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 |   My journal and mirror |
 Possibly a mistake, definitely an experiment. A politics free journal of personal reflections and achievements. This is my first blog, so any feedback or advice would be appreciated. Blog serials (will) include:  Fairy Tales Told Wrong (a character study) (a poem) |
I finished my shoes today.  When I visited my sister at Christmas, she showed me her wedding shoes: Irregular Choice "Peach Melba". These shoes are a glittering pale pink or lilac 4-inch heel. The toe of the shoe is covered with lase and tiny cut-out blossoms. Metallic pink piping circles the top of the shoe and separates the lace sections from the 'plain' pink glitter. Two satin flowers, one pink and one lilac, perch together on the toe and the shoe is lined in something like velveteen. These are shoes on the same scale as the wedding dress. I've never been a shoe person. I like boots in certain styles, but I haven't been the sort of person to spend a lot of money on a lot of shoes. But Irregular Choice and Ruby Shoo? Now that I know about them, the only thing keeping me in check is the price tag. I just cannot spare that kind of money for shoes. And yet I cannot get them out of my head. So I turned that energy into making some pretty shoes, or rather making some shoes prettier. I bought a pair of canvas wedge heels online for £10 and dyed them in the kitchen sink for about 20 minutes. They're now sage green, although the dye didn't take where the uppers are glued to the sole, so there's a thin ribbon of cream there still. The strips of hessian cord covering the heel are also slightly green. I stuffed the toes with tissue paper to help the canvas keep its shape while it dried. This shouldn't be done with newspaper though: the ink can soak through and stain the fabric, which is what happened to My Darling's mother when she tried to stretch out brand new patent nude T-bars. After some searching online and in the stash, I pulled out a wide cream guipure lace and, scarily, cut it to pieces. The top half of the lace is stitched around the top of the shoe, stretching net lace half down the sides to where a line of embroidered flowers end the lace. The bottom half of the lace has been chopped up more: a straight line of guipure arcs over the top of the toe sole to sole and I've arranged individual pieces to decorate the rest of the toe. Sewing the lace on was hard: I had to use a leather thimble to get the needle through the canvas. You can see the finished results here  .I did some internet research before I started. Sadly a lot of sites relisted the same entries from the same blogs, but there are a lot of ways people have customised shoes.  gluing fabric or lace over shoes; painting shoes (there are specialist paints available); using fabric pens or dye on fabric uppers; adding brads or studs or adding eyelets; adding appliqués or patches; adding flowers or bows, or making removable shoe clips; colouring the soles of old high heels with nail polish.Has anyone else tried anything like this before? How did it work out? I admit I wouldn't have tried it if I hadn't found a nice pair of shoes so cheap. |
Yesterday morning I read "Drama in the Description" by THANKFUL SONALI Love my family  and that linked through to "Writing Solid Descriptions That Deliver" by Joy  too.I've been in a dead zone over winter. There has been a lot going on around me, contributed to by My Darling's large local family and a company restructure, and I've struggled to lift myself above the quagmire and free my thoughts to write. It's been frustrating in a way that is difficult to explain because the obstruction isn't a particular feeling or problem. It's an echo of anxiety, an absence of feeling marked by spots of uneasy anticipation not much helped by a self-absorbed relative appointing us to dog-sit every weekend. Trying to write has been like a visit to the corner shop for a pick-me-up: the selection of chocolate is limited and as much as I don't know what I want, I also know I don't want what's there. I would waste what time I could keep trying to decide what to work on and struggling to catch a thread or thought to follow. Then came 'home' to WDC and someone handed me a bag of magic stars. The extracts presented by THANKFUL SONALI Love my family snagged me out of that swamp of stress and sent me spring cleaning the first chapter of The Witch, the Wretch and the Warden Ch1 . I've also spruced up some of the later scenes and I aim - drama permitting - to make a fresh assault on continuing the story. I wanted to give credit to that boost that newsletter gave me because I felt so energised.If you're like me, you write because you love reading, so the best way to come back to yourself is to read. WDC has got so many wonderful people writing who can get you back to yourself, whether that's from a review out of the blue or a contest prompt or an article. |
| I haven't kept a diary before or not one which lasted more than a fortnight. I suppose the problem is that I didn't have anything I want to write. A diary has an audience of one and as hard as it is to write an autobiography, I had even less interest in reading it back. I keep reading that a blog should be about something, that I should become in expert in something. I'm not an expert, but I know some things about some things. This will be a blog about writing, crafts, sometimes food and probably games. I don't talk politics in my life, so I won't do it here. That subject a sure way to start arguments I'm not interested in participating in. That said, I will talk about my beliefs to the extent that they seem unlikely to start off a debate on social reforms. I will probably not write about my family much. I don't feel it is fair or right for me to decide what I reveal about other people, least of all people I care to protect. I will probably not talk about my feelings very much, not as a subject on their own, or my day to day life. I am an introvert, but it's more that I have an aversion to personal conversations with strangers. Maybe it's because I don't take teasing well or because I felt social judgement too easily as a teenager, but I believe there are bands intimacy and I protect those borders until I know who I'm talking to. I also don't believe in holding on to negative feelings, so I won't be giving those a voice here. I should probably say at this point that I'm uncertain where this experiment will go. I feel uncomfortable about revealing this much about myself. The kind of uncomfortable when you realise a guy might be about to hit on you after knowing you for twenty minutes. The kind of uncomfortable when your father asks what you've been doing lately and nothing you're proud of aligns with what he would approve of. I am a fantasy and science fiction writer. I am in a romantic relationship with a girl first met when I was seven. I play video games and I didn't catch career ambitions until last spring. For a long time I have had to live with the 'grown-ups' in my life not taking me seriously until the past two years or so when I've suddenly arrived in a place where I can take myself seriously despite outsiders. I'm not drifting waiting to become an adult any more. I keep reading that a blog should be about something. This blog is about me. It's my sound box and mirror; a platform to help me achieve the things I want to achieve going forward and share the things I am proud of. It has taken me well over two minutes to decide whether to click "save entry" or not. Wish me luck?  |
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