Somebody To Love

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).

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno (and Purgatory and Paradise)
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

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.

1. How do you hold your fabric?
I used to stitch in hand, but then I ended up with cubital tunnel so now I use Q-snaps that someone on the BAPXS yahoo list gave me.

2. Floss licker?
Nope. I use Thread Heaven on my BAPs, and on some of my more important smaller pieces.

3. How do you thread your needle?
With those funny-shaped Boye threaders. Mostly because they are less likely than the wire ones to break, and cheap enough to replace when I inevitably lose them.

4. What needle do you like best?
Size 28, of any kind. Needles don’t last long enough for me to be attached to anything in particular since my skin reacts with them and they get tarnished and rough, or I manage to break them.

5. Are you a needle loser?
Most definitely. I usually end up finding them in the sofa (if I find them at all). A few days ago I put one in the arm of a chair while reaching for the scissors and it disappeared into the stuffing. I’m sure that’s happened before without my noticing.

6. What fabric do you prefer to stitch on?
Anything, really. It tends to depend on the project.

7. Bobbins or floss bags?
Bobbins, because if I kept things in bags I’d lose them or the cats would eat them. It’s harder to lose an entire bobbin case.

8. Are you a scissors collector?
Nope. I have a cheapo pair of stork scissors that barely hold together anymore (these get the most use, and have come in contact with children) and a pair of expensive chrome stork scissors that I treasure. Any others are kid scissors from wherever.

9. Do you do your own framing, and if so, do you lace or pin?
I’ve laced a project once, and never pinned one. But I didn’t frame it. I made it into a book cover.

10. Are you a floss floozy?
I don’t think so. I can’t really afford to buy floss at random. I am collecting all the DMC colours though, buying a hundred or so every time they go on sale.

11. Silk?
I have yet to use silk floss, but if it’s anything like silk roving I’m sure I’ll love it when I finish school and can start using it.

12. Railroader?
No, but only because I’m working on BAPs that I started before I knew what that was. Rather than having the more recent areas looking neater than the rest I am going to start railroading when I finish one and start my HAED.

13. Are you a pattern or designer snob?
That depends. I really like detailed, complicated patterns so I’m currently working on two Teresa Wentzler pieces, and I’ve done some of her smaller pieces as well. But it’s not as if I’ll only work on her stuff. I’ve got a HAED lined up for later and I’m sure I’ll branch out more once that is done. For smaller pieces I’ll work on anything as long as I like it. Though mostly I make my own designs for small stuff.

14. Do you get antsy when you give someone a stitched gift?
A little. I only give pieces away to people who I know will appreciate them, but even so there’s some apprehension since they are usually surprise gifts.

15. Have you reached S.A.B.L.E.?
No way. I’ve been stitching for 15 years and in all this time I still manage to only have a couple pieces going at once and two or three lined up. I don’t get the supplies for a piece until I start it either.

16. Do you wash your projects?
Yes. Sometimes partway through if it has gotten dirty, otherwise when I am done. It seems to help even things out and make the overall look more polished.

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.

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!

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!

Crazy Fuck Bugs

While playing with Google to see what people thought about the new MacBook Pros I stumbled across JErm’s blog and the funniest quote I’ve read in a while:

Now my iBook seems like an old fussy girlfriend who doesn’t do anything cuz she’s fat and lazy. I don’t need this temptation.

A really nerdy thing for me to be amused about, I know. Want something even more nerdy?

There’s a t-shirt that Bert wears a lot that I think it hilarious. It says:

“God is Dead” - Nietzsche, 1882
“Nietzsche is Dead” - God, 1900

It certainly makes the point. Not to mention it brings up lots of fun metaphysical questions.

Comment with other nerdy pearls of wisdom. It might be fun.

My mom called me today with an unusual request: to write up a recipe to make pies out of mud. Apparently everyone invited to Erma’s wedding is supposed to submit a recipe for the favours, and my dad wanted to use this one as a joke. Since my mom has no sense of humour, the job fell to me to get it to seem like a legitimate recipe while still keeping the joke. Erma loves it. Her mother is the one planning the wedding and I don’t know how she’ll take it, but I don’t really care because it’s Erma’s wedding and I love her.

Mud Pie

This recipe is a family favourite, traditionally prepared in the summer months. You should not have to buy any ingredients as they should be things you already have around the house. For simplicity, I suggest obtaining the necessary materials from a neighbour’s yard on recycling day.

Materials;
1 dented aluminium pie tin
1 empty large stew can
1 stew can lid
1 empty soup can
1 mixing stick

Crust:
2 cups fresh cut grass
1 cup wet sand

Filling:
2 cups dry clay; strained
¼ cup mud-puddle water (may be substituted with ditch water in cases of drought)
12 live ladybugs (or whatever insects are handy)

Directions:

Mix grass and wet sand until evenly distributed. Press onto bottom and sides of pie plate. In the empty soup can mix dry clay and water with the stick until smooth. Pour into prepared crust. Place ladybugs on top of filling. Leave uncovered on picnic table in a sunny location for 4-6 hours. Cut into 6 pieces with stew can lid. Serve with pond-water tea.

Note: This recipe requires a unique sense of taste.

It’s essentially my dad’s recipe. I just took the loose version he had and spruced it up a bit.

Your birth tree is

Maple, Independence of Mind

No ordinary person, full imagination and originality, shy and reserved, ambitious, proud, self-respect, hungers for new experiences, sometimes nervous, many complexes, good memory, learns easily, complicated love life, wants to impress.

BOOM!!……….confetti……….wheee

I need to clean up.