Books!

This cracked me up...I can't underline things, so you're going to have to stick with read and unread.

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed. Well let's see.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them ;-) LET'S DO IT!

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (I've started this one...about 4 times now..)
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy (I do not like him, Sam I Am!)
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (I read this one..in French! Take that, list!)
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen (I've started this one, too)
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37.The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (I started this one, too. Couldn't get into it)
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy (I told you, I don't like him!)
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding (Why are books like this ON this list?)
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson (looking for more of him to read. He's great)
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray (I want to read it...but it's seriously hefty. Need more courage)
80 Possession - AS Byatt (I saw the movie....SO want to read this)
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery (also in the original French!)
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo


So let's see...that makes it....26 of them read. Yeah, probably more than average. I'm sure I'll get to the rest of the list eventually. Looks like a good one. :)

Strange Sights around the chamber

So, for all you doubters out there, the Harry Potter car does exist! It's not a pale blue Ford Anglia, and it doesn't fly, and it doesn't come rescue you when you're about to be eaten by giant spiders (though, around here ticks are much more likely right now)....but we do have a car that lives in the woods out at the smog chamber..and it makes me smile, so I'm sharing with you.

Its loooooking at yoooouuu.......

You know, I've been asked (mostly by you, Trent!) why I don't post more stuff to my blog. And I've been thinking about why. Because I'm a terrible blogger. That's it. I'm a half-assed blogger. I don't consider myself to be particularly funny, and my skills at photographing knitting or my other projects are slightly lacking (mostly a photographer..)....and so there you have it. A relatively busy life (I won't dare call it exciting or interesting!) that isn't well-supplemented with pictures. So...in search of funny, I offer up these:





http://www.cyn.ca/knit/





Randomcyn. She's funny. We had a short discussion some months ago about why patterns are made to fit imaginary people instead of real ones...but even if you know nothing about knitting, you can chuckle as you're reading this. I bet, if my writing were half this funny, I'd get more traffic!





http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dP_tfVGKxdE





Again...very stupid. But very funny. And, at least in the lab, this video has spawned lots of variations on the tune.





You want something beautiful and artistic? You got it:

But you see, this isn't my photo...it's my dad's. You can find the rest over at : http://www.alan-molly.smugmug.com/ . Nope. I'm not good for high art...just the astrodome and ice cream. :)

So, what is it that Frodoes all day? Well, today I helped my vet dig poo out of my cat's butt...and there's no pictures of that, thank God. I also did some work with water. My entire day can be summed up in a graph. That's it--a single, solitary graph. Good ol' Kat already beat me to the punch, though, and posted a similar graph over at her blog:
http://geocities.com/gallowayblog/index.html

The weekend? Surely I do fun stuff on the weekend. Well, as a matter of fact, I do. I work at the yarn store...and have a lot of fun...and bring home too much yarn. Too much sock yarn, lately, but anyway...THEY have a blog too. They even have some pictures of me up there, sporting some of my finished creations. Check them out:

http://yarnsetc.blogspot.com/

that's all for now, folks!

Something to fill the time...

Place an X by all the things you've done, or remove the x from the ones you have not.

This is for your entire life: -
(X) Smoked a cigarette.
() Drank so much you threw up (close, but not quite)
( ) Crashed a friend's car
( ) Stolen a car
(X) Been in love
(X) Been dumped
( ) Been laid off / fired - got a buyout - took a redundancy
(X) Quit your job
(X) Been in a fist fight. (I decked a boy in 6th grade for popping my bra strap)
() Sneak out of your parent's house?
(X) Had feelings for someone who didn't have them back?
() Gone on a blind date
(X) Lied to a friend but only to protect feelings
(X) Skipped school
(X ) Seen someone die.
( X) Been to Canada
( ) Been to Mexico. (how is it possible to have been to canada but not mexico when I grew up in texas???
(X) Been on a plane
(X) Been lost
(X) Been on the opposite side of the country
(X ) Gone to Washington, DC
(X) Waded in the ocean
(X) Felt like dying...
(X) Cried yourself to sleep?
(X) Played cops and robbers
() Recently coloured with crayons.
() Sang karaoke
( X) Paid for a meal with only coins
(X) Done something you told yourself you wouldn't.
(X) Made prank phone calls
(X) Laughed until some kind of beverage came out of your nose (that's so overrated. It hurts!)
(X) Caught a snowflake on your tongue
(X) Danced in the rain
(X) Written a letter to Santa Claus
() Been kissed under the mistletoe
() Watched the sun rise with someone you care about (
(X) Blew bubbles
( ) Made a bonfire on the beach
(X ) Crashed a party(
X) Gone roller-skating....
(X ) Gone Toilet Papering (also overrated)
( X) Gone to a major National League game
() Gone to Europe
( ) Been skydiving
(X) Worked as a waiter or waitress
( ) Bought gold bullion and silver
(x) Had surgery
(X) Moved more than ten times
( ) Collected the signature of at least one former president.....
( ) Been a care-giver for an invalid
(X ) Had jury duty and actually heard a case (and it was even child molestation in the catholic church!)
( ) Ushered at a movie theater
(X) Taught classes at work (taught classes for work, too)
( X) Water-skied
( ) Snow skied

