Regarding Nothing In Particular

It is beginning to get cooler again. This is an excellent development. I'm looking forward to the mornings when I'll get to put on SOCKS just to walk about the house. AND SNOW.

Oh, here's a thing: Mummy has begun blogging again! Go check out her posts for amazing pictures of things that are growing in our garden. Also flowers.

I have actually made some things.

Eurasian Bullfinch. (Plus damask [not included]!)

FIVE OF THEM. I'm currently plotting my next avian endeavours (Lady Amherst's Pheasants, anyone?) and rummaging through our collection of papers for suitably beautiful sheets and colours.

Also, I may sew a skirt. We've discovered this fabric which is completely the most amazing and it is brown with adorable patterns of spiky trees and things. It looks like IKEA as a fabric. I want to make a skirt out of it and add some pink ruffles or something.

Aaaaaand OH! Things have been coming together with my bookworld recently and it's been really exciting. I love finding out that sometimes the things you've had written down for ages can all be connected in totally unexpected ways.

In other news. . .

*Regarding Pinterest: of course. But instead of making me less productive, it's actually inspiring me to do great things (mostly). I still need an endless supply of fabric, though.
*The ever-amazing Lauren Child has begun writing a new series featuring Ruby Redfort (of Clarice Bean fame) and I've scored the first book from the library. I've only read the first chapter so far but it looks good already. Ms Child is very good at loading innocent-looking sentences with lots more information than is obvious at first sight (examples to be posted later).
*An addendum to the title should read '(Or Maybe Lots Of Things)'.

Regarding That Man In The Parking-Lot (Part I)

  It was dark.
  Iulius Caesar Stravinsky sweated noisily as he swerved to avoid a marauding shrubbery and veered into the serpentine curve of a parking-lot entrance, swishing into the lot with the noise of tires on rainy cement. This was peculiar - partly because the parking-lot was paved with asphalt, not cement, and partly because Iulius Caesar Stravinsky had been killed three hours earlier.
  But neither of these conditions was the reason for his distress. Stravinsky was sweating because he had sped past the town furniture store at seventy miles an hour and the proprietor and his family had spotted him anyway.
  Stravinsky could not do long division. He had no idea how one might go about finding hypotenuses (nor was he certain what they were exactly) and he'd never been able to make sense of a periodic table. But if there was one thing he knew, it was that he was being followed, and if there was another thing he knew, it was that the people who were following him would like very much to kill him.
  Again.
  This was the reason that he was now sitting in a very dark car in the shadow of three enormous paper-recycling bins, holding his breath for abnormally extended periods of time and wondering whether he should risk trying to use his mobile phone.
  He had no idea how long he'd been waiting when the Jeep's headlights lit up the world around him.

x-x-x-x-x

  Sjburgsteon Pootisson had waited for exactly three minutes and nineteen seconds before turning into the library parking-lot. He had done this mainly to avoid letting Stravinsky escape with a sort of Crazy Ivan manoeuvre, but also to add a sense of tension to the story.
  It worked. As he hurtled toward the parked car, Pootisson saw Stravinsky tense, somehow becoming even stiller than he had been. In the seconds before their cars collided, Pootisson smiled, thinking of the reward money he was about to collect for the second time.
  Time seemed to slow as the impact shuddered through both vehicles, and though neither Pootisson nor Stravinsky was aware of the other's thought processes, they both found themselves being vaguely disappointed that the noises of the crash did not seem to be amusingly slowed, but in fact remained jarringly real.

x-x-x-x-x

  Stravinsky exited through the windshield of the car and performed a spectacular double roll down its bonnet, landing on his feet but falling over almost immediately. Before long, however, he was up again and running for the field ahead. He heard a car door slam and assumed (correctly) that it was Pootisson's; without looking back, he sped up, narrowly avoiding a few inconveniently placed rabbit holes.
  It took him a while to realise that the noises around him were gunshots. Once he'd registered that, he smirked a bit, wondering if Pootisson was just a poor shot or if the weaving trick he'd been taught really did work.
  Unfortunately, it soon turned out to be the latter. As soon as Stravinsky's running pattern straightened out (on account of more shrubbery, of course), something hit him in the leg and he was on the ground before he knew what had happened. He could hear Pootisson behind him now, gaining rapidly (which was unsurprising but still annoying) and making the horrible noise he tried to pass off as a laugh.
  No human being should be capable of making that noise, Stravinsky thought absently. Then something connected with his head and the world became very quiet.

