The Writing Life

I’ve been listening to "Fibber McGee and Molly" radio programs on CDs. One of my characters in the Betsy Devonshire mysteries is fond of old-time radio and sometimes quotes from these old shows, so I get to listen to them as research. Life is sweet when you can combine your work with something you’d like to do anyway. Catch phrases from "Fibber McGee and Molly" include, "Heavenly days!" and, "I’ve got to clean out that closet one of these days." I’ve been listening while I work on a piece of crewel I started a long time ago and abandoned. It’s a pretty piece, of sheep standing in a pasture under an autumn-leafed tree with various colors of fields in the background. If I ever get it finished I’ll post it on my web site.

Today I’m going to try out a recipe that’s new to me as a treat for my writers group – it’s my turn to host the meeting. I had them at the bed and breakfast up in Longville, where I was doing some research for the next novel. They’re called Swiss Butterhorns and they’re shaped something like miniature crescent rolls, except they’re crisp, and filled with chopped pecans, sugar and cinnamon. My, they are delicious! If this were a cookery blog instead of Killer Hobbies, and if they came out as delicious as the ones we had up north, I’d type out the recipe.

I always thought an aid to getting organized was to have lots of places to put things, but now in our new apartment, I’m finding a little room with a tiny desk works even better. I have to keep putting things away to make room for the mess I need around me when I’m writing. You know, a dictionary, a telephone, my notes on interviews, maps and photographs, a cat toy or two, a stitching catalog, a few samples of floss and/or fabric, a box of Kleenex, a pen and pencil holder (mine’s actually one of those rubberoid things used to keep pop cans cold and is shaped like the head of a large-mouth bass), and the miniature file cabinet that holds names and phone numbers of people I need to get in touch with when I have a question. Oh, and my book of baby names, useful for naming characters. So you see, there’s not much room for extraneous items on my little desk. Though I manage to let things get stacked up somehow.

I played a round of par-three nine-hole golf yesterday morning and hit a couple of shots off the tee that were almost respectable, plus a pitch onto the green from the rough that landed inches from the hole. It’s enough to keep me thinking I may be able to play this game well enough to report a score without shame or apology some day.

Work on Buttons and Bones marches slowly – I keep finding things out that mean I have to go back and do re-write. Oh, well, such is the life of an author, too – it’s not all beer and skittles.

BASKETWEAVE KNITTING

Excuse me for barging in early, but I want to post two pictures and I'm not sure I can do it without help -- and my web mistress is NOT an early riser.

Another thing I ran into at the Quilt Show in Duluth two weekends ago was a yarn booth. I don’t quilt, so you’d think I’d be safe from buying things at a quilt show, wouldn’t you? But noooooo. The woman at the booth was knitting a scarf in this fascinating pattern, and showed me how it was done. It didn’t seem terribly difficult, and it was a very interesting pattern. So I bought a skein of yarn, as that was the only way to acquire the instructions for knitting it. She calls the pattern Basketweave and it took me several tries with scrap yarn to acquire the skill. I’m still not terrific at it -- you can see a couple of errors in the pattern -- but I’ve started the scarf on the yarn I bought which is a fabulous blend of silk, wool and mohair, and a gorgeous color. One thing I didn’t realize until I was well into it is that the backside is a completely different pattern. The pictures here show the front and the back – amazingly different.

We have a bed that is very high off the floor – I literally have to take a flying leap to get up into bed at night. There are drawers in the bottom of it, so you can’t get underneath. I knew I’d had at least one pair of reading glasses fall between the head of the mattress and the headboard onto the floor, so when a paperback I’d been reading went missing, I took a flashlight and peered into the narrow space and sure enough, there it was, out of reach. I pushed the mattress out of the way and squeezed my forearm down between the box spring and headboard and still couldn’t reach the floor. I resorted to a pair of kitchen tongs and came up with the book and three (!) pairs of reading glasses. I didn’t realize that’s where they’d all gotten to. On the other hand, it makes me feel competent to have figured out how to get them back without dismantling the bed.

We’re going up to Cass County this coming Sunday, will be there till Wednesday evening. Look for a report next Wednesday on loons, a German POW camp, the source of the Mississippi River, and whatever else I can learn in aid of Buttons and Bones, the book I’m currently writing.

I took a one-hour lesson in driving, as that is my weakest part of my golf game. I think I came away more confused than helped, but we’ll see next time I play. Meanwhile, I’m going to go hit a bucket or two of balls to see if any of it has matured in my head since the lesson. Whoever thought hitting a ball with a stick could be so complicated?

Speaking of slow learning, I think I’m slowly starting to get the hang of writing a synopsis for film as opposed to a book. Think visually, that’s the ticket. But oh, how much easier is that said than done!

Speaking of visually, I think my eyes have at last started to improve.

A friend and I are planning a long train trip around this time next year and she came over this past weekend and we got out the schedules and maps and timetables and started plotting the stops we hope to make along the way: Fargo, Wolf Point, Cut Bank, East Glacier Park, Spokane, Seattle, Portland, Sacramento, Reno, and Salt Lake City. We figure we’ll be on the rails something over two weeks. If any of you are from one of these places, I hope you’ll come and see us wherever we're appearing, a library, a bookstore, or a needlework shop!