Booking Through Thursday

Interactive

With the advent (and growing popularity) of eBooks, I’m seeing more and more articles about how much “better” they can be, because they have the option to be interactive … videos, music, glossaries … all sorts of little extra goodies to help “enhance” your reading experience, rather like listening to the Director’s commentary on a DVD of your favorite movie.

How do you feel about that possibility? Does it excite you in a cutting-edge kind of way? Or does it chill you to the bone because that’s not what reading is ABOUT?

Well... I am quite sure I won't be too fond of e-books, even though I admit I have never even tried. They just lack few of the important things about literature: feel and smell.

You can't fondle an e-book, you don't feel the scratchy paper in your fingertips when you turn the page... and I don't dare to think how a reader would look like if you eat when you read (which is fun).

If I want to watch videos I check Youtube or put DVD in player.

And when it comes to commentary: Stephen King does that in his books. In written form. And I enjoy them.

I do enjoy listening his feature commentaries on DVDs, but a movie is a movie. Moving pictures are all nice and such, but books have their charm because they are good at what they are and have been for centuries.

Call me traditionalist, but that is not always a bad thing.

Writer's Block: The long and short of it

 

I think it's Stephen King's The Stand's longer (1990) version. Its Finnish translation has 1344 pages.

 

Shortest... probably any of the parts of Stephen King's "The Green Mile". Usually I really don't consider anything less than 300 pages a book, but this makes an exception.

 

Writer's Block: Spellbound

 

Stephen King springs to mind without any effort.
I have loved his books since my brother first introduced me to "Night Shift" at mature age of ten and now, twenty one years later I still love his books and when ever I find movies or series based on his books on DVD I get them if I just can afford it (and they are reasonably priced).

When I was younger I used to say that I would marry that man without hesitation if he wasn't already married.
If I wasn't happily married I would still have that opinion. *grin*

Another talented person I admire is Teresa Wentzler whose art I just love and am jealous of her design skills (admittedly her style is her style, my style is my style and I am excellent in my own style).

But still.... Mr. King takes the cake when it comes to talent.

Are any of you surprised when I tell that I haven't been able to sleep too well?

Good, neither am I.

Are any of you surprised that because of this I also managed to break the frame of my glasses? Yes, ouch. (Admittedly they are old: 7-8 years for all-plastic frame is quite well, I would say.)
Luckily we have super glue: it doesn't look pretty, but I am able to see before our visit to Helsinki and maybe even during the time when I am waiting for new glasses (thank G-d for el cheapo optician chains, with luck new ones are only 29€).

My mom could have said this!

"When you meet someone who can cook and do housework don't hesitate a minute: marry him!"
-- Unknown

(And I am lucky to have such a gem in my life. ^^)

Talking of housework, this ankle thing has given a completely new meaning to word accomplish: plain hoovering most of the apartment and wiping living room floor feels like a huge achievement.
And The Ankle Thing also gives a great reason to sprawl on the sofa for ages after doing something: must not strain my poor ankle too much.

Too bad I got addicted to Harry Potter books again so I have been reading the series through instead of stitching...

Igor(ina): "It's easy to kill thomeone, and almost impossible to bring them back again."


Polly: "Almost?"

Igor(ina): "Well, if you don't have a really good lightning rod. And even if you have, they're never quite the same. Cutlery tends to stick to them."

"Monstrous Regiment" by Terry Prachett

Spending on books i.e...

... "The Tales of Beedle the Bard" is available for preorder!

Yes, I already preordered my copy of both editions...

Some enabling per request of joannahurley

My favourite designs in the Myth & Magic:

The sunny summer evenings... look at the balcony behind Neko. The picture was taken yesterday after 9 pm.

To laugh or to cry?