TO BE CONTINUED

Regarding My Goals for July

It is getting very, very warm. I suppose this is the sort of thing which is to be expected as one is immersed in The Hot Hot Summer. All the same, it's vaguely alarming. Especially since we haven't had any rain to speak of.

Anyway, I've decided to stay inside as much as possible and work on my creative endeavours. Here, then, are some of my goals for the coming month:

* I want to become magnificent at drawing cats. I must research their shapes and then put my amazing knowledge to use.
* I want to be able to write excellent improvised songs. Thanks to some quick lessons from a friend, I am now prepared for this.
* I want to start writing the book that has been baking in my head for several months/years/increments of time in various forms and permutations.
* I want to develop a recipe for Scrambled Custard.
* I want to write more letters. Soviet Russia letters, to be precise.
* I want to finish the poems that have been floating around in my notebook for months.
* I want to start new poems.
* I want to finish old drawings and start new ones.
* I want to learn to identify fifty more British birds.
* I want to hunt down every damask-patterned delightful thing in the land and hide it in my room.
* I want to learn new things to play on the pianoforte.
* I want to make a beautiful book of wonderful things.
* I want to discover new fantastic things of whose existence I was totally unaware.
* I want to learn more things.

I shall print this list with added checkmarks, and then I shall keep it in full sight of myself and remember to do the things on it.

Regarding the Heat

It is hot out.

I shouldn't be complaining yet; it'll get warmer in a few weeks, I'm sure. But I don't want to set foot outside right now for fear of the sun. It tries to kill me, you see. It wants to burn the heart out of me. And after discovering this disturbing facet of the sun's personality, I have decided to stay inside as much as possible. At least we haven't got a glass roof.

That's enough of complaining, though; on to the good stuff. I'm sure that as the summer continues we will manage to wrestle one of our tables out onto the deck, and then we will be able to have breakfast picnics every morning. Cucumber sandwiches will be nice, I think.

I have learned to make beautiful bows from paper:

I used this tutorial, which was linked to by the always-fantastic Jen Yates of Cake Wrecks and Epbot fame. They're fairly easy once you get past the fiddliness of turning squares inside out and things like that. I want to make more! I found that thinner paper works better than thicker paper because of all the folding you've got to do - it bunches up on itself and gets very thick indeed. I think I was meant to cut the tails into double-pointed ones, but obviously they can go either way.

One of my newest obsessions is the Art Nouveau style. I've been poring over books and pictures and trying to absorb its details and characteristics. Once I've got it all down I'll probably be drawing a lot of things in that style. Probably even things like blenders and irons and sewing-machines.

More good things to come!
EB

Regarding Road Trips

We recently came home from a week-long holiday at the sea-side. The holiday was wonderful; the drive back may have been just as fun.

The first hour or so was fairly uneventful. We drove straight along one road until we came to the grocery store. Then things started getting interesting. While our parents ran into the store to get juice and things for the drive, my siblings and I watched the various creepy hobo-like people in the parking lot. When our parents came back with juice, we were ready to go. (More than ready. I don't like hobos.)

Juice-bags were passed around, and Kristebel, having consumed a mild amount of her 'Strawberry Kiwi' squeezings, pronounced the contents to taste like vinegar. ('Apple cider, to be precise', she adds, looking over my shoulder.) Mum turned around from her perch in the front passenger's seat and explained loudly:

'IT'S THE KIWI, FREAK!'

just as a man was making his exit from a car next to us. I'm fairly certain he heard us (our windows were open) and we will probably haunt his dreams for the rest of his life.

After we'd laughed about that, we got back on the road and drove. Soon it was Pudding Hour, and we ate pudding.

There was a lot more driving after that, but nothing really memorable happened, apparently, as none of us can recall specific incidents.

But when we were a few hours from home, things started being more interesting. A car pulled up sort-of-next to us, falling behind, then pulling ahead, and falling behind again. There were two men in the front seats, and they had Serious Faces and at least one of them was wearing sunglasses. The following is a speculative recreation of their conversation:

Sunglasses Man: HEY GUIDO. Are we there yet?

Guido: Not yet.

(Silence.)

