The Big Knit

I've been knitting...

Not for myself, but for the Big Knit , a charity appeal whereby knitters make small hats to fit the tops of innocent smoothie bottles. Every hat knitted raises 25p for Age UK, .

I bought 20 20g balls of cotton from my local wool shop (the wonderful Knotty Knits and Kreative Krafts)  and looked up a load of patterns on the net.

Ummm...they're a bit addictive.

It takes about half an hour to make and sew up a basic hat. A bit longer if you're doing more of a novelty one, especially if you have to make legs or sew on eyes or make tails. Most of the patterns have come from the internet, having simply searched 'big knit patterns'.

I've knitted loads...

It's all in a good cause.

Birthdays, Guitars, and Cake.

Can't quite believe it, but Squidgeling T is eighteen this weekend. Where did all those years go?

One minute there's a little cheeky chappie toddling along, the next, there's a strapping six footer - a strapping six footer who is the bassist of a local rock band.

One of his guitars (yes, he has multiple - apparently you can never have too many guitars) was made by Mr Squidge. Squidgeling T had been eyeing up Dingwall 5-string basses, but the prices were well out of his league at somewhere around £3K-£5K. Having made a guitar for his GCSE though, T asked his dad to help him make a Dingwall-inspired one. Mr Squidge ended up doing most of the practical stuff, but T had definite ideas about what it would look like and was instrumental (hah! see what I did there?) in the design.

The guitar was finished earlier this year, and it looks amazing. You can't see it on these pics, but the head of the guitar is coloured to match the body in purple and blue.

Now on his ACTUAL birthday, T will be performing, gigging with Rawkus Redz in Leicester - a charity gig in aid of the Teenage Cancer Trust - so how else could I have decorated his 18th birthday cake, other than with a guitar.

And not just any old guitar, but THE guitar...

Happy Birthday, Squidgeling T xx

Sparky

You'll probably know if you read the Scribbles that Family Squidge are working hard to help the environment. We're big recyclers, have solar panels on our house, save water for the garden, and own a wind turbine.

Recently, we took the next step; we bought an electric car.

Mr Squidge did a lot of research. And I mean A LOT. One obvious issue with electric cars is their range - you have to work hard at planning longer (ie 100+ mile) journeys to allow sufficient time to recharge the batteries. For a long time we ummed and ahhed as to whether to go for it now, or wait until vehicle range increased. But as I pointed out, most of our journeys are short (<50 miles) so we'd get there and back in one battery's worth of 'juice'. And isn't it better to do something now, rather than wait?

Depending on the car we might have chosen, there would have been up to an eighteen month wait on delivery anyway, so Mr Squidge looked at secondhand. Then he discovered the range extender.

Now, hybrid cars are a mix of petrol engine and battery power, but some electric cars have a range extender which - although it requires a small amount of petrol to work - does gice you a few extra miles if the battery's running low.

So we went on a test drive. For those who are interested, it was a BMW i3 with a range extender. (As far as I'm concerned, it's a car, has four wheels and it goes.) It was fairly easy to drive, even though I've never driven an automatic before. We were pretty certain that was the model we wanted, especially as it was very easy for both of us to drive without too many major adjustments to seat positions etc (6'3" vs 5'0" can make it a real faff before you actually drive anywhere).

The hunt was on. Mr Squidge found one in Stockport - and one in Edinburgh. The Stockport one was grey, the Edinburgh one, blue. Electric blue.

He liked the blue.

After a lot of negotiating, he bought the blue one.

Granted, I liked the blue more than the grey, but I did question the sense in flying to Edinburgh, (not so environmentally friendly), stopping overnight, then picking up a new car first thing and driving back home the next day, factoring in stops to recharge on the way.

But that's what he did. And so we took possession of Sparky.

I love driving it - it's really satisfying to be able to charge it via our own solar panels and by the very nature of how you drive. (The only downside was that the day after it arrived, I managed to smash one of the wing mirrors as I backed into the drive. Mr Squidge has since moved the gatepost and given us an extra 10" of manoeuvering room...)

We're still not entirely environmentally friendly in the car department; we decided to keep the diesel estate for the moment. Come September, both Squidgelings will be at uni, and the extra space will be useful to cart student clobber up and down the various motorways, although we have proven we can do a day's trip to Bristol with a charging stop quite comfortably. The insurance companies also won't insure Squidgeling T to drive Sparky until he is 19 and had at least a year of post-driving-test experience, so keeping the Astra means that at least he can get himself to gigs and rehearsals under his own steam. But in the long run, who knows...

