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.