I first saw Tony Foster’s Lockdown Diary during his talk at the Wild Wonder nature journaling conference two years ago. He painted things he saw on his daily walks during a 56-day COVID lockdown. Though I’m not good at “every day,” I wanted to create a compact local nature journaling project of my own. Result: Colors of Colorado.
Continue reading Colors of Colorado: A Nature Journaling Practice
Here is my best whack at summarizing the pop culture references made during The Prancing Pony Podcast’s sixth season. As I was looking through my data, I realized once again just how unscientific this whole process is (see my self-made rules here). The time-span the project covers has made it really difficult for me to be consistent.
First, I have to say how much I enjoyed this season, which covered Book IV of The Lord of the Rings (Frodo, Sam, and Gollum traveling to Mordor). Alan Sisto and Shawn Marchese did a spectacular job with the readings. They have both developed into skilled voice actors. I loved everything they did with Gollum, from their dramatic reading of Gollum and Sméagol arguing (episode 232) to their speculation on what his dating profile would include (episode 247).
Continue reading Prancing Pony Podcast Season 6: Summary Stats
I’m in the middle of a course of sleep therapy and it’s affecting everything, even my creative projects. I decided early in August that I wanted to make a cross-stitch sampler of sayings to help me remember important insights I’ve had about my writing process, so I got out my embroidery hoop, canvas, and floss. I made an effort to find graph paper with much smaller squares than normal, so I could chart my designs, because cross-stitching mottos requires planning. But does it?
Continue reading How My Insomnia Lead to Improvised Cross-Stitch
I’ll be the first to admit my data collection of pop culture references made by Alan Sisto and Shawn Marchese during The Prancing Pony Podcast episodes is not perfect. I have rules about what I do and don’t record, limitations that generate errors, and the usual challenge of being human. Below, I lay out the sources of error for those wondering why a reference they were sure got made didn’t wind up on my charts somewhere.
Continue reading PPP Statistics Behind-The-Scenes: How I Collect The Data
My current knitting experiment is not finished yet, but I want to share the ugly early stages of improv knitting. … More Knitting Experiment: Early Attempts at Pig PJs
