Testing, dropping, picking up

Hello all! Let me explain the post title: 

I'm testing a new app to be able to blog from my phone. Sadly, Google's official blogging app is absolutely useless and they've barely updated it in two years. I expected better, but luckily there are third party apps that people have put actual effort into making work with the Blogger platform. You can still expect lots of typos whenever I'm on my phone, but that's not the app's fault. 

I'm dropping my novel for the time being. I've gotten stalled out at Chapter 16, where it feels like the plot is only finally just beginning. I got hit over the head with another fic idea, and decided to work on that instead, because it was more rewarding. I do hope to return to the novel again this year (hopefully), but for now, well... until I can figure out a plot I'm kinda stuck. 

And finally, I'm picking up on calligraphy again. I've been asked to do four or five new scrolls for people who never received one, some going back as far as the 90s or perhaps even earlier. They're all going to be pretty ambitious, stylistically speaking. I am posting from my phone at the moment and don't have source photos, but I'll be working on two scrolls in the style of the Sforza Black Hours. Another will be written in Irish Gaelic and decorated in a very fancy version of the Mac Durnan Gospels, a 10th century Irish manuscript from Armagh. There is one still on my list whose style is undetermined, because I have to talk to the client to see what she prefers; then the final scroll will be done in the manner of the Eadwine Psalter. 

As I said, I don't have source photos right now, but you can Google any of those manuscript names and get some images to give your an idea of what I'll be up against! I start mockups on the Irish one today.

And all that is in between painting heraldic banners (which I've neglected all winter) and preparing music for the Lafayette Chamber Singers' May concert, featuring all Canadian composers. Busy is better than bored, but even so! This is a lot to have suddenly land in my lap.

Hope you all are well! 

Chapter 9

Slow but steady may not win the race, but it will at least finish it.

The novel I'm working on, tentatively titled The Pilgrimage (and more affectionately known as the NIP for Novel-In-Progress) is up to Chapter 9 now, and I'm pretty happy with how it's coming together. Special appreciation has to go to my group of readers and cheerleaders for offering me constant feedback and encouragement. Thank you!

For those of you who follow me on Tumblr, with the fiasco they're enacting over there, I've gone ahead and made a Pillowfort account. I only have two posts there at the moment, but I'm hoping to update that more frequently, once PF is able to better manage the sudden flood of new traffic that they're receiving.

If anyone feels so moved, please feel free to "buy me a coffee" by visiting the link! The tips are a nice nonverbal way to show your support, if you'd rather not leave comments or chat with me. But of course, there's never any obligation. It's a tip jar, not a shakedown!

In other news, the Lafayette Chamber Singers will be performing our holiday concert today, and I'm pretty excited. A lot of challenging pieces and a lot of effort went into putting this concert together, and I think it's going to sound really cool.

Hope you're all having a good weekend!

Where have I been?

Oh dear.

I've been busy, or tired, or just generally neglectful. But I have at least been making art and writing stories, and once the holidays are over perhaps I will get back into the habit of posting here regularly. That's a good New Year's resolution to make, isn't it?

Some highlights:

• A Laurel scroll (very high award in the SCA) for an old friend of mine, well deserved and long overdue.
• Taking up a challenge and producing eight or nine other scrolls as part of a massive effort to get overdue awards to people. If I remember right, nearly 200 people produced something like 600 scrolls in 20 weeks.
• Writing even more fan fiction, including the completion of my first series, which includes two novels and three novellas, as well as a collection of deleted scenes.
• Plenty of henna at various street festivals in town.
• Plenty of singing for the Lafayette Chamber Singers.

But yes, I'm feeling a bit tired and it's been hard to motivate to blog about all the stuff I've been up to. Sorry for leaving my readers hanging (all two of you). Facebook and Tumblr are probably to blame as well, heh.

In other news, I'm setting up a Ko-fi page, sort of like a tip jar for online creators. If you like what I've done for you, and if you're the sort of person who might buy me a coffee if we were in person, consider dropping by my Ko-fi page instead.

Hope you have a great holiday season no matter what you celebrate (or if you celebrate), and I'll do my best to get you some pretty pictures soon.

Cheers!

Words on Wednesday

As soon as I promise to write something every Wednesday, I stop writing every Wednesday.

Henna has been nice. Editing has been okay. Perhaps tomorrow I will post my editing blurb that I put together finally.

I've also been writing fanfic and getting good feedback. If I ever thought I could craft an original plot or characters, I might consider writing my own stuff, but I seem to suck at plot.