Sunglasses Man: HEY GUIDO. Did you eat that last falafel?

Guido: No. You're holding it.

Sunglasses Man: Ah. Right.

(Both laugh.)

Guido: (wiping tears from his eyes) I can't see the road. Ha ha ha. . .

Sunglasses Man: Just keep driving, Guido.

(They swerve to avoid a flaming tyre.)

They fell behind us for a while after that, and suddenly Mum noticed a car next to us with an enormous opaque trailer behind it. She jumped to the obvious conclusion: this was a man smuggling thousands of contraband harmonicas. After we'd passed the car and laughed at the hapless driver (he didn't look the harmonica-smuggling type), Mum pointed out that it was a good thing the trailer had no windows.

'Imagine,' she wheezed between bursts of helpless laughter, 'the sound it would make!'

It took me a long time to fully get this, but I laughed anyway because I thought she was referring to the sound that would result from a crash.

Around this time, Guido and Sunglasses Man caught up with us again. But this time they had a HUMAN BODY IN THE BACK SEAT OF THEIR CAR.

'OH!' I shouted, flailing and pointing. After I had described the situation, the people around me pointed out that it was not the body of a blond-headed child, as I had previously thought, but in fact that of a rather old woman. We watched with interest.

Sunglasses Man: HEY GUIDO. Where we gonna dump this body?

Guido: I don't know. We're gonna keep driving and then we'll get to a river or something, eh? Or a bridge! Heh heh. . .

(More laughter.)

Eventually:

Sunglasses Man: Don't look now, Guido - but I think those people know what we're up to.

Guido: (nervous eyes)

At this point we may or may not be staring at Guido and Sunglasses Man through the two pairs of binoculars I brought along for birding. (Okay, fine. We are definitely staring at them.)

Unfortunately, we stopped at a rest stop soon after this and Guido and Sunglasses Man managed to get away. But Harmonica Man parked very near us, and shortly thereafter I realised exactly what Mum had meant by 'the horrible harmonica sound'. This rendered me nearly incapable of breath, and the next few moments did nothing to help me.

Not long after we parked, Skandar Keynes' identical cousin or something came out of the rest stop. I pointed him out to the rest of the car's occupants and noted that he was probably In On It with Guido and Sunglasses Man. This called for special observation, of course, and I was still holding my binoculars, so I kept an eye on him. Unfortunately, this sort of activity is somewhat less subtle when one is in a parked car a few metres from one's target. Kandar Skeynes happened to look up while I was Secretly Staring, and a few seconds after he made eye (lens?) contact, I realised that he had probably noticed the binoculars.

'Oops,' I giggled. 'I think he's probably noticed the binoculars.'

Luckily, he did not try to approach the car and attack us. Unluckily, I didn't think to pull down my glasses and give him The MI5 Look complete with Knowing Eyebrows.

Also, Sunglasses Man looked more or less exactly like this:

B[

But he had a nose.

Regarding Creativity

I have recently been inspired to Create Things. This isn't an unusual occurrence, but I'll try to give it an unusual follow-up by actually DOING SOMETHING about it. Having been sucked completely into the world of Warriors, I'm planning to make a lot of little cats of polymer clay and paint them to resemble the cast of aforementioned series. Imagine four tiny Clans romping about your desk! This thought and others like it propel me to great heights of ambition, and the only thing standing in my way is EYES.

I've been trying to research options for eyes: my best bet seems to be little taxidermy eyes, but do they come in sizes that tiny? Perhaps I can make eyes from clay and glaze them. I'll experiment with that. (Most of the things I make from clay happen not to have any eyes - oops.)

Blogger have updated their look yet again - but this time I actually like the changes they've made. Everything looks very clean and efficient, and once you've got the buttons figured out it's no problem to do just what you want in a few clicks. I like the new fonts, too: they're elegant and streamlined and unapologetically fine.

I have just chosen some yarn for my (first) crochet project! It is to be a lovely capelet - the pattern can be found for free here. Don't forget to print the errata, too - they can be found in a link just below the pattern download link.

Most of you will probably know by now that I rather enjoy practising songs on the pianoforte, and some of my sort-of-recent favourites include two of Chopin's pieces: 'Prelude (Op. 28, No. 4)' and 'Prelude in C Minor (Op. 28, No. 20)'. His music is wonderfully powerful and sombre, but one of the best bits is that he was apparently not afraid to use BIG CHORDS. This is lovely because it allows me to put my large hands to very good use.

