sorcyress | Network

I've been on a knit/crochet binge for the past couple of months. I guess it started when Project Hail Mary came out in March, and I ultimately made and gave away something like 6 crochet Earth balls from 3 different patterns, none of which I was perfectly happy with.

I also spent weeks making a vaguely baseball-themed blanket for my baseball buddy, and then made a baby blanket with the leftover yarn, not because I knew anyone who was expecting, but just to use up the yarn and make more space to store different yarn.

Then I missed having a blanket to work on, and started a new one. Then I decided I wanted more colors for it, and bought more yarn that I probably won't use up. And so the cycle continues.

Meanwhile, it's not enough for me to be writing 3 different flavors of D&D fic, I also have done amigurumi of two of our group's characters plus a Night Mare, which I'm actually making twice because our DM is adopting the first one I did. Also I made a dice bag for R's character now that he's joined the group, and some colorful balls to represent uses of Bardic Inspiration for another character who just multiclassed into Bard, and a bag to hold those as well.

One of my Mother's Day presents to myself was a set of Tunisian cabled crochet hooks, so I've been practicing that technique as well. I started with a potholder and now I'm working on a small rug for my bathroom.

I've also started working on knitting a whole entire cloak to wear the next time I go to a Renn Faire or con or whatever. And I bought the new D&D crochet pattern book a while back, and I just got the yarn I need to make the Bag of Holding from that. And I also have a couple of scarves in progress that I keep around to work on because they travel out of the house easily.

So basically if I disappear just look for me behind the piles of yarn and unread books.

Current Mood: crazy

ase

Let's start in March and go from there.

The Faith of Beasts (James S. A. Corey) (2026): In audiobook, narrated by Jefferson Mays,

Insta-reaction: YAY THE BOYS ARE BACK AT IT.

Premise: Dafyd & (~~most~~ some of the) company have survived and completed the challenges demanded by their alien abductors, the Carryx, during The Mercy of Gods. Dafyd has figured out enough about the Carryx he thinks he can figure out more, and maybe plot their downfall, without getting himself and all surviving humans slaughtered for insubordination. Dafyd & (surviving) company's reward? More work!

( Spoiler for The Mercy of Gods and The Faith of Beasts. )

For what are likely obvious reasons, I reread Project Hail Mary (2021). For anyone who has not been paying attention, the movie adaptation is very fun, and Sandra Hüller does a great Eva Stratt.

In late May: Hugo novels!

Life is too short to read Shroud (Adrian Tchaikovsky) (2026) without vetting.

The Incandescent (Emily Tesh) (2026): previously read, in audiobook.

A Drop of Corruption (Robert Jackson Benett) (2026) in audiobook, narrated by Andrew Fallaize.

The Kingdom of Yarrow is scheduled to be absorbed into the Empire, semi Hong Kong style, but one of the diplomats negotiating terms has been murdered in a bedroom with all doors and windows locked from the inside. Why does this need special handling? Because the only reason the Empire cares about Yarrow is the Shroud, directly offshore the Kingdom: the place leviathan carcasses are towed for research and processing into the materials the Empire relies on for its biological technology. And so Ana and Din are off to a locked room mystery!

My split-second reaction after finishing the audiobook: if your author's note / afterword is "I didn't lean hard enough into skewering high fantasy tropes", perhaps you should have done another pass to spackle in additional skewering of high fantasy tropes.

With that said, I think Bennett is doing something fun with the series. I am inappropriately fond of Ana calling the children to listen (the children are 20something officers of the Empire who respect her intelligence and doubt her sanity). Fallaize's querulous intonation of Ana dispensing brilliant deductions, invective, and questionably appropriate personal advice is hilarious to me. The general thread of the novels - the empire is made up of its people and its labors - is worth further exploration. Fun novel, will read sequel(s).