Mother's Day was nice. Choir performance was the same day and we did quite well, to wrap up my first season with them. Having no rehearsal tonight is going to feel weird.

And that's pretty much it. Mostly I feel like I don't have anything to say that would be worth anyone's time to listen to. I've gotten very quiet lately as a result.

I hope all is well with you and yours.

Words on Wednesday

Hello all,

I've been trying to get into a habit of posting more consistently here at Little Fiddly Bits, whether I'm posting as an editor or just in general. In my head I've been calling it "Words on Wednesday", which is admittedly a little cheesy, but then I try to convince myself to clean the house with "Mundane Monday", so, there ya go.

Not much on the editing front today, except that the world seems out to get me with the constant misuse of the words "rein" and "reign". The second one means rule of a kingdom. Think "regnum" which is Latin for kingdom. The first one is what you use to steer a horse. You do not give someone "free reign". You do not "reign someone in" when they get too crazy. You do, however, "reign supreme." Can we all please just embrace this and stop putting all over everything I read? I'd be really grateful.

I have two henna gigs this weekend, which is unprecedented given that it's only he beginning of March. Henna doesn't usually start up for me until May at the earliest. So. Yay! Now I just need to mix up a fresh batch of paste, rather than using last year's. There is generally nothing wrong with using last year's henna, but this time around my final batch didn't turn out right and didn't do much for clients anywhere other than their hands. Which was disappointing, given that I'd mixed it up for a cancer patient to do on her scalp, and we ended up with hardly any color. So I'm going to give that stuff away for free to people who are curious about trying henna, warn them that it's not very dark, and let them have fun.

I freaked my daughter out yesterday, accidentally. She'd been cheerfully humming "The Hall of the Mountain King" while she puttered, just quietly going "bum-bum-bum-bum Bum bum Bum, Bum bum Bum, Bum bum Bum" and I recognized it and brought it up on Youtube for her to listen to... yeah. She didn't know that it turned into the orchestral equivalent of a heavy-metal mosh pit halfway in, and she gets emotionally affected by music the same way I do, so it was like forcing her to watch a horror movie. I felt terrible.

Then I told her the story of a friend of mine who, back in high school, was in the marching band , at a football game, and his team wasn't doing well, and he was bored, so he fired up the tuba and just quietly started going "bum-bum-bum-bum Bum bum Bum" etc... See, "Hall of the Mountain King" sounds amazing on tuba. And the rest of the marching band was also bored. And they got into it. And they got louder. And their football team heard them and also got into it, and started hitting harder. And the game kinda turned around from that point. Once my daughter was laughing, we turned the music back on again and she listened to it a second time and decided that it was pretty awesome, as long as she could pretend to be a dwarf with a hammer and chisel and go pound things. Which, let's face it, is pretty much what that piece of music is for.

That's pretty much it for my words on Wednesday. Got a deadline to meet for someone presenting a PhD thesis, first time working on one of those. Novel length, only nonfiction and with bigger words. And I'm writing fanfic again, I've got a chapter I need to clean up and post. If you're curious, I'll only tell you that I like Loki far too much to be healthy.

Have a great week!

Something I don't understand

There's something I don't understand: How is it that a person can have the blues long enough to sing the blues, but upon hearing the blues, they no longer have the blues?  At what point in the middle of your blues singin' do the blues go away, and after that point, are you still really singin' the blues?

And if not, what do you call it?

And if you're not really singin' the blues, wouldn't that be enough to give you the blues all over again?

(guitar riff)
If you not really singin' -- if you not really singin' the blues....
I said if -- if you're not really singin' the blues...
If you not singin' the blues, won't that just  - give you the blues all over agin?
(more guitar riff)

It's like Heisenberg, man... .I'm speakin' to you here, listen now
Some kind of blues paradox goin' on, messin' wit the space-time continuum
Messin' wit mah head
Messin' wit blues, man, and that's just not right

Is it like a standin' wave of blues, or is it more like...
like...
like Schroedinger's blues?
Man, you got Schroedinger's blues, you never know if you comin' or goin'

'Cause you both.

***

Yep.  That's my brain, doing what it does best, right there... sometimes I feel like I'm just along for the ride the same as you, but it sure is a lot of fun.

Also, I'm not sure if this is more evidence for the theory that quantum physics really is about everything, or if it's just proof that blues music goes well with everything.  It is, however, an excellent demonstration of what happens when I free associate and try to get philosophical while listening to the blues.  Only silliness can result.

