James's Christmas quilt, launched.

James's Christmas quilt is designed. (I also have another design on tap now--I drew it first and I like it so much I think it's too nice to waste on James. Is that terrible?) It's going to be a sort of a graduated plaid design in his chosen colors, brown and purple and gold, with one-fourth of the plaid being not a color but an appliqued dragon. Did that make sense? Probably not. I'll put up pictures. First I've got to buy fabric, and draw a full-sized template for this dragon (and maybe learn how to draw), and decide whether I can cut out single patches for the applique or if I'll have to piece it and how to do the applique since it's just going to be cut up anyway.

I think it's interesting that my response to any quilting challenge is "I can do that; I just have to figure out how." I don't have that with my other skills. In knitting and cooking/baking I have faith in my ability to follow directions and perform a certain amount of improvisation, but I wouldn't try to figure out something truly unusual on my own. In writing I have faith I could do it eventually, but not necessarily now. In quilting, I have faith I can do it now, even if I don't immediately know how. I think I can call that master-level skill, even if my seams and color theory need a little work. Strange that it's this one that's come the farthest.

Now that I have a design, I need a name. I do not have master-level skill in naming things.

Writing, fiction and non

So I thought I had solved my problem with Shoelace by taking out a small but apparently key bit several scenes back. Only it turns out I didn't because there's a major logical flaw I missed while I was plotting this out and by rights the protagonist's semievil semiplot should be ending right here. Dammit. Now I don't know what to do. Maybe I can recruit the real villain to help me out.

In the meantime, I have been critiquing my brother's first writing assignment. Several weeks ago, he said, "I feel like my writing skills are getting worse. So I was wondering if maybe you could give me some assignments and help me out so I could practice." I found this utterly charming and assigned him three paragraphs on the history of ice cream. He sent me his three paragraphs a couple of days ago and it's evident that he needs some instruction along with practice. His grammar and sentence structure are fairly decent, but I get the feeling that he never quite got the idea that writing is used primarily for communication. I admit I did not explicitly say "This is a strictly informative, semi-formal essay" but it's my belief I shouldn't have had to. His essay is nonlinear, overly informal and joking, and isn't focusing on communicating information, even though that's what I asked him to do. I'm not sure what its focus is. I don't think he does either.

So I'm sending it back with a bunch of comments (and a couple of corrected commas and semicolons, but there are no misplaced apostrophes so I'm pleased there) and suggestions on how to improve it with reasons why they would improve it, and I'm going to ask him to revise it. After that, I have plans for more assignments to work on informative writing, persuasive writing, and descriptive writing, using examples he might actually use--memos to employees, cover letters, advertising copy, a letter to his daughter, and so on. I hope he's willing to stick with me enough to get through this. I think he could do really well at writing--I was talking to Mom about this and apparently she and a lot of her family have always been good at it; why didn't I know that before?--but he needs some guidance to get there.

I'm also bemused to find that while I still don't think I'd be a good teacher, I'm enjoying planning out lessons as a tutor. Luckily it's not fiction we're talking about, though, since I don't exactly feel qualified to teach about that these days.