This journal is now largely public. About half of my posts are about Asian Ball-Jointed Dolls (ABJDs), and the other half are about random things like books, art, and knitting. All BJD posts are filtered - comment if you would like to be added to the filter. Comments to this entry are screened.

Thank you!

RUN, LITTLE SQUIRREL, RUN! Leap and bound and rend your enemies!!

Just some odds and ends.


Squirrel I saw, err, recumbent on the porch railing. XD It had draped itself comfortably (?) over the edge and was lying down for quite a while until I eventually startled it while taking photos. I'd never before seen a squirrel not move for that long.

( Arts and other bits )

This has been turning into a photoblog lately. I guess that shows 1. I take too many photos when I have the chance and 2. I love my Flickr far too much!

Comment and I'll give you a letter. Then you have to list ten things you LOVE that begin with that letter. Afterward, post this in your journal and give out some letters of your own.

sushi_candy gave me the letter G. :D

1. Gardening (like you couldn't tell from my photospam)
2. Guylian chocolates (the praline-filled seashells - haven't had them in years though)
3. Gaiman
4. Giggling (...I laugh a lot)
5. Gerbils
6. Greek mythology
7. Gothic novels
8. Grass, preferably cold, + bare feet
9. Granola
10. Glass bottles

Snapshot of the day:

The scarf I made with the yarn that I posted yesterday. 'S for sale at Etsy; you can click on the photo to get to my shop.

( and one more scarfy )

I just found out/realized that two of my all-time favorite authors, Robin McKinley & Patricia McKillip (aka the two who are always shelved right next to each other, or nearly :P), have or will be releasing new books in early September - respectively, Chalice (Sept 18) and The Bell at Sealey Head (out as of two days ago). hurrah!

( extended book babble )

... since it's kind of a fun thing to do, though I doubt I'd really keep up with it consistently.


Pretty yarn for a scarf I'm working on for Etsy. :3 Saw this in the local fancy yarn shop in the spring, immediately wanted it, but since it was pretty expensive, I tried to put it out of my mind and bought a skein that was 40% off instead. The next day, I STILL wanted it... badly. So I walked back to the shop and bought it. XD The end! (Story of my life, really.) Actually, not quite the end, since I ran out of yarn halfway through and had to buy another skein. *eyeroll* Sacrifice twice over.

The scarf is fun and super-long and full of rows of drop stitches and garter stitch, all texturedy and bohemian-looking. I'm really tempted to dig up my box of beads and see if I have any colorless seed beads that I could weave into the fringe and knit to finish it...

I was running around in a tizzy for a while, having acquired a bunch of new Tipping the Velvet and Fingersmith icons, none of which matched my existing LJ colors. :P So I finally slid into the inevitable today, and minorly redid my colors, which nicely solved the whole thing, while letting me keep the same layout. So... stupidly cheerful new icon! that still involves girls in suits and nice hats! yay!

( art babble, and lots of it )


To end, snapshot of fresh produce from when I visited the farm two weekends again. :)

I've edited roughly 500 photos and uploaded around 400 of them in the past 48 hours. Uff da!

In a last-ditch attempt at avoiding working on my research paper, I've been furiously chugging through batch after batch of photos from Bermuda, the secondary goal being NOT to end yet another summer of travel with an absolutely ridiculous photographic backlog. Looks like I now have a mere... 135 photos left to edit. Excuse me while I do a small and bleary-eyed dance.

Anyway, I thought it would be a nice break to actually post some photos, rather than mechanically edit and upload them.

These are from my last twilight walk to Whalebone Bay, along the railway trail that I also posted photos of here. Conditions turned out to be both beautiful and less-than-ideal, since a storm was blowing in from the sea, and every five minutes a warm downpour would begin. At one point I was trying to take photos with my camera on the inside of a Ziploc bag, but that didn't work so great, so mostly I just chanced getting it wet. XD


Not quite at the trail yet...

( Read more... )

Right, 135 more photos to go. :P

Quick clip about a lady who has adopted over 1600 cats (and dogs!) over the past few years, and lets them run around her 6-acre property at will.

KITTIIIIIIIIES

I just undertook a minor revamping of my icons for the first time in foreverrr. I just wanted pretty new ones! XD; Particularly ones featuring tea - this one is by foxglove_icons. I do like the stock that she used a lot, but the colors are a bit cold for what I had in mind. I also did an icon each for Aure and Wintermute. Well, the Aure one isn't new (I actually made it for use over at Resinality), but it is a bit nicer than the ancient one I had of him. I'm just design-shy, so I hate thinking about making anything even as small as an icon.

So if anyone has icon communities/makers that they'd like to recommend, recommend away! :D I'm particularly craving an icon that has bubble tea in it... hee.

and at leisure to play with my garden. :)



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So far I haven't had much to do apart from deadheading the marigolds, lavender, and beebalm - the growth is thick enough this year that weeds aren't really a problem, thankfully. I'm really pleased with how the marigolds are doing! I planted them this year to balance out all of my other flowers, which are purple, lavender, and blue. Although not particularly attractive to pollinators, marigolds are super easy to grow and pest-resistant, and the fact that I have lavender and obedient plants makes my garden popular with bees and butterflies anyway.

I'm disappointed though, that my pasques keep on getting smothered by the quicker-growing plants, despite my efforts to germinate the seedheads every year. They're my favorite flowers, with their fuzzy purple petals and yellow sepals. :3 They also have really pretty, feathery foliage. Next year I'm thinking of brute-forcing it and just buying a ton of adult plants to put in, haha.

I leave Bermuda in less than two days, and will be presenting my final work tomorrow, but in the meantime, photos from the Bermuda Botanical Gardens. :3;



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I must admit to having idly eyed the Canon G9 camera of late, but in the meantime, can I express how much I love my little point-and-shoot? It's so good to me. X3; Although lately it's had trouble figuring out exposure for the first five minutes or so of operation, since I've dropped it on pavement twice while here. (from a short distance, but still, on pavement.) Curses! Normally I take such good care of my belongings, too.

May I randomly add that I am a huge fan of deviantART's new message centre format? Big squidgy thumbnails to click on = yay.

And now, the eternal question of my non-working hours: what heady combination of knitting, reading, painting, and/or watching Dexter should I pursue? Should I knit and read? Should I paint and listen to music? Oh, the options!

Anyone who is interested in serial killers, vigilanteism, and morbid humor should watch Dexter, by the way.

Apparently "penguin in tuxedo" is the universal sign for "freeze."

( Behind the cut, The Return of Cap'n Eppy, and more laboratory hijinks )

I really want a breadstick right now!

Sorry for the silly photos - I promise prettier ones later. I'm way backed up, needless to say.

I was so happy with how this came out. X3; Her foot is too small, though! The dragon actually has a name that isn't Mortimer, but I've forgotten what it is, so Mortimer is a stand-in.

( and the finished hunting prince piece )

By the way, since I remembered that I hadn't mentioned it at all, the biggest influence for my painting lately has been the amazing bluefooted at deviantART. Go check her out!

In general, I think it did me good to take a lot of time off of drawing for the past year or two (not that was a conscious decision - it was simply lack of time, of course) and instead spend time looking a lot of good art and photography.

I'll try to do more photoposts sometime soon! I'm so backed up on everything again, haha.