Death of the Author (Nnedi Okorafor) (2026) in audiobook, primarily narrated by Liz Femi, with sections by Anthony Oseyemi, Jason Culp, and Chris Djuma. Protagonist Zelunjo Onyenezi-Onyedele is at her sister's wedding when she is fired. Disabled, queer, Black, and unemployed, Zelu resolves to write what she wants to. The novel becomes a breakaway hit and the pathway to stardom for Zelu.

The first chapters feel very heavy on the MFA "this is My Literary Novel" tradition, especially when chapters or excerpts of Zelu's novel, Rusted Robots, are interspersed with Zelu's story, and with interviews from friends and family, but the story accrues SF elements during the narrative. Joining Rusted Robots are "wait, isn't this here" self-driving cars, high end engineering, biotech, and civilian space travel.

( Novel-destroying spoilers though the very last chapter. )

The Everlasting (Alix Harrow) (2026): in audiobook, narrated by Moira Quirk and Sid Sagar. Story of Owen Mallory, historian, scholar, coward, ex-solider, and Una Everlasting, the Queen's Champion, the Red Knight, the Virgin Saint, the Drawn Blade of Dominion. Born a thousand years apart, their lives become entwined thanks to a book with Una's sigil on the cover, and the woman who would see that book written to her command, and translated to her specific orders.

( Different novel-destroying spoilers )

edited to add: It's worth noting that The Everlasting has substantial blocks of second person past tense, and it worked for me. Points to the author and the audiobook readers.

I'll hold off Hugo ranking thoughts until I've knocked out The Raven Scholar. It's 24 hours in audiobook. Oof.

creepy_shetan in

comment_fic

Hello and welcome, y'all! 🎶 This is

comment_fic, and I'm your host this week,

creepy_shetan. Let's get started, shall we? :3

Today's theme is adulthood. Maybe you're already an expert on being an adult... Or maybe you're really good at pretending. Everyone seems like they know what they're doing, right? Think of characters' impressions of adults, expectations of their lives as adults, and what marks adulthood (or its many checkpoints) in their eyes.

Feel free to add specifics to your prompts, like whether you'd prefer a gen fill over something shippy, or if you have a squick or trigger you hope to avoid. Original fiction, fanfiction, and fanfic crossovers are always welcome. ~_^

Just a few rules:
No more than five prompts in a row.
No more than three prompts in the same fandom.
Use the character's full names and the fandom's full name
No spoilers in prompts for a month after airing, or use the spoiler cut option found here. Unfortunately, DW doesn’t have a cut tag, so use your best judgment when it comes to spoilers.
If your fill contains spoilers, warn and leave plenty of space, or use the above-mentioned spoiler cut.

Prompts should be formatted as follows: [Use the character's full names and fandom's full name]
Fandom, Character +/ Character, Prompt

Some examples to get things started...
+ DC and/or Marvel (any 'verse), any + any, reuniting after a long time apart and seeing how they (each?) have grown up
+ Stranger Things, any (+/ any), their first real paycheck working full time
+ author's choice, any +/ any, are they young at heart or immature for their age?

We are on AO3! If you fill a prompt and post it to AO3, please add it to the Bite Sized Bits of Fic from 2026 collection. See further notes on this option here.

Not feeling any of today’s prompts? You can use LJ’s advanced search options to limit keyword results to only comments in this community. Fret not, DW members; we are working on a way to search through old entries for prompts for you! As of right now, the best way to search for a lonely prompt on DW is to search the community’s archive, which can be found [[HERE]].

While the use of LJ's advanced search and DW’s archive are options, bookmarking the links of prompts you like might work better for searching in the future.

As a friendly reminder about our schedule, Lonely Prompts and sharing completed fills are encouraged on Sundays, while new themes and prompts are posted on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Saturdays are a Free for All day. We'll share our posts on DW and LJ for everyone's convenience. Keep an eye out for notifications!