Feels good to be going greener...

Editing, un-editing, and gooseberry bushes.

I have been extremely quiet on the blogging front - again. I last posted when I finished Camp NanoEdMo, and had a completed edit of the current novel under my belt. That is now with BInk, and I'm waiting to see what they think of it.

Would you believe, as I sent that one off - the second in Tilda's adventures - the first book came back the other way, having been edited by BInk. (Publication is September, so things are starting to move, with cover design and title ideas being thrown around!) I'd already spent some time working on the first book, because it didn't feel as much in Tilda's head as I wanted it to be, so I ended up incorporating some of my most recent changes into the MS as I checked through BInk's edit.

Problem was, a lot of the stuff I added went it, then a lot of it came back out.

Sometimes, I was only playing with the word order. The alterations I'd made added nothing of value to the scene, so I was un-editing myself and reverting back to the original - which most of the time BInk had no issue with. Realising this led to a very interesting discussion with fellow authors over in the Den of Writers, because I started to wonder whether I was making changes for the sake of change, rather than to make an improvement.

Editing's a weird stage in a novel's life, especially when it's an editor that's made suggestions, rather than you being self-critical of what you've produced. I try not to be too sensitive to the suggestions of A.N.Other, but it's hard.

Some issues arise because the US editor works to a slightly differently format to the UK and we end up bouncing back and forth a bit until I understand why certain punctuation has to be a particular way. Some are because I'm not being grammatically correct - and I'll admit, I don't know all the rules so I do break them; I often write how I'd speak, but when written down, that doesn't always work.

Of course there are places where BInk make a suggestion and I can see that there is an improvement needed, but I have to find my own - Squidge - way of saying it. This can be as subtle as a change of word choice, to ending up re-writing whole sections of the novel. And it's never clear which it's going to be until I start.

There are a few places where I dig my heels in and don't want the change that's been suggested. In this particular novel, I often write actions linked to 'began to...'. I think it must be due to how I picture the scene in my head - I see a sequence of actions, so in writing about the action, it begins before it continues or changes. I can accept that's not always appropriate though, and to state more simply that the action happened is better. But not always...

So, having accepted, amended and rejected - mostly the first two! - the edit of that book's back with BInk too.

I felt rather bereft once it had gone. I tried to go back to book 3 - currently being handwritten in a notebook - and got seriously stuck on a plot point.

Perhaps it's a genuine sticking point. Perhaps it's just that I have focused so much recently on editing, I'm not allowing myself to make mistakes and play any more.

So, in an attempt to give myself a breather, I've done some gardening. I've often said I love my garden, but I don't like gardening, so this is a major form of procrastination/need for thinking time if I'm actually weeding. Mr Squidge wanted some more gooseberry bushes, so the two of us set to on a patch of weedy ground we'd not sorted out since the garden room was built; it was covered in borage. Now bees love borage, and it's very pretty - looks like a prickly, large, forget-me-not plant - but boy, does it spread. It's overtaking my garden, and a real beetle to dig up.

Borage, bramble (lovely blackberries so we keep it), and bush!

Lots and lots and lots of borage

But we cleared the space and yesterday, planted two goosegog bushes and some ground cover flowers. Hooray! I also planted up a couple of blueberry bushes in pots...

Planted!

Pots. I do like blue in my garden

Has it worked in terms of giving me headspace and mulling time? I won't know that until I get back to the notebook, but I'm hopeful. At least now, when I'm sitting in the garden room on a sunny day and staring out of the windows looking for inspiration, I'll have the fruit bushes to look at.
 

Baby goosegogs! These will be red, the others yellow-green

 

And teeny tiny blueberries beginning to form...

And even if I struggle a bit more with the latest novel, there'll be gooseberry wine and blueberry gin to look forward to later this year...so at least something good's come of the writing break!

Winner, winner, Chicken dinner!

It's official! I am a winner - apparently.

Here's the update if you don't believe me...

