2013 Wrap-Up

I've been thinking about doing one of these end-of-year posts for a while now, and I've decided that if I'm ever going to do one, 2013 is the year to reminisce about. In more ways than one, this has been the best year of my life.

I know that I haven't blogged much this year. If anyone out there still follows this blog, you were probably surprised to see me again, I know I'm sort of surprised to be here. But blogging has had to take a back-seat to all of the other amazing things that have been going on over the last 12 months.
Let's recap, shall we?

Last December I quit a job that I hated, and that was sucking all of the life out of me. Immediately afterward, I felt liberated and free. I called my mother as I was driving home that day, and I was giggling when I told her: "Well, I quit my job!" It was such a difficult decision to make at the time, and then afterwards I was literally asking myself what took me so long?

In March, I started working at the local library. This has been my dream job since I was a wee little thing. I started out as a page (shelving books all day!) and have since gotten a job working for the circulation department. The pay's not great, but like I said, this is my dream job. I love what I do, I love the place that I work at, and I love the people I work with. That's more than most people can say. This job has also prompted me to make a very big decision.
Are you ready?
I'm going back to school! I'm going to be applying for graduate school to get my Master's in Library Science and hopefully become a librarian one day!

In August I got married to the love of my life. It was easily the most wonderful day ever. We got married outside in front of all of our friends and family. We had beautiful weather, and wonderful guests and even got to dance to some Beatles. What more could anyone want? This has easily been the high-light of my year, and of my life. My husband (and I really love saying that) and I recently celebrated 6 years of being together. I can't wait for the next 6 years, and the 6 years after that, and then the 6 years after that. I love you Puppy. :o)

I've also been a lot craftier in the last few months. I've gotten back into my crochet and my knitting (though not always successfully). I've even posted a pattern of my very own creation. I've been putting my ravelry account to good use, and actually finishing projects that I've started. I've been making lots of scarves for my friends, I've been knitting dish-cloths for our kitchen and I've even made my very own knitting needles! It's been a crafty year, and I know that we're going to keep it up in 2014. Right now my husband and I are working on an awesome and amazingly cool project that I can't wait to share with you all. More to come!

There's also been a lot of delicious home-made food and treats that I've experimented with this year (like Chinese food for Christmas), but I haven't really been blogging about it, or keeping tabs on it at all. Hopefully that'll change next year!

And last but not least, I've been reading ALL THE BOOKS! There will be a post on this topic shortly after the new year, so I won't waste too much of your time on it now. But let's just say that working at a library has put me back in touch with my ravenous appetite for books. I've read more this year than in the last two combined. And I have the numbers to back that up.


So I think that just about wraps up 2013. What a year. It's easily been the best year of my life, and I can't wait to see what 2014 will bring!


See you all next year!

Hand Made Knitting Needles

         Recently I decided that I really needed to brush up on my knitting skills, so I decided to make a few of Staci Perry's Traditional DishCloths in order to practice some of the basic skills (and pick up a new trick or two in the process). Her pattern calls for size 7 knitting needles, which I discovered… I don’t have.

         I have a set of five size 5 double-pointed needles and a set of straight size 9 needles which are still being used for another project (the cable scarf, if you must know), so I decided to use the 5s. I thought it would be a good way to practice using double pointed needles. And I was right. It was great practice, and the dish cloths came out fabulous, if a bit small.


         Fast-forward a few days, I was talking about the project with one of my friends at work who is also a knitter (though at a much higher skill level than I). She mentioned that I could just go out and buy myself a set of size 7 needles. She’s right, I could… but I didn’t want to spend the money. Especially since I don’t know what else I might use that particular size for in the future. I would rather wait until I had another specific project in mind.

Then a day or two later, she sent me this video:

         OMG! I didn’t even realize you could make knitting needles yourself! I had to try it! My husband and I were at Lowe’s picking up some items for another project we’re working on (Don’t worry, there’ll be a post about it!) and I decided to grab a dowel to try to make me some needles with!

