What I've done this week

I have been a busy little imp. I recently joined craftster because I'd like to create and trade bigger more interesting stuff, and within two days of joining signed up to be a "Swap Angel", someone who steps in to make items for a member whose partner has flaked. I'm angeling for a "Geek Chic" swap, so I got to make nerdy crap. Whee!

The person I'm making stuff for says she likes Heinlein, so I'm hoping she's enough of a Heinlein geek to appreciate this t-shirt:


She wanted a checkbook cover, so I made her this Mario Brothers one with Toad proclaiming that our princess is in another castle. Poor checks. It actually took me FOREVER to figure out how to do it. It has a space for checks and the register and closes with Velcro


Then I made Tetris pieces out of FixitSculpt (which is amazing freakin' stuff), painted and sealed them and then hung them on hemp for this goofy little necklace:


And finally did this mixed media D&D geek piece of hangable stuff... I used these awesome skully tissues that Anita sent me for the background (if it's hard to tell, it's a 20-sided die):


I did this card for the monthly partner swap at iATCs,


With that all being done, I finished up the beginning of one of the moley exchanges I'm doing, this one at illustratedATCs.com. My theme there is "Mondo Bizarro"

Intro pages:


And the first 3.5-page run (with 7 more to follow over the next 8 months)


Then I reorganized the "Studio" (I feel like such a pretentious tard saying that), and will be unpacking and organizing the sewing stuff today. Right now it's piled in a box in the closet.

Other than that, it's been the typical schedule of chasing the baby, chasing the boys, cooking, cleaning, laundrying, and working. Yuck.

Check out Bastian in his "muscle man" persona:

Hello!

If you've stumbled across me by accident, I'm sorry. I really have nothing of import to impart, and the posts below this one are all rescued from an old blog that is soon to be deleted forever. Since these little bits of weirdness helped shape me and keep me from shattering into a billion glittery pieces when the Universe was determined to tear me apart, I certainly didn't want to lose them. I'm not guaranteeing that I'll ever post anything like them again, but you never know!

If you stumbled across me on purpose... STALKER STALKER STALKER! HA!

Dreamings

I woke up one morning with the first line repeating itself in my head until I finally gave up and gave it context

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"If you do not open your Eyes," he said, "the sun will never rise again."

She flounced and pouted, resolutely keeping her eyes shut tight against the glare of the fire and the intensity of his gaze. He stroked her cheek softly, murmuring words of comfort, and her body betrayed her by relaxing in the face of his ministrations. She opened her eyes a crack and looked at him, the harsh angles and lines of his face creating deep shadows. If she actually Looked, she knew she'd see the shadows crawling with living energy, swirling over his skin, acting, interacting, and reacting. Looking would require opening her Eyes, however, so she stayed content with simply watching the play of light and shadow.

"Look," she replied, squinting at him through her eyelashes, "the sun will rise either way. It's scientific fact. It's astronomical." She opened her eyes fully and stared at the sky, speckled with scatterings of starlight, losing herself for a moment in the glow of the moon. She sat up quickly and dug her hands into the earth beneath her, shrugging him off as he reached out to touch her, fingertips aching to feel the pull, the life, the Joy.

He dropped his hands into his lap and smiled at her, nonplussed. "Of course that will happen, silly girl," he laughed softly, "a sphere of flaming gas and kinetic energy that holds nine chunks of dead rock in its thrall of gravity." He pulled her hand out of the dirt and examined it, watching her fingers twitch, dark loam embedded beneath her fingernails. "It is astronomical. This dead chunk of rock you sit on..."

She snatched her hand back and scowled. "You know better than that," she said, nearly spitting the words at him, "even with my Eyes closed I can feel it thrumming with Life." He laughed and called her stubborn, and, rebelling, she rolled her eyes and rose, dancing to the opposite side of the fire. She raised her face to the sky, stretching her arms out, dirty fingertips flexed. "The trees breathe and lean into me... The stars sing... The ground beneath my feet is like a caress.." She dropped her arms and sighed when she noticed him watching her with a satisfied smirk.

"If you do not open your Eyes, the sun will never rise again. The magic will sputter, it will BECOME astronomical. The world will be lit by a flaming ball of gas, primal urges explained away by science." He rose and crept gently to her, entwining his fingers with hers. "Open your Eyes, child, so that the world might see Beauty."

She laughed softly and surrendered the argument, as she did every night, grasping his fingers, letting down the walls, and Seeing. Her Eyes opened a crack, then another, until she Stared, Watched the Earth take a breath, Watched the trees shudder with Joy, serenaded by the starlight. She Blinked...

...and the first rays of sunlight played gently on the horizon.

Burn.

Somewhere between burning and burning out,
there is a moment of stasis.
When you float on the currents
as the heat blisters and your edges blacken,
crying out to everything, anything, something..
for succor,
A single teardrop to bring relief...
A flick of holy water from unworthy fingers..
Take of my blood my body hate me love me live through me burn me burn me out.
And that final moment arrives, when the limit has been reached..
been breached..
Suddenly and without warning,
It.
Just.
Stops.
The chill soaks through your very bones,
another kind of burning.
And you miss the heat in the absence, the lack,
consumed by the chill your blackened edges freeze and blow away.
And at that moment...
for one Sterling Silver second,
there is silence
as a crystal mural of ice hangs in the air.
Haunted and haunting, you wrap your tattered edges around yourself,
licking your wounds
in solitude...
Warm me adorn me defile me beguile me give me up give in give it to me.
And wait for the burn.

Homeostasis

At times I feel like a microscopic specimen
Placed on a slide and dissected, examined, tested with stimuli and concentrated poisons
Drenched in annotations and complicated scientific formulae.
Placed in a vat with other such complex organisms
to interact and integrate
as the blood is drawn from my veins and filtered of its worth
until I'm left with dust slipping through my arteries
ghostly and unreal.
I'm as an amoeba dividing and conquering
dividing and conquering
multiplying, adding, subtracting until I can't remember which one of me I started as,
while the poisons I'm placed in do their dirty business.
I suck them in, soak them in, a simple osmotic reaction,
letting them slide over my membranes
until they're as much of me as anything else and I drift
in homeostasis.

Slithering

Words slide like scales across my skin,
probing with their incessant whispers
hollow fangs overflowing with venomous Truth -
Serpent tongues flickering,
slit pupils reflecting
in the gilded bronze of a mirror.
In a moment of clarity
a deadly asp creeps across my breast,
like an Egyptian queen I await the sting.
Instead I'm wrapped up,
Coiled and constricted
pores suffused with blood and drained
by half truths and blatant lies.