wild for to hold

Watching: The Summer Hikaru Died (sooo good! I'm only 7 episodes in & can't wait to find out what happens next!). Murderbot rewatch number... 4? 5? Something like that.

Reading: Red Traitor by Owen Matthews. Also just started Network Effect by Martha Wells (I'm scaaared, you guys, lmao). And copious amounts of Gurathin-centric fanfic.

Listening: The White Vault S3. It's so spooky!

Playing: Hollow Knight: Silksong. I've only known Sherma for a week, but if anything happened to him I would kill everyone in this room.

Making: PetiteKnit's Moby sweater, attempt 3. The 1898 Hat. A Suzette stitch crochet blanket. A whole bunch of socks.

Feeling: sort of overwhelmed with all my to do lists, tbh, and perpetually falling behind on everything. But at the same time, I feel a bit more grounded than I have in weeks, and my ever-present executive dysfunction/lack of motivation is a little better than usual too!

Planning: to write more soon! I need to get back into it. I've only taken a few notes here and there for months. I have so many Murderbot fanfic ideas that need to see the light of day.

Loving: the 100% Merino wool base layer my Mom gifted me for my birthday! Toasty and warm! It's -4°C today (24F) here. Brrr.

This week has been a good one. Both of my Swedish classes were remote because public transport services are on strike again, but I was actually kind of glad for that because it meant I did not have to leave the house in -9 degree weather (16°F).

I did a lot of knitting and reading. My first project of the year is a pair of wrist warmers knitted with leftover sock yarn, and I'm very happy with how they turned out!

( A photo )

I also finished reading The Mysterious Mr. Quin by Agatha Christie. It was recommended to me by my wonderful girlfriend, plutodetective, and I really enjoyed reading it! I haven't read any Agatha Christie since university, and it was nice to get back to her.
( Some spoilery thoughts )

Finishing this book gave me some reading momentum, so I am going to take another shot at finishing The Return of the King. I'm aiming for 1 chapter per day. So far it's going well, but this is day 1 xD.

Last week I made a somewhat ambitious to-do list, and on Monday I was already like "haha nope," but then I managed to accomplish quite a few things (baking, writing, tidying, sewing prep). \o/

My new fridge is here and I really love it. I had some OCD struggles about the change™ but I think I'm past that now. It is so lovely to have so much space to store my food. It'll make meal prep & eating healthier so much easier!

In the spirit of writing short & sweet things (instead of 20k+ stuff that never gets finished), I've asked plutodetective for Garashir prompts, and she has already given me some absolutely stellar ideas. I can't, y'all. I have so many feelings and only two hands to write all the things I want to write (clearly it is time to attach robot arms). <3

The Winter Olympics are over! :( But the Paralympics start soon, and I hope they'll be streamable here too. :) My Olympics sweater came along nicely; I have not yet reached the end of my raglan seams, but for now I'm ok with slow progress. My yarn is so beautiful that every stitch makes me happy. I've already had to write down multiple ideas for other sweaters. I really need to finish something before I cast on yet another new project, though! :'D

I started playing Sekiro again, woop woop! At first I tried to get back into it with my older save (I got stuck on top of Ashina castle because of Genichiro), but the relearning curve was so steep that I ended up creating a new save instead. I've already reached the Hirata Estate! This game is so much fun to play, and not as frustrating as I remember it. Maybe I've grown as a person since 2019 lol. I was a bit worried that gaming would aggravate my wrist pain, but when I wear my splints I can play for well over an hour with no issues.

Also, I am so in love with Wolf and Kuro's relationship. Families of choice FTW (also bodyguard/client bonds)! I still don't really understand the timeline of their adventures, but I hear Vaatividya on Youtube has created some excellent lore analyses, so I'm going to watch those soon and hope they'll shed some light on things.

(Is this a good moment to shamelessly plug the Sekiro fic I wrote ages ago? Yes.)

