In the Bag

I know, I know, a green post is so boring after all the weeping and gnashing of teeth and other stuff that comes with this time of year at Cheekyness. Hop back a few days and read some sad things, if it makes you feel better.

Finding a plastic bag photo was more challenging
than I anticipated. Apparently there are not a lot of
photographers doing still life of grocery bags.
Source: Mentor Public Library.

Today, let's talk shopping bags. Specifically, the flimsy plastic kind they give you at the checkout. If you're very lucky and the cashier is in the right kind of mood, you might get one bag for each item. (Tangent: my grandma hates it when I refuse a bag for one item and just carry it out. She's convinced I'm going to get arrested, even though I usually have the receipt in the same hand. Going to the store with her is an adventure.) So, what to do with all of them?

The first thing to remember is not to put it into the trash. The only time you would ever need to trash one of these bags is if your raw meat leaked icky juices all over it. A little bit of condensation from your cold/frozen items, though, is not a good reason to throw the bag out. Let it air dry; it's fine.

The pre-first thing to remember is to take your own reusable bags (which you are properly washing every couple weeks, of course), but for the sake of this post we're imagining that you forgot them all at home. Put them somewhere where you won't forget next time, then read on.

These suggestions are in order from the least amount of effort to the most. Determine your energy level and then go:

1. Use them as liners for your small trash cans.
You probably don't have enough trash to use all of your bags this way, and will end up with a surplus. Not to worry; just move on to the next step(s) with the rest.

2. Ready-made lunch bag.
It has handles and everything! Of course, if you're like me and have managed to accumulate more reusable bags than you can possibly put groceries in, then you may have a more permanent lunch bag already. Moving on to...

3. Take them back to the store.
Just about every supermarket in America has a collection bin at the front of the store for used bags. Good news: You can also put other soft plastics, like your bread bags, into those bins. They'll take bags from other stores, the plastic that covers your dry cleaning, and pretty much any thin plastic. Do make sure that it's clean--this is not a place for potato-salad-encrusted Saran wrap. And if you are returning a bag with a zip top, remove the zipper first.

You can also take them back to the store the other way--by taking them all the way in for reuse to carry your groceries home a second time. More power to you.

4. Donate them somewhere not at the store.
This may be a bit trickier, but a little bit of Googling should reveal local organizations that will either use a plastic bag or turn it into something else. Here in Cincinnati, there's an org that makes them into sleeping mats for homeless folks. This is a pretty common thing--try your local American Legion Auxiliary if you can't think of anyone else. Not every Auxiliary does it, but the ones who do make the mats exclusively for homeless vets. Anyone who makes things out of bags will be happy to take your (clean and dry) unwanted stock.

5. Make your own reusable bag.
This one is just off-the-wall enough to be true. It involves some melting and sewing, depending on the tutorial you use, but might be a fun activity with kids who are old enough to assist. Here's a video to get you started.

6. Make your own many other things.
Remember those bread bag rugs all our grandmas and aunts were making in the 80s? Want to try one of those mats for the homeless I mentioned earlier? Need some non-wilty flowers in a hurry? The world of instructables is wide open to you, friend. Have a good time.

Seriously. Don't throw those bags away. There's no reason to send them to a landfill when they have so many other potential uses.

What else do you have in your house that might need a second life?

Strands of a Life

Legacy may be planting seeds in a garden you never get to see, but that doesn't tell us what to do with the gardens that are left to us. What we leave behind matters. But so does what we do with what's been left.

An old episode of Theatre People caught my ear recently, when Jeanine Tesori said, "A lot of the middle ages is taking the strands of your family's history and trying to decide what you're going to use in your own embroidery." I may not be quite to the middle ages just yet, but choosing my own strands is a thing I'm definitely thinking about this week.

Some literal family embroidery--my
grandmother's. This is a thread of hers that
is also in me. The fact that we shared this
was the sort of thing she might have
mentioned while she was still alive.

Some strands I left behind long before it even occurred to me that that's what I was doing, when straight out of high school I decided I needed to move away from my family and its history and see what I could embroider on a clean canvas. I brought them with me, though, with the needing things just so and the snark and the hanging onto things because I'll find a use for them later, plus wherever the writing thing came from.

My grandfather's nickname in his final years was "Mr. Wonderful," because whenever anyone asked him how he was, he would say, "Wonderful." He said that to me when I saw him the last time in the hospital--I walked in when he was alone, he grinned the same smile that my mother and uncles and brother all inherited, but not me--I said, "How are you, Grandpa?" and took his hand. He said, "Wonderful," before telling me he was in too much pain for me to hold his hand like that.

My Chadwick greeted the world with arms and heart open every day. I said of my uncle's passing earlier this week, "the world just got a little less kind and open-hearted." The pieces of my family's thread that are already in me are so deeply embedded that I don't even have to think about them, I can't even see them most of the time, but this open-heartedness and embrace of the world and everyone in it--those are threads I have to fight for. They aren't in me, because I have, at least somewhat from necessity, closed off my heart. I wonder what I'm missing, what kind of tapestry I could be making, if I could access those threads that I've left in the box for now. Who knows how my embroidery will change as the years go by?

I can't use all my family's thread. And I certainly don't want to. We have some ugly colours that I've purposely avoided, because that's not the kind of legacy I want to leave behind. And I've added some that are just me, which means leaving even more of everyone else in the box. 

What threads are you using?

The Replacements

Ash Wednesday is upon us. Not ready? It's not too late. Really. I've started late a few times, and had to re-start more often than that. Tomorrow is always a new day.

So! I'm not sharing my fast, because I don't. And this year's fast was really quite an easy choice. The more difficult preparation for me was deciding what to do instead.

I will definitely fall into this hole if given half a chance.
Source: Asif Akbar on freeimages.com.

Maybe other people don't have this problem. If you don't, I salute you and hope you'll write your own blog post about how you succeed. But for me, I can't just take things away and be done with it. I have to have something to fill the space, or the same old things will fall in again when I'm not looking. If I want a change to stick, even if I decide this one is only for the next six weeks, then I need a smooth surface to build on, not one riddled with potholes.

My process was pretty simple: I looked around and thought, "What are some things I've been neglecting that I can give attention to during Lent?" I'm going so far as to create myself a pretty list to hang up on my wall for when my brain starts getting tugged in the direction of something that's off the table until Easter, because I will forget without something there to remind me. I have, it seems, learned some tricks for accommodating the gaping holes in this brain of mine. This is similar to my practice of not bringing chocolate into the house so I won't eat a ton of it in one sitting, except from the opposite direction.

