Robin McKinley's Blog, page 191

Rain, rain, go away . . .

 

. . . come again some other day/ Rabid hellhounds want to play.  And if they don't get to play sometime soon, rabid hellgoddess will lose her final dissolving fragments of sanity.**

            The problem is that I get just as fidgety as they do, but I take it out in snarling.***  Yesterday was what passes in my universe as a good-energy day, but as often happens with the ME-deranged system, the pedal then stuck floored.†  I was up way late digging through accumulated OIDTT†† and when I...

Guest Post by Black Bear

Color Me Weird.

About 4 billion years ago, there was some discussion on the forum of synesthesia—what it is, who has it, who doesn't, and so on.  In talking further about it, it seemed like a guest-post-worthy topic… which I then promptly shelved after writing a paragraph or two and playing around with crayons for an evening (you'll see the results of this effort below.)  But lo and behold, I started thinking about it again—don't remember why now—and decided to try at a post reboot.

I'm highly ...

Ugly Truths in Storytelling

 

An hour ago I was lying comfortably on a sofa covered in hellhounds* and reading an interesting review**.  I am now lying prostrate on the floor moaning woe, woe***.  I hacked my way through to the end of PEGASUS again today—no, restrain your cheers, there's plenty left to do in the next five† days, I have a list.  I don't have time to go through it word for word again;  this is the 'okay, I'll think about that later' list, and the 'must shoehorn this in somewhere' list.  This latter...

Lo-text Monday*

 

There was frost around last night**, and the jungle came indoors again, but the dahlias are still alive today, so it didn't sit on us.  But Peter says the local forecast declares the lurking menace of frost all week, which means I get to waste a good half hour a day shifting things indoors at night and back outdoors in the morning.  Yes, I need to get everything over to the bubblewrapped summerhouse at Third House but in the first place that'll take real time and, you know, organisation***, ...

Remembering Sunday

 

So first I had insomnia for a week or so and then I crashed as I am inclined to do* and this last week I haven't been able to sleep enough which includes failing to wake up properly between extended periods of sopor.**   Saturday morning I slept nine hours which worked out to getting up at eleven.***

            I have to get up at eight† on Sundays, to make it to service ring.

            I went to bed way early Saturday night, and I was tired and everything because I've been tired all...

Guest post by Jodi Meadows

A continuing epic adventure of socks and spindles and fanciness

Part two: THE SPINDLING (addiction)

by Jodi Meadows, aged twenty-six and mumble months

After I'd been knitting some time, I got the spinning itch. I'd seen enough droolworthy handspun yarns I knew I wanted my own, but I had no idea what I was really getting myself into when I mentioned my spinning desires to my mom, and she sent me this for my birthday.

A spindle kit. Yummy purple fiber, and a painted spindle.

Now, I'd seen spindles b...

Sacrilege

 

I missed sacred home tower bell practise tonight.  I missed it.  I didn't mean to.  I hauled myself up off the sofa at the mews post-hellhound-hurtle (to the hellhounds' considerable annoyance:  it's only been about twenty minutes, they said.  We're supposed to have at least half an hour on the sofa.  You promised) and humped all of us and various bits of paraphernalia (chiefly concerning supper) back to the cottage (Peter being so inconvenient as to be playing bridge tonight), climbed the...

Bells and whistles

 

This just in from my editor:

I wanted to let you know that we will be doing a blast to all the bookstores promoting FIRE and the new edition of WATER, with the fabulous* new material. That will go out either this week or next.

We will also be doing a Skyscraper ad on PW DAILY that is an email that goes to EVERYBODY in the business – bookstores, librarians, publishers, etc. That will be impossible to miss. That will happen on or around 11/30.

 For all of you who've written or posted in...

Guest post by Diane in MN

AN OLD-STANDBY GARDEN TOUR

We live in a not quite rural area because, with multiple Great Danes, we wanted more land than a quarter of an acre in a subdivision.  We have almost three acres, but probably about half of it remains scruffy second-growth woods enhanced by a swamp.  The fenced area behind the house doesn't really count as garden; it's all lawn—or as much lawn as I can get, given shade, hillsides, and Great Danes.

That leaves me with front and side borders and beds, which are more...

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