things done and undone

All kinds of productive this weekend!
The garden shop had a 30% off sale, so I bought a cherry tree (Glacier) for the backyard, and Mark dug the hole and now we have a second cherry tree. I have a new big plant-pot to shift the potted willow into, and a place to put it, beside my hanging chair. I have a tall trellis-y thing that I have used to restrain the Quatresaisons damask against the fence, and hardly got thorn-stabbed at all this time. I watered many plants, and identified a couple of roses
I bought a big oak half-barrel so we can soak hides at Fort Rodd Hill and try making parchment again--if only I can figure out how to do it without rubber gloves (which are non-medieval). I cut out a linen shift that I may get sewn up in time for FRH. I stained and assembled the non-modern-looking standing easel so that I'll have more viewable workspace in the tent, and won't have to stack canvases on the bed.

I finished the Bluebeard's Widow story that came out of chat on the Scribblers thread (just over 4k). Then I became discontented with it, and wrote a second take on the same plot twist, with a different voice and setting, in just over 2k. I have no idea just yet whether either of them is any good, so I'll look again in a couple of days.
What is good, though, is Ferret's take on Rumplestiltskin, (also from the Scribblers thread) which I'm reading over. The ending makes me kind of weepy, but this is a good thing. Now I need to wake up my inner critiquer and be coherent about it.
Also I'm rewriting the ending of Chimps for the fifth or so time, and have it almost right!

In Willow Knot news, I'm muddling about with the index cards as I try to sift Myl's five years in the forest into three years. I don't want it to end up too schematic, with one rescue or encounter or bird/baby image per year, but I also don't want to have events treading on each other's heels.
For those keeping track at home, Mylla will still be 17 when she returns to the city, because I'm making her a little older when they run away, 14, so that she can be under threat of being apprenticed out by Midame, and being parted from Tyl. Tyl stays the same age. He has to be young, because it gives him license to be feckless and reckless and slightly reduces the reader's urge to smack him for it. So he'll be younger at the end of the book this time, closer to Silly's age.
Anyway, a lot more happened in the forest than I'd really considered, especially when the events are split up into 'scenes', which sometimes mean sequences. For instance, an escape would be a scene, and the pursuit that follows it another scene, but if I split them up like theatrical scenes I'll just confuse myself with two index cards that might as well be stapled together, since they make no sense alone. But some other scenes stand by themselves, like the Babes in the Wood discovery, and could be moved fairly seamlessly.
I'm also muddling about figuring out how the palace events mirror the forest events. Not exactly, but there are equivalances, so perhaps a funhouse mirror.
The hard part of this stage is convincing myself to stick with it and not just plunge back into the text. I need to be a picador, circling daintily and plunking lances into the vulnerable spots until I can get close enough for butchery.
I have to remind myself that this part really is work, however much it feels like work avoidance.

Oh, and the domain name willowknot.com is mine. Mine, mine, mine! But there's nothing there yet. Sorry.