Ros Clarke's Blog, page 20

Bad Valentine’s Day stories

I’m hoping to do a series of blogposts in February featuring bad Valentine’s Day stories. Do you have one to share? Leave me a comment and I’ll contact you for all the gory details!

It’s totally okay if your story happened to ‘a friend’.

Whoops!

I have managed to destroy my website. I was updating a plugin and accidentally closed the browser so it got stuck in maintenance mode. And in my attempts to restore it, I managed not only to wipe out the database but then to back up the wiped version, so I have totally lost everything.

BUM.

I will be back! But it’ll take a few days to get things going again and sadly all the old posts and comments are gone forever.

In the meantime, go and read this lovely review of Table for One.

2013 County Show

The schedule has arrived. Am contemplating the following categories:

Class 4: A Display of Cup Cakes

Class 7: An Individual Desert (sic) Using Berried Fruit

Class 8: A Round of Shortbread

Class 12: A Decorated Hat (Only Decoration To Be Judged)

Class 13: A Scarf

Class 14: An Item Of Patchwork

Class 15: A Homemade Clothing Item In a Textile Material

Class 16: A Stuffed Toy

Can’t help wondering what homemade clothing items are made out of non-textile material. Shoes, I suppose. Anyway. If I manage to make a pretty bra, I could enter that and shock the entire county. That would be fun.

Only Connect Wall

I love Only Connect. It is a proper quiz show with hard questions and no prizes. Of course, the most fun bit is playing the connection walls online and seeing if you can beat the teams. At the BBC website you can also submit your own walls.  Here’s my latest attempt:

Red    Pink   White   Hazel

Yellow  Amber   Blue  Green

Purple  Grey  Silver  Red and Amber

Black   Orange  Turquoise  Brown

If you’ve not played before, the challenge is to organise these into four groups of four and state the connection between them. Have fun!

Votes for women!

It’s time for the annual All About Romance poll of the Bests of 2012. Where else can you vote for Best Kick-Ass Heroine, Most Tortured Hero, and Guiltiest Pleasure (mine is always, always Lynne Graham)?

If you’ve loved any of my books, please feel free to vote for them (Table for One and Twelve Days in Best Short Story, The Oil Tycoon and Her Sexy Sheikh in Best Category Romance), but if you read better ones, definitely vote for those instead.

But whatever you do, vote! It’s what Mrs Pankhurst would have wanted.

Looking forward, looking back

I’m talking a bit about 2012 and 2013 over on the Indulgence author blog today. Come and share your highlights of 2012 and hopes for 2013.

I don’t think I’m making New Year’s Resolutions this year. I’ve still got some of my 38 Things to do and I think I might do a similar list on my 39th birthday. Here’s what’s still left to do:

2. Become Dr. Ros

3. Go to see the Strictly Live Tour at the O2.

7. Learn to weave properly

10. Learn to make fabulous lingerie

13. Become a better spinner

15. Visit 38 new places

20. Do The Artist’s Way

21. Make puff pastry from scratch

29. Learn to take better photos

30. Get a professional manicure

31. Sign up for an OCA module

36. Have afternoon tea at glamorous London hotel

I have got plans for most of these before April 16th. I don’t think I’m going to manage #15, but that’s okay. And #31 might have to wait until a bit later. Oh, and #3 has been amended slightly – we’re going to Wembley, not the O2. That’s plenty to be getting on with for now.

Feminism, craft and romance

I love it when worlds collide!

A week ago, I read Tessa Dare’s One Dance with a Duke (I had been avoiding it because of the ridiculous Stud Club thing, but I was persuaded to try it and inevitably loved it.) Here’s the scene where I fell in love with Spencer. Well, first is the explanatory scene to make sense of the scene where I fell in love with him:

Soon, she lost herself in her work – in the precise, familiar rhythm of stitches, the careful selection of colored threads. The room went quiet, save for the low crackle of the fire and the occasional sound of a page being turned. As she worked, her sleepiness increased. When she sensed her stitches becoming less and less even, she knotted off one final strand of blue and cut it free before turning the whole square face-up and surveying her work.