"It was left to the genial Irish prelate James Ussher, while he was bishop of Armagh, to fix the date with absolute precision. According to his workings, which he managed to convince his clerical colleagues were impeccably accurate, God had created the world and all its creatures in one swift and uninterrupted process of divine mechanics that began on the dot pf the all-too-decent hour of 9 A.M., on a Monday, October 23, 4004 B.C.
- - -
At the start of that late October week, in the year that modern Christian calendar would style 4004 B.C., the Deity organized the basic consepts of light and dark, sun and moon, wet and dry. He then made every ocean, inlet, river, sandbar, meadow, desert, mountain, icecap, and fjord: The struture of the world, its topography, and the geology that forms the core of this story were complete. By the morning of the twenty-sixth, the Thursday, God had seen to it that life had been begun, and by that evening every first microbe, newt, spider, serpent, eagle, cat, horse, and monkey had been duly set in place, to creep, crawl, swim, fly, leap, spring and deploy its opposable thumb to climb.
By the following day the botanical phyla were all in place: Every rain forest, grassland, savanna, peony, orchid, rose, palm, apple, pine, and daisy had been left on earth, contentedly to bloom. All of Milton's "rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens" were now fully accumulated: An earthly paradise was set, ready to be lost.
And by the Saturday, most important of all, emerged those creatures who would lose it. The first two examples of ur-human, in the bipedal and upright (but otherwise subtly different from each other) forms of Adam and Eve, had been created in the Garden of Eden. They were at this stage blissfully unaware, of course, and therefore untroubled by the Fall (which would come later, via agency of the already created serpent and apple).
Recorded history would now formally begin. Human beings were in place, made in the image of their Maker, and they could do with their world more or less as they and their Maker between them pleased. Thus was it all done. Come midnight on the Saturday, with all this frantic labor done, the weary Divinity slept, having declared that all he had created was good, and fully ready to begin the adventuring he had ordained for it for the next six thousand years and more. *
- - - - -
* Few outside the world of rigid Christian fundamentalists the strict interpretation of James Ussher's arithmetic, which he explained in his monumental work of 1658, Annalis Veteris et Novi Testamenti. But nonetheless a 1991 survey showed that fully 100 million Americans still believed that "God created man pretty much in his own image at one time during the last ten thousand years" and anecdotal evidence now suggest that this number is climbing. ---"

Source: The Map That Changed The World by Simon Winchester

This, that and something else

I have been good and updated my wish list, though it still lacks all the items I have under wishlist_additions tag.

I am also insane: I'm going to stitch the design for Linda's bourse over one on 36 count linen.
The design is actually quite problematic... I have monochrome and four different colour schemes (of which I have two different versions) and I can't decide which one to stitch! So, I let Linda decide for me... she doesn't know how it looks like, but I have asked her to tell me which colour out of those four she prefers.

"You have a large envelope awaiting"

I had a notification of a large envelope few days ago, but as I have been a bit tired I haven't bothered to go to fetch it - until today. And it was just what I hoped it would be: my order from Interweave Press' Hurt Book Sale!

And here's few of my favourites:

From left to right:

1. Domino knitted linen baskets.
2. Cashmere Crossings shawl from the Wrap Style.
3. Tapestry Garden shawl from the Wrap Style.
4. Kuba from the Knitting our of Africa.

Wrap Style and Domino Knitting are good, as is Knitting out of Africa even though I have one complaint: where are the vivid earthy tones?! Most of the designs are worked with greys and in my opinion that is a flaw: colours are one way to create the style and when some says Africa most people think of vivid, a bit earthy, tones.

Doctors and results

All the results were "within normal limits" (I have to remember to ask my hemoglobin as I am curious to know is it still 120 (which is within normal limits... lowest "normal" is 117)), but I got new call time from the head physician of the health centre for next week.
That doesn't mean that I don't have asthma, back in stone age my brother had perfect spiro results but he got asthma diagnose anyway. No one knows what is my normal, so even the generic "normal" may be reduced flow for me (once again, I sang in a choir, my lungs are "strong").

And... mr. GP wrote the missive for thorax x-ray, but he never told me that I can just walk right in to the local hospital's x-ray unit. He only talked of the spirometry.
How the Heck someone like him is allowed to do work with patients?! (Ok, I know there are worse: like that GP who prescribed aspirin for former neighbour of ours because she suffered of stomach pain... she died of ovarian cancer couple of years later, and it's likely that she might have survived if the doctor had gave a damn. (Yes, in theory I could have a lung cancer, but with my rather cancer free family history (I know of three known cancers within the last three generations, two of the cases were lung cancer, both of them smoked heavily, 50% survival rate (my uncle's cancer metastized(sp?) to his brains before it was diagnosed...) I don't worry about that possibility too much.))

