Recent things

1. I finished a couple of bookbinding projects! "The Other Mountain" by nirejseki, which was a commission (but a fic I loved regardless), and then I used some of the leftover materials from that and from an older project to make a tiny binding of my own fic "The Disappearance of Madam Wen." (links go to my tumblr for pics of the bindings, and the tumblr posts link to the fics)


2. I've been reading The Smiling, Proud Wanderer and I'm about halfway through! It's the first Jin Yong novel I've read and part of why I picked this over Condor Heroes was everything I'd heard about the baffling name translation choices there. The Smiling, Proud Wanderer is a fan translation so I thought that might be safer but, guess what... It's not super prevalent, and at first it seemed to be based on whether it was important to know the meaning of a name--like, I get that it's important to know that some guy's out there calling himself Invincible! Could've gone in a footnote, but I get it. I do not get why they've translated the name Blue Phoenix.

The other reason I picked up this novel was some comments a while back in cnovels about how WWX had reminded some people of Linghu Chong, and I can see where that's coming from! Not identical characters, but there is a resemblance to be sure (and didn't Xiao Zhan play him in a video game ad once? I should track that down).
 

3. Of course I've decided to pick up a knitting project after it got cold, rather than ahead of time. But I can probably finish before spring! I'm making a balaclava/ski mask to wear while biking, and since I need to wear it under a bike helmet that ruled out any quick knits with chunky yarn. I opted for this pattern but I'm planning to swap out the colorwork for something different--yes I know the intended use case makes the colorwork hardly relevant but I'll be bored if there's nothing going on at all.


4. More bookbinding plans -- I think for most of my projects going forward, at least the ones where I do the typesetting myself, I want to work on binding novel translations rather than fanfic. I'm in the middle of binding Evil As Humans as a series of 80s-style paperbacks, which were begun as part of an exchange but I was only able to get some of the volumes finished for that and I'm still finishing them up. I've also got most of the design done for a Tai Sui binding (inspired by the Arts & Crafts movement, for Reasons), but I'm not sure if I'll dive into that project next or if I'll do something shorter first.


5. Halloween was fun! The kids dressed up as Team Rocket, with the older two as Jessie and James and the youngest as Meowth. Easier costumes than some years, Jessie and James didn't need anything sewn from scratch except for Jessie's skirt. I used Simplicity 9842 for Meowth and compared to animal costumes I've made in the past, this one seems like it was actually designed with the materials in mind -- elastic casings made with applied bias tape instead of directly from the same fake fur as the rest of the costume, for example. In the process of Halloween sewing, I fixed a couple of minor annoyances with my sewing machine, and then mended some pants (frayed/holes in the inner thighs) too. It's nice to be able to say no, I don't need to buy new pants, I can still wear these! (I hate shopping for pants in particular).