#advent calendar content posted in no chronological order

[fastwiemagie]

Seed berry ornaments

Making these was so much fun!!! I collected the empty seed coats on a walk in a local park and pretty soon knew I wanted to make some kind of ornament with them.

Because they were empty I took a wooden bead and wrapped it in wire, with little beads threaded onto each wire string. It was a simple process of stringing the beads and wrapping them through the wooden beads opening, but still time consuming. For me it was relaxing and fun to see the berry form with all the beads attached to the wooden bead! I hot glued the beaded berries into the seed coats and also hot glued red satin ribbon onto them (for hanging them up) and added some red velvet ribbon shapes into bows (for further decoration and festive cheer)!

I really adore how they came out.

[image description]

Picture 1: Picture 1 and Picture 6 are basically identical, they are just slightly different in zoom and are there to show of the pretty seed berry ornaments twice. Because, why not! They both show the finished seed berry ornaments, made with empty seed coats I found on a walk in nature, they kinda look like flower hats in my opinion. A berry made from different red-and-black beads has been glued inside the empty seed coat as a new berry and the ornament is decorated with a red satin ribbon loop and a red velvet bow.

Picture 2: Two empty seed coats, one laying on it's side and showing it's cap/hat like shape and one standing on top of the table. Two wooden beads wrapped with wire and beads are laying next to the seed coats, looking very much like red-and-black sparkly berries.

Picture 3: A close-up of a finished bead "berry" placed into an emtpy seed coat, showing how cute this ornament will look once I glue everything together!

Picture 4: A wooden bead wrapped in wire and covered with little beads is laying on top of a table. It looks very much like a sparkly berry in different shades of red and some black beads. Next to the wire-wrapped berry lay the used tools: two kinds of miniature-sized pliers and one miniature-sized wire cutter, the collected empty sead coat and a little transparent tin with a red-and-black bead mix.

Picture 5: A close-up of one wooden bead that has been completely wrapped in strings of wire with various shades of red (and some black) beads threaded onto the wire. The final look resembles a sparkly berry.

Picture 6: See picture 1. The picture almost look identical. I just wanted to include both! [/image description]

[scary-grace]

Director's Commentary on "more than words can wield the matter" ⭐

So! This fic was for the Tolkien Advent Calendar 2022 and the prompt "love letters", and came together really fast -- I think over the course of a day or something. It went up after my typical zero-editing procedure, which meant I was doing a lot of post-posting edits for the next few weeks. As for the content of the fic, I would be remiss if I didn't pay homage to the early days of the Barduil fandom, in which there were some excellent epistolary fics. (I don't have a list off the top of my head, but if you sort the Ao3 tag for single-chapter fics and then put them in reverse chronological order you should see some of them.) I think my "twist" on it, such as it is, comes out of the Laws and Customs of the Eldar, particularly the bit about sex = marriage for Elves. (I know it's more complicated than that, but the concept is what I went with.) The amount of humor -- and angst! -- that could be generated out of Thranduil thinking they're married and Bard having absolutely no idea was too good for me to pass up.

The love letters themselves were a lot of fun to write, although I regret that I left most of Thranduil's smut-writing to the audience's imagination. My favorite part was probably writing Bard's letter back to Thranduil.

Thank you for the ask!

send me a ⭐and a fic and I'll do a director's commentary!

[chiyume]

1, 2, 5 and 9 of the latest ask game for Coming home for Christmas, please :)

1: What inspired you to write the fic this way?

If the “way” in this question refers to it being an Advent Calender, I just felt a mighty need to create a slow-burn fic with real fluffy, wholesome content, and then space it out evenly with a steady posting schedule because I was fairly new to the Stucky fandom and figured that apart from making it an Avent Calendar for fun, it might also gain me a few new readers, and hopefully even friends.

I was brainstorming fic ideas with a friend of mine and I think it started out with us fangirling over punk!Bucky with tattoos and piercing, and then that turned into a plot bunny of him meeting preppy!steve and it sort of escalated from there haha. I remember it being one of those “Omg, YES!” ideas that you know right away that you’re gonna have an amazing time writing. Which I did.