         I still wanted size 7 needles, which are also known as 4.5mm. Unfortunately, I live in a country that had not yet embraced the Metric system, so I had to convert to inches. The closest measurement we were able to find was a 3/16in dowel. I think that’ll end up being a size 7.5ish needle. Close enough for $0.65. The next thing to do was to decide how long I wanted my needles to be. I like my knitting needles on the long side, so I cut my dowel down into four 11” pieces, with a few inches left over for a cable needle. I used a small hand-saw and it took about 2 min altogether.

         At this point, we were at my in-law’s house, “borrowing” their basement work-shop for that other project I mentioned. So I went up to my mother in law’s studio to “borrow” her electric pencil sharpener to sharpen up the ends of my needles. I didn’t really need four 11” double pointed needles, but it seemed easier than trying to find some sort of "bobble" to put on the other end...
          Next up was some medium-grain sandpaper (we didn’t happen to have any fine-grain laying around, but it would have been nice) to smooth everything down. I thought that this process would be tedious and annoying, but it actually went really quickly. In no time at all I had everything sanded smoooooooth. 

Knitting needles drying...

         Time to break out the Polyurethane. This stuff smells, and I would recommend working in a room with good ventilation (or outside if possible). We were still in the basement, and lazy, so we stayed put for it. Luckily, this also went pretty quickly. I just brushed on a few layers of the stuff and then set the needles down to dry. Since my needles are so long, I decided to Polyurethane them in two parts. I brushed one side, let it dry on the clean side, then flipped them over and did the same thing on the other half. The can of Polyurethane recommended letting the stuff dry for 3-4 hours between coats, which we did not do. I only waited about 30 minutes between finishing one half of the needle and finishing the other half. But we had pretty ideal drying conditions and only one very thin coat to do.¹

          So I got my needles home... and they weren't quite done yet. No big deal, I just sanded them down again (even smoother this time) and hit them with another coat of Polyurethane. Perfect. Except, of course, they're not.
       This is my first attempt at making knitting needles, and of course, nothing is ever perfect. I'm really happy with the way these came out, but I can already think of some tweaks and improvements for next time. For example, these came out super-freaking pointy. Like, stab someone pointy. So next time I think I'll use one of those dinky little plastic pencil sharpeners to get a duller point. I can always sand it smooth. I would also use a prettier wood next time. We used poplar this time, but for ~$0.50 more, I think I can spring for oak.

Okay, so here's the finished product:

Four size 7.5ish knitting needles and a matching cable needle.

         They look nice, don't they? I'm pretty proud of them. Again, they're not perfect, but I'm happy... I might take some bolt cutters, chop the tips off and sand them down again but... I really am very proud of these, and pretty darn happy with the way they came out. They weren't hard to make, and a hell of a lot cheaper than buying new knitting needles!


Happy Crafting!



^{1. Tip: put your brush in a plastic baggie and stick it in the freezer between coats of the Polyurethane, it’ll keep the brush from drying and getting hard as a rock. ↩}

10 Stitch Failure

        
       As you might know, I'm not much of a knitter. But that never seems to stop me from taking on really ambitious projects.
       For an example, I still haven't finished that cable scarf, but a few days ago I decided that I was going to knit a blanket. Yeah, I know... don't ask. Now, I have no idea how I even came across this pattern, and I'm not really sure what came first, the pattern or the tutorial, but I found it and decided that I had to knit it.
       It seemed easy enough, the only skills that you need to know going into it is how to cast on (which I can remember, if I try hard enough) and the basic knit stitch (which I know). Everything else you need to know, Staci walks you through in the video. I watched a bit of the video, and then went ahead and cast on my 10 stitches.
       I was knitting along, and it was actually going great. I got to my first (and then immediately after, my second) mitered corner, and it wasn't hard at all! I was knitting up this blanket like a pro! I was even attaching my knitting to itself with ease. I had knitted up a nice size piece:

I took a picture for my ravelry page

 

   
       I actually had a lot more knitted than that, and now I'm kind of wishing I had taken another picture, but... oh well. I started out with some brown yarn I had laying around, left over from another project I had finished a month or so ago (maybe I'll post about it later?), and I wasn't really too crazy about it. When I started the blanket, I wasn't sure that I would actually be able to do it, so I just picked up some scrap yarn and started fooling around.
       However, when it became clear that I was actually accomplishing a blanket-like object, I realized that I was going to have to jazz things up, color-wise. For one thing, I don't have nearly enough of the brown scrap for an entire blanket, even just the lap-throw I was planing on. And secondly, I didn't particularly care for the color. So I thought I'd mix things up with some nice green yarn I also had laying around.