If you have a Dreamwidth account and would feel more comfortable participating there, please feel free to do so… and spread the word! comment_fic

tag=adulthood

ranunculus

My recent reading has either been complete fluff, or about soil management. Books with "No Till Farming", "Soil Biology" and "Bio Char" in the titles. Reading about the advances in our understanding of soil biology has been fascinating and useful. All this reading, plus watching what is going on in my own garden, is continuing to alter the way I garden. That plus the very warm spring we have had here means that I have tomatoes that have flung themselves up their trellises. Many are well over 4 feet tall with big thick stems, and have their first crop of tomatoes growing rapidly. Some have struggled to set fruit, possibly because we are still getting swings of temperature that are 40 or more degrees F. between day and night. Today it was 95F during the day, but the forecast low is 55.
Chores for tomorrow are to finish unloading the fourth pickup load of wood compost, and start digging a ditch for a new faucet. While I'm putting in a faucet I want to install a underground box for valves. It is long past time to set up timers on my beds. I've got all the stuff to do it!
My solar stuff was supposed to be here Friday, didn't come, was supposed to be here today, but no word. The tracking on it just says "In Transit", which isn't very helpful.

redsaturn in

icons

15 Red Velvet "Feel my Rhythm" Icons

here @

redsaturn

ysabetwordsmith in

dw_community_promo

birdfeeding is a community started on January 1, 2023. It's all about birdfeeding, birdwatching, and other topics relating to birds. It also touches on nature in general, and observations that may effect bird activity such as local weather. Both text and image posts are welcome. Now is a great time to join as hungry birds are easy to attract with a feeder.

Community resources include posts about birding events, nurseries that sell seeds or plants attractive to birds, bird identification apps, the benefits of birdwatching, and other useful materials. Check out the anchor posts from Three Weeks for Dreamwidth.

Recent posts:

Video

Gardening

International Respect for Chickens Day

International Migratory Bird Day

Visitors

Current Mood: busy

myrtlebroadbelt in

fandomcalendar

( You're about to view content that a community administrator has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

torachan

1. I got my hair cut this morning. I was worried that maybe my stylist was leaving the salon or something because I had tried to reschedule and their website was not showing any availability for her at all (like even checking several months down the line), but I think it's just that their system will only allow you to reschedule to the same day in a different week, and she changed the days she works, so since my appointment was on a Monday and she's no longer doing Mondays, it wouldn't show anything. I feel like their system used to allow you to choose a different day of the week and that's an annoying change, but there's always the option to call and reschedule that way, I guess. I'm just glad she's not leaving the salon!

2. We cleared a bit more space in the shed so it's easier to get the new bikes in and out. They're definitely a bit chonkier than our old ones (especially with them both having baskets). I had a couple fans in there that I'd been planning on putting out on the curb once it was warmer weather, so I took those out (now that we have ceiling fans in the living room and bedrooms, we don't need the stand-alone fans as much, and we've still got a couple in the house if we really need them) and some other stuff got reorganized a bit. It will be even better once I get some of the Christmas decorations transferred from the giant plastic tub they're in now to some smaller tubs that will fit on the shelves better.

3. Look at this sweet face!

china_shop

Poll #34680 Legacy media

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 13

View Respondents

I have

View Answers

a pile/jumble or one or more boxes of audio cassettes
5 (38.5%)

a carefully curated selection of audio cassettes I don't want to part with yet (even if some of them have stretched)
5 (38.5%)

access to a tape deck
5 (38.5%)

a pile/jumble or one or more boxes of VHS tapes
4 (30.8%)

a carefully curated selection of VHS tapes I don't want to part with yet
6 (46.2%)

access to a VCR
5 (38.5%)

a lot of DVDs
11 (84.6%)

access to a DVD or Blu-ray player
11 (84.6%)

Super8, MiniDV, etc. tapes
1 (7.7%)

access to a camera or other way of playing them
0 (0.0%)

vinyl
3 (23.1%)

access to a record player
2 (15.4%)

a ridiculous number of CD-ROMs
9 (69.2%)

other
1 (7.7%)

a storage system I'm satisfied with
3 (23.1%)

at this point, it's just a lot of old stuff, help!
7 (53.8%)

ticky-box
8 (61.5%)

billroper

I finally managed to get all of the data entry done for our APBA league and fired off the test run for the first half of the season. This is later than I had hoped for, but there has been a *lot* of paperwork.