2: What scene did you first put down?

I actually put the scenes down in time with the chapters, in chronological order. I wrote the whole fic from start to finish, and even though all but the three last chapters were done when I started posting on December 1st, I never wrote ahead. I allowed the ideas to come to me, one chapter at a time, which made the whole process so much fun because I got to evolve the story along with the characters without actually knowing before hand what was going to happen between point A to B to C etc. 

5: What part was hardest to write?

The hardest part to write about this entire piece were the parts that challenged political correctness. I got a few nasty comments about it on the early chapters accusing me of being prejudice and condecending towards homeless people. I could understand the misconception, but I don’t think the fic warranted such an accusation, especially not on the very first chapter when the remaining story of additional 23 chapters had yet to be posted. 

The narrative is written from Steve’s POV, and in the fic, Steve is indeed prejudice in a way that I believe a lot of people are. The point of the story is for it to be a journey through prejudice, for both Steve and Bucky alike. Steve is confronted about the falsehoods of his social influences, while Bucky somewhat hostile views on modern society and the people in it are equally challenged. They are both faced with two views of one world, and have to learn to find their place in it, together. So the hardest part for me was to write preudice opinions, without making either of them come off as a complete douchebag. Nothing in this world is completely black or white, fully good or evil, and I wanted to convey as much without compromising the characters, or the love I know people feel for them.   

9: Were there any alternate versions of this fic?

Surprisingly not. I sort of poured the entire thing out in Google Docs over the course of two months, and working against a very set deadline (aka, Christmas Day) there was very little time for alternate endings or timelines. It became what it became, and I think it worked out great. It was the first time I did something like that, and I am glad, because it spawned a bunch of other fics in its wake, along with many dear and still ongoing friendships.

Thank you for sending my the ask, anon, I hope I managed to reply to it well enough

[fastwiemagie]

Coverings for the fae of heart

I got majorly lucky when I thrifted this gorgeous wool-mix bolero shrug! It was buried deep in a bargain bin with otherwise hats and scarves. I can never resist a good rummage (even though I didn't plan on getting anything - but rummaging is most of the fun anyway!

I almost couldn't believe my eyes when I unearthed this gorgeous bolero shrug. The colour is so beautiful and the details are sooo good! I love the lace knitting on the sleeves and the bow like closure at the front. If that bolero came in my size, better believe I'd wear the hell out of it! As it is, it's a perfect upcycling/refashion project for my handmade advent calendar swap. This was the present for Christmas Eve ♥

I've hand embroidered a fern grass border along all the edges of the cardigan with a colour changing yarn in light mauve-and-gray-colours. I really hope my swap partner loves it as much as I do!

[image description]

Picture 1: The finished refashioned knit bolero shrug. It has a deep mauve/dusty purple colour with lace knit details on the sleeves. The edges of the bodice (neck and bottom) have been hand embroidered with a thick yarn in light mauve-and-gray colours in a fern pattern stitch.

Picture 2: My cat (a brown tabby) claiming the freshly thrifted bolero shrug (along with some other items) as her newest cat bed!

Picture 3: A close-up shot of the beginning of the fern stitch embroidery on the deep mauve coloured bolero shrug. You can already see the colour change from light mauve to gray in the first couple of stitches.

Picture 4: A long line of embroidered stitches along one edge. Laying next to it are two balls of yarn: the colour changing yarn I've used for the embroidery and a uni coloured lighter reddish berry-purple that also was a contender.

Picture 5: A close-up of the embroidered fern grass stitches almost (but not yet!) meeting along the bottom edge of the bolero shrug in the back.

Picture 6: The deep mauve coloured bolero shrug is laying down with it's arms folded across the bodice. 3/4 of the hand embroidery is finished, only one edge is yet to be embroidered.

Picture 7: A close-up of the fern grass embroidery, that shows but the "good" side (what you see on the outside) and the "bad" side (what you see on the inside). On the inside the embroidery shows up as a row of short stitches.

Picture 8: The deep mauve coloured bolero shrug laying down on the table with the fern grass embroidery in light mauve-and-gray colours finished. [/image description]