To-do list for next week:

• finish reading A Stitch in Time
• keep editing/writing Garashir fic
• dust plants!
• make couscous salad
• 2 zoom meetings with the writing group
• Swedish phone call! eek gotta brush up on my adjectives
• play more Sekiro & perhaps take a peek at my old fanfic WIPs

I. We finished watching Deep Space Nine--all 7 seasons! Woop woop! I'm both happy and sad. Somewhat relieved that it's over because especially S6+7 had some persistent bits I didn't like, but also sad because... whatever will we do with our evenings now?! (We still have a very full to watch list. We'll find something.)

II. I bought 2 skeins of Drops Soft Tweed in 'grizzly'. Originally I just wanted to make a cowl, but honestly, I am so deeply in love with the color and the feel that I need to make a sweater out of it. It's somewhat brighter than shown on the website & overall just stunning. I cast on the neck band yesterday (using a cast-on method with scrap yarn I've never used before), and I must have tensed up a lot, because this morning my hands were hurting. :'D So I've been resting them today.

III. Writing-wise, I am working on & dabbling in:
• a mid-episode Garashir thing for Dr. Bashir I Presume (5x16)
• two post-The Wire (2x22) one-shots
• extremely self-indulgent de-aging fic
• something about Garak, Julian, nightmares, and sharing a bed
• a Julian-and-Jadzia one-shot
• Weyoun 6 fic
This is just what happens when I'm enamored with a new fandom! I'm really excited about the first one; I'd say the first draft is about 60% finished. Most of it just exploded out of me over the past 2 weeks. I have now reached the parts that are a bit tougher to write, plus some anxiety is catching up with me & I wonder if I have the skill to create this thing the way I want it to be. I'm going to keep at it and hope for the best.

IV. I bought a book the other day--an actual paperback book: Spares by Michael Marshall Smith. I read it for the first time during middle school and became totally obsessed with the story! I remember the book very fondly, and I'm excited to see what I think of it now, about 15 years later. Back then I was vaguely annoyed with the ending, I think, though I can't recall any details, and I'm excited to see what I'll make of it this time around.

In some ways it feels like reading an entirely new book. I don't remember a whole lot, and I've now bought the English edition, whereas I read a German translation as a teenager.

V. Earlier today I was feeling a little down on myself, and stumbled across a TED talk by cmdr_hadfield: What I Learned From Going Blind In Space. I highly recommend it to absolutely everyone, regardless of whether you find astronauts interesting. There were so many great quotes, but my favorite by far was, 'The danger is entirely different than the fear.' Very applicable to my struggle with OCD. I'm so grateful to have found this quote, and such a calm, uplifting message, somewhere I hadn't thought to look for support. <3

✈ My roommate and I just watched Castlevania S4 and we're both emotionally destroyed now. It was SO GOOD. No spoilers, also because I can't even put any thoughts into words yet, but oh my God. Oh, God. FFFFFUUUU-- I'm so happy. The ending was perfect imo. <3

✈ Got my first shot of the covid vaccine last Friday! I was super nervous before the appointment itself, and double-triple-checked if I had all my paperwork in order, but everyone at the center was really nice and patient with me. Aside from a sore arm, I felt no ill effects at all, though I've heard the second shot hits you harder. My second appointment is in June. I will be SO freaking relieved once that's in the bag.

✈ My crafting has slowed down a bit. I'm joining lots of granny squares for my blanket & discovered I don't have enough yellow yarn to finish the stripes... so I may have to buy some after all, although I inteded for the blanket to be a stash-busting project.

I recently had to frog a big section of my Rosewood scarf because I'd dropped a stitch--half a stitch?--a couple rows down. I tried to ladder it back up, but just made it much worse until I decided to unravel to just below the dropped stitch. Then I discovered that picking Fisherman's Rib stitches back up is a pain in the ass, and essentially had to knit & twist every single stitch individually because I couldn't figure out how to do it all in one go. But the scarf is back on track now. \o/

✈ Fandom-wise, I'm back in MCU hell, currently reading a lot of Steve/Tony fic, trying to comment more, and somehow... collecting Darcy/Bucky and Steve/Bucky plot bunnies like I'm running a shelter. I've started writing some of both, and it's at the same time daunting and fun; I've never written MCU fic before, but I really want to try, so I hope that something publishable will come out of this. My main WIP, if it can be called that, is a post-CATWS Darcy/Bucky fic where the Winter Soldier pretends to remember his past life & Darcy finds out about his deception. Also, HYDRA chases him relentlessly while brandishing the trigger words. At one point it'll involve one of my favorite tropes of all time: a roadtrip where Darcy and the Soldier run from HYDRA together. There shall be seedy motels, only one bed, long hours on the road, near-misses with their pursuers, and lots of pining. \o/?