Music! Henna! Links!

So, as part of my involvement in the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism), I have finally gotten back to singing in our local chapter's choir, the Rivenstar Madrigali.  Recently one of our members recorded one of our rehearsals.  As my friend and fellow soprano Katya said, "Not bad for a take-all-comers casual choir," and I agree.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhXwGMH6giU

If you want to play Spot The Blogger, I'm the only one there who didn't have this piece memorized, as the others had been rehearsing it for months and I only rejoined in January.

As a self-professed choir snob, it's been hard for me sometimes to just let go of the expectations about what I think we "should" be doing (based on years in college-level choirs with conductor/instructors who demanded a very, very high level of focus, discipline, attention to detail, skill, and all the rest that goes with taking choir for a grade), and allow myself to enjoy all the things that we are doing.  We're singing, and we're enjoying the sound, and you know what?  That's something to be grateful for all by itself.

**

Next Wednesday kicks off my fourth season with the Sagamore West Farmer's Market!  Today I finally got my contract and booth fee delivered to the right people!  They were already full!  They were only merciful about letting me in because I'd achieved "permanent" status!  I'm using up my lifetime quota of exclamation points with this paragraph!  Woo-hoo!

**

Next Wednesday, a couple hours before the market kicks off, I'll be at Sunspot Market giving a talk as part of Sunspot's "Food For Thought" program.  Basically they serve lunch and invite a speaker to come be all educational and stuff, and I get to talk a little about the history and culture of henna, then give people free samples before dashing up the street to set up my booth.  They have a little flier that they put up for each month's speakers, and when I stopped in to buy supplies today, I saw that they were gracious enough to give me a really nice blurb.  Felt nice to see, you know?

If you're local, I'd love to see you there, and if you can't make it, well, the market really is only a few blocks away.

Cheers!

PS - Ladysmith Black Mambazo. That is all.

Adventure, mayhem, and pretty things

Hello folks.  How ya been?

I keep forgetting to mention the embroidery project, which is in its final stages for color.  I'm working on the blue background, finally, or I would be except the project is currently stalled.  Why? Well, because, it's sitting in top of my scanner, waiting for me to take pictures of it to share with all of you.

***

I also keep forgetting to mention that I've been given an art commission to paint some Celtic knotwork on a large antique metal milk-canister.  I've spent the past several days drawing out the knotwork on paper, reworking it to my satisfaction, and the past two days using an exacto knife to cut the drawing into a decent stencil.  Relax, it's just to get the guide lines on.

If we hadn't killed my van today, I'd be heading to the store first thing tomorrow morning to pick up paints and such so I can begin the transfer onto the can.

***

Related to the knotwork is the fact that I recently claimed an SCA "scribal" assignment - a request for volunteers to do calligraphy for our society's award certificates (we're medieval history buffs and re-enactors, did you think we were going to print awards off on a computer?? Psh!) - for the first time in about five years.  The SCA is, by and large, a game where we dress up and pretend to be medieval, but like anything, it has its group dynamics and its politics, and between the political stuff and some honest burnout, I haven't really had the heart to do a "scroll" in about five years.  If you look back through the archives, you'll find a private commission for a gentleman's SCA award from about two or three years ago, but the regular stuff with deadlines hasn't held any interest for me in quite some time.  I think it'll be good to get back into the swing of things; here's to hoping I'm right.

***

Oh, and I'm also auditioning tomorrow to join the Lafayette Chamber Singers, one of those very small groups where you can only get in if someone else dies.  Fortunately, no one died this time around, but they did move far far away, freeing up one slot; and the conductor has decided to expand the soprano section so they can take on more ambitious compositions, which has opened up another one or two slots besides.  Talk about luck for me... wish me some, if you would.

***

Finally, in addition to the van, we're very sorry for breaking much of the rest of the Lafayatte area earlier today.  The van broke down on the access drive to Wolf Park, where we had been planning to observe their weekly wolf-bison interaction, only it got cancelled for the first time in pretty much ever due to the potential for more storms (yesterday's were "apocalyptic" according to Amy Prettybaby) and the heat index heading toward the ridiculous zone (kind of like Ludicrous Speed in the movie Spaceballs).

Once we got the van towed, the husband's car acquired, and the rest of us collected from the park premises, it was time for an early dinner.  So we headed to Pizza Hut, ordered our meal, and watched over drinks while the lights flickered impressively for about half a minute before going out altogether.  The manager came out and told us he was very sorry, but the transformer out back had just shot "really kinda beautiful" sparks and lightning into the air in all directions, caught fire, and fallen into the street, and he hoped we wouldn't be too upset that our dinner wasn't going to be happening there that evening.