This is probably a fairly abrupt ending to the post. Oh well.

Regarding Vegetarianism

I have become a non-gluten-eating vegetarian person.

In other news,

-I am nearly finished with the second series of Warriors. I'm also working on 'The Fountainhead' by Ayn Rand, which has been extremely enjoyable. I have just created some peanut-butter-chocolate-shortbready biscuits, and they are quite lovely.
-There's not much else going on. We're currently having a warm snap in the weather; I'm hoping for one snowfall (three feet?) and then I'll be fine with whatever the weather throws at us. Well, I'll be fine with spring. I love when it rains, but it's even better without the guilt of wishing it would snow just once instead.
-Oh! Today I worked on matrices in maths. They were wonderful. I'm nearly halfway through my chemistry course, and that's being brilliant as well (I'm working on electron configurations and orbit shapes).
-Back to reading: my goal is to finish eleven books (plus the remainder of the one I'm reading now) before the third of April, when the newest one will be out.
-My mum is working on a lovely Harry Potter-inspired shadowbox. Ask her for pictures when she's done!

Regarding Inspiration

To begin, we shall make two assumptions: firstly, that I am good at having ideas; and secondly, that I am good at carrying out. The problem is the bit in between those two things.

As it is a New Year, I have decided (in the manner which people usually do) that I am going to start doing that small bit in the middle and actually become productive. After analysing the amounts of time which I spend doing things each day, I have come to the conclusion that there is actually plenty of time to do almost everything I want. Expect to see some results soon.

But while you wait for that, look at THESE THINGS instead. Here are some special people and things. What is so special about them? They are influences which have burrowed into my mind and stayed there, filling me with new things to wonder at, and making me realise what I could be doing instead of sitting here and blogging lying on the sofa and having a staring contest with the ceilings (which, by the way, I always win).

LOOK, and BE INSPIRED:

D. M. Cornish - The author of three books (so far) and over thirty notebooks (which I would love to go through entirely on a rainy afternoon), Mr Cornish never fails to pull something awe-inspiring out of nowhere. Plus, he did an ENTIRE POST in response to one of my comments once, and that totally made my day. (Okay, I can't deny it - I'm still coasting on that buzz.)
Dorothy Hearst - Wolf fiction. Need I say more? Promise of the Wolves and Secrets of the Wolves are her only books so far, but there's a third on the way. These books leave little to be desired (some delicious pencil illustrations would be quite welcome!) and it's great to see that the market hasn't got tired of wolves just yet. (I have plans of my own, you see.)
Erin Hunter - Well, she's actually several people, but they're all awesome. I'm working on getting through the Warriors series (at the rate of two books a week, I'll be well-prepared and ready once the final book of the latest arc comes out) and am awaiting the first book of the second Seekers series. The cast of characters for the former series is almost Dickensian in size, and is handled (with a few minor gender-bending exceptions!) quite smoothly.
Kathryn Lasky - I love the Ga'Hoole series to bits (OWLS!) and the companion series (WOLVES!) is fantastic. She's written much more than that, but I shall never outgrow my love of animal fiction, and these two series remain firm favourites.
Valve - One of my favourite companies on this planet (and that's saying a lot). They're the authors of the incredible videogames 'Portal' and 'Team Fortress 2', and their sense of humour matches that of my family so perfectly that I laugh out loud at 98.12% (or more) of what they do, even if it's a minor blog post or a description of an in-game item. Character design: they're doing it right.
Weta Workshop - The Lord of the Rings film series is probably what they're best known for, but this design and prop studio have credits all over the the film world. They've done some collaborations with Valve through their 'Dr Grordbort' division (ray guns and mounted alien bugs, anyone?) and are quite responsible for the glorious-looking Tintin film, which appears as though it will do many justices to the wonderful books on which it has been based.
Jen Yates - Cake and crafts? I'm in. EPBOT has plenty of geeky references mixed with jaw-dropping DIY plans for incredible things. I couldn't begin to list all the things I've found through this blog. (Plus she's a fellow Sherlockian. Win-win-win!)