Here's what I came up with:
1. Reading
Kevin Tuerff's Channel of Peace is on my shelf and ready to go. I have Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Life Together on hold at the library. And I realized earlier this week that my skills at finding something quickly in a paper Bible are almost non-existent after many years of using an ebook version, so I have one likewise on a shelf where I will see it and remember to open it up.

2. Writing
Between this blog, the Women in the Marketplace blog I've neglected even more than this one, and a still very much unfinished school story that I would really like to find out how it ends, I have plenty to keep my keyboard busy. Incidentally, sad blog posts are coming this weekend. I know some of you only come round for those, but if that's not you, I won't be offended if you run away until the sad stuff is done.

3. Crafting
I've lost track of how many projects I have in progress, but there are three in particular that I'd like to finish soon, and one I need to start because it has a hard deadline.

I'm not certain what this hand is doing, so I'm off to a
good start. Source: John Hughes on freeimages.com.

4. And some other things...
There are some things on my list that I think it's best that I keep to myself. Things that should remain, like the fast itself, with the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. Maybe after Lent is over I'll share some more. We'll see how it goes.

How do you deal with changes you'd like to make in your life--temporary or permanent? Do you fill up the gap with something else right away, or are you able to leave it alone and let it heal on its own?

A Tale of Two Blankets

I brought home an incredible souvenir from my last trip to Indiana.

My grandma told me the story of this blanket, which I somehow had never heard: when my great-grandmother passed away in 1997, she left behind rather a large stash of leftover yarn. My grandma gave it to her sister-in-law (Grandpa's sister, that is, not one of her brothers' wives), as a thank-you gift for housing them in their many comings and goings through my great-grandma's illness, I guess, and also because Grandpa's sisters were prodigious producers of things made of yarn and Grandma thought one of them could put the yarn to good use. (This is a skill none of them bothered teaching me, by the way. I had to learn it from a non-relative.)

One of them did. Great-Aunt Estelle set to work and knitted this massive blanket in something like a couple weeks and gave it to Grandma on their next trip through. She's had it in the house ever since, and when she told me this story, I asked, "May I have it when you're done with it?"

Apparently she's done with it. This pic doesn't do it justice,
nor does any other pic I've taken of it, so you'll have to come
visit me if you want to know what it looks like in person.

So that's blanket #1, now safely ensconced in my house where it shall remain for a very long time indeed.

Blanket #2 has been the subject of much bitter complaint, and a little bit of triumph, for several months here in Su-Land. I've been reliably assured that in the course of making this blanket, I covered in in so much hostility that it was hard for the folks who saw it the most often to really appreciate it. You gotta love a blanket that has a backstory like that.

I posted the finished product on Facebook and someone said,
"That looks just like a temperature blanket!" Yes, very
much like, indeed.

Blanket winner! At least four people
bid on it (I'm not 100% sure because I
refused to look), but she was
determined that it was going home
with her. And so it did.

This was my first attempt at a temperature blanket (using data from 2016 in Cincinnati), and my first knitting project that was any bigger than a scarf. You'll understand why I've returned to another scarf as my project du jour, although I've promised blankets to ever so many people if they'll just buy the yarn for me to use.

In the course of its making, this blanket visited at least three peoples' houses, the Circle Center Mall, a bar, a Megabus, church, Shakespeare in the Park, was carried through a flooded neighborhood park during a downpour, zoomed along in one of Sharlie's panniers, and was basically my constant companion those last couple weeks. Its ultimate destiny was as a prize in a silent auction for work.

I hope Great-Grandma and Great-Aunt Estelle and the rest of my knitting aunties feel that the family legacy of making things is safe on my needles. Although I suppose they would prefer that I carry on their hobby with the help of fewer swear words and less hostility.

Even in the afterlife, one can't have everything.

Making "For Now" Longer

I'm not sure where this story begins.

It ends with a pair of pillows that I restuffed earlier this week because they were sad and droopy. I've had them tucked away awaiting restuffing and a bit of mending for a while, but fixing a couple pillows has never been a top priority.

Last week I picked up new shirts for work at a thrift store (an action that is not super-compatible with my Project 333 Challenge, by the way) and was exploring the craft section when I saw a practically brand-new bag of fiberfill. "I can use that!" my brain shouted, so the bag came home with me and has now been emptied into my two pillows. Because sometimes the spark needed to finally do something lands in the right place at the right time.

Back where they belong. Slightly wonky, because of the
resewing process. But "slightly wonky" is very like
my Chadwick, so no worries there.

You see, I've had these pillows since the first year I was married, and Chadwick loved them and used them for so much lounging on the couch that the inadequate bit of stuffing I had managed to scrounge up on our painfully limited budget back then was soon flattened. We didn't get rid of them, though, because they had sentimental value and anyway, all they needed was a bit of fiberfill, and surely we wouldn't be living on a craft-free budget forever, and as with so many things that are relegated to the back burner the pillows stayed there for years, kicking around in our bedroom but never seen in public.

Chadwick loved the pillows so much because he had loved them in their previous life as his favourite t-shirt and shorts, and one day he came home to find a pair of pillows sitting on the couch that looked suspiciously like some things that used to be in his closet. (I gave him fair warning first, but he didn't take me seriously because he thought I didn't know how to make clothes into pillows. He was mistaken.) I thought he might be a bit sad, but instead he was delighted--he'd only been hanging on to that shirt and shorts because he was reluctant to throw them away and now he didn't have to. And there was much rejoicing in Chez Wilcox.

Because they had needed to be thrown out, quite desperately. You know the current trend for bare shoulder tops? That's more or less what the shirt had turned into, because it had so many holes, and I fully expected that one day Chadwick would put it on and the collar would stay round his neck while the rest of it just kept on going until it hit the floor. He had agreed not to wear it in public, at least, but then he kept forgetting because it was still in his closet and available. The shorts had much the same problem. I had mended those more than once just in the few short months we had been married, but they had reached the point that they were more patch than original in a fairly vital place.