Yawn

After 18 hours of sleep (after being awake 26 hours) one almost feels like a human being again. And adds ability to sleep on the list of Advantages of what-ever-drug they gave me at spirometry (even though I got an allergic reaction from it).
And I got another reason to dislike that GP. I spesifically said to him that I can not use medication with any kind of starch in them and this bright fellow prescribed me medicine which has... corn starch, my worst enemy.
I know that corn allergy isn't one of the common ones, but you could imagine that a doctor would believe the patient noticing that he does not know me. I can take it if our regular Jane and John Does don't understand that I really am allergic and don't choose what I put in my mouth just to be nasty, but this guy is an actual doctor... When it comes to Ventolin(e) either the dose could be bigger or I have to learn the finesses of discus, but at least I got no symptoms from it (unlike from Nasonex, my eyes are itching - known side-effect) and it's nice to breathe freely again.

Anyway, retail therapy... I stumbled upon fabric sale and came home with two plastic bags full of fabric (click the thumbnail as usual):

 

My reason to go into a fabric store was that little tan piece on the upper right, as I need it for model's lining. Others... well, they just wanted to come with me.
The blues on upper left were the expensive ones, but I couldn't leave them there... rest of the fabrics in the big picture were in One bag full of fabrics only for 10€ sale so I just picked up everything I thought could be useful for me or my mother. (That white webbed fabric for example will end up in dye pot and after that I will sew couple of airy home tops. Those flowery fabrics end up serve my shirt demo - and rest of them... who knows, they would be great curtains, for someone who likes lighter shades (like my mother).

That ant fabric (who could resist a black fabric with metallic red ants on it?! Even less when it was in One bag full of fabrics only for 10€ sale...)) will probably end up being something more comfortable, I actually can see it as a dressing gown, and there's so much of that fabric that rest will probably end up being nice, short, "airy" nightie... just to have a matching set, you know. *grin*

And the books: 'Dictionary of Jewish Biography' ($43.80?! I paid $16.5... and mine was bought from a Finnish store and they had to order it for me (odd thing for a sale book, don't you think?)) and 'Hand-stitched Boxes' ("List Price: $24.95", I paid ~$10, and this one had to be specially ordered too).
I have to say that based on short browse that box book is really worth those 7 euros it was in sale. Imagine book filled with instructions for several dirrently shaped and sized boxes made of fabric and there's instructions even to those beautiful sewing cube boxes I have been drooling all over 'net.

I was a bad, bad person...

Spite of not knitting very eagerly I couldn't resist few homeless books at Interweave Press' Hurt Book Sale... From this moment on I am eagerly awaiting 'Knitting out of Africa', 'Domino Knitting' and 'Wrap Style'.
Whole pile with postages 42 euros (postage is about 2/5 of the whole amount).

Apparently I just proved that I am a book collector.

Though, I reasoned every single of them: KooA sounds interesting as I am rather fond of "African style" because it's generally colourful and strong.
DK because I have heard about domino knitting and have an instruction for it, but it's lousy, so I hope that this book proves to be better as these domino pieces would be great quick little projects and whenever I have enough of them I can just build a blanket out of them (assembling such thing is another issue altogether).
WS was clicked in the cart because lately I have suffered shoulder pain related to draft (If the temperature is any lower than 20 and there's any wind I may end up with stiff shoulders).

In general

I have been in pieces since yesterday's grocery store trip, but despite the pain, exhaustion and all the other "nice" issues (you could almost think that there's something in wrong with me O_o *grin*) I have been productive designing wise. All of them will come out as complimentary designs so stay tuned for the details...

