Books Read in 2012

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 June 12 Paperback/ePub
Catching Fire Suzanne Collins January 28 January 30 ePub
Mockingjay Suzanne Collins January 30 January 30 ePub
Matched Ally Condie February 8 February 23 Hardcover/ePub
Keeping the Moon Sarah Dessen February 9 February 12 ePub
Running the Books Avi Steinberg February 10 February 28 ePub
Crossed Ally Condie February 23 February 27 Hardcover/ePub
The Gentleman of the Rings J.R.R. Tolkien February 28 In Progress Paperback/ePub
Ready Player One Ernest Cline February 29 March 6 ePub
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie Alan Bradley March 9 In Progress Audio/ePub
The Gift of Fear Gavin de Becker March 9 March 22 ePub
As I Wake Elizabeth Scott March 22 March 23 ePub
The Secret Lives of Hoarders Matt Paxton March 23 March 29 ePub
The Happiness Project Gretchen Rubin March 29 In Progress ePub
The Thief Megan Whalen Turner April 4 April 7 ePub
Black Heart Holly Black April 4 April 5 ePub
The Queen of Attolia Megan Whalen Turner April 7 April 9 ePub
The King of Attolia Megan Whalen Turner April 9 April 11 ePub
A Conspiracy of Kings Megan Whalen Turner April 11 April 13 ePub
Soulless Gail Carriger April 13 April 16 ePub
Changeless Gail Carriger April 16 April 18 ePub
Blameless Gail Carriger April 18 April 19 ePub
Heartless Gail Carriger April 19 April 20 ePub
Timeless Gail Carriger April 20 April 23 ePub
A Clash of Kings George R. R. Martin June 12 June 24 ePub
A Storm of Swords George R. R. Martin June 24 June 30 ePub
A Feast for Crows George R. R. Martin June 30 July 9 ePub
A Dance with Dragons George R. R. Martin July 9 August 13 ePub
Reached Ally Condie December 13 December 15 Hardcover

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?


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.

Pirate Santa

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 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.


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!

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:

degree

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.

peacock tapestry detail

This is what I have so far:

peacock tapestry whole

Since Kitty actually stayed off it this time, I’ve got something else. Kitty raspberries!

kitty razz

In other cross-stitch news I received my needleroll from Hania this month:

needleroll

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.

topiary needleroll

As if there isn’t enough random stuff in this post, have some cute piggies!

piggies