He had been a bit wary, for my first birthday of our marriage, of buying me the sewing machine that I'd asked for--partly because it was way not in our budget, and partly because he didn't want to be the husband who bought his wife an appliance as a gift. But I insisted that I couldn't look after our belongings properly if we were relying on my patience and mental fortitude for hand sewing, so off to Sears we went and bought the machine I'm still using 15 years later. Once he realized its usefulness for keeping his clothes in circulation much longer than he could have done it himself, he agreed that it was probably the best birthday gift he'd ever given anyone.

Chadwick in the shirt before it began disintegrating. Based
on the boxes on the countertop behind us, I'm guessing this
was probably the first week we were married. That was
such a crappy apartment, but it was ours.
Also, dang, we looked good!

He was crazy-proud of the fact that his wife could sew. The first time I mended his clothes, he sat back in shock and watched me fix rips he had thought were unrepairable, only to put whatever it was back on and see he didn't have to throw it out after all. He was still in college at the time, and rumor has it that he was like a little kid at show and tell when he wore newly-mended clothes to class. I'm pretty sure this is why married students at Christian universities have a reputation for being slightly off-balance, y'all. They brag about things like living on a tight budget with the help of a needle and thread.

So the pillows are back on my sofa where they belong, and I can still feel Chadwick's delight hovering around them. The fabric is at least 20 years old and won't last forever, but thanks to a chance find at a thrift store and a faithful sewing machine, I at least have them for now.

Encapsulated

I've been reading the Project 333-- 33 wardrobe items for three months--blog for a few years now, without ever participating. This week, when a new challenge post popped up, I finally thought "why not?" and decided to take the plunge.

Part of why I've never participated before is that I've never seen the point--I don't have an overstuffed closet, and most of what I own is secondhand anyway. Now there were those couple years in Glasgow, where fast fashion at the end of the 90s was much cheaper than it is here in the U.S., that I went a bit overboard. And then I had to leave a great deal of it behind because I only had two suitcases to move back to the US with, and since then continuous sticker shock has curbed any remaining shopping impulse. So my closet, while full and generous by the standards of much of the world, is probably not one of your average American.

I don't consider myself a minimalist, though. My craft drawers are stuffed full with supplies, I have knickknacks on every available surface, and my walls are more or less covered with bookshelves and artwork of varying degrees of aesthetic. Despite my penchant for occasionally attempting to empty the contents my house into someone else's, I still own way too much stuff to use the term "minimal" in any seriousness.

I'm not wild about the term "capsule wardrobe," even less
so after reading it approximately 5138 times in a couple
hours, so this is just my wardrobe for July-September.
Yes, I iron them before I wear them--I don't go to work
with that many creases.

Anyway! All that to say, here we go. I counted all the clothes and shoes I currently have out (cold-weather things are tucked away for the summer), excluding running and cycling clothes, underwear, and pjs (as per the Project 333 instructions), as well as everything in my mending/remaking drawer which is not currently wearable anyway, which brought me to a total of 67 items--admittedly, a higher number than I was expecting. Some were easy to put aside--two suits I no longer require for work but am keeping around in case of need, a couple dresses and a shrug I only wear to Broadway theatres (also kept in case of need!), casual trousers that I didn't put away for the summer but am unlikely to be wearing outside any time soon. Others I had to more or less close my eyes and point.

Counting the three pairs of shoes I currently use (but not my running shoes, since they are workout wear), I pared it down to 32 items for the next three months--that extra space is in case I finally get anything out of my mending drawer back into proper rotation. That won't be until I finish my current knitting project, that's certain. I probably went too heavy on the skirts, given how little I wear them, and after a few weeks I may swap one or two of them out for a work shirt. Well see how it goes. Here's what I have for now:

• 8 work shirts
• 4 dress trousers
• 1 dressy (but not for work) shirt
• 5 skirts
• 1 casual trouser
• 7 t-shirts
• 2 shorts
• 1 dress
• 1 pair heels
• 1 pair boots
• 1 pair sneakers

Have you ever tried any of these wardrobe challenges? How did it go?

Paused

My running the last few weeks has been more theoretical than literal, or to put it more bluntly, I can't remember when I last my running shoes on. I have a fairly detailed log, so of course I could just look, but that's not quite the same thing as being able to remember it.

What my running shoes look like when I'm not totally
neglecting them. 

This is irritating to me not only because I kind of need running to keep my synapses firing in good working order instead of short-circuiting sideways to "unbearable," but also because I'm wasting this nice summer weather that I love quite a lot. It's not like I've forgotten how much I hate running in the cold, but maybe it's that not-running became such an easy go-to that now I'm having a hard time getting my brain back out of that rut I dug. Sigh.

I wonder how long I'm allowed to not-do something while still calling myself a practitioner? A few weeks off running, when there's no race on the horizon, is easy enough to correct as long as I go out and do it eventually. When I think of all the other creative acts in my life (yes, I totally count running as a creative act) that come and go and come again--I don't know how comfortable I am calling myself a quilter, for instance, when the last quilts I finished were at least 10 years ago. The last cross-stitch I made was 2 1/2 years ago, and it didn't turn out as well as I had hoped it would (so much so that I told the recipients that I was totes cool with them shoving it in a drawer and never looking at it again. They laughed, but I don't know what they really did with it).

Or is everything like marathoning? I'll never stop being a marathoner, even if I never run one again--does that also apply to being a crocheter? A public speaker? A cookie maker?

One thing all these skills have in common is that the skills become rusty with lack of use. One thing they all have in common is they can always be picked up again when the time is right. And one great thing about Mondays, as I say as often as possible, is that it's a perfect time to begin anew. So that's why I'm headed out this morning for the short run that's listed on my plan, just to make sure that I remember how to put one foot in front of another.

What will you begin again today?

Word: Checking In on Creation

The last Sunday of June seems like as good a time as any to check in on my word for 2017, Creation. (Some of the ladies at church can remember each other's words and cheer for accomplishments in their word of the year. I only remember mine because it's on my ribbon board and I can see it from here. Maybe my word should have been "memory.")

These are Charles Rennie Mackintosh font & roses.
Because when in doubt, use someone else's creation, I guess?

