and I deal with secondary (or tertiary) characters in this story, but I secretly hoped that after "Lost in the Past" having been such an unexpected hit, people would get interested in reading about the same characters in a canon-compliant story, too. Ah, well.

If my whining got you interested and you're planning to hop over to AO3 to take a look, I think a fair warning is necessary: "Brothers-in-Arms" starts off as a slash story. Nothing explicit or descriptive, and one half of the couple is killed off early on, but I know that quite a few people don't like slash and I wouldn't want you folks to stumble upon it unawares.

Yesterday, to be more accurate. So I will be over at picowrimo a lot in this month. Hop over, take a look, read the snippets, join the conversations or join the whole session if you like. It is fun!

Chapter 01 - E-Mail For You of Sherlock and the Copper Beeches has been posted to FF.Net, thanks to my brand new beta, known over there as englishtutor.

(lindahoyland, dear, I'm not ignoring you by having hunted down a different beta for this story, I swear. *hugs* It's just so that I already have a couple of WIPs that you're involved with, and I don't want you to overextend yourself when I finally get around to continue "An Excellent Mystery" and "Precious Like Rubies".)

Other than that, I'm spending November mostly over at picowrimo, with reading, commenting and (hopefully) working on my Merlin BBC/Camelot crossover in bits and pieces. If you're not familiar with the comm, hop over and take a look, reading the snippets is a delight, even if you're not participating yourself.

I'll be mostly over at picowrimo, in which I happily participate. Hop over, take a look at our snippets and enjoy!