       And that's when everything went to shit. I have no idea what I possibly did wrong, but I certainly screwed something up. I attached my first row of green, flipped my work to knit up the wrong-side row, and counted 11 stitches... Fuck! What did I do? I tried tearing out just the last row of knitting to do it again, but that didn't work, and I decided that I should just take out the green and go back to knitting with the brown. I could try to re-attach a second color later.
       But that didn't work either! Suddenly, all of the rows that I had joined to my previous knitting started to come off! I was left with strips of knitting with angry raw-looking loops on the end! My whole blanket had come apart in strips!

       OMG! I still have no idea what I could have possibly done wrong, but I'm super upset with myself right now. Ugh. Ugh, ugh, ugh! I guess there's nothing for it but to rip everything apart, which is what I'm doing now. I'm frustrated, but trying to look at the positives. I wasn't really too into the brown color, and this gives me a chance to start over fresh. I was really just fooling around in the first place, and now that I know I can actually knit this thing, I can pick up some pretty yarn that I actually like, and make something I'm really proud of.

     I guess that means I'm off to the store to pick up some more yarn... As a great space-commander once said, "Never give up, never surrender!" I don't think he was talking about knitting, but it applies.

Very Simple Pot-Holder

         I've been making a lot of pot-holders lately, and I thought that it might be nice to share the pattern. It's super easy, and you do not have to be an advanced crocheter to learn it. It's actually a great pattern for learning or practicing the single crochet stitch, and when you're done, you've got something that can actually be used. Plus, this project is a great way to use up any scrap yarn you have laying around the house!

Very Simple Pot-Holder

Materials:

         Any 2 colors of yarn (it helps if they are both the same type of material and weight)

         A hook size of your choosing

         A tapestry needle (for sewing in loose ends)

For this example, I used white and blue worsted-weight yarn (this is scarp yarn, and I have long since lost the labels, so I don't know exactly what kind of yarn I'm working with), and a size J (6.00mm) hook. 

The size of your pot-holder is going to depend a few things. 1, how bulky your yarn is. 2, what size hook you choose to work with, and 3, how many chains you start out with. All of the pot-holders I've been making have started with a chain of 21 stitches, so let's start there, shall we?

Use both of the colors of yarn to Chain 21:

Row 1:

Work a single crochet into each of your chains (skipping the first chain off of your hook) for a total of 20 single crochets. Chain 1 and turn.

Row 2:

*Work a single crochet into each of the single crochets from the previous rows (going through the entire stitch), totaling 20 single crochets.*

Row 3 - ?

Repeat everything between the asterisks until the pot-holder is the size you'd like it to be.

And that's pretty much it! When you're finished, just pull the working yarn through the loop on your hook to finish it off, and use your tapestry needle to weave in the ends. All done!

I like my pot-holders to be square, but I can't really be bothered to count rows, so I simply fold my work-in-progress in half along the diagonal, and when both sides are even, I'm done!*

So that's it. I'm having a blast making these pot-holders, and I hope you guys will too! If you have any pattern corrections or suggestions (believe it or not, this is my first time writing up a pattern), please let me know!

Happy stitching!

*A note on finishing: A lot of people like to block their finished crochet/knitting pieces, and I do too! I just haven't been bothering to block my pot-holders, and you'll probably find that you don't need to either. With some regular use, they'll end up blocking themselves.

Team of Rivals

It's March and I've already made significant progress on my reading goals for the year.

If you'll recall from way back in January, one of my reading resolutions was to read Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals, which tells the story of the diversity of Lincoln's cabinet members and how they came together to help the country through one of its hardest times.

I sought out this book to read because I thought that my mother-in-law recommended it. But when I mentioned to her that I had finally finished it, she said that she wants to read it next! Wait? She's never read it?
*facepalm* 
She had heard a glowing review of it on NPR, and that was the basis behind her recommendation. Oh well, all misunderstandings aside, the book was fabulous!

