Five lobsters, lots of ketchup

hockey, fic, otters, boom

[thoughtportal]

[reblogthatartyoulike]

If you like this check out @wastelesscrafts

[wastelesscrafts]

This is a lovely example of how you can cover up a hole with embroidery!

One suggestion to make this mend last longer is to fix the hole first, for example by sewing on a small patch on the back or by darning it, and then adding the embroidery on top.

[klutcherov]

jonny comparing patrick’s work ethic to michael jordan | 06.08.20

[kiitoskime]

[peekaaboo]

[essouffle]

[klutcherov]

patrick kane on his chemistry with artemi panarin | 05.15.20

[hedgehog-moss]

In honour of this blog’s birthday I drew up a (non-exhaustive) list of the small moments I have chronicled on here, over my first year on this farm ♥

Spring & Summer

When mystery cows just showed up out of the forest one morning and stayed at my place for a few days (x) (x)

When the mayor told me I needed a prefectural authorisation to kill a dormouse (x)

When I was preparing for the llamas’ and donkey’s arrival (x) and the first picture I took of them in the pasture (x)

When I realised baby Pampe was a very dramatic llama child (x) 

When I realised baby Pampe was an unstoppable escape artist (x) (x)

When I made increasingly desperate attempts to keep this tiny llama in her pasture (x)

That time we caught my fugitive llama with the power of Abba (x)

When I first took the llamas for a walk, and baby Pampe just zoomed around for an hour (x)

When I discovered the purpose of a car cow stick (x)

When I was getting to know my new friends by feeding them random things and taking note of their personal taste (x)

When I introduced the cats to the grass eaters (x)

When I started making firewood (x) (x) (x)

When I visited baby Pandolf before bringing him home (x) and he was such a grotesquely fat puppy he couldn’t jump a 10cm obstacle (x) … and the day he joined the family (x)

When I first met the garbage deer (x)

My very stressful adventures trying to help my injured donkey (x)

Tales from the village: summer (x) (x) 

Autumn

First autumn rains (x) and autumn colours (x)

Pandolf’s first meeting with a llama (x)

When the postwoman refused to deliver my neighbour’s post because he was commercing with vultures (x)

My donkey’s very encouraging progress update, two months later (x)

My non-stressful adventures trying to deworm my llamas (x) and donkey (x) for the first time

When hay started to become a major part of my life (x) (x) (x)

When I had to hunt dormice myself because Morille went on strike (x)

Baby Pampe is growing up, is still a ridiculous baby (x) (x) who sometimes serves time in llama jail (10 minutes without parole) (x)

When I got surprise kittens (x) (x) (x) (x) and they slept in the oven (x) …and eventually left to be with their new families (x)

When I discovered moon wood (x)

When I was caught in an endless loop of fence-fixing during a storm (x)

Tales from the village: autumn (x) (x)

Winter

First touches of winter (x) (x) (x) (x)

That time a stupid gormless deer got tangled up in my electric fence in the middle of the night (x)

Pandolf’s new job as a mobile service provider (x)

When Pan took Puppy Lessons to learn how to be a good dog (x) (x)

Baby Pampe’s first snow! (x) 

And baby Pampe’s first Christmas, but she refused her tasty presents (x) (x) (Pandolf also wishes you a happy Christmas (x))

Four months later, teenage Pampe completely over snow (x)

When I met the local firesetter to learn how to set things on fire (x) (less exciting than it sounds, it’s a fairly meditative activity)

When Pandolf bravely saved us from a grass thief (x)

When I built the donkey’s shelter (x) and the chicken coop (x) (x)

Teaching my animals proper French manners (x)

Tales from the village: winter & early spring (x) (x) (x)

Miscellanies

Pampe and Pandolf: A beautiful friendship (x) (x) (x) (x)

Mascarille and the hay net: A love story (x) (x) (x) (x)

Pandolf and the kittens: A one-sided love story (x) (x)