Many of the artists I admire do not have website galleries to do them justice, but here are their names:

JC Amberlyn - The author of two books. One of them is fantastic - if I had to pick one art instruction book to bring on a Desert Island Holiday, it would probably be Drawing Wildlife. Every one of the animals in her drawings glows with life, and it's not at all hard to give them stories in your mind while flipping through the book. The style is one I hope to achieve - almost pure realism with a touch of stylised liveliness.
Richard Cowdrey - Responsible for the covers of Kathryn Lasky's 'Ga'Hoole' and 'Wolves of the Beyond' series.
Wayne McLoughlin - Cover artist for Erin Hunter's 'Warriors' and 'Seekers' series. I wish he would do an instructional book or something - I like to stare at the jackets of our books and wonder at the pictures.
Terryl Whitlatch - Unfortunately, she seems not to be present on the wonderful world of the Internet (although she seems to be a contributor to the art academy blog to which I've linked), but that shouldn't stop you from hunting down her work. She's done creature designs for loads of animated films (and STAR WARS!) and has a seemingly flawless grasp of anatomy. I admire her for drawing real birds even when it doesn't matter to most other people, like in the background of some pages for her incredible collaboration 'The Katurran Odyssey' (which was the first book of a proposed series, but unfortunately stands alone so far) - oystercatchers in the distance, and loads of other birds which I recognised but cannot recall, as I do not have the book in my possession!

This is by no means a complete list of my inspiration sources - I'm always finding new things to stare at. But it's a start, and everything has to start somewhere. . .

Regarding Keyboards

After a sudden flash of brilliance, I have come to the conclusion that every keyboard should have a 'Forward!' key to complement the Backspace key. It would be on the left-hand side of the keyboard, directly across the number-line from the Backspace key.

*The Plus and Minus keys could be moved to replace the buttons for Page Up and Page Down, which could be implemented as functions on the up and down arrow keys.
*The number keys would be shifted so that 0 was right next to Backspace, making room for Forward!
*The Forward! key would function as an alternative to the spacebar, and it could also be used to return to a page which you had just gone back from, much in the way that the Backspace key can be used to return to a previous page.
*Pressing Shift and Forward! at the same time would work in the same way as a left-button mouse click. Control and Forward! would produce an effect identical to that of pressing the right mouse button.

That is all. Perhaps I shall construct a diagram of the ideal keyboard to post later on!

Regarding That Time We Crashed A Wedding

Please note that the following account has been embellished somewhat in an effort to make it even more appealing to the general public.

 It started with an innocent effort to explore some family history.  As it happens, our grandfather went to his first Christmas service at a church not too far from our house (which is very interesting as our families have moved to many places since then).  We travelled to the church and, after taking some photographs of its beautiful surrounding gardens, went inside.

It was very interesting to look at all of the bits of the church's history that were on display.  Eventually we came (inevitably) to the Big Main Church Room and thought - hey, let's go in there!

As soon as we came near the door, it swung open with a thunderous clanking of gears akin to the sound of a hundred stampeding horses.  The dozens of people in the room turned slowly to look at us - a crowd of six people standing motionless, beginning to grasp the gravity of the situation on which they had just intruded.

Two of the people (standing at the front of the room) were dressed very nicely - one in a white dress and the other in a tuxedo - and they looked to be the most surprised of all.  Their shock lasted only a moment, though - and then the bride-to-be pulled a revolver from one of the pockets in her dress.

I ducked as the first shot buried itself in a wall inches from my head.  For a moment, there was absolute silence - perhaps our assailant was considering the best strategy for attack - and it was quiet enough for us to hear the click in the moments that followed.  By this time we were all stumbling gracefully backward, trying to figure out how we might escape without turning our backs or running into anything.

Before we could vacate the premises, the merciless woman pulled the trigger a second time.  Luckily, I had noticed each of the nearly imperceptible movements she had made while adjusting her aim, and I just had time to pull a nearby crucifix from the wall and hold it in front of me.  In true symbolic fashion, the sturdy metal of the cross deflected the bullet, and we were off and running before she could reset the hammer of her gun.  We burst out the doors in a spectacular display of athleticism, startling the innocent people lounging in the gardens.  Our lightning speed brought us to our vehicle ere the crazed gunwoman could catch up with us, and we left her shouting creative insults as we sped away in our bulletproofed mini-van.

We laughed all the way home.