Goodwin managed to keep me interested all throughout the book, which at 900+ pages, is quite the accomplishment! Now granted, not all of those pages were text. There were many pages of wonderful period photographs and maps and a very thorough index and bibliography (which are all very important in a non-fiction work of this magnitude). 

She managed to tell the stories of so many lives in a seamless way. Everything interconnected beautifully, and I think one of the ways she did that was by keeping her main focus on Lincoln as the driving force behind the book.

I would recommend this book to Civil War buffs, obviously. But I would also recommend it to anyone who:

• Saw and enjoyed the recent movie Lincoln (2012)
• Has a passion for US History
• Wants to learn more about the Civil War
• Wants to learn more about our 16th president
• Just enjoys a good long read!

 So there you have it. Reading Goal #1 for the year: Accomplished! That's 944/4,480 pages read (and only 3,536 left to go)!

Veggie Tuesdays!

I just wanted to write up a quick post to let you guys know that I've officially (officially) declared Tuesdays to be...

Veggie Tuesdays!

Yes, you heard me right. That's 'veggie' as in vegetable! I've decided that one day a week I'm really going to concentrate on eating fruits and veggies. That means that on Tuesdays I'm not going to have any meat, no sodas (no coffee either), limited amounts of sugars breads and pastas. What I am going to eat are lots of fruits and veggies, fresh juices and of course water!

And I'm not doing it alone. My fiance has agreed to attempt this grand undertaking with me. Wish him luck, he's going to need it.

The menu for the first 'Veggie Tuesday' (1-15-13):

Breakfast: Veggie Burger

Snack: Apples

Lunch: Portobello Pizza

Dinner: Veggie Sloppy-Joe's

Reading Resolutions

In the spirit of moving boldly forward into the new year, I’ve decided to try to tackle a few reading projects that have been on my list for a while now. I like to think of this list as a bit optimistic but do-able. You might think of it as madness. We might both be right.

My “Reading Resolutions” for 2013:

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of AbrahamLincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin

Hardcover (2005) 944 pages

This one has come pretty highly recommended to me by my mother in law (who hasn’t quite finished it yet). I think she heard an author interview on NPR around the time that Lincoln (2012) was coming out in theaters. After seeing the movie myself, I want to know more about Lincoln and his cabinet and how exactly they managed to pass the 13^th Amendment.

 

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

Signet Paperback (1987) 1,488 pages

             I’d been wanting to see Les Mis for ages. A lot of my friends who are into musicals and theater had told me that it was one show that everyone should see. So on Christmas day my fiancé and I braved the crowds to see the movie with our families.  It was spectacular and I’m so glad that I saw it (more on that in a later post). However, I’m the kind of person who loves to read the books behind the movies, so for some reason I decided that I had to read Hugo’s book, and I had to do it this year.

The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

Paperback (2002) 832 pages

            My fiancé has been bugging me to read Hitchhiker’s for a long time, and it’s been on my reading list, I just hadn’t quite gotten around to it yet. A few weeks ago while we were at Barnes & Nobel we found a copy of the complete series for a reasonable price and split the cost. I apparently have no excuse not to read this now, and in fact I’ve already started on it.

The Lord of the Rings Trilogy:

The Fellowship of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien

Paperback (2012) 432 pages

The Two Towers by J. R. R. Tolkien

Paperback (2012) 352 pages

 The Return of the King by J. R. R. Tolkien

Paperback (2012) 432 pages

            Now I know these are three books, but I’m counting them as on entity on my list because I plan on getting the whole trilogy read this year. A long long time ago, way back in 2001The Fellowship of the Rings movie was coming out and my friends and I were excited to see it. But one of my friends (who shall here remain nameless) made me promise that I would read the book first. I foolishly promised and then… never got around to reading it. Here we are 12 years later, and I still haven’t read any of the books, and so I still haven’t seen any of the movies. But that’s going to change this year, I hope.

