How to use this Page

This was over at Mousecircus.com, the junior site, on the front page. I'd heard that the whole site was going to get a makeover, and finally get out of Flash animation, but it hasn't happened quite yet. This counter was sitting there, below the Dave McKean mouse orchestra drawing, telling me that the Graveyard Book would be out in six days, six hours and eleven minutes. I thought about waiting another five minutes to post, then decided to test out the "Post it in blogger" function. Which what I'm doing right now.





(It seems to work on blogger. Not on any of the RSS feeds though. It's also about 30 seconds different from the counter on the sidebar. Clicking the Get & Share button at the bottom allows you to post it anywhere you want.)

(And my apologies for the practical nature of much of the current blogging.)

(I just figured out that you can actually also get it from http://www.clearspring.com/widgets/48765b515bcd6b33?p=48d9881e2fea74f1, where you get a larger number of ways to embed it into many more things. Although that doesn't have links to the google/yahoo widget version or many of the others.)

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In the UK for Eastercon. It's nice to be home (and amazing how comfortingly home it still feels after 16 years away).

I noticed that Terry Moore's STRANGERS IN PARADISE won the GLAAD award for Best Comic -- congratulations. Somewhere I have the beautiful GLAAD award that Sandman took for the same thing, about a decade ago. And then I read the small print of the Awards Press Release and realised with pleasure that STARDUST took the award for Outstanding Film (Wide Release) -- I was very pleased for Matthew Vaughn and Jane Goldman (and Robert De Niro), but wish that I'd known that it was happening. I called Matthew and Jane and told them. I wonder who accepted the award -- someone at Paramount? It says on the press release the awards ceremony will be telecast on Bravo, so I'll set the TIVO and find out.

The Eastercon is at a hotel near Heathrow, and because I took Silverjet in to the UK (this is the second time I've flown them, and I'm really impressed. The tickets are cheap, every seat on the plane is business class, and you don't have to worry about checking in for an international flight many hours beforehand, as they have their own little check-in-lounges at the airports. I hesitate in plugging them because right now it's easy to get seat and to change flights) I landed in Luton, where I was picked up by a Taxi from the convention, which was a nice surprise (especially when I saw the lines of stopped traffic outside Heathrow).

I had a bath and then slept some more.

The con is, I am told, pretty full, but there are still memberships and day memberships.

I'm doing a signing on Saturday at 4.00, and my Guest of Honour speech/reading is Sunday at 2.00pm. There's another signing "on scooters" I am assured, on Sunday night at 8:15.

As a sort of general thing at the con, if you see me and I don't seem to be doing anything, and you have something with you you want signed, and you sidle over and mutter "It's for Norman" (if your name happens to be Norman) then I'll probably scribble on it for you.

Right. About to wander out into the world to see old friends and make new ones.

I have noticed that you look identically cool-writery in all your photos. I would like to know how this is done, please. When I'm in family photos whoever's taking it looks at the camera screen and gets a little frown and then they say "we'll just do that one again." I'll say sorry and then they say "That's alright, dear, you can't help it." and they take four or five and then just give up and email whichever one had my eyes most open and my mouth most closed.

Is there some trick?

Yes. You don't let anyone put the photos of you with your eyes shut, or with a goofy grin, or looking like you just dropped something, or drooling, on the back of a book or in a newspaper. Then people think that you always look like that.

Claire
I'll record it within the next month or so and it should be out in September when the book comes out.

I'm also planning to collect together all the live readings of chapters from the Graveyard Book as well... maybe make them downloadable or watchable from http://www.neilgaiman.com/p/Cool_Stuff.

So probably a thousand people have asked by now, but what does coffee which has been partially digested by a civet cat taste like? I've never quite been willing to shell out the extra money to find out. Is it worth it?

It was a perfectly nice, fairly mild, not-at-all acidic coffee -- with an astonishing caffeine kick to it. But I'm a tea drinker, not a coffee drinker, and while I could probably describe different teas in ways that might communicate things to other tea drinkers, when it comes to coffee it was a very nice, not-bitter, not-acid, cup of coffee, and someone else will have to describe the underlying notes of cinnamon and vanilla and red wine in civet-coffee, for it will not be me.

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A little BOO worm and BOO monsters…I think the monsters one is kind of weird…boox3 = 2 boo’s from the monster kids + big boo form by the logo and the kids…??!?... just something weird that just came to my mind this morning at work – boss not around. As for the worm one, I did it before; while drinking a delicious hot mocha it came to my mind to do Halloween cards out of napkins (now available at my card store + free e-cards). If you liked these you can see more at my blog – under trick or treat title.

^_+ HAPPY HALLOWEEN +_^

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This is a nice little project that you can do quickly and use up some of those bits of fabric. If you've been working on something big or complicated, it makes for a nice break. This is also an excellent beginner's project.

It started with a set of eight blue napkins I found at Goodwill, they were such a pretty blue and nice soft cotton fabric. I've had a small piece of turquoise pictorial satin that made a beautiful combination. I'd been saving this scrap but never knew what to do with it. It's a bit droopy, so I paired it with a fairly sturdy plain turquoise cotton for the backing. I'm not crazy about interfacing, I use it sometimes but I didn't want to here. You could though if you want to really make your rings crisp.Step 1: (above) cutting out your fabric. I wanted eight rings so I cut eight strips of fabric as large as I could from the little piece I had, then eight matching pieces for the backs. (You could use the same fabric for front and back of course - in which case you would just cut one piece and fold it in half lengthwise). The pieces should be around 6" long to go around a typical napkin, and it's up to you how thick to make them. My pieces were cut 3" wide, for a 2.5" finished size. I wanted them to be large enough to see the little scenes in the fabric.

Step 2: Place right sides together and pin in the middle. Then sew down each side, with a 1/4" hem.Step 3: Turn the ring right side out
Step 4: Press flat. Then tuck inside a 1/4" hem on one side and press. Then tuck the other end in to make a loop. Pin in place. Handsew together using blind stitch. I sewed the outside, then turned the ring inside out to sew the inside. As you go you can tweak the way it's tucked together to make it neat.
Done! I love how they look with this vintage linen tablecloth. I found this one at the St. Lawrence antique shop for $10.

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