They've put ads on my front page! Oh, this is terrible - the reason I chose tbns.net in the first place was the lack of ads. I guess it just gets too hard for companies to give free websites based on just the ads on the pages you use to edit. I've been thinking about getting a domain name for a while and that is looking like the way to go now. Apparantly you can get them for as little as $9 a year, so now it's a matter of thinking of a good name and doing my research. I think I have definitely inherited my father's "Let's see if Consumer Reports has anything on that" gene.

While we were in New York I finished my first successful pair of mittens. Last winter I had started a pair in grey wool, but I had really wanted red mittens and anyway there wasn't enough of the grey to finish them. So I finished them in blue so the hand part was blue and the thumbs and cuffs grey. It didn't look too bad, but then I washed them. I had made them larger than they were supposed to be on purpose so I could wash them in hot water and then they would shrink. If you do it that way they kind of felt together and they're much tighter and warmer fabric. But - horrors! - the blue yarn had been synthetic and instead of shrinking it stretched. I was left with mittens that would have fit only a person with hands the size of loaves of bread. So I gave up on that pair and just before we left for New York I bought a roll of red wool. While we were up there Mom taught me to purl and so I could make the cuffs ribbed. I washed them when we got home and after being tumble dried they were just as red and nice as ever mittens were. They fit perfectly and I wish it were winter so I could wear them to the bus stop. I like mittens. That sentence was carved into my desk in science last year. Vandalism still occurs at my school, but it tends to be a bit more creative than average.

When we used to do a lot of Star Wars role-playing in middle school my problem was that I could never make up a good character. Even when I thought I had a good idea for one, they turned out to be just as boring as the last. It's always been a problem in my writing, too, secondary only to the fact that I can't come up with a good plot to save my life. But now I have a character - two, in fact. While I was knitting my mittens this idea came into my head of a serving-maid type character who was talking to someone and knitting. She keeps breaking into "knit two, purl two" at intervals. As the week went on she became more evolved and though I still haven't got a name for her or a plot to put her in, she works well. I had just reread The Last Unicorn at the time and I swear she wasn't based on Molly Grue, but they did come out sort of the same . . . I'm thinking of naming her Maria. I saw Twelfth Night the night before my birthday and the maidservant's name there was Maria. It's a good, servicable name for a servant.

I've always wanted to do a story about a servant. I started one once but never finished it because once I was through with the introduction I realized I had nowhere to go with it. But I've got several two-paragraph starts to stories about servants accumulated over the years, some medeival and some more Victorian. But in this case I would want it to be more like TLU in that the environment is basically medeival but there are references to things like tacos and magazines and Child ballads. Fantasy, not fiction. That was where I went wrong with the other stories; I tried to make them historical fiction. Fantasy allows you to focus on the character.

The second character would be the princess Maria serves. They'll work well together, sort of like Molly and Amalthea. The princess's job is to be beautiful and regal and the maid's job is to be practical. This brings me to another bit of philosophy on writing: for years novels and movies have been using princesses who are brave and fight with swords and rescue men and ride astride and resist arranged marriages. The idea behind this is to shatter the stereotype of the fairy-tale princess. But there is now a major flaw in this method of designing heroines: there is no stereotypical fairy-tale princess. Every Disney heroine of the last fifteen years has been modern, strong, witty, and essentially feminist: Ariel, Jasmine, Belle, Nala, Anastasia, Esmeralda, Pocahontas, Mulan, Jane. Books such as The Ordinary Princess and Dealing with Dragons also cast princesses as resourceful young women who really don't act like princesses at all. Princess Leia of Star Wars did have long hair and a white dress, but other than that she was a blaster-weilding politician.

The only modern example of a classic princess I can think of is Buttercup in The Princess Bride. She's all the things princesses are supposed to be: gentle, lovely, easily kidnapped, much-rescued, devoted, charming, blonde. The only thing she doesn't do is sing with bluebirds.

And so I want to have a princess character who's different in that she does fit the princess stereotype. Someone with long fingers and brocade dresses and no fighting ability. I was thinking about people I knew and who would make good princesses and why. Christine would sort of work as long as she would never have to be queen, because she has no leadership ability whatsoever. And there's this girl, Ariana, at my school who'd work perfectly. She was in my Spanish class these past two years and freshman year I wanted to look just like her. She has this dark red hair that falls past her waist and she's tall and has these beautiful clear eyes. And her clothes! They're the sort of thing you know she found at Fantastic Thrift, but at our school that's a mark of refinement. She's got these incredible soft leather boots, like moccasins only they lace all the way up past her knees. And a multitude of swirly skirts and earrings and bellbottoms with purple calico sections she must have put in herself and ribbons tied round her neck. She never speaks in class unless she's called on, and then she says everything as if it's a question. But she's on the staff of the school newspaper and the articles she writes are very articulate, so she must just not talk much to people she doesn't know. If I were a boy I'd be in love with her, but as it is I want to use her as a character. And so I am naming my princess Ariana after her. It's a good name for a princess.

And I am only left with the happy dilemma of what to do with these two symbiotic characters now I've got them.

July 18
July 31