16/4  - 173

17/4 - 0

18/4 - 1315

19/4 - 1219

20/4 - 828

21/4 - 1579

22/4 - 1729

23/4 - 889

24/4 - 1855

25/4 - 1879

Total words at final count - 48025 (Target was increased to 48K from 45K about a week ago)

I realised that the end number of words, when added together, might not match my final total, because some days I went back over short sections of what I'd done the previous day - especially when I was writing rather than editing near to the end. But ultimately, I have completed a first, fairly well edited computer draft, of a 48K fantasy novel. 

I'm not going to say I've finished, because I know I haven't. I need to rest this story for a while, then come back to it with fresh eyes. It's never really finished until it's in print. (If it ever reaches that point).

And I have to say that although I'm pleased, I don't feel like a 'winner'. That implies I've been racing against others to get my project completed, but I don't like to think of myself as being in competition with folks on the writing front. All of us in our Camp NaNo cabin made progress on our projects, so in that sense, we're all winning, even if some of those projects won't be completed by the end of the month.

The best lesson of this whole intense writing camp that I'm taking away is that I have proven to myself that I can be disciplined enough to write a little (sometimes a lot) every day if I need to. That alone is worth the win.

So what's next? Book 3, of course! And finding beta readers for numbers 1 & 2. Any takers?

Batik-y and zingy quilting

Although I've been 'camping' this month, editing my next novel, I am trying to do other things as well.

If you're a regular reader of the Scribbles, you'll know I also knit and stitch - and in recent years I have taken to quilting. In between editing, I've given myself breaks by working on some quilting. I thought as a change from updates of 'number of words I've edited', I'd post a few pics of 'quilting I have done' instead.

My last quilting update was back at the beginning of February; I'd finished two large quilts for myself and Squidgeling T, and was about to embark on a lap quilt in zingy colours AND a large blue batik-y quilt for Squidgeling J. Here's where they're at...

Blue Batik-y quilt:
The top was pieced together a while ago, but as Squidgeling J was in Bristol, I waited for her to come home so we could go to our local fabric shop to find the backing fabric and all the other bits and pieces I needed to start the hand quilting. (We went last week - also bought fabric to border and back a lap quilt of whirly hexes that Squidgeling J's making for herself). We ended up with a beautiful turquoise and deep pink-red batik fabric which draws out the pinks and purples and brighter blues in the quilt top.

Yes, it's the back of the quilt top and just a little bit of the backing fabric

Next step is to join two pieces of the backing fabric, then pin all the layers together before hand quilting. Not sure what pattern to use yet - we've played around with some ideas, but nothing's fixed. And as the weather gets warmer, it'll be too hot to do. Might have to wait until the autumn to get going on it...

Zingy Lap Quilt:
I managed to piece this together fairly quickly over a few days, and had enough cut-offs of wadding to not need to buy any new.

The backing - well, I admit I skimped on this one. I bought polycotton rather than 100% cotton, but I was so taken with the colours (which match the top) I knew I had to use it.

I found seven coloured cottons that matched some of the fabrics, and proceeded to hand quilt by picking up the patterns on the top.

spirals, wavy lines, flowers, crosses, squares...

I realised quite quickly that I didn't like the plain white in between all the coloured squares, so I made extra work for myself by deciding to stitch just inside the borders of all the white rectangles as well, making sure - as far as was possible - that there weren't any two adjacent rectangles stitched in the same colour of cotton.

Guess who likes sitting on it...

All that's left for me to do on this one is piece together the border strips, machine sew them onto the quilt, then catch down on the back by hand.

Probably ought to put down my needle and get back to camp now, though. Haven't edited anything yet today...and that story won't edit itself. Catch you later!

Camp update 4

Well, things have been a bit up-and-down over the past few days. Had another no writing day, a very low word day, then a couple of good days.

12/4/19 - zero.
13/4/19 - 690
14/4/19 - 3460
15/4/19 - 2285

Total to date: 36366 words edited.

Actually, what I've produced over the last couple of days is more like first pass writing, because I'm at a part in the story where I got stuck before. VERY stuck. So it's all written in note form, without formatting; I'm having to do a lot of filling out and formatting as I go.

I also increased the word count I'm aiming for, because my original estimate of 45K for this novel seems a little low. So I increased it to 50K. I may not get that far, but I'd rather be working up to it realistically than looking like I've gone over and above my target if I set it too low at the start.

Onwards and upwards - like my word count.