Things found in the forest: lovely watery places (x) (x) a fairy path (x) the sentient moss (x) the legs of Baba Yaga’s house (x) a remarkable tree (x) mushrooms and other good things (x) (x) (x) (x)

Tales from the village: at the library (x) (x) and in pandemic times (x) (x)

And the story of how I bought this farm (x)

[sinaminion]

Mark Scheifele on Patrick Kane (x)

[ohhocka]

Jonathan gets asked about Brad Marchand, ends up gushing about Shawzy. In French :)

[pattytoews]

Look at those curls

[hedgehog-moss]

I don't know if you're doing book recs, but in case you are: do you have recs for books that feel cozy and comfortable? I realize this might seem vage, but I'm thinking about gentle prose and/or stories about women just living their lives.

That’s honestly one of my favourite genres, and I often have to fall back on letters or journals for this kind of serene daily life atmosphere, since novels insist on introducing conflict. Although low-stakes conflict is okay, or when you know exactly what to expect from an author and you trust that she will write and resolve conflict like an old lady knitting a sock, neatly and affably.

Ivy Compton-Burnett’s books are not for everyone, I think, as they are 90% dialogue and somewhat insubstantial, you don’t really remember what it was about once it’s over, only that it was irresistibly funny at times, and smart, like a very light pastry. Her books consist mostly of characters commenting on & analysing events that took place off-screen and they feel like a gentle mockery of the human species, I don’t know, I love her. I always suggest to start with Elders and Betters to see if you have a taste for her writing.

I like Patricia Wentworth’s Miss Silver crime novels, most of them are set in quaint British villages in the 1930s and they feel very snug and intimate and lovely despite being articulated around, well, a crime. Probably due to the fact that the crimes are solved by a kindly old lady detective. 

Rosamunde Pilcher’s novels are in the “you know exactly what to expect from this author” category—female characters, Cornish or Scottish countryside, a warm and tranquil atmosphere. I like The Shell Seekers because I like old lady protagonists. 

My favourite novel with an old lady protagonist is Elizabeth Moon’s Remnant Population, it’s technically science-fiction but doesn’t really feel like it. Humans have colonised a planet that turned out to be not so well-suited for colonisation, so they all decide to leave. The only person who remains is an old lady who secretly thinks it will be heaven to be left behind with this planet all to herself, after spending decades taking care of others and not living for herself. The book follows her daily life after everyone has left and feels very warm and peaceful, she is quite content and eventually discovers an alien life form that looks like strange intelligent birds, and befriends them. It’s lovely.

Becky Chambers’ novels are sci-fi that feels more like sci-fi, with spaceships and AI and stuff, but they are heartwarming, with interesting female protagonists and sweet endings. I liked Libration.

Lillian Beckwith’s The Hills is Lonely and Laura Cunningham’s A Place in the Country are two memoirs by women about going to live in the countryside, that were often very funny, had p much no conflict and were just whimsical, light-hearted vignettes of life.

Elizabeth von Arnim! The Enchanted April is enchanting and feels very happy. It’s about a woman who finds her life in England a bit dreary and decides to spend her savings on renting a mediaeval castle in Italy for a holiday, and finds three other women, through a newspaper ad, to accompany her and split the rent with her. A Solitary Summer and Elizabeth and her German Garden are also lovely, more diary-like and the latter more focused on gardening (as the title suggests).

If you like gardens, Dorothy Sucher’s The Invisible Garden is also nice; it starts when the author decides to buy a house because she fell in love with its garden and the little river running through it, and it follows her various (and sometimes failed) attempts to care for it, create a pond, a wildflower meadow; along with her thoughts about life & things. 

Edna Walling’s biography by Sara Hardy which I read earlier this year was also a lovely book about gardens—Edna was a very famous designer of gardens in 1930s Australia, who at one point bought a plot of land to fulfill her dream of creating a pretty landscape of little cottages with perfect gardens—it was an enjoyable, no-conflict biography.