At this point, after starting as, "oh, bummer" and progressing to, "eh, it's a nice day to be stuck at a nature park, and hey, y'all are really nice people", the day's catastrophic failures became completely hilarious.  I'm still chuckling as I type this, to be honest - I mean, what are the odds of all this happening at all, much less happening all on the same day, back to back, while my father-in-law is in town visiting?  Plus there wasn't any reason to actually be upset - we weren't in any hurry, no one was hurt, and it really was a nice day to be stuck at a nature park with really nice, gracious, and extremely helpful staff.  While we were trying to see if we could fix things ourselves and/or jump-start the van, my daughter and I got to check out the nature along the side of the road, in the form of wildflowers and a whole crowd of butterflies and other harmless bugs.  She was an angel the whole time and thought that riding in the tow truck with Daddy was cooool.

Anyway, after everything else, we were almost afraid to go to the next-closest Pizza Hut, since we weren't sure what other damage might be caused just by us being near the place.  Luckily, nothing went wrong (except that their cable and radio had gone out shortly before we arrived, though I don't think we can really claim that as ours), dinner was yummy, and we had a good visit with my father-in-law after all.

Our motto for the day: If you know where you're going, it's not an adventure.

Hope to see you at the Farmer's Market if you live nearby, and if you don't, then maybe some other time.

Cheers!

Post-Octoberfest recovery

Well, the festival was an utter disappointment in many, many ways.  The weather and resulting low turnout were a part of that, but the rest will have to wait until I've gotten the opportunity to speak with the festival organizers.  I'm wondering if I'd have been more forgiving if the weather had been nicer, or if maybe I've just been spoiled by the way previous events have gone for me.

Regardless, I have a big new batch of henna waiting for people to let me use it on them, and a discount that will continue till the end of the month for anyone who brings me one of my old business cards.  That thought cheers me, and the Indigo Girls in my ears right now are helping more then they will ever know... although I could send them an email... I guess...

***

It's a very old line from a very old Steve Martin routine - back when he still did stand-up comedy, which ought to give you some idea how old - but I still hold it to my heart as a Law of the Universe:  It is impossible to be depressed around banjo music.

***

Daughter and I have made a habit of getting her a little snack right before bedtime, so she doesn't wake up hungry at 1am.  At her request, a new part of this routine is that I sit at the couch and work on the embroidery while she plays with her yogurt and eventually gets it all into her tummy.  So progress is in the "very slow, but steady" category.  Right now I'm working on the ground the figures are standing on.  That's right - I'm stitching dirt.

New residents, new opportunities

Yeah, okay, this has nothing to do with my creative endeavors, but everything to do with beauty, so...

Our housing addition has a pond. I don't know how far I can go to call it a habitat, since they mow down to the water's edge and treat the water to counteract all the lawn chemicals that wash in and cause algae blooms, but still. Pond, fish, frogs, and drop-in visits from ducks, geese, and about every other year a family of muskrats takes up residence in one of the culverts and starts undermining the bank.

Well, we also get great blue herons, one of my favorite birds. Last year a really HUGE one got his foot caught in a muskrat trap - I know this because I was the one who noticed he'd been in the same spot all day, and got close enough to confirm how badly he was stuck.

This year it's either a different heron, or he was immature last year and has come into his full color this year, because he is spectacular. All the pictures you see with the shiny white head, black streak across the eye, kind of shaggy feathers on the throat and chest?... This particular bird looks like he has a sideline modeling for the Audobon calendar.

Yesterday and today, for the first time, I've seen a kingfisher in the area. Yesterday he was on a wire about a mile off, along the route I drive to take the kiddo to preschool. This morning he was sitting on the culvert at the pond. Yes, the same one that the muskrats like so well.

I'm going to miss the house swallows this year, though; they were living in a mailbox just across the street from the pond, and for some reason the homeowner wasn't too happy about that. Barn swallows are this really rich midnight blue with orange chest and bellies; house swallows are an equally rich deep teal-green, with white chest and bellies. I'd never seen them before last year, but in the fall the guy took down his mailbox and replaced it with something harder for birds to set up housekeeping in.

***

At the event where I taught the henna class, I also proved once again that I needed a chaperone anytime there is colored thread around. But they were five skeins for a dollar, and how can you pass up a deal like that?

