Daily Musings: Bow Benches

Daily Musings – it has a Photo, a Mood, a Food, a Fitness Report, a Musing, a Read, a Fashion Update and a Fun Fact about me. What more could you need from the Internet? Don't forget to subscribe if you want to get updates.

Date: Nov. 2, 2014 11:30 A.M. Sunday

Mood: Excited to have company. It's not even my company but I'm still excited. My boyfriend and his friend are making bow benches in the yard. That is a bench used for making archery bows.

Eats: Some blah food at Del Taco.

Fitness: Chasing the chickens trying to give them some worms?

Musing:  It is great to be hanging out with writers again. Yesterday was the Nanowrimo launch party in Apple Valley at a very cool used bookstore I'd never been inside before. And all their non-fiction is half off throughout Nov. so I bought some craft books and some writing guides. Can't wait to play with my new books. Today I've already writing 5 pages for my novel.

Reading: I'm Halfway through with Night Myst which is also by Yasmine Galenorn and I realized another novel was due first so I'm reading that one as well. 

Magic to the Bone

Fashion Update:  I'm really interested in scarves with hoods right now.

Fun Fact about me: I just found out one of my belly dancing teachers, Mesmera, has been in a bunch of TV shows. That's more of a fun fact about her, but I've been in It's a Living as an Extra. I didn't get to belly dance though. I was cast as a token 'fat person'.

Houdini playing in his tower.

My recently updated blog/s: http://portaltoesoterica.blogspot.com/ and http://everythingievermade.blogspot.com/ and http://hookery.blogspot.com/

and http://rrrforartists.blogspot.com/2014/10/weaving-on-wooden-picture-frame.html

Your comments are needed and appreciated. You can leave them below.

Another Paleoplanet Meeting Tomorrow

Tomorrow is our monthly archery meeting. I always look forward to gathering under the old trees and working on crafts related to archery all day.  They vary from making bows out of wood boards or staves or branches, to learning to make arrowheads out of stone (knapping) or making beadwork for quivers, or things like drinking vessels out of gourds. Many skills are required.  Everyone is at different skill levels so we all help each other.
Some of them love to make atlatls and darts (a primitive spear chucker). We all started out knowing very little but some of the guys now make bows and atlatls and arrows for a living. You get out of it what you put into it.
I've picked up some of these skills at the gatherings including spoon carving, bamboo straightening, fire starting, knapping, basketry, and gourd art. The best part is it's free and we all share our materials and supplies.

It's in Pasadena CA by the casting pond.

Fire starting demo

Longbow practice

Darts for the Atlatl by Chris Henry of  Paleoarts.

I Miss Camping

It is hard to focus on reaching goals when I'm not in good health. I'm going back to the Dr. on Wed. for my monthly check-up. He never seems to be able to help me much though.

Despite it all, I'm still taking a stab at making each day matter. I'm continuing on with art projects, making a little progress each day. It's humbling to have big dreams and have no chance at making them come true. I'm going to miss my favorite archery event for the second year in a row because my body doesn't do well camping. I wake up so many times during the night, that I'm too tired in the daytime to even enjoy the camping event. Most of the time I end up sleeping sitting up in the truck before the night is through. An archery event isn't much fun when you can't go hiking and shooting. My friends are going to be there and I feel really sad that I'm missing out. After the Gene Foster shoot I pretty much decided that my camping days are behind me unless we can get a camper some day. And with current finances, that's not going to be any day soon.

Right now I'm updating my online articles. Google Adsense changed their algorithms again and Hubpages took a big hit in traffic. I think my views were down 20%. Everyone keeps saying we'll bounce back as Adsense works on eliminating content farms. The problem is this go around they threw the baby out with the bath water. Just in the nick of time Hubpages implemented their own ad servers, and I was selected as one of the writers to test out the beta program. As is typical in my life whenever I gain an income source I lose an income source so it's hard to get anywhere.

Fencers at an SCA event I was at on Saturday.

I'd best get back to work. I can't complain that I have no income if I'm not even trying to earn any, now can I?

Social Networking Sites

Marianne working on a bow at a Paleoplanet gathering.


Here is it Friday morning already. This week just flew by. I've been busy honing my social networking skills. I'm now on Facebook, Flickr, Youtube, Twitter, Tumblr, Linkedin, Hubpages, and half a dozen other ones. A person with no life could literally spend every waking moment doing online networking. I have to pry myself away from the computer with a tire iron.

Yesterday I heard a random blurb on TV that the average person sits for over 8 hours a day. I probably sit even more than that between the Internet, creating arts and crafts, eating, watching TV, and riding in a car/bus/train. I totally wish I had a treadmill hooked to my computer monitor. 'No walkie, no talkie.'

So every day I do gardening, hooping, juggling, and some dancing. The dancing is more like stretching because I have so little space to move in where someone isn't gawking at me. I've just started another monthly archery gathering, so now we'll have two a month and that should help with the physical end of things. If nothing else I get exercise walking to and from the truck to the archery range. Then if I shoot arrows I get a lot more walking in retrieving all those arrows. Most of them land on the hay bales nowadays, so I don't have to hunt and fetch quite as much as I used to.

About Dance, Juggling, Atlatls, Knitting and Hooping

My newest project is taking a photo of myself dancing every day. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but I think most of the photos are just going to be me in my backyard, because it's been years since I danced in public anymore, mostly because it's just not that fun to dance when I'm overweight and self-concious.

I'm getting ready for 2 events this weekend. The first is at El Dorado Regional Park. It's a combination of World Juggling Day and World Knit in Public Day. It's at an archery range so I'll take my bow too. If we have to pay $8.00 to park inside the park, I want to get my money's worth.

Then on Sunday is our monthly Paleoplanet bowmaker's gathering. And it's an atlatl competition as well, so I'm going to take my archery stuff, my crating gear and my newly finished darts. I haven't made an atlatl yet but I'm pretty sure someone there will let me borrow one. I just hope I have enough energy to make it through the weekend. I was so tired today I had to lay down and take a nap, and I hate napping because it makes me feel like a little old lady.

I guess we are going to try to be there at 9 AM tomorrow, even though it starts at 10. But we have heavy gear and need a good parking space. We are taking watermelon and snacks too. And my hula hoops. One way or another I'm getting some exercise tomorrow.

Going to an archery event.

I'm going to a four day archery event tomorrow. And I'm really torn as to what to take. Which projects do I want to work on? Which ones are too much trouble to bother with? If I take too many will it interfer with the time I want to spend interacting with others? It's a social event and if I'm not careful I'll spend the whole time with my nose buried in various tasks. There will be opportunities to learn new things too, but I'm always too shy just to come right out and say, "Teach me to do this." I mean I don't want to usurp someone else's time. So then everyone else comes home having learned something new, and I haven't. I know I should be more proactive but it's just not my nature. And the people in the group that are experts are always super busy helping other people. They barely have time to do their own projects.
I really want to take my guitar, but then again, do I really want other people to hear how much I suck at it? And what about my juggling equipment? My hula hoop? There is only so much space in the truck and most of it will be taken with inventory, tent, tables, a canopy, sleeping bags, and so forth.