Stream of Consciousness Saturday, Amble

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “—amble.” Add letters to the beginning of “-amble” to make another word or use it as is in your post. Enjoy!

2019-2020 SoCS Badge by Shelley! https://www.quaintrevival.com/

Writing my memoirs is like ambling back through my life. 72 years of shambles and rambling through brambles. Ouch! or take a gamble with this choice or that. Though it is fun to revisit with my grandparents and aunts and uncles, revisiting death or car accidents can sometimes feel like it just happened even if it’s been decades since the actual occurrence. Still smelling the cedar of my grandparent’s closets or the ever-present scent of laundry soap can make me feel warm and secure. I have learned new ways to find my center.

Remember that friend you went to Renaissance Faire with? Remember a day of laughing while sitting in a creek on a hot day? So many memories to take that stroll. I do love a good amble!

Photo by Tatiana Syrikova on Pexels.com

Finished Friday

Not quite as candy corn as the last hat. And I think the orange mohair is gone.

The white brim yarn is chenille. It’s a folded brim. I think it will keep someone’s ears warm. It was tough to work with. The mohair was sift but full of static electricity.

The decreased crown was accomplished most easily on the KB Flexee fine-gauge loom. This hat is now heading for charity. I know I’ve shared the YouTube before. But just in case, here it is again. Sadly I had to play yarn chicken as I ran out of the orange just when finishing.

The Sunset on the Beach is nearly finished. By next Friday I will be working on a dragon.

During the Embrace Your Weird (Felicia Day) session we were given a prompt. Write a story starting each sentence with the next letter of the alphabet. The first sentence starts with ‘A,’ last sentence ‘Z.’

I changed it up. 😋 my inspiration was Valentine’s Day’s Bitmoji.

Ascending as always

Blessings by ballooning Betsy

Cruises carelessly

Charging chubby cherubs

Darting, dashing, doing,

Ever elusive, enormous emergencies

For forlorn, forgotten favors

Given graciously-

Gritted gifts-gamed

However handled,

HER history

Imagine icicles issued in ignorance,

Jumping jack jealously jerking

Kite kept kisses

Loosed lightning love-lint

Meant mostly mush

Needed nearly, noted necessary

Openly optimistically obtainable

Positively popped prayers

Quietly quenched

Research received respite

Safely settled sheltered sanity

Together this time,

Target tagged.

Unusually ushered, ultimately used

Valentines, virus, violent visions vanquished

With wonder, wishes wafted, wrangled, washed, woes

Xed

You yell YES!

Zapped

Heavens to Betsy

#WDIIA Editing Day!

NaNoWriMo is doing another group push. It’s called Now What 2022. It helps to have these things to try to kick me in the butt to get my editing and more writing done. So for my own accountability, I’m keeping track of words as I add my second Haven book back into the newest version of Writer. I wrote this and Haven back when the program was newish. yWriter5. We are now to yWriter7. I am nothing but redundant in my saving my WIP. So I consistently save the day’s writing in that program to RTF. Now decades later, I am glad I did that.

In this case, I can find my book, Haven Above and Beyond, open it in Word, and then use Grammarly to help me weed through and make a better version, if not rewrite the whole thing to make more sense. And as I enter it into a new yWriter7 project, I can count the word as I paste the worked-out bit in. I set my goal to 25,000 words. I have a few of my other books set up with the same goal because I might feel like moving around. I am not good at editing. I love the adventure of imagining a new story. But jumping into the mess and fixing what already played out as a movie in my mind, I miss a lot, and fixing things just doesn’t come easily. So the word count to date is 2,949. There are two scenes within that that are entirely yellow highlighted as I hate how it reads and will have to totally rewrite them. That’s okay. I’m glad I can see the awful within that movie.

So between editing, Diamond Painting, making a new charity hat while watching Sweet Magnolias, Duolingo, finding the moments to walk or play the recorder, and having a high need dog, I can get pretty turned around. I am grateful to be retired, with nothing but time. But there is never enough even without a job hogging it up.