            In case you folks at home haven’t been counting, I ran up a total for you. These four little reading projects add up to a total of 4,480 pages. That’s a lot of pages… and I’m planning on reading this all in one year? You guys were right, this is madness. Oh, and this is all on top of my ever-present challenge to read all of the 1001 Books to Read Before You Die and my standing 50-books-a-year challenge.

Yeah, I’ve lost what little marbles I had to begin with. If all else fails though, it’ll be an interesting year filled with lots of wonderful books. It might be crazy, but I can’t wait to get started on my challenges. I’ll keep you guys posted on my progress and I’ll try to post reviews of more books this year (in the spirit of posting more content in general). Well, I’m off to the library, wish me luck!

Books in 2012

One of my New Year's resolutions from last year was to read 50 books in 2012.

Did I achieve that goal? Yes and no. Let me tell you what I mean. I had originally set out to just read any 50 books, but as the year progressed and I got more and more into my reading, I decided that the only books that would count toward this goal were new books, ones I had never read before.

Sounds admirable right? (yeah, I know, I've got a huge ego)

Anyway, even though I read a total of 51 books this past year, only 37 of them were new to me.

It wasn't quite the accomplishment that I was hoping for, but I'm pretty proud of it nonetheless. It's a lot more than I read last year, and I enjoyed a much higher percentage of the books that I read.

And what books did I read? I'm so glad you asked.

Here is the definitive list of all of the "new" books that I read in 2012:

1.      30 Days of Night: Dark Days – Steve Niles, Ben Templesmith

2.      The Maltese Falcon – Dashiell Hammett

3.      Gentlemen Prefer Blondes – Anita Loos

4.     Water for Elephants – Sara Gruen

5.      One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

6.      The Hunger Games ­– Suzanne Collins

7.      The Sound and the Fury –William Faulkner

8.      Watchmen and Philosophy: A Rorschach Test – Mark D. White  

9.      30 Days of Night: Return to Barrow – Steve Niles, Ben Templesmith

10.   The Vampyre, a Tale – John Polidori

11.   Catching Fire ­– Suzanne Collins

12.   The Bridge Over the River Kwai – Pierre Boulle

13.   All the King’s Men – Robert Penn Warren

14.   The Family that Couldn’t Sleep ­– D. T. Max

15.  The Tommyknockers – Stephen King

16.  Mockingjay – Suzanne Collins

17.  Flying Home and Other Stories – Ralph Ellison

18.   Moby Dick – Herman Melville

19.   The Psych Ward Killer – Michael Price

20.   The Haunting of Hill House – Shirley Jackson

21.   A Smudge of Gray – Jonathan Sturak

22.   The Pleasure of Finding Things Out – Richard P. Feynman

23.   The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – Stieg Larsson

24.   The Dark Monk – Oliver Pӧtzsch

25.   Blood Work: A Tale of Medicine and Murder in the Scientific Revolution – Holly Tucker

26.   Four Part Midnight - Stephen King

27.   The Girl Who Played with Fire – Stieg Larsson

28.   Asleep: The Forgotten Epidemic that Remains One of Medicine’s Greatest Mysteries – Molly Caldwell Crosby

29.   Christine – Stephen King

30.   Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter – Seth Grahame-Smith

31.   Mr. Darcy, Vampyre – Amanda Grange

32.  Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Society

33.  Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontё

34.  Rose Madder – Stephen King

35.  The Girl WhoKicked the Hornet’s Nest – Stieg Larson

36.  The Holy or the Broken: Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley, and the Unlikely Ascent of “Hallelujah” – Alan Light  

37.   Disease and History – Frederick F. Cartwright & Michael D. Biddiss  

One thing that I'm really proud of is that I didn't abandon any books last year. If I started a book (with the exception of one book that I'm still in the middle of reading), I finished it. This is new for me, and something that I really wanted to work on.
Another project I'm working on is re-reading any book that I said I hated, and seeing if I still feel that way. The Great Gatsby fell under that category this time around, and I'm happy to say that while it's never going to be my favorite book, I have much more of an appreciation for it now after my latest read-through.

If you guys want reviews of any of these books (beside the handful I already did a long time ago), just let me know. I'd be happy to let you guys know what I thought of any of these books!