Margaret Forster’s Keeping the World Away is at first about a female painter who paints a still life of a quiet little attic bedroom, and then it follows the women who successively own that painting over the next century, and who all somewhat long for a small peaceful space like this sunny attic room. It isn’t exactly happy but feels light and serene, kind of like the painting itself, which seems banal at first but then grows on you.

Three non-fiction books by women that I really liked: Arika Okrent’s In The Land of Invented Languages, Alexandra Horowitz’s On Looking, and Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Gathering Moss—all three were interesting and warm and sweet in the way nonfiction books are when the author feels affectionate towards her subject matter.

Rabih Alameddine’s An Unnecessary Woman is a bit different than the above recs, maybe less cosy-sweet (mainly due to its taking place in war-torn Beirut) but a very good book about a 70-something woman who used to work in a bookshop, happily lives alone, and each year starts a new translation of a literary classic into Arabic for her own private enjoyment. She isn’t always content but I liked reading her thoughts, the atmosphere of the book was calm and uneventful (in a good way), with a lot of literary reflection, and the ending was heartwarming.

(Lots of old lady characters in this list—they are often the ones that make for a peaceful gentle novel, because they have left all conflicts behind, like in Vita Sackville-West’s All Passion Spent, about a widow in her late 80s who wants to get away from her children and grandchildren and rent a pretty little house and finally live for herself)

May Sarton’s journals are very quiet and thoughtful. I like The House by the Sea, the one she wrote as she was living alone in a cottage by the sea with her little dog and her garden and her writing. 

I don’t think Mary Oliver needs to be rec’d at this point but House of Light is very, very lovely.

[hedgehog-moss]

Reblogging this because I find myself gravitating towards soothing books at the moment and maybe others do too.

[dawnfelagund]

101 Comment Starters

I began working on this last summer. Like many veteran fanfiction authors, I lament the decline in commenting that I’ve seen in my fandom, the Tolkien fandom. I’m also a humanities teacher, so I spend a good part of my day teaching young people how to write, and one lesson I’ve learned the hard way is that each type of writing involves unique skills that have to be learned. And commenting is a unique form of writing and one that comes with added stresses around social expectations and public performance. My research on the Tolkien fanfic community confirms this: Many people want to comment, but they simply don’t know what to say.

As a teacher of writing, I often use  sentence starters or mentor sentences. The writer uses these to jumpstart their thinking and writing, until they become comfortable enough to begin working independently. “101 Comment Starters” is built around this research-based strategy of teaching writing.

Some of the comment starters are simple enough that they can be merely copied and pasted. Others require filling in some blanks or providing some elaboration. In some cases, a because can be dropped if the reader isn’t comfortable providing that level of elaboration yet. In other cases, a more experienced commenter can add the because and elaborate more on their comment.

They also differ in their level of praise. They range from simple statements of how the author made the reader feel to compliments around an aspect of the author’s writing or their work in general. I’ve tried to limit words like really, very, and so as much as possible, except when it made the comment feel wooden. You’re welcome, of course, to add those words in if you feel they more accurately help capture how a story impacted you.

If you’re just starting to comment, please keep in mind that the vast majority of authors will love to hear from you! They don’t care how long or elaborate your comment is. They don’t care if your English is perfect or if you’re a little awkward. They just want to know that you’re reading and enjoying their work.

Finally, please feel free to reblog and share and add your own comment starters!

101 Comment Starters

Keep reading

[tenfifteenthirteen]

Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane are 𝟭 and 𝟯 All-Time in Shootout Goals. (x)

[deathbedscenes]

Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane on Spectator Plaza

[kanerboo]

A cute little 1988 moment from yesterday’s game against Columbus. I basically recorded my laptop screen from my phone so you know, it’s not great quality, but it’s very cute so I thought I’d share it anyway 😁

[captain-furious]

FANGIRL DOWN. SEND HELP. JONNY IS MAKING THE C FOR KANER. HELP.

[eternityinalake]

Epix Road to the Winter Classic: Kaner