Getting in the Mood

I’m feeling creative again. My creative spirit isn’t back in high gear yet. I think my problem over the past few months is that I spent my evenings online instead of doing something productive with my hands. I’m getting back into the swing of things and curtailing evening internet hours. I don’t spend as many hours perusing MobileRead, just long enough to check for free books and see if there are any interesting topics in the Lounge. I haven’t done proofing for Distributed Proofreaders in a couple of weeks. The last time I was there, I didn’t find any interesting books to proof.



Sometimes on cool evenings, I like to wrap something around my shoulders while on the couch. All of my other attempts at making a wrap have been clunky. I did a triangle with small cotton thread, but it just didn’t feel right. Another attempt was using leftover blue variegated acrylic yarn. I got a nice long rectangle, but the fiber is stiff and takes effort to keep it in place. A few weeks ago, I found four small skeins of green yarn. The label doesn’t specify the fiber content, but it feels good to my fingers. It’s a lightweight yarn and I’m using a size F hook. The pattern involves making a long chain, double crochet, chain two, and double crochet some more. It is making a nice mesh. Not big enough to stick your finger through, but big enough that it isn’t forming a stiff solid fabric. My first attempt wasn’t wide enough and I had to rip out about half a skein. Now I’m up to my third skein and very pleased with the results. I think I’ll have just enough length to make a decent wrap around the shoulders.

I haven’t finished the quilt. In fact, I haven’t touched it since I discovered the seams weren’t lining up right. It’s still sitting on the sewing machine. Soon…soon I’ll return to it.



I’ve been doing a little purging and organizing recently. I sorted through a plastic bin and paper bag full of bills, receipts, and other documents that needed to be filed or shredded. A trip to an office supply store later and I had folders, a new stapler, and a label maker. I put my shredder into overdrive and got everything done in a couple of days. Now, instead of tossing everything in the plastic bin in the living room, I have a monthly organizer next to my desk. When I open my mail, all of the bank statements and bills go into it. I’ve even got a drawer designated for things to shred. I was already pretty good about recycling the other paper bits.

I’m starting to make more use of the glassware I brought from home. A pair of stackable glass storage jars hold hair clips and ponytail holders in the bathroom. Just today at lunch, I filled a glass cookie jar with those little tubes of water flavoring. No more little boxes cluttering the shelf above the kitchen sink.

It’s still too early to wear socks and close toed shoes, but I’m breaking in a pair of flats I bought months ago. I tried wearing them bare, but the right shoe rubbed my heal even though I was just walking around the apartment. The socks ease the friction and today is an ideal day for them. It’s been hovering around 60F all day and raining. When I take the garbage and recycling out later this afternoon, I’ll definitely change shoes. Don’t want to get these sweet green bows wet.



I’ve been wearing sandals all summer and its about time to do winter shoe shopping. I’ve found a couple of things in catalogs (hate trying on shoes in stores) that I’ll order this week. I’ve had pretty good luck buying shoes online.

Proofreading

I haven't worked on my quilt recently. Actually I haven't done anything crafty. I've been spending more time with my computer instead.

Distributed Proofreaders (DP) is a group of people who volunteer to scan and convert paper books into ebooks. I've signed up and started proofing OCR scans. I like it. Comparing the OCR'd text to a picture of the actual page is the first step in the process. Basically I make sure that the letters and punctuation scanned correctly as well as ensure that any blots on the paper didn't get translated into extra letters or commas. It's not a big commitment and I can do a page or two every night if I want. I've considered doing some smooth reading as well because I could download an entire book that has been proofed and formatted for one last read thru before sending to Project Gutenberg. Maybe I will when something interesting shows up in the queue.

Black Orchids

I'm currently reading Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe novels and finished the audiobook version of "Black Orchids" yesterday. Not many of these books are available in ebook yet, so most of my reading will actually be listening. Audible.com has a nice selection and I like the narrator. The funny thing is that although I like the narrator, my mind overlays the voices of Maury Chaykin and Timothy Hutton for Wolfe and Archie. I guess I'll always love the A&E series based on the books.

Musical Endeavors

Today I hope to finish loading all of my music CDs onto my laptop, build playlists, and fill up my new Creative Zen X-Fi 16gb mp3 player. The X-Fi arrived on Friday afternoon, after a very long day of waiting and watching for the UPS delivery truck.

My original mp3 player, a Creative Zen Touch, is ready for retirement. The play/pause and next track buttons are a little flaky. Sometimes the next track button will pause the current track and the pause button sometimes sends me to the next track. I think this player has earned a rest. I've put it through its paces. It's not destined for the trash, by any stretch of the imagination, but it will no longer have a place in my laptop case.