My word was inspired in part by 2 Corinthians 5:17 and in part by Rent, which is par for the course here in Su-Land, but of course all my creating thus far this year has had very little to do with either thing. Some creation in my 2017 thus far:

• Since I'm likely to be in this apartment for at least another year after my current lease runs out, I'm making it a living space I can feel comfortable in and happy to come home to
• More writing on my perennial friend, Sybil, who may never ever be finished but at least is my constant companion
• Building a new community, as best as I can, in Cincinnati (I honestly have no idea how humans make friends. I mostly just hang around people and try out a few topics of conversation until they either talk to me or run away. Is that what everyone does?)
• Tackling a massive knitting project with a hard deadline. I should be working on that right now
• Planning, with considerable enthusiasm, my next four crafty projects. Because creation begets creation
• 131 blog posts (out of 211 days of the year thus far), which is more than I've managed in some entire years. 
• Embracing that some of my blog posts are bound to suck, and taking the duds as a learning experience to make all my writing better
• Finding ways to keep all the new information I'm learning at work in order (every time a coworker asks me for information, I pull up the spreadsheet where I keep said information, which inevitably elicits a "Wow, you are so organized!" from the coworker. To be clear: I am so very not)
• Reluctantly spending less energy on the time-sucking pits that I love (Twitter and Pinterest) and less time on the sucky pit that has become a habit (Facebook) to devote more of my time and energy to things that need that kind of attention if I'm going to get them done

I'm not sure I would count all these things as creation, any other year, but I'm counting them now as I go through my days looking for opportunities to create and attempting to see the everyday with fresh eyes.

What are you creating today? Alternatively: what's something you're trying this year, and how is it going?

In the Flowers

After I blogged about (metaphorical) weeds potentially choking out the more desirable things of life, more thoughts arrived, as they are wont to do. For instance: What is a weed?

Broadly speaking, anything I don't want growing in my garden is a weed. But why is it that we plant daisies on purpose but not their cousins the dandelions? What characteristic does clover have that makes it a nuisance rather than a welcome friend? 

Some folks see these and race for the weed killer.
I see them and rejoice, especially when the bees are at
work around them. Source: Andre vd Meulen
on freeimages.com.

Context plays a role, of course. My parents' house is surrounded by farmland, so my mother can't grow morning glories, which are aggressive and will attatch to anything taller than themselves, like handy stalks of corn. They're a nuisance to farmers not only because of potential lost crops, but also because their vines will wrap around equipment during harvest and cause breakages. Morning glories are gorgeous and wonderful in the city or in the forest. In farmlands, they're destructive.

By the same token, a good thing in my life may be a weed in yours, and vice versa. I guess the problems really begin when we look round at other people's gardens and see them proudly cultivating their weeds. "Why would anyone want to grow that?" I wonder, or worse, "They let the weeds overrun their flowers," when in fact said weeds are the flowers, and I just can't see it. And from there it's only a short step to seeing the presence of weeds as the presence of a moral failing and the absence of virtue. 

This plays out quite literally in places where some folks are, shall we say, zealously devoted to the care and maintenance of their grass while the neighbours are, shall we say, less devoted. And so the dandelion seeds float from one lawn to another, while one resident is oblivious and another is indignant. I'm convinced this is why HOAs happened. For some folks, it was surely either that or start a dandelion war. 

But in our lives the weeds and flowers are less literal and the misunderstandings that arise even more fraught. No one wants anything they've spent time and careful attention on--be it a school accomplishment, or a work project, or a new skill, or a creative endeavour--to be treated like a weed. And I hope no one wants to be the person who treats others' precious flowers with such disregard. (Please keep that in mind the next time you're tempted to ask, "What are you going to do with that??" of your college-aged relatives.) But it happens to the best of us from time to time, and flowers get trampled and hearts get bruised.

What to do? Apologize, with all sincerity. Forgive (even though it takes time). Learn from the mistake and use that new knowledge to see with different eyes. Stretch the definition of a flower and shrink the definition of a weed, and see where that takes you.

Cultivating great things in my own life is important, but to recognize it in someone else's life is beautiful.

Reading Challenges Update: December

I finished all of my reading challenges for 2016!

Will you do that again? No, I don't think so. Most of them I forgot to check in on more than once or twice all year, and therefore I didn't technically fulfill the challenge requirements. It was fun, but I'm ready for different fun now.

What, no challenges at all for 2017? Well, let's not go that far. I've signed up for the Goodreads Challenge again. Of all the challenges from 2016, my favourite was probably the Woman Challenge, so my plan is to make sure at least half the books I read in 2017 are written by women.

What's your Goodreads goal? I'm glad you asked! I like reading over 100 books in a year, because it gives me things to think/tweet/talk about all the time. However, setting such a high goal makes it rough to tackle longer books, and since I have a few of those on the to-read list I'm setting my goal lower--52 books--in the hopes that I can get through some longer ones without feeling like I'm failing at an arbitrary challenge.

Any other suggestions or ideas? I'm thinking over my favourites from 2016 and will share those next week! Another thing I'm planning to do in 2017 is read a few things that I wouldn't normally pick up--I'm hoping to choose at least one book per month from Goodreads friends' lists that make me say, "But why?" to find out what the fuss is all about. Particularly people with short lists--those are much easier to peruse. (And that being the case, my apologies to all my Goodreads friends for the excessive length of my lists. By the way, are you on Goodreads? Let's be friends.)

So here's December. As always, links are to and images are from Goodreads, where all my reviews are written.

I Love Libraries Challenge CHALLENGE COMPLETED (53/50 books)
Black Man, White House: An Oral History of the Obama Years, D.L. Hughley
Make Good Art, Neil Gaiman, Chip Kidd (Designer)
This is a Book, Demetri Martin
Sweater Quest: My Year of Knitting Dangerously, Adrienne Martini
The Scribe: Silas, Francine Rivers
How to Sleep Alone in a King-Size Bed: A Memoir, Theo Pauline Nestor
Real Artists Have Day Jobs: (And Other Awesome Things They Don't Teach You in School), Sara Benincasa
A Family on Wheels: Further Adventures of the Trapp Family, Maria Augusta von Trapp & Ruth T. Murdoch


Read It Again, Sam CHALLENGE COMPLETED (6/4 books)
The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett (Read this ahead of seeing the musical!)
Dash & Lily's Book of Dares, Rachel Cohn & David Levithan


Woman Challenge CHALLENGE COMPLETED (61/20 books)
The Wednesday Sisters, Meg Waite Clayton
Sweater Quest: My Year of Knitting Dangerously, Adrienne Martini
The Scribe: Silas, Francine Rivers
Bronze, Kerri-Anne Weston
How to Sleep Alone in a King-Size Bed: A Memoir, Theo Pauline Nestor
Real Artists Have Day Jobs: (And Other Awesome Things They Don't Teach You in School), Sara Benincasa
A Family on Wheels: Further Adventures of the Trapp Family, Maria Augusta von Trapp & Ruth T. Murdoch


