Who loves your feets?

So far I haven't blogged much about knitting because...well, I'm still in blogging practice mode, which means I have maybe two-point-five regular readers, all of whom I have already bored with talk of what's on my needles.

I am rather proud of my first pair of socks (pattern by the Yarn Harlot) though. They were for Brendan, but I'm modeling them here (pre-blocking) because I was impatient to get a photo up on Ravelry. He says they fit like a pair of gloves. Hooray!

I can see myself getting totally addicted to sock-knitting. This reminds me of an op-ed (if you can even call it that) I wrote for the Washington Square News entitled "Trash Your Panties: Going Commando with Camille." (I was going to say it was tongue-in-cheek but that sounds a little dirty under the circumstances...) Anyway, towards the end of the piece I suggested that socks replace ladies' underpants as fetish objects:

I recommend socks for their wintry practicality and distance from the danger zone.

I should dig out that piece and post it here sometime. It was one of the better things I wrote for the paper at NYU (sadly enough).

(I've just finished this pair for Seanan. Pattern here.)

Next entry will be all about Cúirt, the international literary festival going on right now in Galway.

Two Days in Dublin

Brendan and I went to Dublin for a couple of days to see Elbow at Vicar Street Monday night. The concert was fantastic. I've heard it said more than once that the true test of a band's talent is if they sound even better live than they do on the album, and this was definitely the case. I'll write more about Elbow later though. Here is another little photo essay from the last couple days.

Brendan's first ride on the Luas. Weeeeeeeeeeee!

(You know how much I usually deplore this sort of couple-y smugness, but I think the artistic value of this shot makes it worth including.)


Brendan and Diarmuid after lunch at The Bank on Dame Street. Probably the best gastropub in Dublin--food, service, and original nouveau decor all awesome.


Shitmonkey: the only toy Diarmuid and his brother Donnacha ever had, apart from a lego set.

Eh...no caption on this one.

And here are some shots taken from the balcony at the Elbow concert:

Thoughts on the Creative Cycle

Until recently my website bio concluded with the following line:

At the moment Camille is working on a new novel that will feature chocolatiers, burlesque dancers, antiques dealers, pyromaniacs, and a runaway snow globe, though not necessarily in that order.

Tongue-in-cheek, but only to a point. At the time I wrote that I was doing a lot of random reading and wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to write about. Since this is novel #3 for me, I have enough of a work history now to notice a pattern of peaks and troughs in my creativity. I have never finished revising one novel and started writing the new one the following week or month (and I’ve always wondered about those writers who say they do). In between revising the Practice Novel and beginning Mary Modern there were a good seven or eight months of trying to develop various ideas that ultimately weren’t viable, at least in the form I gave them at the time. The Mary Modern-Petty Magic interim period was a good deal longer—partly because I was working on Moon Ireland, but more because I was putting a fair amount of pressure on myself to come up with something that would top Mary Modern. All in all, it was roughly a year between finishing up the guidebook and MM edits and beginning Petty Magic.

Even with Mary Modern promotional stuff taken into consideration, 2007 didn’t feel like a productive year for me, although I figured even at the time that “trough” was a necessary part of the cycle. All the false starts eventually lead you closer to what you’re meant to be working on. In 2007, these false starts took the form of seventy pages of a novel I later realized I could have written five or six years ago (fortunately I could cannibalize the strongest parts, and for two different projects), and the start of another more promising novel that clearly needed more time to simmer. I also wrote a few short stories I will revise at some stage. (As my friend Danny put it: stories, like jelly, need some time to set.)

So there seems to be a pattern of filling up (reading eclectically and voraciously; collecting random bits of dialogue/character quirks/fun words/plot jumping-off-points on little scraps of paper – though these bits will eventually work their way into many future stories, not just this one coming up), formulating an idea, writing up a storm, then another eclectic reading and gathering period that well outlasts the novel revisions. (I’ve read that this cycle is personified by a trinity of Hindu gods: Brahma the creator, Vishnu the preserver, and Shiva the destroyer.)

It’s that filling-up period that has all the false starts in it. You’re trying to write before you know what you actually want (or need, or should) write about. And you know you’re in the formulation stage when you start to notice little serendipities: books of particular relevance seem to pop off the shelf, and you may notice subtle links between two seemingly unrelated topics that have both intrigued you lately. There is a definite sense of things falling into place, and a lovely tingling excitement whenever you think of your new Big Idea.