I have two other Creative mp3 players, a V Plus 4gb and a Zen Stone. The Zen stone has a built-in speaker and spends most of the time in the shower, safely tucked inside two plastic zipper bags. I like a little peppy music with my morning ablutions. The V Plus is my everyday player. Audiobooks on the way to work and at lunch, music in the office and while I'm doing housework. I think now the V Plus and X-Fi will compete for status of everyday player. The X-Fi has a built-in speaker which will be great for use in the sewing room, but the V Plus will still be my favorite for audiobooks. So far I've discovered that the X-Fi may be a good desk player because it fits perfectly into a business card holder, allowing me to easily see the display.

All I really know right now is that I'm tired of loading CDs into my computer. Only half a binder left to load, thank goodness!

Piecing a Quilt

My current project is a quilt. I'm piecing the top this weekend.

The floral fabrics were purchased from Dragonfly Quilt Shop. I only bought a couple of fat quarters in each pattern because they were on sale, having no definite plan at the time of purchase. I just liked the design. It wasn't until I decided on a quilt and was trying to pick the coordinating solids that I researched and discovered the fabrics are part of the Elizabeths collection by Jennifer Chiaverini. I laughed when I found out the fabric is connected to a series of books. Serendipity! I'm not sure the books are my style, but I've added them to my wish list.


The squares are 4-1/2 inches. It took a while to cut all of them. I don't think I realized just how long it actually takes to prepare for piecing. Over a period of weeks, I washed, ironed, and cut all the squares, then started laying them out. I don't have table space for that. Instead I put up a curtain rod and hung a piece of flannel fabric. This became my design wall. I started with a scrap piece of flannel but it was too small of my ambitious endeavor.

I picked this flannel for the grid pattern. I turned the right side to the wall so the colors won't detract from my quilt colors, but the grid shows through enough to help keep things straight.

The green and cream solids are from Hobby Lobby. I originally planned to include a pink, but it seemed too brash.



I'm quite pleased with the random design.



I'll probably sash it in cream and bind with the green. I haven't started work on the back yet, but it will be green and cream with a few leftover floral fabrics squares.

This is only my second attempt at quilting. My first attempt worked out rather well. I used scraps purchased from Goodwill to make a placemat sized quilt. The scraps looked like they were cut from a designer's fabric sample book and all of the same pattern, just different colors. The piecing went quickly and smoothly and even the in-the-ditch hand quilting was easy. I actually should have finished this piece in January but laid it aside because the binding intimidated me. Last weekend I finally made my binding and stitched it on. It was a surprisingly simple process. I guess all the hours of quilt blog browsing paid off.

An Introduction

I am a reader, a stitcher, and a crafter. These are the things that make me happy. This is how I spend my time.

I pondered the possibility of creating a blog for quite a while before finally taking the big step. I've kept a pen and paper journal since college, but realized that the medium is not suitable for my current activities and accomplishments. It's a little difficult to record the particular color green used in a quilt without a picture. How do I explain the simplicity and beauty of a painted canvas? Photographs, pictures, and drawings are the easiest and most effective way to record the things I sew, crochet, or paint. This is the place where I will present those graphic representations of my time and energy, my creativity and my passions.

I've always been a bookworm, a voracious reader. Novels are my favorite escape. I was a weekly visitor at the local public library and regularly requested interlibrary loans to get the books I wanted. That is one of the things that frustrated me because it could take a couple of weeks to get the next book in a series. And then I heard about ebooks. In November 2007 (I think), I bought a Sony Reader PRS-505 and I haven't been separated from it since. Recently I bought an Amazon Kindle 2, but the 505 is my first love and will always have a special place in my purse for lunch and dinner time reading. The Kindle's place is on the bedside table. My access to books, most of them free, has vastly increased and I've been introduced to authors I never would have read. I also found my way to mobileread.com, an online community for ebook readers, and that is where I became BookishDreamer.

For years I kept track of all the books I read by listing the title, author, and date I finished the book in a journal. It wasn't enough. When asked how many books I'd read during the past year, I'd have to go home and count the entries. I joined goodreads.com in September 2008. Now I can easily and quickly report that 77 books were consumed during the year 2008 and I've already gone through 60 books in 2009. I'm not surprised to see that my reading has increased. I read every might for at least an hour before bed. I listen to audio books in the car. I eat in restaurants on a regular basis and am almost always a table for one. Until I got my Reader, I avoided eating alone in restaurants because paper books are difficult to manage, especially if the pages won't lie flat. That's not a problem with my Reader. My mealtimes are no longer so solitary. So many people have been curious about the device I put just to the left of my plate that I got moo cards printed with a few of the important websites for ebooks.

Reading, sewing, and crafting are things I love to do. They are the outlets of my creative mind. They are the manifestations of my dreams and of hands that will not be idle.