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Last.fm| Title | Author | Date Started | Date Finished | Format |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Then We Came To The End | Joshua Ferris | January 16 | January 28 | ePub |
| A Game of Thrones | George R. R. Martin | January 24 | In Progress | Paperback |
| Catching Fire | Suzanne Collins | January 28 | January 30 | ePub |
| Mockingjay | Suzanne Collins | January 30 | January 30 | ePub |
Fiction Read in 2012
Immune System Fail
The last couple of weeks I could feel some sort of illness lurking about trying to find its way in. This was not a surprise, as various colds were making their way through the library staff. Besides working directly with 3 people who were sick, I was also performing updates on every public library computer in the city. It was only a matter of time before the germs won.
At first it seemed like a mild cold, but progressed to an ear infection which I cured with the aid of an ear syringe and some drops. All seemed fine. I was feeling great for the first time in weeks and could get back to being productive. The next day it hit me. Over the course of a few hours I felt progressively worse. By the next morning it was obvious that I’d caught the flu. Bugger.
The reason it’s bothering me enough to blog about is because my parents are visiting this weekend for the first time in 8 years. If I can’t shake this in the next 24 hours the weekend is going to be, “Hi guys, so glad you could come! Don’t come near me or touch anything I’ve touched until I wash it, or you’ll get sick….No, I can’t do that with you. I’m too tired and sore….Let’s not go there, there’ll be too many people and I don’t want to infect everyone.” Sounds fun, right?
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Doodle The Mascot
I joined the local embroidery guild a couple weeks ago, and for their first project of the year they are doing redwork embroidery. Basically you take a stylized image, transfer it to your fabric, and use outline stitch (also called stem stitch) to stitch the outline onto the fabric. It’s redwork because you traditionally use red thread for this. Bluework uses blue. It would be greenwork if using green. You get the idea.
Anyway, the second thing we are going to be doing is turning a redwork piece into a round ornament. Since the first thing I stitched is around 5 inches and we need something around 3 inches for the ornament, I’ve been trying to come up with something good I can use for the second lesson.
Today while going through some of my papers upstairs, I found the Doodle The Mascot page from the One Piece manga that suggests ways to turn a skull and crossbones into a customized pirate flag. Since I’ve also been trying to learn Illustrator and playing around with my graphics tablet, I’m going to create a pirate flag for Santa and use this as my ornament. Brilliant!
Basically, it will be a skull wearing a Santa hat with candy canes where the crossed bones would be. The bonus is that it will be stitched in red, so it’ll look very appropriately Santa-like.
ETA: Here it is! I suck so it took way longer than it should have, and the hat is a little weird. But I still think it’s awesome. Click for the full thing.
Hybrids!
I’ve been playing Animal Crossing: City Folk a lot for the last couple of weeks. I usually don’t give much thought to the flowers and things in town, but this time I want to get the golden watering can so I’ve been planting a lot of flowers and trees. So, I started the game up yesterday and was very surprised to see that I now have my very own orange roses. It turns out that if you plant flowers of the same variety next to each other they can produce new flowers, and sometimes hybrids. See?
Orange Roses
Orange flowers! I’m going to go back and move flowers around to try and get more pretty colours. By default you get white, yellow, and red.
25 Random Things
Lots of people keep asking me to do this meme, so I’ll do it. But I refuse to tag other people since I find it annoying when people do that to me.
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LibraryThing Meme
This is a list of the top 106 books most often marked “unread” by LibraryThing users. The rules: bold the ones you’ve read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish. Pop a note in the comments if you’ve done this one (and help me keep the dream alive).
My Stitching Habits
This meme came up on the LJ cross_stitch group, and I figured since I don’t talk about my stitching very often this would be a good way to let you all know some things about how I go about it.
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Let's talk about…quirks
Since I’ve just finished eating a grapefruit and Brent talked earlier about some quirks of his, I thought I’d share as well.
It takes me 20 minutes to eat a grapefruit.
I eat grapefruit often. They are very delicious and I love to eat them plain. But when I say plain, I mean plain. I don’t eat anything but the pulp. I peel it like most people do oranges. Then I meticulously peel off any remaining rind. I’m left with the segments, but I don’t eat these at this point either. I separate each one and peel off the membrane, careful not to burst any of the pulp inside. Once I get that all off, I eat the pulp.
I also eat lemons and limes this way, though I don’t get these as often. Today I also learned that my guinea pig, Gingie, loves grapefruit too.
Brent may have started something here that he didn’t intend to. 
What You're Doing
Or, what I’ve been doing.
Things haven’t been too busy but I’ve been enjoying the chance to read again and not spend so much time on the computer. I realize once school starts up in September I’m probably going to be chained to my laptop again.
I’m trying to learn to actually use Photoshop, rather than putting up with my usual tactic of fumbling around until I get something presentable. I’m also teaching myself to type using Dvorak to help with my repetitive strain. I’ve pretty much got it down but find it hard to stick to because I’m so slow at it compared to Qwerty. Oh well. If I put stickers or something on my keyboard, or rearrange the keys, I’m sure I’d be faster at it since when I forget where a letter is I can just look instead of having to stop and think about it.
Look! A cute ducky!
That was taken before Convocation, when me and Dean were wandering the park looking for good places to take pictures of the gown for my grandma. I’m sure she’s glad she made me promise that I’d go to this one [since I skipped out on my highschool graduation] because not many people in my family make it through to university, let alone graduate. Now that I’ve had a couple weeks to get over it, I’m kinda glad I went too. Not for the usual reasons, but so I’ll have an idea of what to expect when I graduate from Western. At least that’s one convocation that I’ll be glad to go to!
Still, I really like the pretty purple frame for my degree. It’s much better than Dean’s with his boring brown thing. Mine’s so bright and cheerful. I think it better represents the spirit of the school. Not just because it’s the school colours. The whole experience at school was so much fun. The other frame is so austere looking. It kinda creeps me out. I keep saying mine is better than Dean’s. Eventually it turns into us joking that I chose the one I did because I’m an artsy-fartsy philosophy major and he’s an important and valued business student. Ha! I still say we win because there are more people getting BAs at Laurier than BBAs. So there!
See? Mine’s so nice:
While waiting for the spinning wheel to get back I didn’t feel like knitting much, so I started working on Peacock Tapestry again and I’ve now finished another page. For as much as I still love this piece after all these years, I must admit I’m going to be very excited when I’m finally finished the leaves on those trees. So much green! Even the pears don’t provide much distraction from the overwhelming green of it all.
This is the section of the trees that I just finished. You can see where the page ends.
This is what I have so far:
Since Kitty actually stayed off it this time, I’ve got something else. Kitty raspberries!
In other cross-stitch news I received my needleroll from Hania this month:
It’s so beautiful! I love it so much. Especially because it’s something I never would have thought to make for myself, and yet it’s so pretty.
I also made her one. Mine’s something of a colour-overload, but in a good way I think. The original pattern was so monotone that I couldn’t stand it and went in the complete opposite direction.
As if there isn’t enough random stuff in this post, have some cute piggies!
Yay! Presents!
I finally received my biscornu and it’s the coolest thing. I love the design and the colours so much.
[click for larger images]
Also, my partner sent me lots of loot to go with it. That was much appreciated what with exams looming a week away and massive essays and such.
I’m so happy!