“How did you accomplish that?” Spencer asked, reaching over her arm to indicate the rightmost section of the cloth.

Startled by his sudden nearness, Amelia jumped in her chair. When had he moved his chair beside hers? How long had he been looking over her shoulder?

“Right there,” he said, pointing to the little brook she’d stitched tumbling through the glen. “It truly looks like water. How did you accomplish it?”

“Oh, that.” A hint of pride seeped into her voice. She was rather happy with that bit. “It’s very thin strips of ribbon in different shades of blue, worsted with silver thread. I twist the needle as I sew, and in that way each stitch catches the light in a different way. As sunlight might dance on a rippling stream.”

He said nothing. Likely he hadn’t been that interested, to warrant a needlework lesson. Well, he had asked.

The longer he stared silently over her shoulder, however, the more self-conscious she grew. “I was going to make it into a little settee cushion. Or perhaps use it as the center of a chair cover.” She turned it this way and that in her hands, tilting her head to examine the piece from different angles. Perhaps she ought to frame it in strips of velvet, and use it for a larger pillow, or-

“A cushion?” he said abruptly, pronouncing the word as though it were caustic on his tongue. “What an abhorrent idea.”

Amelia blinked. Abhorrent? “Wh-why?” she stammered, taken aback. “I’ll keep it in my own room, if you don’t care for it. You needn’t see it.”

“Absolutely not. That-” he pointed at her needlework. “-is never adorning a chair or settee in my house.”

“But-”

“Give it here.”

Here’s where we next see the embroidery, in Amelia’s bedchamber:

There was a small silver frame hanging there that she didn’t recall seeing before. She took a candle from her dressing table and stepped closer, peering at it hard. “It’s…” Oh, goodness. It was her needlework – the little country scene she’d finished the other night – stretched tight and framed under spotless glass. The silver frame complemented the silver threads she’d woven into the brook, and the whole effect was … even if she did say it herself, it was really quite charming.

“You had it framed?” she asked, still staring at the embroidered vignette. “I thought you said you’d never allow it in this house.”

“I said it would never adorn a settee in this house.” His voice deepened as he came to stand behind her.

“But… but you took it from me.”

“Of course I did. Because you threatened to make it into a pillow.” He placed both hands on her shoulders. Their weight felt like a reproach. “A pillow, for Christ’s sake. Why should it have to justify its existence by serving some mundane function. It’s lovely. It’s art. In this house, we don’t sit on art. We hang it on the wall and admire it.”

*sigh*

One of the first things Spencer notices about Amelia is her talent for embroidery. I love how much he values that talent. He doesn’t say that she should use her talent on something more ‘important’ like painting. He takes her work, which is the epitome of feminine pastimes, and places it on the same level as all the other artwork in his house. He values it even more than she does. He certainly values it more than Germaine Greer would have done:

“Women have frittered their lives away stitching things for which there is no demand.”

Why should things women have made, whether to fulfil a practical need, or simply for the sheer pleasure of doing it, be dismissed as ‘things for which there is no demand’? And why is stitching things ‘frittering’ one’s life away? It’s a whole lot more worthwhile than kicking a ball over a line, or drinking endless pints of beer, or whatever more masculine pursuits Greer thinks we should be doing. Appearing on Celebrity Big Brother, perhaps?

It’s true that the making of something doesn’t automatically invest it with any artistic or creative merit. Nor does it necessarily have any financial value. But the reverse is equally false. Handcrafted items can be incredibly beautiful. They can be as powerful as art created by any other medium. And they can be very valuable. A couple of years ago I went to the quilting exhibition at the V&A. The traditional quilts were utterly fascinating and in many cases, very moving. Most of the modern ‘artwork’, by contrast, left me cold. The two exceptions to that were the quilts by Grayson Perry and Tracey Emin, both of which respected the traditional methods and used them to create very powerful art.

