that someone carved your name into the tarnished silver key

This is mostly for Sir Edward, but it's put me in mind of the current Clockwork project of Mr. Allen's, a clockwork girl, a la Metropolis...sort of. Much more ornate, much more Steampunk.

If he figures out how to display her, do come by the store and see. She's wearable. :)

Tonight, I--with the help of Mr. Sands for the actual smoke column--made a chimney for the house!



Or, well, made a chimney *pipe*--I truly couldn't figure out how to fully extend a brick chimney without obscuring the stained glass panel.

It's funny, you know, puttering about the house gives me a great deal of time to think. And the whole round of packing, moving, finding those dusty boxes in some far-off place of storage, unpacking things and wondering if they'll fit the new structure...

Being me? I found this:



build my house of baling wire and bones
small frosted glistening shapes of sea glass
twigs and feathers, carved fetishes
arching mastodon ribs and darting eyes
make a door of cedar and barbed wire
strips of salted leather and broken timepieces
videotape streamers and scorched red ribbons
twisted rusted rebar and skulls

tattered silks and cottons to line the interior
between layers of acacia thorns and suture wire
old sections of vintage quilts and beaded draperies
embroidered denim and soft cotton batting
handfuls of caltrops scattered through the substructure
carded Shetland wool and hand-dyed felt
pull all around me, nest inside and
wait for someone to get past the outer defenses
wait to see if they can make it through
without spilling a drop on the cottons

The more things change, the more they stay the same. I wrote that 3 January, 2003. I still behave like that, in large measure. All I can say to help, from the perspective of self-knowledge, is...once one finds a way to get in, things generally open up.

But I make it hellishly difficult for anyone to get in...and I have ridiculous expectations if mistakes are made. Even if I'm the one making the mistakes.

But the tower is finally finished:



I think part of the fretting over the house, honestly? Traces to two distinct things:

A, and first: My knowledge of period Victorian architecture can quite likely be carved painlessly on one prim thumbnail. My knowledge of house design picks up around the turn of the last century or so.

B, and second: I have agreed to live with three loves over the course of my life on the grid. In all three cases, the relationship--for likely disconnected reasons, but I am a superstitious sort--detonated soon after. Once through death; once through volcanic dissolution; and the last, through slow attrition.

I'm nervy over losing the loves I have simply because I said yes, let us make a home together.

Which is part of why I'm making the home. If I can't make one we like, if I can't make one that reflects my love for them--in whatever bizarrely odd way it's currently manifesting--then we have no hope anyway.

So I'm fretting over the house, making sure everything lines up, checking texture after texture, tracking down windows, tracking down woods. Making sure. Because I need to be sure.

I think, sooner or later, I'll relax. Until then I'll be the one in the corner with the paintbrush and the nails in her mouth.