Mount TBR Challenge CHALLENGE COMPLETED (51/48 books)
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Franklin
Bronze, Kerri-Anne Weston
The Buttersmiths' Gold, Adam Glendon Sidwell
For 91 Days In Idaho, Michael Powell, Jürgen Horn (Photographer)
The Canterville Ghost, Oscar Wilde
Walking, Henry David Thoreau


Goodreads Challenge CHALLENGE COMPLETED (112/100 books)
The Wednesday Sisters, Meg Waite Clayton
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Franklin
Black Man, White House: An Oral History of the Obama Years, D.L. Hughley
Make Good Art, Neil Gaiman, Chip Kidd (Designer)
This is a Book, Demetri Martin
Sweater Quest: My Year of Knitting Dangerously, Adrienne Martini
The Scribe: Silas, Francine Rivers
Bronze, Kerri-Anne Weston
The Buttersmiths' Gold, Adam Glendon Sidwell
How to Sleep Alone in a King-Size Bed: A Memoir, Theo Pauline Nestor
For 91 Days In Idaho, Michael Powell, Jürgen Horn (Photographer)
The Canterville Ghost, Oscar Wilde
Walking, Henry David Thoreau
Real Artists Have Day Jobs: (And Other Awesome Things They Don't Teach You in School), Sara Benincasa
A Family on Wheels: Further Adventures of the Trapp Family, Maria Augusta von Trapp & Ruth T. Murdoch


What are you reading?

Reading Challenges Update: October

Here's what happened with my reading challenges in October. I went a bit crazy with reading this month, because: I moved into my own space, so no more guilt about neglecting the relatives while I read; I'm spending a lot of time on public transportation again, which is prime reading time; and I won't be doing much reading in November, because of NaNoWriMo, so I decided to get as close to complete on all these challenges as I could.

A lot of what I've been reading are Kindle freebies I've collected over the years, and many of those are sadly forgettable. I try to be as kind as possible in my reviews while still being honest, but some books are clearly being published when they're not yet ready for outside readers, and that's a shame.

Updates:

• After joining my new local library and seeing the wealth of reading material available in Cincinnati (41 library locations. 41!! Where has this city been all my life?), I went back and forth on bumping I Love Libraries challenge to the next (and highest) level, which initially seemed like a bad idea since NaNoWriMo is upon us. I finally went with bumping it up, on the grounds that December is long enough for a few books. 
• I'm calling Read it Again, Sam complete, since my entire personal library is still sitting in storage (prayers, crossed fingers, and other things that this will be remedied shortly) and is unavailable for re-reading, so moving to the next level is probably a bad idea.
• I moved Mount TBR up to the next level, and I'm almost done with it, so unless something crazy happens this is the level I'll finish the year on.
• And finally, after November is over, I'll make a decision on raising my Goodreads challenge. My usual practice has been to raise it by one book every time I read a book for the first 20 or so days of December, if I'm getting close to completion. My plan for October was to get within 10 books left for December, and I overshot that a bit.

Links are to and images are from Goodreads, where all my reviews are written.

I Love Libraries Challenge (44/50 books)
Small Victories: Spotting Improbable Moments of Grace, Anne Lamott
Some Assembly Required: A Journal of My Son's First Son, Anne Lamott & Sam Lamott
Who's Your City?: How the Creative Economy Is Making Where to Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life, Richard Florida
Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World, Donald Sull & Kathleen M. Eisenhardt
Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers, Anne Lamott
Daily Rituals: How Artists Work, Mason Currey
The Porcupine of Truth, Bill Konigsberg
The Captive Heart, Dale Cramer

Read It Again, Sam CHALLENGE COMPLETED (4/4 books)
The Instant Genius, Tanya Slover


Woman Challenge CHALLENGE COMPLETED (54/20 books)
Stirring Up Trouble, Juli Alexander
Armed and Outrageous, Madison Johns
Aundy, Shanna Hatfield
Knitting: The Complete Beginners Guide to Knitting and Crochet Patterns, Martha Watkins
Small Victories: Spotting Improbable Moments of Grace, Anne Lamott
Some Assembly Required: A Journal of My Son's First Son, Anne Lamott & Sam Lamott
Hexes and X's, Zoey Kane
Angel Wings, Suzanne Stengl
Out of Sight, Out of Mind - Easy Home Organization Tips and Storage Solutions for Clutter-Free Living, Judith Turnbridge
It Takes An Egg Timer, A Guide to Creating the Time for Your Life, Joanne Tombrakos
A Kiss For Midwinter, Courtney Milan
Frugal Gourmet Ideas: Secrets to Saving Thousands in the Kitchen, Charmaine Gerber
Leashed (Going to the Dogs #1), Zoe Dawson
Tomato Container Gardening: 7 Easy Steps To Healthy Harvests from Small Spaces, Mary Verdant
The Instant Genius, Tanya Slover
Simple Living - 30 days to less stuff and more life, Lorilee Lippincott
On Raven's Wings, Isobel Lucas
Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World, Donald Sull & Kathleen M. Eisenhardt
Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers, Anne Lamott
Trouble's Brewing, Juli Alexander