28th year is almost here

I got an interesting "birthday card" today from my mother (we decided that it is a birthday card as it was about the same price as a card and it was given me for my birthday (which is in coming Tuesday (3rd of July), so you're not late sending gifts ):

1. It's a book, called Museum der Orientalischen Kunst Moskau.
2. It's published in Leningrad (yes, it was Leningrad back then).
3. It's printed in German Democratic Republic (Yes, it was GDR back then).

Not to mention that it has great pictures.

Did I mention that it is published in 1988?

Sparky has a wall!

The pumpkin on the right is modified. In the pattern said pumpkin frowns and taking the base idea behind this design and the general look of it I really couldn't understand a frowning pumpkin...
So, I opened my designing software and played a bit. I like this version of The Pumpkin much better. (Notice the cat on the crock!)

In addition to stitching...

... and taking care of Her Highness my weekend contained reading one book, a book which demanded to come home with me Wednesday (when I spent time in book store while waiting HH's operation to be over) despite its price (14,90€ which is way more than I usually pay for any book) and which wanted to be read as soon as possible, even though it actually had nothing I hadn't already knew in it. The book was "Antisemitism in Finland 1918- 1946" (its slightly modified version from a thesis).
One of those books everyone should read. (It saddens me that large percentage of the noisiest anti-semites were highly educated... and notable percentage of them were priests.)

If you are as interested of little tidbits of information as I am you may find it curious that one of Nazi Germany's "allies" had Jewish soldiers (and a field synagogue) during WWII: that country is Finland.
Nazis asked Finns to surrender our Jewish population, but prime minister of that time (J.W. Rangell) answered to Heinrich Himmler's request: "Wir haben keine Judenfrage". That was only time during the whole war when this topic was discussed.

Considering the facts we all know about Europe during WWII that is a real curiosity, and only few know about it.

Link of interest:

Jews in Finland during WWII

Stitcher reads quotes...

"It's a dangerous business going out your front door." (J.R.R. Tolkien) and stitcher adds "... - rather stay at home and stitch."

Like I didn't have enough things to do already...

I have been asked would I be interested to take part to a book project, and I have given preliminary promise to be one of the writers.
It will never be a best seller, but I see it as a possibility to affect opinions and, do what I have always wanted to do, be a publishing writer.
It would also be a good possibility to practise my writing style.

Stitching

I have been practising my French knots (-> best tutorial ever <-) and realised that silk may not be the best choice of fiber when doing it. I have also been wondering how it is possible to fell in love with your own design?
It is partially due choice of floss, as Atalie's Lhassa is simply beautiful when stitched, but partially it is about the design being just so... me, but so unlike me.
Nevertheless, it's beautiful.

Kitties

Her Highness has been very co-operative: she didn't kill me when I gave her her antibiotics last night and this morning she took her painkillers nicely. Though I am quite sure that that paté I had mixed it with had something to do with it.
Now I will just wait a while and give her morning meds when she's high enough not to care.

And, as I have no stitchy pictures, let me introduce you gorgeous man who sleeps on my left side:

To-Be-Read, an update

3rd and 4th ones from my To-Be-Read list are down: I finished 'The House of the Dead' last night and read Elie Wiezel's 'Dawn' after it (quick read: about 140 pages (40-45 minutes, which is much less than I was able to read at my best)).
I have to say that I seem to like Dostoevsky's's way to think, but something in his style bothers me. Maybe because, at least in this particular novel, he seems to make statements and forms the story out of them rather than tells a story - though, we have to notice that he bases it on his own experiences.
And admittedly I have never read anything else from him - yet, I have 'The Brothers Karamazov' in my list waiting... (I started 'The Idiot' aeons ago though)

Next victim: Daniel Katz's 'Otelo'
Coming to think of it... with this pace (4 books/ month) I am done after summer (notice that I have 'The Brothers Karamazov' and 'The Egyptian' in my list) - and found my beloved addiction again.

I have a cunning plan

I will finish my fourth model today, then I will stitch Spring and after that, if I have time and inspiration I will see about the fifth model. If I don't have the inspiration it can as well wait for July launch - taking that it won't end up being a catastrophe (model, not the launch).

There's no reason to boil my brains and get sick just because I worry too much. It does nasty things to one's creativity and I can't afford to lose that.