I was pleased to read the article on feminism and craft in Perri Lewis’s wonderful book, Material World. Debbie Stoller writes:

But because craft is traditionally something that women have done, it’s undervalued, because women have always been undervalued. So… we realised that by rejecting craft we were doing exactly what culture had always done: we were failing to appreciate work done by women.

I love craft. I love the process of making, the exercise of creativity, learning new skills, playing with colour, and so on. I love that I can make beautiful and functional things. I love that I can make frivolous things. I love that sometimes I only make a mess. But I also love that when I craft I am participating in a wider heritage. Both my grandmothers crafted. I live in a part of the country where the local economy was built on craft. And I love that this heritage is predominantly female.

2012 has been…

the year I went on holiday on my own to a country where I didn’t speak any of the language.

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the year I won First Prize in a category at the County Show.

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the year I went to Wembley.

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the year I started making some money by writing books.

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the year I met Russell Grant.

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the year I didn’t quite finish my PhD.

the year I found out I am going to be an aunt.

the year I started learning to dance.

It’s been a good year. My new year’s resolutions were:

1. Increase yarn stash: FAIL. I actually sold a lot of it. Though I have also bought some, too.

2. Increase number of WIPs: FAIL. Have finished some and frogged others.

3. Watch a lot of daytime TV: SUCCESS.

4. Improve wardrobe: On balance, SUCCESS.

5. Read a lot of romance novels: SUCCESS.

6. Increase fabric stash: SUCCESS.

7. Have regular intake of chocolate: SUCCESS.

8. Have regular spa days: FAIL. Think I’ve only had one this year.

9. Go on holiday: SUCCESS.

10. Choose to be happy: On balance, SUCCESS. I have let myself do things I want to, not just the things I feel I ought to. And I have consciously tried to cut out some of the things that make me unhappy. My 38 Things To Do has been an excellent way of achieving some of this.

Twelve Days Reviews

People are reading it! And saying nice things about it.

Kelly gave it a B+ and said “Sad-cry + happy-cry = *happysigh* (all in only 35 pages!)”

And the Mean Fat Old Bat (who shall henceforth be known as the Lovely Fat Old Bat) gave it a B and said: ”

It made me feel all warm and happy inside, the ending worked for me, the whole book worked for me, and it’s a B. I’ll definitely read it again next Christmas. I’ll definitely look up more of Ms. Clarke’s work.”

So, yay! And if you haven’t read it yet, it’s here, here and in non-Kindle formats here. It should be appearing in other online bookstores soon, but I don’t know exactly when.

Making a list and checking it twice

Not for presents but ‘things to be done’.

Tomorrow and Saturday I shall be in London for high jinks.

On Sunday, it’s church and the carol service in the evening.

I am really looking forward to Monday when I shall gently potter around at home, putting up a few decorations and doing a little cooking. I need to make a dessert for Tuesday and I plan some other little treats. I think I will aim to not talk to anyone on Monday, since there’s been rather a lot of socialising this year and my introvert self is protesting.

On Tuesday it will be Christmas Day at my parents’. My sister-in-law is nearly nine months pregnant, so that could be even more exciting than planned. A niece or nephew would be a nice Christmas present.

On Wednesday, my godson’s family will come for a now traditional Boxing Day walk and games.

On Thursday I shall have a quiet day. Maybe with my new jigsaw.

And on Friday I have friends coming over for tea and we’ll go to the pub for dinner.

Phew. At some point I shall need to brave the supermarket. And clean the floor. Maybe even tidy up a little. I think I’ve stopped work for the moment. Looking forward to a bit of a break.

Here’s my recommendations for some Christmas reading:

Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising

Courtney Milan’s A Kiss For Midwinter

Marion Lennox’s Christmas With Her Boss

Sarah Morgan’s The Twelve Nights Of Christmas

Beatrix Potter’s The Tailor of Gloucester

Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women

Antonia Forest’s Run Away Home

Heidi Rice’s On the First Night of Christmas

Kelly Hunter’s Flirting with Intent

Kelly Hunter’s Wife For A Week