Neumond

March 16, 2015. That's when I finished this knife. I wrote about it, too, and then just let it languish in my drafts. Reinbeast.com got more love because there are so many shows and t-shirts to write about, and so many other things to do in life. I just got work done early, which is very rare, and I'm suddenly finding myself with a free hour. The same happened last week and I decided then to start Stranger Things. What a fantastic decision. That show was a spectacular gem.

But I'm here to talk about a knife design, not TV. I haven't done much with that lately. Life just keeps getting in the way. If these sudden free moments are any indication, someday soon I'll be able to get back to it. I seem to be getting more efficient at my job and things are running more smoothly. So, here's what I wrote about this weapon in early 2015, with a few edits. I thought I lost this, but I just found it in my Dropbox.

It has been so long since I posted one of my designs, or any real knife, that I nearly forgot I used to do this. I was far too busy with a second job, maintaining multiple blogs, learning domaining, trying to study German, and lamenting wasted opportunities. But the biggest reason I basically stopped drawing for the second time in my life (the first was after high school) was that my iPad became unreliable. Some apps started constantly crashing and others couldn't be used at all until they were updated to versions that only ran on iOS 6, which my old first gen didn't support. I eventually bought a refurb Air, in November (2014). I thought I could get back to it, but since then I've had so much to do, and my mother's health to worry about for the first half of this year.

What finally brought me back here is this crescent moon shaped weapon that I actually finished in December 2013. For a long while, I thought I had already published it. I guess work, Christmas preparations, and a time consuming 30 Day Blacklist Challenge on Tumblr (fun but a waste for how few read it) put it completely out of my mind. At the same time, I was also working on Red, a tribute knife for The Blacklist about the main character, played by the remarkable James Spader.

Even with everything going on, I had a post written and the name picked out: Elatha. I wanted something to represent the moon, but I never liked "Luna." I looked for other words that meant moon or were related in some way. I found a list and chose Elatha because it stood out. Then I looked it up again months later, when I discovered I never posted it, to make sure nothing changed, and it seems the page I had originally found it on made a mistake or I read it too quickly. It's really the name of a sun god. I couldn't find or think of anything better, so I decided to keep Elatha, especially after finding out it was the name of a planet in Mass Effect, one of my favorite game series. Maybe that's why I gravitated towards it, because I had heard it before.

Okay then, Elatha it is, I thought. But not so fast. See how the title is not that? When I last worked on this, I had another thought. At the time, I was making up for having missed Joachim Witt's new album, "Neumond." It is such a spectacular, heartfelt, beautifully sung, deep and melodic masterwork that I couldn't go a day without it. All this time later and I still think about it, and listen to it, quite a bit. If I had to pick a single album to listen to for eternity, even considering all of the others I have loved, I think "Neumond" would have to be the one. Though this weapon was designed long before, it just felt right to pay tribute to the album that I can't live without.

If I've got you curious about Joachim Witt now, here's the first song I heard off of "Neumond."