Having gotten my Medicare number, I can make my scheduled visit to the doctor tomorrow. Gretchen is still waiting for her prescription card so that she can refill her Ozempic.

The parts to fix my big recliner chair have arrived and I've scheduled a tech visit for a week from Thursday to get the beast back in working order.

We need to schedule a time for Julie to take her written test for her learner's permit for driver's ed. Gretchen will see how she can manage this tomorrow. This is around training for the kids' summer jobs, Julie's driver's ed classes, and Gretchen visit to get her replacement crown this week.

Whee!

silveradept

Let us begin with a pair of bad decisions. The first is that someone enterprising stored a case of cans' worth of beer in one of the microfilm storage areas in an archives. The second bad decision is that they chose Natural Light as the beer to store. Natty Light and PBR are the things that someone drinks at university because they're cheap and terrible, and if you're at Duke, presumably, you have both the means and the willingness to drink better beer than that. I still wouldn't store beer in the microfilm area, because, well, warm beer is nobody's friend, either.

Snaaaaake, snaaaaake, ooooooh, it's a snaaaaake! (has been inducted into the British Film Institue's Archives.)

Pictures from a Black Fae Fest in Georgia, which I love primarily because of all the fae there having a good time. (Admittedly, the idea of Black fae was not much of an issue for me - a collegiate production of A Midsummer Night's Dream with the Queen of the fairies (Drag Queen of the Fairies, at the bare minimum) and the King of the Fairies throwing up the hood of his hoodie to turn invisible.)

An accurate obituary for Ted Turner, who, as billionaires went, was eccentric, but also had some good ideas, and certainly turned aside from the path of being a completely evil man. Even though he cursed us with CNN.

( The grift, the corruption, the iocaine dilemma pushed on trans people, and, of course, the techbros )

Last out, someone has compiled together operating systems across the decades and tweaked them so they run properly in emulation, as a museum and a way of allowing people to access older OSes and play in them. The full edition is about 174 GB uncompressed, the lite one a mere 21 GB uncompressed and will need to download anything not initially included. This is a good reason to fire up your BitTorrent client for both downloading and seeding, because holy shorts, that's a lot of OSes to look through.

A plea not to remove the thing that makes science work by trying to produce automation and non-human scientific pipelines to get faster results. Just so - new knowledge does not always come from rearranging old knowledge, but from the breakthroughs and evolutionary paths and inefficiencies that come from exploration.

Server Charms, a self-contained small network with a few HTML pages that runs on an ESP32 powered by recycled vape batteries. Which is about small and local networks, and hiding a server in plain sight, or in an art project. Reminds me of PirateBox and its insistence on creating a local network for file-sharing and chatting and other such things, albeit on slightly more power-hungry hardware for slightly more power-hungry applications. The idea of small things, very local, very low-powered, and not connected to the greater Internet, still appeals, although there's always the difficulty that connecting to unknown WiFi networks is not encouraged. If there were some way to help satiate the curiosity, and also potentially be a viable local network, that would be something interesting. I feel like this is the sort of thing that a student might use to generate a network away from prying eyes. Or anyone else who would like a small and local enclave they can use away from surveillance and with community at its heart. (Which would work very well with things like PirateBox.)

(Materials via

adrian_turtle,

azurelunatic,

boxofdelights,

cmcmck,

conuly,

cosmolinguist,

elf,

finch,

firecat,

jadelennox,

jenett,

jjhunter,

kaberett,

lilysea,

oursin,

rydra_wong,

snowynight,

sonia,

the_future_modernes,

thewayne,

umadoshi,

vass, the

meta_warehouse community,

little_details, and anyone else I've neglected to mention or who I suspect would rather not be on the list. If you want to know where I get the neat stuff, my reading list has most of it.)

