bring me a bottle of good sake & you can read it
Originally uploaded by wrdnrd.

Cipher #2 is inching closer to finished.  I’m still hoping to be assembling copies this weekend, altho’ i do still have to do the page numbers/table of contents plus add 1 last detail page.  Those things are fairly straightforward (tho’ certainly tedious, in the case of the page numbering), so i’m hoping to get them done tonight so that i can start running copies of the contents tomorrow.

Things with the cover are still somewhat up in the air because i’ve been hoping to do them on my awesome mimeograph/duplicator, but last night when we tried out the e-stenciller (which will make the stencil version of the cover which i will then use on the duplicator to run off copies) we couldn’t get the mechanism to engage properly.  I’m hoping that Andy will be able to attack that in the next few days.

The prototype that you see in the picture is at least twice as thick than the finished zine will be — the prototype is full of double pages and layout tape and so forth.  But Cipher #2 will be a bit longer than Cipher #1 was.  And on the one hand that makes me happy, because i love a zine that i feel i can sink my teeth into.  But on the other hand, wow, did i get tired of doing all that layout.

I have a love/hate relationship with layout.  I enjoy doing it.  I love the challenge of making the text and the visual elements work together.  I love balancing everything against the negative space.  I even love the challenge of doing layout cut-and-paste style instead of with a computer program (whether it be a simple form for work using Microsoft Word or whether it’s a literary journal using InDesign).  It’s something i really enjoy.  Up to a point, and then i hate it with a passion that burns like a thousand fiery suns. Especially when i’m working with cut-and-paste layout, the process quickly crosses the line from being art and feeling fun to being factory piece-work and feeling like a drudge.  And since this issue of Cipher was so bloody long, by the end i began to entertain notions of not doing fancy layout for the next issue — just doing a very simple printout of everything from inside my word processing program.

One thing i did change with this issue of Cipher was the font size.  And i feel bad about it, because i know it’s making the zine longer by a small handful of pages, which could impact how much i charge for the thing (tho’, as always, i try to only charge what i need to in order to cover copying/mailing costs).  But when i was doing a proofreading pass using the font i’d selected, i realized it was hard for me to read.  Maybe i need new glasses, but i’m also not going to ask people to read my zines with a magnifier.  I still used the smallest font size i could.  I suspect the biggest difference is that i used a different typeface than i did for Cipher #1.  Perhaps i’ll have to do a little comparison between serif fonts for the next zine, see how each one looks at various sizes and see which one gives me best readability at the smallest, most efficient size.

Now that the typesetting geekery has scared away everyone but Jess, i’ll muse aloud a bit about a few potential giveaways when this zine is finally ready.  Just before i put it up for sale at Crabby Media, i think i’ll have a few quick questions for people to answer to try to win a free (free shipping, too!) copy of Cipher #2.  I have 2 questions in mind that will be for people who already have a copy of Cipher #1, and 1 question for people who just like making random guesses about numbers of things.

Stay tuned!

About a month ago i pulled apart a skirt i’d made back in 1999.  I think it was only the 3rd thing i made when i returned to sewing as an adult.  I could just imagine my grandmother rolling her eyes as i tediously pulled out every single seam, but i really wanted to save the skirt.

Tonight, finally, i had the time to sit down and sew it back to together.  I’d cut out the pattern pieces last month, too, but i’d just never gotten the hours-at-a-stretch block of time i needed to get the sewing done.

Simplicity #9569 -- made uncounted times

The pattern i used was this one: Simplicity #9569 (do not be deceived that the envelope says it’s a 2-hour pattern — the sewing alone took me FOUR).  I’ve made this pattern … lots. I’ve made it in 4 of the 6 styles, too.  I haven’t made either the straight- or A-line mini-skirt, because i don’t like wearing skirts that short anymore.  But i like the straight-line knee-length as a sophisticated skirt for work and i like the A-line knee-length for pretty much everything, but especially with t-shirts.  I’ve made the long straight-line skirt with swishy fabric (faux satin & faux velvet).  I did try a long straight-line skirt in a heavy fabric, thinking it would make a nice pencil skirt, but it didn’t — turned out to be hard to walk in even with side slits.  I’m going to chop it off to make a knee-length skirt.

The iteration i made tonight was the 1st long A-ling skirt.  The skirt i unsewed was originally a long A-line, but back when i started sewing i wanted things simple, so it was an elastic waistband.  Which was great for awhile, but these days i prefer clothes that fit my body a little better and the looseness of that skirt (and the other, oh, 7 i’d made to the same pattern) was starting to drive me nuts.  Also, i’ve gotten wicked good at putting in zippers.

Four of the 8 skirts have been / will be cut down into the long straight-line pattern.  Two have been cut down into A-line knee-length skirts.  There were just 2 left, and i wanted those to be long A-lines.  Now i have just 1 more to go.

finished skirt -- 1 down, 1 to go

Here’s the finished product — not looking so hot in part because i don’t have great lighting anywhere in the house for taking pictures of clothes, and also because my phone’s camera doesn’t have sharp colors.  You can sort of see that the waist still has a wrinkly effect from having lived as an elastic waistband for 10 years.  You can’t quite see that there is a slit on each side seam, to make it easier to walk.  Also, the 1 modification i make to this pattern is to make it a bandless skirt.  I like the smooth line of having no waistband.

The biggest reason this picture doesn’t look so hot, however, isn’t lighting or camera: it’s that the fabric is faded almost to nothing.  (Which also made the fabric flimsy and difficult to work with as i cut out the pattern and did the sewing.)  The skirt this cloth was originally made into was, as i said, 10 years old.  And the cloth was 10 years old before i ever made it into the original skirt in the 1st place.  I bought the cloth when i was still in high school because i absolutely fell in love with it.

And that’s why i wanted so badly to save the skirt and make it into something i’d want to continue to wear for awhile.  Because even tho’ the cloth looks like this these days:

faded cloth

Once upon a time, the cloth looked like this:

cloth in its original glory -- such rich colors!

When i’m coming down with a head cold, or even when i’m already full-blown sick, invariably some genius will say, “Maybe it’s just allergies.”

Here’s a newsflash:  I do actually know what a head cold is like!  Furthermore, it seems obvious — to me, but apparently can’t go without being said — that i do know my own body far better than you ever will.  Are you my doctor?  No.  Are you my spouse?  No.  Are you one of my best friends?  No!  Are you ME??  NO!!

Both head colds and allergies are fairly common things.  And i am 38 years old.  Why would you assume that by now i would not have a concept of how my body acts when i am either sick with a cold or dealing with an allergy attack?

I know people have this urge to keep a conversation going, an urge to say something in response to whatever has just been said.  Here’s a tip:  When someone says, “I have a head cold,” just say, “I’m sorry to hear that!  I hope you get better soon.”  Because second-guessing their understanding of their own body is just fucking insulting.

I was inclined to pick up this book based on Karen Healey’s quick review on her LiveJournal (you’ll have to scroll down to find it in the list):

It’s about the difficulty of hope, how terrible things happen for no reason, how the mechanics of poverty and oppression keep great people down, how they can be combated, and how faith – of many kinds, including in one’s God, in one’s self, and in one’s friends and allies – can be maintained, lost, regained, and blaze like a beacon for others. There’s barely any hints of romance.

Unfortunately, for me, it’s told in 1st person point-of-view, and i’ve found that with 1st person you have to actually like the narrator’s voice well enough to keep on.  And i didn’t.  Perhaps if i’d pressed on i’d have gotten past Amber’s irritating narrative stylings, but these days i don’t waste more time on a book than i have to.  Sorry, book!

One of my odd hobbies is picking up grammar advice books and seeing how long it takes me to get angry.

This book didn’t bring me to towering heights of rage.  In fact, in my skimming, the advice all seemed pretty solid and, more importantly, advice i agreed with.  The only thing that bothered me was the “devotional” format.  It’s a cute idea — a different bit of grammar advice for every day of the week.  But, personally, i’d rather my grammar advice be sensibly organized rather than presented in a quasi-religious format.

Not something i’ll be buying for my collection, but not bad to flip thru’.

This month i’ve been working fairly steadily on the final push to finish Cipher #2.  It seems like every zine-maker since the dawn of zine-time feels as tho’ they’re not putting out zines fast enough — how many intros have started with “I’m sorry this zine is so late?”  I had to squash that urge myself when i wrote the prologue to C2.  But what i’ve come to realize is that my pace, right now, is 1 zine every 2 years, finished in time for the Portland Zine Symposium.  I guess that’s not too bad.  I do kind of love having my zines debut at PZS because the Symposium was so instrumental to turning me into a zine-maker and it’s definitely one of the high points of my year (tied only with Wiscon).  I wish i could be debuting a zine at the Symposium every single year, but it does take me a long while to produce enough articles to put into a zine, and the editing/layout process is always a slow, tedious crawl thru’ Hell for me.  I think Dante went thru’ Hell faster than i can paste together a finished zine.

I guess i’ve always been like this — wanting a greater output to my name.  Back when i was writing poetry way more seriously than i am now [read the article in the forthcoming Cipher #2! (heh)] i’d complain to my dearest friend that i wished i were capable of producing as many poems as some of our other poem-writing friends.  She always gently reminded me that quality was infinitely to be preferred over quantity.  This is probably true — i’m sitting on enough crappy poems in my backlog as it is.  Why would i ever want more?

Talking so openly about working on C2, by the way, is making me slightly nervous.  One of my very, very few superstitions is that talking aloud about anything sensitive or important like this will instantly make the universe give me the exact opposite of what i was hoping would happen.  Want Cipher #2 to be ready to debut at the 2010 Portland Zine Symposium?  The surest way to have that not happen is to talk about it on my blog!  When i did the final layout and copying on Paragraph Girl i didn’t even tell Andy i was working on it — he was out of town on a business trip and i didn’t whisper a word to him when we’d talk on the phone.

Except this time i think that might not happen.  I’m actually feeling extraordinarily positive about putting together my zine.  The writing is finished except for 1 piece that has taken some serious editing (altho’ tuesday this week i think i found the final fix) and the epilogue.  I know exactly what i’m doing with the layout and design (for a change!).  I even have an idea for what i’d like to do for the single element of hand-touched design i like to add to my zines (each issue of Paragraph Girl and Cipher #1 had some rubber-stamping that was hand-done for each individual zine).  I’ve been so excited about working on C2 for the past few weeks that i’ve been blabbing about it on Twitter anyway, so it seems silly to leave wrdnrd.net out of the loop.

So i guess i’ll hit “publish” on this post and see what happens.  You better not fuck with me, universe!