Things are actually progressing with the embroidery thing. I'm outlining the lady's wimple and veil right now. You might recall a griffin I mentioned doing in Bayeux stitch; I gave it to a friend of mine whose "kingdom" emblem is a gryphon, and she said it would probably end up being part of the front panel for an early-period gown. Cool. Probably I should ask her to send me a picture of it, since I never thought to take one.

***

When you're clinically depressed, it's too easy to fall into the trap of struggling to be "happy" as the opposite of "sad." Thing is, happiness comes in moments and snippets. A guy I know describes it as the butterfly landing on your shoulder - beautiful, but impossible to try and keep around. What is better, according to my counselor and my college memories, is the idea of "peace" as the opposite of "suffering". So I've been checking in with myself yesterday and today, asking what feels peaceful to me, what brings me contentment, that kind of thing.

Or, as a great many sources of wisdom like to say, "Pain is; suffering is optional." Another way it gets phrased is, of course, "shit happens"... it's how you handle the shit that determines, oh, pretty much everything.

***

Had an email out of the blue (heh - out of the ether (I'm so clever)) from a guy who wants to host a web domain and site for me, for free, simply because he likes to assist artists and the arts. Sadly, I keep finding myself trying to examine the horse's teeth, just because it's been awhile since something like this has dropped into my lap without conscious effort on my part. All I did was leave some business cards somewhere and the guy found one.

Also, I have no freaking idea what domain name to pick. Just my name isn't very catchy, nor does it describe what I do... but like this blog, I do a lot more than just henna, even if that's the only art I'm making money with at the moment.

Hmmmm... suggestions welcome, both serious and otherwise.

***

Anyone know how to repair a stepping stone that has cracked into four pieces, just from having a three-year-old walk on it? This was the one I discovered had poorly mixed concrete, and was crumbling around the edges and all that.

I'd really rather not redo the mosaic from scratch, nor "recycle" the thing by chipping each piece of glass out of the broken sections to rebuild into another stone. Even though that probably would be both faster and the wiser course to take. That damn thing took me about a year to finally finish; I really don't want to dork with it anymore if I can help it.

***

I think I'm on an upswing emotionally; I can tell I'm improving when my brain starts providing me with song lyrics without my asking. Today it was "Beer Run" while at the cashier, paying with a $10 and getting back a $5. If you've never heard the song, try to imagine a nice hillbilly twang and someone going "yee-ha" in the background. It doesn't have a banjo, but it should.

B, double-E, double-R-U-N, Beer Run,
B, double-E, double-R-U-N, Beeeer, Ru-un,
All we need is a ten and a fiver
A car and a key and a so-ber dri-ver
B, double-E, double-R-U-N, Beer Runnnn.

Not sure who wrote it, but it plays on Bob and Tom every now and again, so I guess it qualifies as their contribution to American culture.

I will continue to agree with Steve Martin's (very old) assertion that it is impossible to remain unhappy when a banjo is playing. 'Course, at the time I'm sure he'd never heard Bela Fleck playing BACH on banjo... which would only serve to confirm, reinforce, and utterly and competely prove the point.

And now, something different

The weather didn't look trustworthy. I chose not to go to the farmer's market. The weather proceeded to get all sunny and gorgeous.

Farmer's market is about done for the season anyway - so now it's time for me to either put the henna away till spring, or start advertising for bookings, birthday parties and that kind of thing.

I've never liked marketing... maybe I'm just lazy.

***

Speaking of lazy, the mosaic is still waiting for me to get it into the mold and pour the cement. I'll get there, maybe even today.

***

I've mentioned before that I come up with the absolute dippiest songs to sing to my kid (and how thrilled I am that she seems to be starting to do the same thing). Well, I do have one song I put together that I can actually proud of - not that I have any shame whatsoever about singing the other little things - and I wanted to write the lyrics down before I forget them. I don't sing it to her often anymore, partly because she doesn't usually have the patience for a slow waltzing lullaby right now.

Anyway, um, here.

Evening has come, the day is done
Look all around, the light has gone
Th' wind in the trees now sighs and yawns,
"Hush little one, the day is done."

Evening has come, it's time to sleep
Sun's going down, her bed to seek
Stars in the sky all seem to speak:
"Hush little one, it's time to sleep."

Evening has come, now rest your head
Rivers and streams flow to their beds
The whispering waves on th' shore have said,
"Hish little one, now rest your head."