The Steve/Bucky I'm writing is pure, potentially embarrassing self-indulgence: they roleplay an encounter in which Steve 'saves' the Soldier and helps him remember his past. Look, I just write what my downstairs brain wants to read. I don't make the rules here. (That's a lie, I'm actually quite embarrassed for no good reason. But I really want to teach myself to feel less shame about the fluffy h/c fics I want to write. It's not even ~problematique~ content, ffs, I don't understand what I'm so scared of being judged for.

✈ I picked up Hollow Knight again, but I started a new playthrough because I'm frustratingly stuck on the Traitor Lord in my original one. :'D My main goal with round 2 was to get the Dream Nail asap, which worked out surprisingly well, and I had the pleasure of dream-nailing Hornet during our first fight. I also beat her on the first try??! The learning curve is amazing, considering how long I was stuck on her the first time.

✈ Resident Evil 8 is FANTASTIC. I'm watching jacksepticeye play it & so far I love almost every single thing about it; it's the first RE game I've felt the urge to play myself. The environments are stunningly beautiful & I want to take many screenshots & repaint them with gouache. <3 I love Ethan & Mia--I squee'd quite loudly when they revealed 8 would be a sequel to 7 just because I liked them so much. So far, the character that gave me the most feels was Moreau. ;_; I wanted to adopt him and shower him with love, okay. Mother Miranda can suck an egg.

✈ I've somewhat gotten into the habit of taking walks. I stopped running some time last year, and I haven't been able to kick myself back in gear so far, but I thought taking walks is better than nothing! I've downloaded a step-counting app on my phone & it's surprisingly motivational.

✈ Song rec! Baby Don't You Lie To Me by The Fratellis. ♥ I'm currently rediscovering The Fratellis; their music accompanied me through uni, but I hadn't really checked out their newer stuff, which I'm doing now. Most of it is SO GOOD. The urge to learn how to play the guitar is largely foreign to me, but I feel it when I listen to their music. :D

Knitting!!! ♥ I did not touch a single knitting needle for 2 years, and then I Marie Kondo'd my frankly ridiculous yarn stash & suddenly felt a burning need to bring back the simple coziness of Making Something Soft, swearing profusely while I drop more stitches than I have adult responsibilities.

Current stash-busting projects: a moss stitch scarf for a dear friend that's almost finished, only missing some pompoms; a colorful garter stitch scarf for my mom; my first attempt at knitting cables... and a mostly-finished raglan sweater from years ago that I'm frogging completely because it no longer fits me. Press F in chat to pay respects.

The Mandalorian ♥ (S2 spoilers ahead!) My dudes, it is SO wonderful to share a fandom with my roommate again?! Especially since they're not usually interested in Star Wars at all. But the show is so fantastic that it's no wonder it drew them in. We binged episodes 1-15 in the weeks leading up to Christmas & had to wait a week for the last one, a time during which we yelled, "HE TOOK THE HELMET OFF!!?" at each other at random intervals & lost our collective shit every time. The S2 finale aired on my birthday & I can't believe my heart was shattered by a bounty hunter and an omnivorous gremlin. 11/10, highly recommended.

Writing ♥ Watching Mando has well and truly lit a fire under my ass & my plot bunnies are procreating like... well, like rabbits. I'm embroiled in several WIPs, all of them terribly fluffy. I also participated in my first-ever fic exchange in December & had a ton of fun! ... Plus I watched the Hitman movie (yes, the legendary pile of shit) and oh my God I hadn't expected to be hit this hard by Nika Boronina feels, but here we fucking are. I have 2 WIPs, one plot-heavy story & one that's just me collecting post-movie headcanons about how her relationship with Agent 47 might progress.

( Fics I wrote )

( Recs )