To-Be-Read/ Books

I have found one of my long gone bad habits again: reading in bed. (When I was married I kind of had other things to occupy myself with and it made me forget joys of reading in bed...)
When I was younger I used to read in bed before falling asleep, though sometimes it caused me insomnia because book in question captivated my attention and forced me to just keep on reading (I read Stephen King's The Green Mile in one night because I couldn't put it down (or rather put them down, as it consists from six parts)).

And thanks to this newly found bad habit of mine I have finally been able to draw few strikes to my To-Be-Read list. (Two books in two days just by reading in bed... fact is that I am fast reader, still.) (Admittedly both of those books are only from two to three hundred pages, but we have to acknowledge that everyone is not Stephen King.)
(Currently my bed time story is Muistelmia kuolleesta talosta by F. Dostojevski (I prefer to use more or less direct transliteration) which is number 10 in my TBR list).

When it comes to reading no one won't find reading in bed unusual, but I do remember those odd looks I got during my earlier years if I happened to mention that in my home we were allowed to read at dining table while eating.
And I found it odd that people found that odd as for me it was completely natural... You know, it would have been so terribly boring and unimaginative just to feed one's body so we preferred to feed one's mind too.

It is just quite odd that I was in my teens before I actually understood that my family is odd if you compare to an average Finnish family (but then, I was seven or eight before I realised that joulu (Yule/ Christmas) is actually religious holiday to some people... I have always been tad slow). I was over twenty when I realised that it actually may be the reason why I have so many communication problems with Finns: we just don't share same culture and it causes clashes when other part doesn't understand that you can actually do things differently without being bad person. (I know, I digress... I think I should try to sleep a bit. If cats let me.)

Ask and ye shall receive...

It was only day before yesterday when I drooled over Les marquoirs d'école and today I received a big envelope from a well-wishing friend... guess what it contained?

Ten points: one (1) copy of Les marquoirs d'école! Am I one happy camper now or what?!

In addition to that I realised today that one of the things close to perfection is 40 count cream Newcastle linen. Here presented with some glorious flosses.

Another challenge

TBR

A challenge to get me back to reading, as I have been dreadfully lazy on that matter last two years.

Pick 12 books - one for each month of 2007 - that you've been wanting to read (have been on your "To Be Read" list) for 6 months or longer, but haven't gotten around to.
Starting January 1, 2007, read one of these books from your list each month, ending December 31, 2007.
By the end of the year you should've knocked 12 books off of your TBR list!

And my list (in no particular order) - original names in parenthesis:

1. Eclipse of the Crescent Moon (Egri csillagok) by Géza Gárdonyi
2. Oikeusjuttu (Der Prozess) by Franz Kafka
3. The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Writings by Edgar Allan Poe
4. Sivuvaikutuksia (Side Effects) by Woody Allen
5. Sarastus (L'àube, Editions du Seuil) by Elie Wiesel 23rd of April
6. Otelo by Daniel Katz 13th of May
7. Kannibaaligalaksi (The Cannibal Galaxy) by Cynthia Ozick 3rd of April
8. Sinuhe egyptiläinen by Mika Waltari
9. Karamazovin veljekset (Bratja Karamazovy) by Fedor Dostojevski
10. Muistelmia kuolleesta talosta (Zapiski iz mertvago doma) - ' ' - 23rd of April
11. Jazz (Jazz) by Toni Morrison 5th of April
12. Orja (The Slave) by Isaac Bashevis Singer 17th of May

TAST

Haven't forgot that! I just need to get myself going with it, all those biscornus just are too tempting to be left alone, even for a day - or few hours.

An update

*gasp*

Not that much progress (thread needle -> stitch three stitches -> snip -> rethread needle -> repeat ad nauseam is tedious, and a wonderful method to slaughter time), but once again few stitches closer to the end.

But with this pace I won't get second part finished before this month ends. If it takes an evening to stitch one vine...

T-A-S

By the way... read the comments:

• that first attempt
• circling herringbone

Do I feel good now?!

And then...

Piece of literacy: Francis Crawford of Lymond, the (Zombie) Master of Culter.

BTT