For the last few weeks I’ve been busy getting ready for coming SF conventions – preparing workshops, taking photos for slideshows, arranging transport, lining up our cat/house sitter, confirming panels, arranging meetings and meals, warping looms and researching weaving techniques…

Yeah, that last one seems unrelated to the rest, but it is relevant, as you’ll see.

The first convention I’ll be attending happens next weekend in Auckland:

… where I’m going to be the International Guest of Honour. This will be the first time I’ve been an international GoH. (At Imaginales I was one among many author guests.) I’m flattered, excited and a little bit nervous. I’ll be talking on panels, running a writing workshop, doing a speech/presentation and more.

The weekend after that I’ll be back in Melbourne, at:

… which, as you can see, has a craft theme. I’ll be talking on panels about craft in books as well as the craft of writing. I’ll also be running a very basic bookbinding workshop in which participants make useful and fun things out of con bag contents, and doing a weaving demonstration – which is why I’ve been warping up looms and researching weaving. Ironically, I think the weaving demonstration may have taken more preparation time than anything else I’m doing over these two weekends, but it’s been a lot of fun and a great reason to expand my knowledge of weaving. It’s also great when my non-writing interests and writing intersect. Which they also do in the Millennium’s Rule trilogy, but that’s a whole other blog post.

They are going to be two amazing, fun weekends and two very different conventions.