Mount TBR Challenge (45/48 books so far)
Stirring Up Trouble, Juli Alexander
Armed and Outrageous, Madison Johns
Texas Homecoming, Maggie Shayne (This is a DNF that I've now removed from my TBR list. I'm so glad those count for this challenge--I've managed to cull a few books that just weren't for me that way.)
Everblue, Brenda Pandos (Ditto the above. Also, this is why I probably shouldn't just grab every free Kindle book that comes my way. Some are gems, most I end up not finishing.)
The War of the Worlds, H.G. Wells
Aundy, Shanna Hatfield
Knitting: The Complete Beginners Guide to Knitting and Crochet Patterns, Martha Watkins
Brailling For Wile, Jamie Zerndt
Don't Fight With the Garden Hose and Other Lessons I've Learned Along the Way, Tom Harvey
Streetlights Like Fireworks, David Pandolfe
Hell's Super, Mark Cain
Goal Setting: A 7 Step Guide to Reach Your Goals and Have One Hell of a Time, Matt Harris
Ready Aim Fire!: A Practical Guide to Setting And Achieving Goals, Jim M. Woods & Erik J. Fisher
Haunted Presidents: Ghosts in the Lives of the Chief Executives, Charles A. Stansfield Jr.
Hexes and X's, Zoey Kane
Where Is God When It Hurts?, Philip Yancey
Angel Wings, Suzanne Stengl
Out of Sight, Out of Mind - Easy Home Organization Tips and Storage Solutions for Clutter-Free Living, Judith Turnbridge
It Takes An Egg Timer, A Guide to Creating the Time for Your Life, Joanne Tombrakos
A Kiss For Midwinter, Courtney Milan
The Parrot Talks In Chocolate, Everett Peacock
Frugal Gourmet Ideas: Secrets to Saving Thousands in the Kitchen, Charmaine Gerber
Attack Your Day!: Before It Attacks You, Mark Woods & Trapper Woods
The Cat Manual, Michael Ray Taylor
The Myth of the Garage: And Other Minor Surprises, Chip Heath & Dan Heath
Leashed (Going to the Dogs #1), Zoe Dawson
Tomato Container Gardening: 7 Easy Steps To Healthy Harvests from Small Spaces, Mary Verdant
It Takes a Genome: How a Clash Between Our Genes and Modern Life Is Making Us Sick, Greg Gibson
Simple Living - 30 days to less stuff and more life, Lorilee Lippincott
On Raven's Wings, Isobel Lucas
Wintersmith, Terry Pratchett
Trouble's Brewing, Juli Alexander


Goodreads Challenge (96/100 books so far)
Stirring Up Trouble, Juli Alexander
Armed and Outrageous, Madison Johns
The War of the Worlds, H.G. Wells
Aundy, Shanna Hatfield
Knitting: The Complete Beginners Guide to Knitting and Crochet Patterns, Martha Watkins
All My Friends Are Still Dead, Avery Monsen, Jory John
Brailling For Wile, Jamie Zerndt
Don't Fight With the Garden Hose and Other Lessons I've Learned Along the Way, Tom Harvey
Small Victories: Spotting Improbable Moments of Grace, Anne Lamott
Streetlights Like Fireworks, David Pandolfe
Hell's Super, Mark Cain
Goal Setting: A 7 Step Guide to Reach Your Goals and Have One Hell of a Time, Matt Harris
Ready Aim Fire!: A Practical Guide to Setting And Achieving Goals, Jim M. Woods & Erik J. Fisher
Some Assembly Required: A Journal of My Son's First Son, Anne Lamott & Sam Lamott
Haunted Presidents: Ghosts in the Lives of the Chief Executives, Charles A. Stansfield Jr.
Hexes and X's, Zoey Kane
Where Is God When It Hurts?, Philip Yancey
Angel Wings, Suzanne Stengl
Out of Sight, Out of Mind - Easy Home Organization Tips and Storage Solutions for Clutter-Free Living, Judith Turnbridge
It Takes An Egg Timer, A Guide to Creating the Time for Your Life, Joanne Tombrakos
A Kiss For Midwinter, Courtney Milan
The Parrot Talks In Chocolate, Everett Peacock
Frugal Gourmet Ideas: Secrets to Saving Thousands in the Kitchen, Charmaine Gerber
Attack Your Day!: Before It Attacks You, Mark Woods & Trapper Woods
The Cat Manual, Michael Ray Taylor
The Myth of the Garage: And Other Minor Surprises, Chip Heath & Dan Heath
Leashed (Going to the Dogs #1), Zoe Dawson
Tomato Container Gardening: 7 Easy Steps To Healthy Harvests from Small Spaces, Mary Verdant
It Takes a Genome: How a Clash Between Our Genes and Modern Life Is Making Us Sick, Greg Gibson
Simple Living - 30 days to less stuff and more life, Lorilee Lippincott
On Raven's Wings, Isobel Lucas
Writing on the Wall: Social Media - The First 2,000 Years, Tom Standage
Wintersmith, Terry Pratchett
Who's Your City?: How the Creative Economy Is Making Where to Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life, Richard Florida
Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World, Donald Sull & Kathleen M. Eisenhardt
Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers, Anne Lamott
Trouble's Brewing, Juli Alexander
Daily Rituals: How Artists Work, Mason Currey
The Porcupine of Truth, Bill Konigsberg
The Captive Heart, Dale Cramer


What are you reading this month?

Overstuffed Drawers

There are two things I hate about clothes: 1) When one of my favourite things wears out, and 2) Having too many to know what to do with.

As far as the first one goes, well, nothing lasts forever. I mend (in defiance of Brave New World), I treat stains carefully, I line dry to keep the tumble dryer from wreaking its havoc. In the end, if I really like it, I might add it to a quilt or a pillow, or dust rags for the not-quite-as-well-loved items.

I have this thing for turning Chadwick's clothes
into soft furnishings, it seems.

One of my favourite Chadwick stories happened in our first year of marriage, when he had a t-shirt that he had loved almost to death, and for the sake of his own modesty I asked him to make it an at-home-only shirt. Of course he forgot and wore it to class one day. Sigh... so one weekend I took that shirt and an equally problematic pair of shorts and made them into throw pillows. He was so delighted, he told all his friends (and IIRC, they all agreed that that shirt was well past its usefulness as a body covering).

I know this is not something everyone can, or is willing, to do. No worries! The good news about green living is that there is room for a lot of things that work. Being a sewing person, I mostly can only thing of uses for old clothes that require a needle and thread, but people more imaginative than I can probably list a few more.

Which brings us to the second, and probably a lot more common, problem: What to do with the clothes spilling out of every available crevice of the house? A t-shirt quilt is not the solution to everything, unless you just really need a lot of blankets. Thrift stores are an obvious answer, although as a green solution it merely kicks the can down the road a bit, because then the thrift store has to get rid of any unsold clothes. (Some of them have really good solutions for this that don't involve the word "landfill." Ask before donating if the end use matters to you!)

In most places that I've lived, I've ended up amassing a group of friends who willingly swap clothes back and forth between us, which has been a great solution for me. My other solution is to refuse: say no to the free t-shirts that come flowing my way at every event I go to. Unless it's a shirt that's so great it knocks my socks off (and dangit, races have gotten a lot better at this), I leave it on the table.

Because especially for many of us in the U.S., the best solution to crammed closets is probably not to cram anything else into them.

What do you do about clothes?

