Sylvanians, Twitter, and two book reviews

Writing itself has sort of gotten stuffed to the back of my closet the last week as I've tried to push through other things, including "Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength" a book recommended to me by Merc (an excellent read) and more of "Getting Things Done" which has seemed to result in me getting a ton of things done, but all of them non-writing things I'm forever putting off.

One of the excellent points the book makes is that a cluttered space lowers our willpower.  People in a messy lab scored lower on quizzes or accomplishing things than people in a tidy lab.

One of these things was to go look at our stuff in the attic that my husband and I are storing at my parent's house, only to find the roof leaked on it, which meant sorting all of it before they get back from their vacation.  I've spent the last three days rather astounded at some of the stuff I've saved… (old movie tickets from high school? really? and those old striped sheets, eww, I don't know how I ever liked them)

Then finding some of the stuff has inspired some of my other hobbies emerging once again…

I've collected Sylvanians for years… small animal dolls that were hugely popular  in the 1980s, and apparently stayed popular (unknown to me) in Japan, which is why they resurfaced later renamed in the US anyway, as Calico Critters.

I keep telling myself I have enough of them (does a collector really ever have enough) but then would see some here and there and fall in love with them.  Well, i found a pack of used ones at Value Village the other day and just had to have them.  Most of them, however, lacked clothing.  So, I tried to sew some… and got some rather iffy results (the first shirt looks more like those things they make you put on at the emergency room).  While the green dress looks alright from the front, it doesn't close in the back either.

Store clothes compared with mine.

After turning to the internet for help I finally found some patterns.  While the instructions are all in Japanese, the pictures are easy enough to follow and you can see a huge difference in my new results.  The shirt both fits and closes in the back and the dress looks remarkably like the store made ones, which pleases me.

I also finally figured out Twitter… I mean I know it's not supposed to be complicated, you just follow people and type very very short messages, but I sort of felt lost by the whole format.  I did find a group on She Writes of self-published women who were all posting Twitter handles though, and so by adding them I finally got the sense of the why to Twitter.  Everyone was so nice and friendly when I added them.  It helps they also decided to copy Google plus in their format, which threw me off at first but then made it easier to find things. I'm looking forward to staying connected with a great group of authors.

Also, I received a wonderful review from Gina, Diane Saleri's daughter on her blog In High Spirits and another great review from Good Book Alert last week.  I'm thrilled they enjoyed it so much.

Perhaps all this productivity will finally this week translate into some writing.  That'd be nice.  I'm partway through a novella connected to "A School for Villains" that I'd like to finish and start on its way to publication.