1. Any Children? Nope
2. Any Pets? Just Annie
3. Any nicknames? Becky, Beck, Becker, Ykceb, Biki
4. What is your favorite drink? wine. :) And margaritas
5. Body piercing? Ears
6. How much do you love your job? I'll love it when I get my degree.
7. Birthplace? Houston, TX
8. Favorite vacation spot? The beach.
9. Ever been to Africa? Not yet
10. Ever steal any traffic signs? I have my stop sign staked out. Just need to go get it.
11. Ever been in a car accident? Yup.
12. 2 Door or 4 door? 4-door yellow suv. The Duck. :)
13. Salad Dressing? Don't like salad. The oil-based ones make good marinades, though.
14. Car or Truck? SUV? All the usefulness of a truck without the wonky weight distribution.
15. Favorite pie? Apple or blackberry
16. Favorite movie? My Fair Lady
17. Favorite food? Mexican food from Texas. anywhere else just doesn't cut it.
18. Favorite day of the week? Friday
19. Favorite brand of body soap? eh, not too picky.
20. Favorite TV show? South Park
21. Favorite smell? freshly cut grass, pumpkin....I like lots of smells.
22. What do you do to relax? go camping, do crafty things (sew, knit, scrapbook), read...
23. Message to your friends reading this? Don't let me go back for a PhD
24. How do you see yourself in 10 years? Beats me.
25. What do you do when you are bored? What is that?
26. Furthest place you will send this message? Beats me, it's the internet! An exploratory satellite could probably pick it up and send it back to NASA's mission control.
27. Who do you think will respond the fastest? I doubt anyone will.
28. Least likely to respond? See 27.

What I like about Texas

I got the opportunity to take a trip to Texas about a month ago for a friend's wedding..and I got a chance to spend some time immersing myself in Texas culture. So, a couple of pics to share with everyone:

This is the Astrodome in Houston. On the ground is the fairway for the carnival that is situated along the walkways around the Rodeo. This shot was taken from the top of the ferris wheel! And, another shot:

The best ice cream in the country. Yum! Even better--there is a coffee shop opening in Durham that sells this stuff! Woohoo! Now I won't have to drive to Charlotte to get some for my birthday. :) Now, if I can get a rodeo to come to town and some decent Mexican food, I'll be all set and may never have to move back to Texas....

A Becky by any other name...

1. Your rock star name (first pet, current car): Oreo Escape (hmmm, that one's pretty good!)

2. Your gangsta name (fave ice cream flavour, favourite type of shoe): Peppermint Slingback

3. Your Native American name (favourite colour, favourite animal): Green Lioness

4. Your soap opera name (middle name, city where you were born): Leigh Houston

5. Your Star Wars name (the first 3 letters of your last name, first 2 of your first name): McRRe

6. Superhero name (2nd favourite colour, favourite drink): Blue Merlot

7. NASCAR name (the first names of your grandfathers): Pete Norman

8. Stripper name (the name of your favourite perfume/cologne/scent, favorite candy): Lavender Gummi (worms)

9. TV weather anchor name (your 5th grade teacher’s last name, a major city that starts with the same letter): I think I should be exempt from this question, as I could work as a TV weather anchor with my REAL name. To play along though: Burns Boston

10. Spy name (your favorite season/holiday, flower): Summer Iris

11. Cartoon name (favorite fruit, article of clothing you’re wearing right now): Grapefruit Pajamas

12. Hippie name (What you ate for breakfast, your favorite tree): Oatmeal Dogwood


Enjoy!

Life beyond fiber..

Well, this post is for a friend of mine (probably the only one who reads this blog!) who complains that I don't post anything about what I'm thinking, just stuff about knitting and sewing. So, here you are. An actual post about something beyond fiber.

I suppose what's been on my mind most recently is all the crap surrounding Robert. I go up and down depending on which day...no, which MOMENT I am asked about it, and lately it's been down-ish. I supposed I'm still just processing everything, everything that was said and not said, and to whom. In one of the eMails, it's written that Robert doesn't love me and never did. Several times he mentions that he is married "only to his country" (angsty poetic crap, I know), but a refusal to acknowledge a marriage to a person still hurts. Since I no longer trust what he tells me (or ever told me, unless it was negative), I have a hard time believing that he does or did in fact love me. I don't know if I've adopted this belief as a coping mechanism, or what the truth actually was. Part of me is starting to settle on the idea that he didn't love me because he doesn't know what love is...which seems awfully plausible. It's hard for me to imagine that a person can love someone and still hurt them so completely without a second thought about it. Also on my brain's internal track is "Why?" whywhywhywhywhywhywhy....why this? why me? why now? why was I led to believe a lie?

There is an upside to all of this. Even with all that negative crap swirling around in my head, a small part of me feels refreshed and free. All that energy that was spent worrying about Robert, making sure I had time to connect with him (let's ignore the fact he didn't give a crap whether or not he connected with me...he said and wrote on more than one occaison that he wished I would go away and leave him alone...), making this marriage my number one priority (I know--it wasn't his!)....all that energy is FREE! And it wants to create. And work on my thesis...it wants to be and do and grow. And when it shows up, I'm really trying to make sure I hang on to it and make it last. Here's hoping it comes more often and stays longer!