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: gorillaz - Clint Eastwood

l33tminion

S&S Deli closed last week, after 107 years in business at the heart of Inman Square. It's really going to live a hole. Though people were already a bit mad at them for putting deed restrictions on the property that used to hold Ryles Jazz Club (their other Inman Square venue) when that closed, which resulted in the ground-floor retail there not being able to host another restaurant and thus becoming a comically oversized ATM lobby (and one with limited hours at that, despite being unstaffed). It's a real gap in the neighborhood, especially with (much newer, but also fairly nearby deli) Mamaleh's no longer being a full-service, sit-down restaurant ever since the pandemic.

Clover also went out of business, closing all locations. It's tragic, I'm going to miss that so much.

This weekend, we went to Jersey City to play some Ingress, an odd trip because we never went across the river to New York (Saturday was busy with the game, and Erica's Sunday morning activity choice was Liberty Science Center). It was fun getting back to an Ingress event after a long break in that (those stopped for a while during the pandemic, then I kept having schedule conflicts with nearby ones for one reason or another). Tagging along with the team took more effort from Erica than last time, when she was still riding in a stroller, but she kept up without too much complaint, despite some very heavy winds. Also, our team won!

Since we were out of town, we missed the other neighborhood event of the weekend, a meteor exploding over Cape Code Bay. Our neighbors definitely noticed, though. Apparently, the boom was heard for quite some distance, including as far north as Nova Scotia.

Current Mood: restless

musesfool

Bedtime is repealed!

I must say, I really am enjoying the Mayor Mamdani experience. And go Knicks!

*

Current Mood: amused
Current Music: Mets vs Mariners on tv

got_quiet in

booknook

Title: A Handful of Dust
Author: Evelyn Waugh
Genre: Satire
Content Warnings: Racism, including slurs and native savage stereotypes.

A Handful of Dust is a social satire originally published in the 1930s by Evelyn Waugh. The plot revolves an affair that Brenda Last has with John Beaver, as Brenda's husband Tony is completely oblivious and all of their society friends look on.

With one massive caveat I enjoyed it a lot. It's a caustic satire and on a superficial level fits neatly into the genre of Everyone Fucking Sucks. The absurdity of the plot and the playful way that Waugh lets the characters represent themselves as reasonable while the reader thinks, nah, you also suck, elevates it from that cliche.

( Spoilerish Review )

Big Ending Spoiler here

And then there's the ending. WTF was that ending? Again, spoilers for a 90+ year old book, but in the end Tony finds himself at the edge of death and disaster multiple times while being led deeper into the wilderness by someone who has no right to be leading anything. I was on the edge of my seat wondering how they’d fare, if the disease would kill him, or the constantly provoked locals, or some thing else entirely, and every time it seemed like things were getting better they’d just get worse, until in the end he stumbles, delirious with fever, into a literal horror scenario and becomes the permanent captive of a fucked up European who tricks a rescue party into thinking Tony is dead so that he will stay forever and read him Dickens. The implication in the end is that he ends up dying there, eventually, but perhaps of old age 30 years into the future, who knows.

I read this book while on a plane, and the last few scenes had me worked up enough that I was dying to get up and pace and couldn’t, which compounded the emotional reaction. I desperately wanted to turn to the person sitting next to me and ask, "Have you read this book, and if so, can we please commiserate about the ending?" But I did not do this and instead stewed in place. I felt like I was simply out of the habit of reading books that do not get tied up in the way that feels obligatory for genre fiction.

I will admit that I have a strong stomach for the bigotry that permeated literature from this time period. It also helps (???) that for the most part, you don't get jump scared with the blunt stuff until the very end of the story. I haven't read any other Waugh to know if this is one of his best as the introduction says, but I would say that it was better than 90% of what I end up reading nowadays.