Oh! Did I mention that in our tiny little community that had one gas station/convenience store and a tiny grocery store, both of which are charging twice as much as they used to, and even then, they were high? We just got a Dollar General. My son and brother went the other day. They came home and told me that it was a TARDIS of a shop, bigger on the inside. My husband and I plan to check it out tomorrow. Who knew, back in my big city days that I would be this excited to go into a Dollar General?

Photo by Oleg Magni on Pexels.com

I’ll try to get my own pics tomorrow. As if most of you haven’t seen a Dollar General! 😂

Carpenters’ Blues

I didn’t feel the blues because it was either Monday or sort of rainy. But with my cataracts, my wonderful husband agreed to help me find my medical insurance today.

We started with this book:

Yeah, useless.

Our tiny hamlet doesn’t have anything for older people. No flu shots without albumin, no vaccines. To get those, we need to spend $50 for something free. And indeed, finding helpful insurance has been stressful and sad. We finally settled on something… I think. Meanwhile, I need only green spray paint to recycle/reuse this piece of *&#$+*for the trees wasted.

Calling for green spray paint and glitter.

Stream of Consciousness Saturday, Lid, Inktober, Pressure

Per Linda G. Hill

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “lid.” Use it in the literal sense, use it in the metaphorical sense, use it any way you’d like. Have fun!

I decided to combine #SOCS’s ‘lid’ with #Intober2021 where the prompt of the day is ‘pressure’.

Here’s the story’s continuation:

Trying to keep the lid on seemed to increase the pressure. The watchman clicked on his watch and scrolled to Crystal’s name and hit send. When her face came on the screen it was full of understanding. Her crystals were growing nearly taking over her irises. It made her look blind, but he knew it was the opposite. He warned her to get out while she could.

Crystal looked around at her fans. She felt the one who had whispered before, tugging at her arm. She whispered again, “Let’s get out of here, this way!”

Crystal let herself be pulled while bowing and thanking the enclosing crowd.

~~~

Shoot! Another cliffhanger! What is going to happen? I wish I knew! Anyway, here’s the #Intober2021 ink.

Inktober, Watch

First of all, I like drawing with a pencil. I’m not doing well with the finality of ink when I am not at all versed in how. So sorry, not sorry. Besides, this is to encourage my writing. Having multiple words yesterday in trying to catch up was easier to pull out the story. But this is going more slowly. First the pic and then the bit I’ve written.

Maybe I should use markers to color in. I can’t seem to leave the sketch in black and white. And that bit at the upper left is the watch on the guard’s arm, not a pill bottle. Okay, the story installment:

The watchman looked at his watch. Panic set in his bones. He noticed the crowd closing in on Crystal.

How was he to rescue her while obeying her command to let her enjoy her fans? But midnight approaches, and he now what that means!

#Inktober2021/#Inktober

I hate cliffhangers!

Inktober 2021

My friend was telling me how much fun she was having with Inktober. She is not only inking illustrations but also inking a journal or story to go with the picture prompt. That sounded like fun so I’m joining seven days late.

Here’s my days 1-7 #Inktober2021 submission and then the story that goes with it. Since I wrote the story long handed I felt it too personal to take a picture of my handwriting.

Arriving proudly at the ball, Crystal, dressed in a formfitting suit, grabbed the mic. “I refuse to be a vessel for another man!” She loosened the knot at her neck, as she continued, “No wonder guys are so cross! Ties are the worst thing since high heels!” At which point she kicked those glass slippers off the stage.

The belt was next, then Crystal squirmed out of the skin-tight pants. Her jacket was long enough to cover the goods or the raven-black panties covering said goods.

The crowd was cheering her on. This wasn’t on the itinerary but none would object. Still, the spirit wasn’t in her to continue. She bowed to wild applause and then descended into the audience.

“Excuse me, Crystal,” a voice whispered behind her, “I’m you’re biggest fan.”

