Icon Tutorials for Everyone

Well. This post is inspired by the relevant Snowflake Challenge, but does not conform to it.

You see, the 6th Snowflake Challenge this year asks for my Top Ten somethings. And that's really hard to do. Top ten books? Impossible. If I kept lists and records of everything I've read and ranked each book, maybe, but lists and records? Me? Ditto songs. Can't do top ten musicals either. I would need a smaller pool from which to draw!

This is where inspiration struck. My socks! I have many fun pairs of socks, most of which were knitted for me by the wonderful turlough. There are of course others: the ordinary socks, like the long plum-coloured ones that go with my dark red dress, and the plain black ones for concerts. And there are the slightly more fun socks with 'art' on them, like the yellow 'Klimt' ones or the grey ones with 'The Scream' depicted around the ankle.

But the socks of which I speak are the superior socks from my selection. And even then, I cannot readily pick a Top Ten.

So I decided not to do a Top Ten after all. Instead, I shall show you my favourite baker's dozen pairs of socks, and invite you to select your Top Three. Here are the socks.







To expand, click. Meanwhile,

Top pic, top row, left to right:

1 green, yellow, purple, teal stripes in a zig zag. Cheerful, interestingly textured, and perfectly comfortable

2 Gryffindor socks! very comfortable

3 red with leaf pattern, lovely lace design, a couple of stitches too long in the foot for perfect fit

4 the zig zag socks are more of a magenta pic than shows up in the photo, fabulously pink!

5 woodland stripes in a funky design, comfortable and fun

Bottom row, left to right

6 lovely orange socks with great cable section in the middle, pity it gets hidden in shoes. I am wearing them right now.

7 Cheerful red, blue, purple and green stripes, an older favourite

8 Fraternal socks, bought, not gifted by turlough, comfy though a teensy bit long, and I like the one with the black toe more than the one with the red toe!

9 Llama socks, bought at Royal Norfolk Show. Knee length, useful under dresses

10 Sheep socks, ditto, but not quite as adorable as llamas!

Double picture:

11 pink and purple striped socks, lovely design, good fit, alas that I have worn through the toe and darned badly.

12 Sloth socks! The sloths are rather bigger than I had bargained for, but they actually don't get in the way as they clutch the fronts of my ankles, and they occasioned great amusement at my recent rehearsal.

Individual picture:

13 purple socks with cable design on the outside of each foot. Love these, very comfortable


So. Which ones would you pick as your Top Three?

I went to another interesting theatre experience this evening. This time there were four pieces, all small cast or single person, and all partial shows.

The first was about a boy/man who is angry at the prospect of going bald like his father.

The second was about pollution and about the woman who was trying to help being perceived as a witch. Probably the least advanced, and rather loose, but with potential

The third showed a boy/man who learned how to become invisible. The actor created his childhood self, who was given a magic set but wasn't very good at magic, his adult self who could get the magic right, and his teenage self, with a bully. Lots of audience interaction.

The fourth was a woman character doing improv for the first time. Lots of physical comedy and a long stretch with no dialogue at all—very brave!

There was an online survey asking us to fill in three words to describe each piece, two words to describe how I felt after watching it, and giving an opportunity to ask a question.

Afterwards, we were offered a drink and an opportunity to discuss anything of interest with cast members. I did compliment the improv woman, but did not convey my thoughts (although I had them) to anyone else from the cast! However, it was again very interesting.

*

Snowflake, er...#7 LIST THREE (or more) THINGS YOU LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF. They don’t have to be your favorite things, just things that you think are good. Feel free to expand as much or as little as you want.

I like my ability to write. I learned to read when I was three and always had my head in a book if I possibly could, so I absorbed the rules of English without ever thinking about them. I very rarely get tripped by the technicalities of constructing coherent prose, so I can concentrate on writing the story. Or the newsletter, or the email, whatever.

I said to my husband just yesterday that my life would be a lot less organised without him in it. And his would be a lot less varied without me in it. I like my ability to feed us a reasonably interesting, healthy and varied diet by buying ingredients and being able to open the fridge, see what's there, and figure out what to cook. That's not the only kind of variety I bring to his life, but I'm happy that my Beast is not doing what he used to do (ie eating the same things all the time because food is just fuel). I like my butterfly-mindedness, that prods me into doing something different. I can provide variety in entertainment, too, not just food, but food is every day and important.

I like my artistic ability. I'm not a great artist, or even particularly skilled—I'd love to be better at drawing or painting what is in my head, but I find it very hard. However, I can produce interesting, tasteful things, whether those be cards, shawls, pictures or something else, that benefit from having 'a good eye' involved in the production. As I say, I'm not a great artist, but I can usually produce something a bit more enjoyable to look at than someone without 'a good eye' would produce. I like that.

And, while I'm at it, Challenge #8: Talk about your creative process.

My creative process is mostly 'let's see what happens'.

I've never been a planner. Stories do not get planned in advance. They just grow. Some discipline is imposed eventually, but not until I know what the story *is*. It starts, usually, from an idea. If I get a scene, or a moment, or a phrase, or a plot, or some kind of notion in my head that wants to be a story, that's a good enough germ for the story to start from. It might be "Lance and Adam are two different kinds of gay", for example (see Bouquet). Or, a scene in which Chris has injured both his hands and is wearing some kind of foam protective mittens and Lance goes to him and how exactly do they figure out how to have sex? (That one was particularly interesting because it spawned an entire story of which I am very proud, but did not actually happen in the story (The White Room). That's my 'this is how to write a story' brain taking over from my 'this is how to write fanfic' brain.)

Mostly I just start writing. I've been working on a romance lately, and I just started writing, and my viewpoint character emerged as I wrote and I liked her very much.

Prompts, therefore, are good. I wrote so many stories to prompts on LiveJournal's fic_requests community, because there they were, and they sparked a ficlet, and that was all I needed.


It's mostly the same with more artistic/crafty creations. I used to make quite a lot of LJ icons, and it was just a matter of doing a crop that I liked and then experimenting in Photoshop to see what happened. Sometimes I'd have an idea, but mostly I'd see what tools and resources came to mind, and proceed from there.

With knitting, it's a bit different, because I'm frequently working from a pattern. Frequently not, though—I make quite a lot of impromptu shawlettes and scarves which just involve me picking a bunch of colours that work together, and getting on with it.

Card-making, too, depends more on what mood I'm in and which of my seventeen thousand crafty bits and pieces is top of mind/closest to hand at the time. There might be layers of different papers, or shiny bits, or a glasspainted 'window' or a glasspainted topper for a stack of papers, or lace, or whatever. I don't generally set out with a plan. Which is sometimes a bit of a shame, as I would do better to get the ingredients together first and make something for a specific card and a matching envelope, but hey. I have fun exploring/experimenting.