(This is also crossposted on my blog)

koshka_the_cat

I was planning on using the pattern from my evening bodice with harem pants and backless suffragette dress for the 1927 water dress. Since those are from 2012 and 2017, it wouldn't fit anymore, but a good starting place. I took out the bag marked teens under bodice, and the Poiret lampshade dress pattern was in it.

But that made me think, I don't need a complicated base at all. A front and back piece should be plenty. Just shape it with darts.

Then I found the pattern pieces. They apparently fell out when I was opening the bag with the pattern in it.

The easy idea stuck though. I just did a quick two pieces of fabric pinned at the sides with slight neckline shaping and darts mockup, and it'll work.

This dress is all about the trimming. It's such a basic shape when you look at it!

ysabetwordsmith in

fandomcalendar

( You're about to view content that a community administrator has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith in

fandomcalendar

( You're about to view content that a community administrator has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Current Mood: busy

anaisninja

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

renay in

ladybusiness

It's hard to write about an advanced reader copy of one of the most coveted science fiction releases of the quarter. I tried, multiple times, to collect some thoughts about Platform Decay, the latest release in The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells. I failed, every time, because my love for this series is immense, but also hard to quantify. Finding the words to describe sincere emotions? Ugh. Therefore, Platform Decay is already out, and you can read it now via your library or favorite indie bookstore!

Platform Decay is the eighth entry in The Murderbot Diaries, following our hero as it stages a high stakes rescue on Corporate Ringworld. It's working apart from its usual allies, it must infiltrate and escape the station with several squishy humans, and oh right, a former enemy asks for its help, complicating the extraction. Nothing can go wrong!

(Things immediately go wrong.)

To make matters worse, it's also dealing with an emotional health module. What's more stressful than a hostage situation in corporate territory? Mobile therapy. Murderbot must protect its humans (no pressure), avoid corporate forces that would love to slurp its kidnapped humans into corporate slavery (assholes), and navigate across a hostile station where one mistake could cost it everything (business as usual!). ( Read more... )

the_mary_sue_feed

Posted by Tiffanie Drayton

https://www.themarysue.com/late-to-margaritaville-cruise/

https://www.themarysue.com/?p=927539

two women sprinting (l) woman shares cruise experience (c) cruise about to leave dock (r)

Missing a cruise ship is a travel nightmare for many people. That’s why TikTok users can’t stop watching a viral video of two friends making a frantic run to board their Margaritaville ship after arriving more than an hour late.

The clip sparked strong reactions online. Some viewers roasted the pair for cutting it so close. Others admitted they would have done the exact same thing.

https://www.themarysue.com/late-to-margaritaville-cruise/

https://www.themarysue.com/?p=927539

Profile

Katarina Whimsy

May 2026

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
					1	2
3	4	5	6	7	8	9
10	11	12	13	14	15	16
17	18	19	20	21	22	23
24	25	26	27	28	29	30
31

Page Summary

Style Credit

Style: Atomic Orange for Funky Circles by ninetydegrees
Resources: Stuck in Tokyo

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

Page generated Jun. 2nd, 2026 06:01 am

People I enjoy!

Network

all yarn all the time

Hugo Novels Nominees (Three or Four of Six) and Non-Hugo Reading

Tuesday ✎ Adulthood [DW]

Reading, Garden

Red Velvet "Feel my Rhythm" Icons

Birdfeeding

Highly Irregular Fargo Week 2026

Daily Happiness

Legacy media

Let's Play Ball

Time continues to move at one second per second... Late May 02026

Crashing Down

closer to the great bambino numbers

Book Review: A Handful of Dust

A start...

June Bingo Fest

Creative Jam

(no subject)

Let's Get Literate! Platform Decay by Martha Wells

Two ‘type B’ friends book Margaritaville cruise. Then they arrive at Tampa port—and start sprinting:

Profile

May 2026

Most Popular Tags

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags