galadhir

I knew what I was talking about when I said that the boat painting would be a 4-6 week job, because we are not finished yet. However, since stripping the paint off the roof and putting on the first layer of primer, we have at least achieved the following:

• put another layer of primer, three layers of undercoat and one layer of topcoat on the roof
• stripped both decks down to metal and given them two coats of primer
• stripped the starboard bow down to metal and given it two coats of primer
• stripped the starboard side down to metal and given it two layers of primer, three layers of undercoat and three layers of topcoat. Added decoration, registry number and name-plate

Still to do

• strip and repaint the second side
• strip and repaint the second bow
• strip and repaint both stern sections between the blacking and gunwale
• strip and repaint doors (three quarters done already.)
• two more coats of topcoat to go on the roof
• three layers of undercoat and three of topcoat to go on the decks (non-slip)
• strip and line water tank with food safe sealant paint

It seems like there's more to go than we've already done, but the side is the only really big thing to strip down, and that's where most of the pain and effort is required.

Mind you, it took me three days to do the decoration and signwriting alone, so we're not looking at being finished before at least August.

But, we finished the side enough to turn the boat around yesterday, so that we can now get to the other side from the walkway, and here is what we have done.

The old rusty livery I've posted before, turned into the new aqua, silver-grey and purple colour scheme with the new name and the eel :)

Apologies again for fading in and out so much more lengthily than on previous occasions. First there was the boat moving, and now there is the boat painting. All of which requires all electronic devices to be kept in a safe (inaccessible) place so they won't accidentally be dropped in the canal/river.

(We've already lost one phone, one powerbank and one pair of prescription glasses to the water, as they fell out of pockets and even off my face. Hopefully that lesson is learned.)

Catching up from the last post, we waited for three days for an engineer to come out to us. He was like 'well, I can do you a quick fix which is good enough to get you to a boatyard, but it won't be good enough for permanent use.' So he did that and we thanked him.

Then we cancelled the painting dock that we had been heading for, that we would not now be able to reach in time. They said 'Oh, I'm sorry to hear your news, but you can get it fixed and then re-book, no problem.' Which was great.

So we turned the boat around (again, very blessed to have had this happen within winching distance of a turning hole,) and headed a day's journey back upstream to Fox's boatyard in March. They took us in, said, "Yeah, we can fix that tomorrow," and then did fix it by 9.30 am the very next day.

We thought 'hurray! We'll re-book the painting dock and we can get there by Monday next week, with one week of DH's pre-booked holiday still to go and not too much time lost.'

So we phoned the painting dock to re-book and they said, 'Oh yeah, we're not doing that any more. Sorry.'

By this time we'd been travelling 6 hours a day for a month to try to get to this damn dock (a place which was covered so you could paint in the rain, there was access to both sides of the boat at once, and electricity on tap for power tools.) We had been two days travel away from the plan going like clockwork, and now we had nothing, and had moved the boat all this way for nothing.

We loudly expressed this to anyone who was listening. Which happened to be the guys from Fox's boatyard who had been fixing the tiller. They said "We have a painting dock, you know. I mean it doesn't have cover, so you'll have to stop when it rains, and you have to turn the boat around to get to the other side, but..."

We said, "Taken! Thanks!"

And now we are moored up at Fox's boatyard for the month, and we've spent a full week getting the paint off the roof. It is so thick it had to be scraped off with an angle-grinder, (while working in 30C heat) and it really needs a final sanding before we start to put paint back on it.

But we're due thunderstorms today, so last night we put a coat of rust-proofing oil on it, which should be dry by now, and we'll pick up with sanding the gutters and then the sides tomorrow when the weather should allow it again.

Amazing progress, considering the pit of despair we were in on Friday, and massive recommendations for Fox's boatyard and marina in March, who continue to be immensely friendly and helpful.

Lovely evening at the pub tonight. We (the Ely and Littleport Riot morris dancers, along with some strays from the Sutton Masque morris dancers) normally practice on Fridays and then go to the pub afterward, which means we have our musical instruments on us, and frequently we have a sort of mini-session while we're at it. Tonight, a couple who has just moved into the area were around too, and they were so visibly overjoyed and delighted to find a music session going on that it made the whole thing seem more special to us too.

She broke out a whistle and joined in with several of the tunes. He - being a harmonica player - had a go on one of our melodeons and discovered he was a natural on it. Then we cleared some of the tables and chairs out of the way and taught her one of our dances. According to him, she had not seemed so happy for years - and of course this made us all feel excellent too.

Of course we invited them along on any further Friday they might see fit to attend, and hope to see them around again (and maybe to recruit one or both to one or the other of the morris sides involved.) I guess it must be nice, when you have moved to a new area and don't know anyone, to come across a bunch of people playing, singing and dancing, who are eager to socialize with you. But honestly even if you are a bunch of people playing, singing and dancing, it's also really nice to meet new people who think of that as something special. Everyone, I think, had a jolly good time.

And on a lighter note, I have begun podficcing my own Oak and Willow, which conveniently has shortish chapters that I can both record and edit in a day. Much easier than having to record for an hour at a time!

Oak and Willow being the story of Celeborn and Galadriel during the First Age of Middle-earth, told from the Sindarin point of view, with digressions to cover the invention of writing, the first rising of the sun and the moon, and so much elvish racism and politics.

First three chapters up at Ao3

I can't remember who I was talking to about how nice it would be to have a community in which to share original fiction. Because the journey to writing a novel is a long, lonely one and sometimes it's nice to have a bit of company and support along the way.

I was going to make a new community for the purpose, but first I thought I should check to see if there was already anything of the sort. And it turns out that there is!

That community is originalfiction

It was last updated 26 weeks ago, and for at least a year or so has only had one visibly active member, duskpeterson but there are a lot of people signed up with it who might be persuaded out of seclusion if there was activity. So perhaps rather than reinvent the wheel, the thing to do is to sign up to that one?

Fading in and out again like I said I wouldn't. Ah well, I think I have to accept that I live up to my name (which means 'of the sea') and I'm always going to be tidal.

Partially this is because I am now writing and podficcing and trying to fit in signwriting practice, and really this is one creative activity too many in a day. I suspect that if the writing carries on, the podficcing will have to go.

Went down to the boat again on Saturday and accidentally discovered that the bilge pump had been disconnected and there was water in the bilges almost up to the base of the engine. DH managed to get it connected so we could use it on manual, and we pumped the water out, but it still isn't working on auto, so keep your fingers crossed that it doesn't fill up and sink before we can get back to it this Saturday.

On the plus side, Daughter got a cat!

I didn't think I would like a hairless cat, but I'm smitten. She's called Ember. She's two and had been used for breeding, but was being bullied by the other cats there, so the owner decided she needed to go to a better home.

She's so small and delicate, and very affectionate. She'll climb up to rub her head under your chin and purr all the time. And she does have a slight fuzz, so stroking her is more like petting a cat than like petting warm leather.

So I have not been on DW recently because I've been trying to write and podfic and practice my signwriting all at the same time and I had no energy left over. However, I do really feel like I'm back in the swing of writing (God willing) because here is another chapter of my Jin bros fic.

the same last name and the same colour eyes, Chapter three

In which Jin Guangyao attempts to lure Wei Wuxian over to the Jin side by the nefarious means of offering him a pardon and paying for the Wens to make it through the winter. Meanwhile, of course Jin Zixuan has eyes for nobody but Jiang Yanli.

Chapter Three is up here

In which Yanli teaches her husband to make dumplings, learns that he can dance, and gets delightfully drunk.

After many engine woes, and despite the fact that Jem at the boatyard still hasn't managed to fix the idle rate so that the boat will tick over in neutral, we went down to Bates Boatyard yesterday to pick up the boat and take it away.

It went into the boatyard in September, to have the hull fixed and blacked, and the sacrificial anodes replaced. They finished doing that in about a fortnight. After which they began on the indoor work. (Making the gas piping legal and safe, fixing the shower, replacing the batteries and installing an inverter that could handle heating water for the shower.)

They did all of that by November, and we were planning to get it back then, and looking for heated sheds we could rent to do the painting. And then - when they were checking the stove to make sure it was not emitting carbon monoxide, they discovered the roof was rusted through where the stove pipe went through. So now the boat had to go back into dry dock to have the roof welded.

At that point I think, they had a look at the engine, which we had noted could not be run in neutral without stalling out. This makes mooring up very difficult. So we had asked them if they could see a way to correct the engine's idle rate. Unfortunately, as they were investigating this, the engine overheated badly, and they realized the boat could not be moved and the engine would need to be stripped to find out the cause of the overheating.

(It turned out that a couple of the pistons had been put in upside down! There was literally nothing on this boat that had been done properly.)

Of course, they hadn't budgeted time for doing engine repairs on top of everything else. So now they were having to fit in trying to repair the engine around the other jobs they had scheduled. And now it was the deepest cold of the year, the boat was frozen in, and it had been there, unheated, unoccupied, for five whole months.

(Of course the pipes burst during that time, and the boatyard had to fix those too.)

Given all that. It really wasn't in that bad a nick when we got it back.

There were some signs that people had been walking around in it in dirty boots. Son had forgotten at any point to empty the toilet, which was now disgusting. (He has a capsule toilet, and we had to lift it out, including contents, and carry it to the car to be brought home to clean.) And a lot of the bedding was moldy.

Fortunately Son had decided not to go straight back to living on board, so we have brought the moldy stuff home to be washed/thrown out as appropriate.

We moved it down a flight of six locks and found a new mooring spot just outside Tring.

• Slight panic as the engine heated up and started smoking.
• back to the boatyard to ask about the smoke
• Jem looks at it and says it's probably just that the insulating wrappings around the exhaust pipe have got wet and are now steaming dry.
• we all agree that that's what it looks like too.
• Proceed with journey and are reassured that the smoking stops almost immediately.

The locks are only just open after being out of order over the winter, and we proceed through them in a measured and professional way. (Son at the tiller, Daughter and I manning the windlasses, opening and closing the locks.)

At the final lock a family with two small children, taking a walk along the towpath, come to watch the fun. Daughter and I explain how you have to wind the paddles of the gates up so that the water can come in and fill the lock; how you can only open the gates once the water level in the lock is the same as the water level under the boat.

We attempt to open the lock. It will not shift.

Twilight is falling. The countryside around us is silvery blue. A flight of geese passes overhead in a skirring 'v' formation.

Water is still coming into the lock, but the gates won't open. Daughter and I throw our whole backs and thighs into trying to push it. Onlookers' two children decide to help too and push with all their might while their parents look fondly on.

Eventually the parents join in too and are astonished to feel for themselves that it is just not possible to get these gates to budge.

Finally I think to myself "there's clearly still water coming in, so why isn't the water level equalizing?" and at that point I realize, "maybe it's because the water is going out through the lower gates?" I check the paddles on the lower gates, and sure enough the previous people who came this way have left them half way up.

Daughter and I roll them down, and before I can even get back to the gates, the two young infants have opened it all by themselves.

Major triumph for me and for two small children :)

That's the last lock and we're losing the light, so we moor up. I am feeling good, although exhausted. This is my first day covid -ve and it has involved quite a lot of heavy labour. Fortunately, there's a car park very close, so Daughter gets on Son's bicycle and cycles back down the towpath to fetch her car.

We load the car with moldy bedding and double-bin-bag-wrapped toilet. Then walk across the road and get a really nice, very spicy vegetable chilli and chips from the Angler's Retreat pub, before driving home.

Arrive home at 9.30pm ish with every fibromyalgic inch of my body protesting, feeling accomplished.

Today I can barely stand up, and I have promised to thoroughly wash out and bleach that toilet, but it was still worth it. It is so nice to finally have the boat back!

Working my way through Disney+ or actually working my way through Marvel and Star Wars, because if D+ had never absorbed those franchises, I would never have a lot of use for Disney itself.

Anyway, have now watched

1. Obi-Wan Kenobi, the series - was okay but nothing special. Watched the whole series mainly to finally see Qui-Gon come back as a Force ghost. And Oh Boy, they really did make me watch the whole series for it, as it happened about three seconds from the end. Solidly entertaining, but never going to set the world alight. It was nice to see Ewan McGregor back though.

2. Thor, Blood and Thunder. I followed the Thor comics back in the 1980s and Journey Into Mystery (the Loki comics) in the early 2020s, and was a big fan of the first Thor movie (wrote a lot of Loki fic), but I didn't like this. Thor came across as a big self-absorbed jerk, and I personally don't really find Taika Waititi's humour very funny. So yeah, it was very colourful but would not watch again.

3. Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness - honestly kind of boring, but then I don't really care about the Scarlet Witch, or the snap or any of that post Avengers stuff. Again, very colourful and pretty, but did not engage my emotions.

4. Ant Man - I really expected not to like this one, but surprisingly I enjoyed it a lot. The hero actually was likeable and his band of quirky sidekicks were lovable. I liked Hope very much and was glad that she will get her own suit in the next one. And the ants were like being continually in the middle of a herd of puppies. Will now go and watch Ant Man and the Wasp.

5. Wakanda Forever - I watched this first in the cinema, but it was nice to be able to see it again. It benefits from being on the big screen but it's still a fantastic movie even without that extra element of grandeur.

I'm enjoying catching up on all the Marvel movies I missed when I stopped going to see them at the cinema. I'm not really enjoying the Star Wars content all that much because it all feels very cookie-cutter and unimaginative, which is a great shame for a franchise that began by blowing the competition out of the water with its vision.

Any recommendations for what else I should watch while I still have my month's free subscription?

Thought I would make a list of all the things that bug me about RoP, because I need to vent to someone.

1. Male elves with short hair. Why is this really annoying? Because Tolkien went to the trouble of saying that their long hair is a sign of vigor and beauty for them. Finrod, Fingon, Fingolfin are all high Noldorin lords, and even their names revolve about how beautiful their hair is. In other words having long hair is very important in elvish culture. Why sacrifice that for no good reason?

2. Why do Celebrimbor and Gil-Galad look so much older than Galadriel, when in fact Celebrimbor is about the same age as her (?) and Gil-Galad is her nephew? And specifically, when canonically, elves do not show signs of age until they are absolutely ancient. Is this like 'oh no, how will they look properly authoritative if we don't make them middle aged?!' What about 'elves are immortal and beautiful' is so hard to understand? And why exactly are we not allowed to have beautiful elf lords but it's so vitally important to have beautiful elf ladies? (We know why, but I'm still rolling my eyes.)

3. How the f*#k does Gil-Galad have the authority to force Galadriel to go back to Valinor, when she is an Exile and her inability and the other Noldor's inability to go home is a huge, HUGE, important plot point throughout the Silm and LotR both. Way to completely miss one of the overarching tragedies of the entire Noldor people.

4. What is this nonsense about the elves all being about to die or forced to go back to Valinor without mithril? See above about how their Exile and their Oath is still making that completely impossible. Also, mithril is a precious metal that is more beautiful than silver and harder than steel - that's enough for it to be politically important and something that people covet. Way to turn it into yet another magical item and somehow absolve the elves and the dwarves both of the responsibility of their greed.

5. I mean there is a lot of stripping of the Silmarillion elves magnificent jerkishness. It's a different book from LotR and the Silmarillion elves are proud, ruthless, dangerous, sometimes murderous, but you would not know it from this series, where they all behave just like LotR elves.

6. There's no acknowledgement that there are different kingdoms and kinds of elves who are in strained diplomatic relations with each other. Where is there any awareness of the kind of politics that is going on in the Second Age?

7. Where is any awareness of what the beef between the elves and dwarves is actually about? Is it really better to present it as some kind of irrational prejudice, rather than the result of elves having hunted dwarves for sport in the past, and dwarves having sacked Doriath and killed King Thingol fairly recently? I know that introducing that would complicate the whole "elves and dwarves are all good people!" thing, but complication is what you get when you choose to tackle the Silmarillion, which is essentially Tolkien's Game of Thrones.

8. Argh! How is it that Celebrimbor, who is a master smith, doesn't know how ores work? For goodness sake, people, make some attempt to depict forging accurately in a story where smithcraft is also a huge plot point.

9. Galadriel was in effing Lorien when the three rings were made.

10. Forever sore that we did not get the story of Celebrimbor usurping the rule of Eregion from Celeborn and Galadriel that we should have got, which lead to Galadriel and Celebrian fleeing Eregion through Khazad-Dum to go and prepare a refuge in Lorenindorinan. While Celeborn stayed in Eregion and was on hand to fight Sauron when he revealed himself and came against Eregion with an army and the body of Celebrimbor impaled on a pole as his standard. Instead we get this wishy-washy crap where the entire army of Numenor decides to go and rescue a small village in (what will become) Mordor, despite the fact that nobody on the spot has even asked for aid.

Am I less annoyed now that I've got this all out? No, not really.

Here is a series of blogs by an actual historian talking about the many things that annoyed him

It being the day before Candlemas today, I've taken my Christmas decorations down. As we're both suffering from covid, this took the form of 'takes down tinsel, rests for two hours, takes down tree, rests for another two hours, takes ornaments off the tree outside, rests again.'

It's all down and packed up now, but goodness knows how long it will be before we get the boxes upstairs to the attic.

I'm having a little rest atm, but when I can, I'll put the this is not a Christmas tree, it's a spring tree" up.

This, along with a single string of white fairy lights, is my 'something around here has to be bright and beautiful until the flowers come back' mental health resource until it gets light and bright enough outside for me to feel I don't need it.

February is the longest month of the year (we don't usually get even snowdrops til March) and this really helps get through it.

Fandom Wrap Challenge

Everyone seems to have jumped on the 'wrap' bandwagon after Spotify has been doing it for all these years. I got 'wraps' from Reddit, Duolingo, Tumblr, and more. We don't have any scientific algorithms here, but we can do what we do best - estimate and make stuff up to fill in the holes!

Presenting the snowflake_challenge's Fandom Wrap! Fill in your top 5 (or less. Or more, we're not picky) in each category. If you'd like to make up your own top 5 category, please do!

What were your top 5 fandoms for 2022 based on the amount of time you interacted with them?

1. I started the year still with General Hux (Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Kylux and Gingerpilot) where I was writing fanfic.
2. then I wandered off to read a lot of stuff in the Murderbot fandom, while mostly lurking
3. and a bit of stuff in The Goblin Emperor, where I also lurked
4. The Untamed came in hard at the end of the year, and I tried a bit of fanfic but have mostly contributed by podficcing 5.

What were your top 5 fandom spaces (Discord, Twitter, etc.) you experienced fandom in terms of time spent?

1. The year started on Tumblr, where I had a nice little community of people who discussed the First Order with me. But they all drifted off to other fandoms.
2. after which I tried to get into Mastodon (where I already had an account from three years ago when my fandom was permaculture.) But kept drifting back to Tumblr for the instant dopamine response and the fact that I didn't have to put much effort in.
3. Briefly tried to get into The Untamed fandom on Twitter, just before Twitter went nuclear
4. Eventually decided that if fandom places were all doomed to collapse, I would come back to DW, which had survived ever since LJ went down and looked like a good candidate for a social-media-of-our-own

What are the top 5 things you did to contribute to fandom in terms of time? Did you write? Comment? Send positive energy into the universe? Create art?

1. I'm in the grip of crippling writers' block and hadn't found another way of contributing until I discovered podficcing. Late in the year I did discover podficcing, and I've been doing that since September
2. I do comment when I have the spoons to do so
3. Occasionally I make icons, but as they are for really obscure fandoms I mostly end up using them myself

What were your top 5 most appreciated fandom contributions? (i.e. in terms of likes, kudos, reblogs, comments, etc.)

1. Definitely the podfic of Last of Our Kind by Shiome. She has been a huge support and cheerleader, and I've had a lot more comments than I ever imagined.

Have a Top 5 List you'd like to share?? By all means!

Media I can remember and enjoyed from 2022 (some of which was watched on Netflix)

1. Wakanda Forever (briefly thought about writing Namor/M'Baku, but see above re writer's block)
2. The Untamed (attempted to write for this too and managed a single short. Then gave up.)
3. Warrior Nun (fun enough)
4. Winx Club (also fun enough)
5. Amazon's Rings of Power - made me wish to start writing Celeborn again, out of spite, but did not actually manage to make me do so.

Just watched the last of Amazon's Rings of Power. Good God, they really did just make the whole thing up, didn't they?

What kind of hellworld do we live in that a big corporation can spend millions just to buy rights to a deeply beloved book so it can comprehensively misrepresent it in the most expensive way possible? I can't even call it fanfiction because whoever wrote this can't have actually been a fan.

Why couldn't they have written a story that they did have the rights to? And then they could have made something that could have lived with the actual canon.

GDI Amazon.

Cover reveal for the new Murderbot book, System Collapse!

Well that title doesn't sound ominous at all!

Now that I'm spending most of my social media time here instead of on Tumblr, I figured it was time to support DW with a paid subscription. As a result, I have lots more icon slots. Hurray!

So it was time to make more icons. And as your_favourites were running a competition with a theme of 'favourite hairstyles' I thought I would combine icon making with taking part in a community for a change. But I also thought I'd post them here for anyone who wasn't part of that community.

Two buzzcuts sported by Colonel Young and Lieutenant Scott of Stargate SGU. And two different ways to wear Nie braids, by Meng Yao and Nie Mingjue.

Argh! So fed up of people misgendering Murderbot! So fed up in fact that I just left a long comment on a YouTube video to that effect. The guy had done a long video enthusing about how great the Murderbot diaries were - which was great - but calling MB 'he' throughout. And clearly someone had challenged him on it before because he had a bit about how it was agender and he knew of a lot of people who called it 'she' because they identified with it more that way.

Meanwhile I'm like "It calls itself 'it'! It calls itself 'it' consistently throughout every single book, so what about that indicates that its pronouns are anything other than 'it'?

Why do so many people see a character who is vocal about having no gender and no sexuality, and who calls itself 'it' through five different books, and think "oh, clearly I can call this character 'him' or 'her' or even 'they' according to my whim?"

I'm just like, what kind of reading comprehension do you have if you ignore every single time the character is referred to throughout its own series, in favour of choosing a pronoun to suit yourself? What kind of entitlement? As a fellow agender person it absolutely infuriates me.

DH expressed bafflement as to how I could continue to work outside in the conservatory, with snow on the ground while either sewing or signpainting. It's the only place we've got a big enough table to do these things, but it's completely unheated, whereas he tends to feel cold while sitting upstairs in the spare bedroom/office.

I said my secret was the banyan (18th Century house coat) I had made for myself many years ago when I found myself cold in the house. Then I said I would make him one too. ( Read more... )

In your own space, post the results of your fandom scavenger hunt. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

Search in your current space, whether brick-and-mortar or digital. Post a picture or description of something that is or represents:

1. A favorite character

Oddly I still have a really deep fondness for this guy - Colonel Everett Young from Stargate SGU, who is an absolute disaster, but by God he tries hard. ( Read more... )

• Transformative Works Policy: [what is it, where is it posted]


I'm not sure I have anything as grand as a policy, but on Ao3 I do say "If anything I write makes you want to write or draw your own stuff, feel free. Likewise if you'd like to include it in a podcast or podfic it. I would be completely flattered and would love to hear about it."


• Current Passion [not necessarily fandom or fannish, but anything that takes up your time and thoughts - e.g. knitting, interpretive dance, meta about a movie that doesn't exist, or you know, one that does]


My blorbo of the moment is Jin Guangyao, and I am gnawing my way through every fic on Ao3 that contains him like the very hungry caterpillar through a leaf. (Skipping the ones in which he is a moustache twirling villain.) Then I'm podficcing my favourites.

Having had a professional writing career and burning out, I'm now trying to retrain as a signwriter, so that's something I try to practice every day. I'm also trying to learn to play the melodeon. And in my spare spare time I can be found morris dancing. This year I imagine there will also be a lot of narrowboat-fettling as I try to help my son make his boat livable.


• Where to Find Me: [what platform do you use the most, or what platform do you use for different purposes?]


I use Tumblr when I just want to scroll through pretty things and rest my brain, Dreamwidth when I want to actually interact with people, and Mastodon mainly because I like the idea of decentralized internet, but I've not really connected with it.


• Master List: [for fic, for art, for recs, or anything else]


Fic and podfic are on Ao3
For everything else, I have a Website Of My Own at Galadhir's Home On The Net

• Anything Else: [anything else you'd like to include]