Copper/silver/glass treasure box, 7" x 7" x 2 1/2", wooden box, acrylic paint, glass tiles, paper, ink. Bidding starts at $10.

For the holidays, I decided to veer back in a crafty direction. This is an 8 1/4" x 8" x 2" wooden treasure box decorated in acrylic paints and glass tiles. I had no idea how to price it, so bidding starts at $10. Please click on the auction link for more views.

Stayed up all night making collages. Gotta get with Grey and figure out how to photograph these things so people can see them. Crafty eBay auctions ending this evening: the homoerotic botanic treasure box, the copy of Exquisite Corpse with my handmade cover, and two blank books. This turns out to be the Make the Mortgage Payment Sale, so please bid if you can!

The mail continues to bring treats, including a signed copy of Caitlín's The Drowning Girl. Very much looking forward to reading this one. Thank you, greygirlbeast! In your honor, I shall try to write something resembling a real entry. With, you know, thoughts and stuff. Not just random observations and eBay listings (though I do have some of those).

Life is ... sticky. I guess that's the best way to describe it. Not precisely bad, but difficult. Literally so, because the air conditioning in my house is broken and we're heading into another long, sweaty, tyrannical New Orleans summer. Most luxuries have fallen by the wayside, and necessities are starting to do so. Yet I live in interesting times, both personally, by being in a relationship that brings me joy and creative inspiration, and globally, by feeling -- as I seldom did growing up -- that we are living on the right side of history. The other day I sent Grey a text saying, basically, we may be old by the time it comes, but I think we'll live to see a day when today's last-gasp homophobes look as benighted as the news footage of rabid bigots screaming at black children integrating the public schools. (I didn't want to be a Negative Nancy, so I didn't add that I don't expect to live to see a day when transgender people are anywhere near as accepted.) Meanwhile, there are still "religious" nutjobs who want to put us all behind electric fences and courts that give evil little shitweasels thirty damn days in prison for hounding us to death, but society no longer seems to be in tacit agreement with those people as it did when I was younger.

One more paragraph for Caitlín. Christ, when you get out of the habit of writing, forcing yourself to do it starts to feel like weightlifting. I have little puny stringy 98-pound-weakling writing muscles. If I do any more reps, I'll make them sore. Clang.

So about those eBay auctions ... they are all crafty things, two more blank journals, a copy of Exquisite Corpse with a redesigned cover by me, and a "homoerotic botanic" treasure box. Please check 'em out.

I think the Game of Thrones box is finished, and now I feel sort of empty even though it's basically just a piece of fan art. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, especially since I've seen fan art that touched my own heart, but I surely can't take full credit for it and I don't know whether I can sell it on eBay. Not sure if I want to; even if it's a response to someone else's creativity, it's the first creative thing I've done in three years. I'll be posting photos, at any rate, possibly more than anybody wants to see. It's a detailed object.

When I said the ending of A Storm of Swords disturbed me and made me kind of angry? I did not mean I thought the novel should have ended differently. I value a story that can make me feel like that. I don't find them very often. I just needed to take a break and read some nice fiction about nice people who just do normal things like throwing their spouses down wells, and also Me and Dean: A Love Story by Jerry Lewis (more on that later). And apparently I also needed to make a box. But I'm starting to miss all those dreadful Lannisters, Starks, Greyjoys, and Targaryens, not to mention the Hound whom I love though I don't know why, and I'm about ready for further punishment. (Speaking of grrm fan art, has everyone seen this amazing map of Westeros?)

Good God, what a fanboy I have become in my old age. It serves me right.

Well, Grey warned me that all the creative energy he's had lately might rub off. I just pulled an all-nighter making my first piece of art/crafts in I don't even know how long*, one of my "treasure boxes." It's obviously inspired by the Song of Ice and Fire books, and felt/feels (it's not quite finished) like an enthusiastic but angry response to book 3, A Storm of Swords. I wasn't angered by the novel in a critical/social way, but in a purely emotional way, by how much it managed to blindside and disturb my "Tra la la, yum yum, I'm so enjoying my foray into epic fantasy" Constant Reader-self. Which is a powerful thing and I value it, but I also needed to create some kind of response. This box will probably be for sale on eBay at some point if it doesn't get too derivative. Here are a couple of VERY preliminary photos:

Also had a brief but friendly text conversation with Chris about one of those dumb little things that nobody but us would know or care about. I hope we can keep that up some.


*Actually, yes I do, thanks to LJ tags. Three years almost to the day, on April 16, 2009.

Finally put the book-shaped treasure box I've been talking about on eBay, then forgot to say I had. There is no black velvet to be had in this house unless I wanted to tear up a nice dress, which I didn't, but I found a piece of lovely wine-colored velvet to photograph it on.