In My Mailbox #13

Technically, this will be in someone else's mailbox, because I bought it as a gift. Whatevs.

Wreck This Journal, Keri Smith

I love these journals. For the uninitiated, they're meant to be torn up, beat up, and otherwise wrecked--the pages say things like "Rub this page on a dirty surface" or "Freeze this page" or "Make this page into a paper airplane." A precious journal to be closely guarded, this is not.

This journal is intended for "anyone who's ever had trouble starting, keeping, or finishing a journal or sketchbook," but I don't know that many people who can't use this kind of creativity boost/permission to tear things up/stress relief in their lives. Which is why I've given tons of them as gifts. One of these days I'll keep one for myself.

What's in your mailbox this week?

Melt It All Away

From time to time, people ask me what to do with their candles that have burned all the way to the bottom but left a fair amount of wax behind. I don't know if people ask me because I write about reusing so often, or because I do other green things so it's naturally presumed that I have have Thoughts On The Subject.

Source: Sorina Bindea on
freeimages.com 

I do, as it happens. Before I married a guy with asthma, I was quite the scented candle fanatic (and from where I'm sitting in my living room, I can see four right now, so I suppose I am again) and they never burn down to my satisfaction. I paid for that whole jar of wax, dangit, and I am not amused when it burns straight down the middle. That's just cheating.

Some things I've tried with varying degrees of success: Stick a tealight in it and see what happens. (Nothing. Don't bother.) Put the jar on one of those heater things--this one works, of course. Stick a taper candle in the middle-- this one works best if you cut the taper down to the size of your jar, but in the end it really only works marginally better than putting in a tealight.

Then there's sticking in a new wick, which I've also done. This works best in conjunction with melting the whole thing down. If I were going to try this again, I think I'd get the wax just warm enough to pop out of the jar, put it into a double-boiler-ish setup so it melts faster, then pour it back in once I'd made sure the wick was in place. (Not what I did last time. Last time--well, let's just say there was a big mess.) Oh, and once you finally do melt the candle all the way to the end, remember there are things you can do with the empty jar, like put a pillar candle in it to catch the spare wax, for instance.

And, of course, you can always ask Pinterest to see what people more expert than I am have to say.

Do you burn scented candles? What do you do with the leftover wax?

Skirting the Issue

Before: the shirts. 

I had a rare productive day on Saturday (without structure, my days tend to go poof! without me accomplishing anything at all), in which I finished the dress I shared yesterday and also a t-shirt skirt.

I started with this stack of t-shirts (one mine that I wore one time and immediately sweat-stained, sigh, and the rest were Chadwick's) and this tutorial for a t-shirt skirt, which I completely ignored once I got going, but it was great for giving me some ideas.

Other things circular knitting needles
can do-- I used mine to draw the
shoestring through the skirt without
a lot of fuss.

I used the white t-shirt for the base, since it was just the right size to go around my hips/legs and be snug without being uncomfortable. (Yes, I did step into it upside down and put both feet through the neck hole to determine this.) Also, that shirt was way thin-- I'm pretty sure it was meant for layering in the first place, which is great since that's basically what I've done with it. My original plan was to sew in some elastic, but... I hate elastic. So, I grabbed a shoelace I have laying around, cut a couple of tiny slits in the t-shirt hemline, and voilà-- we have a drawstring skirt.

So, I cut off the white t-shirt right at the armpits, cut strips (including the hemline) about 7-9 inches wide (depending on stains) from all of Chad's shirts, then tiered them up from the bottom. Obviously, this required a lot more pinning, checking, and re-pinning than I can describe in one go, but that's basically how it happened. I liked the blue shirt that's the bottom layer best, so that's why there's two of it. And that's the only one I hemmed, since it's the lowest layer. I may still hem up the others if they get to be troublesome, but for now I like the raw edges. The slightly fancy top layer is from a skirt I have laying around and have been unwilling to get rid of, since it's still perfectly good fabric.

Finished product, before washing. The white line
 on the blue layer is the chalk I used to mark
 cutting lines-- I marked that one in the wrong place. 

Also: t-shirts are heavy. This is made from six shirts, which weighs it down. I hope that translates into the skirt not riding up and displaying more of me than I intended while I'm riding my bike in it (although I'm not holding my breath). As long as it doesn't fall off, though, it's all good.

What's next? No idea. NaNoWriMo is creeping up on me super-fast (are you a Wrimo? Let's be friends!), so I may have to put things away for a while and concentrate on what I'm writing.

What did you do this weekend?

When It Rains, I Make Things

That's not totally true. What is totally true is that I finished this:

... while it was raining yesterday, since I wasn't interested in going outside to see how the Austin drivers were coping.

The top is a t-shirt I bought a couple of months ago in an attempt to occasionally wear shirts that don't have a running or Les Misérables logo on them. Apparently, I was unsuccessful. The skirt is a shirt I picked up at a clothing swap ages ago for Denise, she couldn't wear it at work because it doesn't go with her dress code, so she stuck it in a Goodwill bag, whence I rescued it to do this. (Does that even count as a rescue, since I cut it apart and sewed it to another thing?)

Edit: I realised a bit belatedly that this post is more useful if I tell you what I did! So, the skirt was a button-front shirt-- I sewed that closed so I don't get any gaps (left the buttons on), then cut it off directly under the arms (I used a rotary cutting board for the guidelines, a yardstick, and a piece of chalk to get the cut relatively straight). I thought about turning the raw edge under before sewing it, but that didn't seem necessary. I sewed it directly onto the hemline of the t-shirt, and did the gathering of some excess material in the front (and a little in the back by mistake) in places where there was already a dart in the shirt. Then I ironed the whole thing down. Since I sewed the bottom shirt along the hemline of the t-shirt, there is some excess fabric there, which may cause me some issues that I'll need to fix.

I'm wearing it to church today. We'll see how it goes.

What Does 5% Look Like?

I've been desperately trying to wade through the backlog of saved things from my Feedly so I can move on to the backlog of articles that have accumulated while I've been sorting through articles I've had saved for way too long.

I'd like to do this 5% faster. (Photo
I dug out of my archives, so I'm not
sure about the source.)

In the process, I ran across this marketing article with everyone's favourite type of content-- a list--and one of the tips stuck with me: Do 5% More.

Patrick Armitage, the article writer, says "This was advice I got from my uncle, a successful painter. He said that because there’s so much mediocrity in the art world, those doing five percent more reap the cumulative effect of being a little better."

