Month: December 2022

Sorting thoughts (and art)

In Uncategorized by RChrystal / December 31, 2022 / No comments

While I was at my mom’s house for Christmas, I took a day to perform the semi-regular ritual of sorting through my remaining boxes in the basement. There were more than I’d remembered, now living in a 220sq ft studio apartment, despite how many attempts I’ve made over the years at reducing my possessions. On previous minimalistic tears, I’ve culled, parsed, and pared down my belongings drastically from what they were ten years ago, each time making piles for trash, recycling, and donations, like a tithe to the household gods. I’ve always liked the idea of traveling light, of owning only useful things, and only what I can carry with me. I once thought about floating noncommittally around the country (who hasn’t?), packing my life up into a few bags and boxes, always ready to cut and run at a moment’s notice.

But as I dug into the boxes in my mom’s basement, I rediscovered the few things I haven’t managed to throw out or give away, despite my best efforts. I found a dress someone (I don’t know who) neatly crocheted for one of my dolls when I was a child. I found a hand-sewn bag and a Bible cover my mom made, and the Bible for which they had been meant with a note in the front cover saying “Merry Christmas! from Mommy and Daddy December 1997.” I found things which had belonged to my grandparents, things which had been given to me by old friends, notes, papers, pictures, and the last vestiges of my younger self.

I sifted through assorted bits of things, wondering what to do with the fact that the person I am now doesn’t value everything that the person who saved these things did. Can I throw things away if I don’t want them now, but did in the past? Can I give things away if someone meant for me to have them, and hoped I would find them amusing or useful or an expression of love – but I don’t want them?

I suppose that it’s alright if things had their time and place. Maybe my younger self valued Star Wars action figures and Barbies, but that doesn’t mean I have to hold the same values that I did when I was twelve.

So I tell myself, anyway, with a silent apology to my past as I put once-valued possessions in the donation box.

Some of the more interesting things I uncovered were art projects from my college years (although I majored in graphic design, my heart wasn’t in it, and I took a consolation minor in studio art). Two of the pieces from sculpture class were a round wooden shield carved in rings of knotwork (it’s easy to tell when I ran out of patience), and a Celtic cloak pin in bronze, without the pin (also where I ran out of patience). I also found a hand-bound journal which I took on a study abroad trip to France, in which I made sketches alongside my French homework. Despite all the changes in the past ten years, some things haven’t changed.

Papermaking, reprised

In Uncategorized by RChrystal / December 20, 2022 / No comments

After a few unsuccessful attempts at handmaking recycled paper on very large frames, I broke down and asked for help to resize my frames so they would fit in a bucket, like all the hobby-mommy bloggers have. Help was graciously given, and I found myself with a proper handmade mould and deckle for paper roughly 10″x12″, made from thrift store wooden frames and hardware store window screen. Astonishingly, practicing a craft the way everyone has always been doing it actually works. Who would have thought?

I now make an average of two pages of recycled, handmade paper per day, pulling the paper in the morning before work and tucking them under my bed in front of my Rinnai heater to dry during the day. I described this process to a friend who said, “Sounds like a fire hazard, but alright.” I scoffed. I never set my heater above 68 at the very most, which couldn’t possibly heat paper to ignition point. But then, examining some of the pages I’ve made, I found crispy, brown edges, as on just-cooked phyllo dough. Fire hazard, indeed.

While I haven’t mastered the thin, smooth, letter-writing sheets that I’d imagined, recycled paper is rustic and texturey. I would highly recommend against using it as letter paper, as the one sheet I mailed took three stamps, but there may be other uses for chunky, textured paper. I’ve bound a few fat little notebooks with it for odd, almost-useful-but-mostly-just-entertaining Christmas gifts, and considered (though haven’t yet tried) painting on it.

Each of the paper slurry blends has been composed of slightly different ingredients, but they’re generally made up of junk mail, notes to myself, shopping lists, fliers and strips* from the bookshop where I work, paper bag scraps, bits of used wrapping paper, scrapbooking paper which I bought in 2009 and am definitely never going to use, and any unattended paper which falls into my greedy goblin hands. Does it matter that I haven’t found an actual use for my recycled paper yet? Absolutely not. Somehow the making of a thing, useful or not, desirable or not, is itself compelling, as though creating a pile of something – words, paper, crafts, images, blog posts – is proof of the worthwhileness of existing.

Wishcycling is a thing.

*Strips are a funny piece of trivia for those who have never worked in a bookstore. Bookstores buy books from the publisher at a discount on the price printed on the jacket, and, if they don’t sell, then they send them back to the publisher for credit. Some books aren’t worth enough to the publisher to send back, and so bookstores tear the cover off, mail it back to the publisher, and throw the rest of the book away. These are called “strips,” and are marked next to the barcode with a triangle symbol around an S. Mass markets are almost always strips, as are many kids’ and YA paperbacks.

Dragons and isles

In Uncategorized by RChrystal / December 19, 2022 / No comments

Someone very thoughtfully gave me the new D&D starter set for my birthday, and despite never having actually played D&D (barring one short and not-terribly-enjoyable stint with Pathfinder), it seems as though I’m in the process of turning into a DM. In theory, the starter set contains enough information that even brand-new players can open the box and start to play, but listening to Critical Role for something like the past ten months will be hugely helpful. For one, I can draw slightly on Matt Mercer’s abundant wealth of NPCs when I have no idea what a character’s voice should sound like.

The plan is to run the game for one player, so I’ve been mulling over the adventure book, considering how to scale the encounters and whether to add more than one sidekick in addition to the character I’ll be playing. I’ve also been redesigning some of the locations, drawing maps, making notes on additional background lore (who can resist building a backstory for dragons?), and trying not to wade too deeply into the bog of “Oh gosh, I need to know what’s in every drawer in every cabinet, and the title and author of every book in the library, and what wood was used to make the bookshelves because it might be significant.” Even Matt Mercer had to start somewhere (presumably).

It helps that neither I nor my player have actually played before, and we’re learning together how to create characters, how to fall into backstories, how to play and world-build and explore together. It helps that we’re both epic nerds who have been accumulating knowledge of lore and fantasy for years. It helps knowing that this is the first time, so it’s alright if it’s clunky and exploratory and awkward. What matters most, as it says in the adventure book, is that everyone has fun.