Evening has come, it's time to rest
Rabbits and deer have found their nests
Till morning comes, I'll love you best -
Hush little one, it's time to rest.

(c) 2007, so don't go takin' credit for words you didn't write, or you'll make the little babies cry.

How to complete a project that mostly annoys you

So, the mosaic. Red tiles that won't permit themselves to be trimmed to any reasonable shape. Not enough square-ish shapes, way too many Massachusetts-shapes.

Have you ever set a jigsaw puzzle out on your dining room table and just left it there for a few days? Before long, the whole family is compulsively pausing whenever they walk past, to put just one piece in and then go on about their business.

Yeah, that's what I'm doing with the mosaic, more or less. It's still in my project space rather than anywhere public enough that the Monkey might notice it, and of course progress is somewhere between "glacial" and "creeping along", but I've decided not to worry about that. Slow progress is better than none.

***

When I was in college, I managed to arrange things so that I was singing at least three times a week; one year, I was in five separate musical things (four choirs and a voice lesson), so I was singing daily. I loved it. Unfortunately, once you get out of college, singing opportunities are much fewer, and usually constitute one rehearsal a week if you're lucky.

Feh.

Since having a child, I have begun singing again almost daily, and have discovered previously untapped depths of talent in musical composition and creation of lyrics... oh, who are we kidding. "Depths" refers to how far I will sink to create something singable for my kid, regardless of the dippiness of the words. (The "Belly Bongos" song comes immediately to mind... followed by the Sweet Potato Boogie and Sha-Poopie, which refers to exactly what you think it does.)

I am thrilled to report that my kid seems to be developing this ability as well. Every preschooler will sing anything you put in front of them, and I imagine most of them will blur the words together from various songs as long as they all sound like "Twinkle Twinkle". But MY kid has recently begun adding her own words to tunes she knows, without being taught, and I'm so excited I could just pop.

***

Never put me anywhere near a clearance book bin, even in the grocery store, even when I'm exchanging a thing of white sugar for a thing of brown. There was a craft book. I was good and I didn't buy it (sometimes virtue doesn't show, because it's measured by what you don't do), but of course I looked through it.

The chapter on crafting clocks and mobiles (no idea why they're the same chapter, but whatever), had a whole bunch of mobile projects that were built essentially from lots of small bent-wire sculptures hooked together. Which got me thinking yet again about this idea I've had percolating for awhile now, involving my family tree and roughly a quarter-mile or so of copper wire.

See, it's like this: My ancestry in the US goes back eight, possibly nine generations. Back in the very early 1800s, there were one or two intermarriages in different branches of the family, which makes a two-dimensional representation look really screwy - and I mean really screwy. So I had the idea a couple years back to try a three-dimensional representation instead. A mobile was my first thought, but that wouldn't quite work either, since the intermarriage links would keep some part of the mobile from being able to move freely. Also, nine generations of family means I'd about need a cathedral to hang it from.

On the other hand, a freestanding tree sculpture, limited to just my direct lineage, could actually work. The trunk would indicate the direct line of descent from the first US generation to the present. Side branches, coming off the trunk at equally-spaced intervals, represent the other offspring at each generation, ie the siblings of whoever the direct ancestor is. To keep things from getting crazy, the branches wouldn't have any "sub-branches" to represent their descendants. Instead, metal leaves would be attached to the branch, stamped with names and dates for the individuals in that generation. Small furled buds would represent the tragic number of would-be ancestors who did not survive past childhood.

Thing is, you'd need not just one leaf per person, you would need one wire as well; the idea is to have the trunk start out really thick at the base, with wires coming out of the trunk and becoming branches at each generation. That way the trunk would get more slender as you go up through the generations, just as in a real tree, and at the very top there would be only one or two branches with leaves, representing the current generation - either two leaves for my generation (me and my brother), or just one for the latest generation in the lineage, my daughter.

Either way you look at it, that's a lot of wire. How do you find something pliable tnough to shape like that, but strong enough to support the weight of all the other wires and leaves and such around it?

***

That's the first time I've actually set out this idea in writing, despite having doodles of it in my notebooks and the image in my head for, oh, probably two years or so now. It occurred to me recently that I could make trees for each of the original branches of the family, and the intermarriages could be covered with intertwining branches from two of the trees; but I'm not sure I'm ready to build even one tree, much less an entire grove of them. Current records from the late 18th century to the present, with all the ancestors and their spouses listed, is somewhere near a thousand people; possibly more than that.

Too bad my brain just refuses to let this one go.