One of the reasons that I spent time reading these articles at all is to contribute to my own professional development, so naturally I'm thinking about what 5% more looks like in my job, but also in the rest of my life. As a writer, as a runner, as a sometime crafter-- what does 5% more mean?

• Do I stay longer in the office to finish the project I'm working on? 
• Can I meet deadlines a bit earlier?
• My usual goal is to write 2000 words per day-- can I write 2100?
• Can I stop what I'm doing a few minutes earlier in the evening so I get to bed on time?
• Even if my crafts are just for my enjoyment, can I think of ways to make them just a little better?
• How hard would it be to add a few faster spurts in my running?
• In between books I read for fun, can I read research-based ones about technical writing or nonprofit issues to expand my own knowledge base?

Maybe blogging about it can be today's 5%. Maybe tomorrow I'll think of another one.

What do you do to get better at being you?

New Beginnings

I forgot to take before pictures, but last weekend I did this:

Before we moved, Denise & I each had sizable giveaway stacks for the local thrift stores. I rummaged through hers, as is my wont, and rescued a couple of shirts I thought would be great for doing one of those t-shirt makeovers I'm always seeing on Pinterest. The orange and white stripey thing is one of hers that I stole.

The green skirt was a workout shirt Chadwick got late last year that he only used once or twice, at most. He gained weight after his surgery in November so he had to go up a size in workout clothes, but was only able to start working out again gradually, so I really don't know if he ever wore it. That being the case, it wasn't one I was interested in putting into his t-shirt quilt (which I still don't have, but I'll definitely share as soon as I do). Anyway, since it's wicking material it's nice and soft.

I haven't worn this in public yet. Not sure if I'm brave enough. Although I suppose if I'm not, it was a bit of a waste to assemble it.

I have a couple of other things I'm planning to make from old shirts, which I'll post as they're done. This one was fairly straightforward--cut, then sew--but the next one will take a bit more planning. And I'll try to remember to take before pictures.

Have you ever remade old things into new things? How did it turn out?

The Darkest Skies Will Someday See the Sun

Well, yesterday was nice & depressing, wasn't it? Thanks for coming back today for something (slightly) less sad.

After melting.

 Another day, another non-Les-Mis crayon art, this time from my new obsession, Next to Normal. This didn't turn out quite like I had it pictured in my head. Maybe the dark colours were a mistake. But, as with everything else I've done so far, I'm probably better off embracing the mess than being fussy about it. This musical is all about life (and death) being messy, and the best thing you can do is keep going on. And so I'm trying.

And despite all my best efforts (and pointing the hairdryer the opposite direction, for goodness' sakes), I still got splatters in what was supposed to be the non-splatter section. Ugh!

I mentioned before that the Next to Normal soundtrack has kept me upright and buoyed for the last couple of weeks, and this crayon art (as well as today's post title) is from "Light," the final song of the show. I'm not kidding about this being a super-sweary show, so if you go digging any deeper, please beware, but this song is safe for all ages:

Before melting.

And should you decide that you can live with the swearing but can't live without this soundtrack for one day more, the Broadway cast album (with Aaron Tveit! and Alice Ripley!) is on Amazon, where incidentally you can order it through Amazon Smile and support the charity of your choice (looking for ideas? Try Texas Bicycle Coalition & help pay my salary!).

I still have one more canvas and a few more crayons... suggestions? I can do non-musical things, if absolutely necessary.

Into The Dark

This weekend, I decided to give the crayons a rest (okay, not really-- I'm starting my next crayon art thing as soon as I get done blogging) and try a different crafty thing.

So, if you spend a lot of time pinning Les Misérables things like I do-- you know what, I'm just gonna assume that you don't. There are quite a lot of t-shirts, mugs, and other things with the Barricade Boys listed & lined up so their names spell out "Revolution" in a contrasting colour. I like these things, although many of the examples I've seen leave out at least one of the less-well-known Barricade Boys, or have Jehan Prouvaire twice (apparently the memo hasn't gotten out that "Jehan" and "Prouvaire" are the same character).

So! I rounded up some supplies, looked at some online examples, and opened my copy of Les Misérables to the chapter called "A Group Which Barely Missed Becoming Historic," where Victor Hugo kindly lists out all the Barricade Boys' names and spells them correctly to boot. Result.

Here's the front:

Enjolras, Combeferre, Prouvaire,
Bahorel, Joly, Courfeyrac,
Bossuet, Feuilly, Gavroche, & Grantaire 

Obviously, I'm not thrilled that the 'N' in "Grantaire" didn't stay red when I baked the paint on, but it's growing on me a bit the more I look at it. Like the revolution gets darker as you go along, which happens to be true, not to mention that Grantaire, as the cynic of the group, would probably appreciate that his letter didn't come out red. Still deciding on whether to leave it or try it again.

In case you're wondering: yes, I left out Marius on purpose. It's more a book thing than musical thing, but he's not listed with the other Barricade Boys since he wasn't really a part of them for most of the story, and since he outlived all of them.

Strictly speaking, Gavroche is also not listed in the Barricade Boys group, but "Revolution" is a ten-letter word and there are only nine Barricade Boys. Plus, he died on the Barricade, too. He deserves a spot with the rest of them.

And yes, I bookended the list with Enjolras and Grantaire on purpose. (Not just because that's how Victor Hugo lists them; unfortunately, I wasn't able to stick exactly to his list order due to alphabet challenges.)

I was going to be done once I had all their names listed out, but on a whim, I flipped it over and wrote "I will follow you into the dark" on the other side. The red paint really is dark and hard to read (which is why the mug looks greenish in this pic; I had to amp up the fill light to make it even readable, so the darkness of the mug was lost a bit), which is kind of the point, I think. Anyway, I know that it's there, even if no one else does, and I know what it means.

Speaking of what it means, it's a nod to this-- George Blagden, who played Grantaire in the 2012 movie version of Les Misérables, is really into the Enjolras/Grantaire relationship, to the delight of many fans, and he covered "I Will Follow You Into the Dark" with a small lyric change to fit Les Mis. I've seen it mentioned in a few fanfictions now, so I'm guessing a whole bunch of Les Mis fans (and especially the E/R shippers) are similarly enamoured:



If you decide that you need to race out and personalize yourself a set of mugs, I recommend the directions here, up to and including the brand of paint pens.

What would you put on a mug?