That, and relief that you aren't faking it.

more about Waterford

Towards the end of our holiday weekend in Carrick-on-Suir Brendan and I went to Tramore for the afternoon, and I snapped this photo (he's a teapot, see?) before my camera battery died. I wish I had gotten a shot of the ferris wheel, which we later rode for €3 each (and I think we only went around three times, but it was still worth it).

As you can see, Tramore is on the Waterford coast, eight miles south-west of Waterford City. I didn't write it up in the Moon guidebook because I was initially put off by the rather tacky seaside amusements--a large arcade and an amusement park with enough rides to keep the kiddies entertained the whole day through. Tramore feels like the Irish version of Coney Island. While you're on vacation, I thought, why go to a place that feels so much like an American carnival? You get enough hot dogs and spinning teacup rides at home, right? But that's exactly why I enjoyed myself so much, when I actually took the time to see Tramore properly. The sea views were lovely, and being able to look out over the ocean from the top of the ferris wheel made us a really nice memory. I have learned this lesson several times since publishing Moon Ireland: ultimately I'm not doing my readers any great service by making snap judgments. They might be missing out on something cool because I never took the time to investigate it in the first place. I may know Ireland pretty well, but there's so much I haven't seen or experienced yet. I'm looking forward to working on the second edition.

Mahon Falls, take 2

I finally signed up for a YouTube account so I could upload the video I mentioned in my last post. (The quality is much better when I play it on Quicktime. Boo.)

holiday weekend #2

Let me tell you something about Waterford: if you go down there only to visit the crystal factory, you really ought to be nettle-whipped. The mountains, country roads, and sea views are so, so lovely! (And much of that crystal is now so, so produced in Turkey.)

Ponies in a pasture on the River Suir, just outside the town of Carrick-on-Suir (just before the one on the right tried to chomp on Brendan's arm):


(Carrick-on-Suir is technically in Tipperary, but people have Waterford tags on their cars and root for Waterford sports teams, and the 'Welcome to Waterford' sign is within spitting distance of Brendan's house. Hence my initial confusion over which county Brendan is actually from! Tipperary is also a county of beautiful mountain and pastoral views--see the post before last.)

Until this past weekend, Ardmore was my hands-down favorite place in County Waterford, but check out my pics of Mahon Falls in the Comeragh Mountains:




(I also took a panoramic video, but I think it's too large to upload. Drat!) It was awfully cold and blustery up there, but those storm-clouds in the second photo held off until we were back in the car. There were all these grizzled sheep moseying up and down the sheerest mountain-faces, the waterfall was awesome, and there weren't too many other people. After our walk to the falls we kept driving, and the road was spanned by the most complete rainbow I've ever seen.


You could actually see where the rainbow ended on both sides.

Here are some close-ups of the Harry Clarke windows at the Church of Saints Quan and Broghan, Clonea:

I'm not sure which saint this is, but here's a detail from the bottom of the same window:


Actually, there seems to be some uncertainty as to whether the later windows were done by Harry Clarke or Evie Hone. A Google search gave me no answers, and I've left my Harry Clarke book at home. I must look it up at the library. Anyways, from the earlier set by J.J. Clarke & Sons, here is St. Brendan the Navigator, along with a picture of a certain name- and beardsake:

...looking slightly less holy.

After we visited the church in Clonea, we went to Mothel holy well where the locals walk through the stream seven times on pattern days.


(The well is at the roots of that tree. Notice the sign--apparently the water used to be known for its purity, but it's now contaminated.) There's a small dolmen in the field beyond.

Getting well off the tourist track feels great, doesn't it?

Couldn’t Ask for Better Neighbors

I’m back in Tipperary this weekend, at Brendan's parents' house in Carrick-on-Suir for Easter. Here is a view from their backyard:


Now, living right beside a graveyard might creep some people out--but the way I see it, there are bodies buried everywhere. These are just the ones that are marked.

Last night we were walking into town (so I could sample the spudballs, a local delicacy; alas, there were no more to be had at Fats Quann's takeaway), and as we were passing the graveyard Brendan pointed out the eerie blue lights inside--the same solar-powered lights you can get for your front walk, which charge all day and illuminate the sidewalk at night. If there were any honest-to-God orbs floating about you'd hardly have noticed them.

You expect this kind of elaborate grave-tending in a predominantly Catholic country, but I still wonder at the time and expense behind all those rotting wreaths, water-logged flower-globes, sentimental plaques (which often include a photograph of the deceased) and battery-operated candles. It seems like a significant part of Irish culture--something that, unlike the rural custom of forming a digging party when a neighbor passes on, won't be dying out any time soon.

(Blame Seanan for the offaly bad pun.)