~~~~

In my #Inktober sketch above I made a close of Crystal’s eye a sneak peak, I think, is that she was born with a crystal in her eye and since then has developed several each gives her powers. The list of prompts is on the Inktober 2021 website. I’m hoping the writing part will spark something for NaNoWriMo some people call October Preptober. That last link was a Google search and there are so many there to help a person get ready I think I’ll keep it open and wade through them all later.

How many want to join me in either Inktober or NaNoPrep?

Stream of Consciousness Saturday, Pin

Per Linda:

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “pin.” Use it as a noun, use it as a verb, use it any way you’d like. Have fun!

Pinterest is a history lesson of my passion over the last few years. Ah, but then so is this blog.

Writing starts and continues as the place I put a lot of energy. But I used to sew. I found the race of pulling the pins before the needle hit them too stressful. Not to mention the ripping what I sewed. Ugh! And sitting in the position of leaning over the machine hurt my back. Sewing fell as a passion.

Crochet became my next passion. I could make hats for charities and spend time creating. But my hands didn’t like the constant positioning.

Then I learned to loom knit. Even ripping, frogging, or tinking projects was fun. More yarn, more chances to improve.

I tried to dry felt but found the constant hand movement hurt so another craft bit the dust.

Now I’m having fun playing my recorders. It hurts my hands sometimes but it seems, if I’m inconsistent (skipping a day here and there) that my hands get more proficient and hurt less. It doesn’t carry with it the fulfillment the loom knitting does. I’m not helping anyone else. But maybe that’ll be something to come?

Drawing has the same feeling. I can get lost, as lost as when writing, in a project. True, I don’t feel the giving feeling there like I do with the knitting but I don’t feel wasteful of my time and energy. I wonder what that is? Should I see how I can expand somehow into something more charitable?

Music is coming alive in me again. What can I do with it? Is it okay to just enjoy the journey? Does it, too need me to pin it to the social magazine (how I think of Pinterest)? I really want to pinpoint my passions to understand how best to approach the ‘work’s of the fun.

And now with health improving, I wonder where that will lead. Hiking, camping? Let’s just put a pin in that.

Stream of Consciousness Saturday

Weezles and Heffalumps

No. I guess I was wrong. These guys are who I meant.

One wee mistake trying to stream my consciousness.

This is a weekly prompt that happens on the first day of the weekend. Just let the sweetness flow between the ears.

What you come up with may be bittersweet. Or look like you’ve been smoking that weed the kids, (babyboomers) have been talking about.

Sweeping my brain just makes me weep. Maybe if I’m lucky I can tweeze out a teeny-weeny cartoon or two. Alice knew.

Or an awful insect that swarmed my Zoom cereal.

Ugly weevils.

Wait. Have I just streamed full circle? No that was weezle, oops, woozle, not weevil. But now I have

WEE!!!

• 

Per Linda:

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “wee.” Use the word “wee” or find a word that contains it and use it in your post. Have fun!

Stream of Consciousness Saturday, Up/Down

Up in the sky, way over there,

Those thoughts that fly

When I need them most

Are having a hey day!

Down in that valley, yes, right here,

We try to carry on,

Spiriting up

Getting things done

Having down to Earth fun.

A lack of sleep night had me scurrying for words when talking to family. But I had my ups and downs in the day getting lots of recorder things done, piano practice, even scales with fingers running up and down the keyboard.

A couple boxes got unboxed. The first signs of the heat showed up. Though in comparison with those west of here our temps were down, I don’t think we got to the predicted 95. Not looking forward to the triples due tomorrow through Wednesday. Too hot to be productive when there is no AC. Well, we have fans and a little window AC. But not the whole house kind.

Keep cool everyone!

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “up/down.” Use one, use them both, but try to put one in your first sentence. Bonus points if you use the other in your last sentence. Have fun!

Thanks for the fun prompt, Linda G. Hill!