And, by the way, in case anyone's asking, the skirt has been a hit! I've gotten lots of compliments on it. :)

What, you didn't think I could resist not mentioning fabric at all, did you?

Finally some progress!

Hello again, world. I seem to be falling off my resolution to write more frequently. Ah well. I've been too busy DOING things to write about them, it seems. Anyway, here she is:

Ta-da! It's my shiny new Bernina. We've been happily getting to know one another...with lovely creations such as this cute little lace pillow...an idea inspired by my cousin....and new skirts to wear to class, like this:

Not bad, eh? It's a chocolatey mole-skin and was incredibly easy to make..it looked a lot harder than it was.

In addition, I've also picked up my Terribly Ugly Textured Tunic...even if it ever becomes pretty, I might not change the name. :) It was a sweater I started back last August...and finished sometime around there too. Nice, easy raglan sleeve top from Fitted Knits. Oh, no, though...not that easy. When I finished..and put it on...it was HORRID. Too big in all the wrong places and too tight in even worse places. This was Not The Knit for Me. I was pretty mad at it, so I tossed it in the closet and let it sit for a couple of months. Then I pulled it out and frogged 85% of it. Now I'm actually going to work on it a little bit more. I have ideas on how to finish it and make it look good...and I'm going to love it when it's done. I hope.

A new arrival

Well, so far so good. I'm keeping up on my resolution to blog more. That doesn't mean that this site is getting any more traffic, but hey. It's a start.

The biggest news of the past week is that a new arrival has entered my home. No, no babies, but a new sewing machine! Woohoo! It's a Bernina Aurora 430 and I'm totally in love with it. I had forgotten how nice and smooth and pretty and sleek Bernina's were. But now? My memory is happily jogged. I've already made a few things on it--a bellydance choli, and a skirt I've been hacking at for ages on. That, at long last, is now down to the final bits--the gathering and sewing. And it's a lot of gathering. Photos to follow as they get taken!

New Year's and all that

Well, it's 2008, and that means, at least for most everyone, resolutions. I usually don't make them, but for some reason, this year they are showing up in abundance. Some way to improve every part of life. I want to get my thesis done (before the end of the year!), get to my WW goal weight, finish up projects I've had stashed away and make a dent in my scrapbook supplies...which kind of fits in with the projects stashed away. I also want to update this blog more. I've had it forever and never seem to do anything with it..I feel like I should either do it or not. So, I'm going to make an honest effort to do it.

Happy news: I'm finally about to get my sewing machine! I'm so excited. Since my machine was stolen, I've been handsewing what I need or borrowing machines as I need them. No more! I'm going to be the proud owner of a Bernina Aurora 440 QEE. It's a refurbished model, so I'm getting it at a deep discount (the previous owner traded up to an insanely expensive machine for Xmas)...the QEE part means Quilting Edition + Embroidery. It's got an embroidery unit, which will be fun to experiment with, and the quilting part just means that it has a lot of overhead and a nice big sewing platform. And lots of fun decorative stitches. I'll have a good time playing with this new toy. Visions of dresses and bellydancing clothes are dancing through my head right now.

Knitting news: I started a new project--Clapotis. I've seen hundreds of these things online, and there's probably hundreds more that are undocumented in the world. I was sold on it after seeing one in the flesh and trying it on. It's so elegant and makes use of such beautiful sock yarn that I just couldn't resist. Mine's in colinette jitterbug, colorway Gaugin (I love how they use artists names for their colorways!) Here's what it looks like so far:

More to come as I make progress. I hope to finish this soon, so I can wear it while it's still actually chilly outside. Given how long it's taken others, though, I have my doubts. I can still wear it into the spring, though. Once the AC is turned back on in school, I'm sure I'll be cold again!

Onward ho, back to the needles!

Alrighty..so I finally joined the Fitted Knits Along (link here). Woohoo! I didn't want to join until I had something to show for it. And I do. About 2/3 of the textured tunic. I went until I ran out of yarn. Now I'm stopped until the LYS pulls some from their other stores and gets it over to me. Wed, perhaps? Then I can do the back flap and the sleeves. Right now I can't get over how LONG it is. I feel like I'm wearing a dress. But I'll be trendy! I'm not sure what I'll do next. Probably something smaller. Maybe that little shrug? I need to do something for Mr. Froggie, as he has so sweetly earned it by wearing the ugly scarf I made for him last year for xmas and LIKING it. That earns a sweater. Or at least a vest.

I promise..pictures soon!

Resurrection, perhaps?

Hello out there to everyone (all 2 of you). I'm going to try to resurrect this blog, as I do want to join some of the KALs that are floating around out there as well as show off what I'm doing. The status of the sweet sweater? I finished it! It's cute and everything, and I put it on and.....yeah. Too small. Well, too narrow. It would be utterly cute if I lost 15 lbs. I'm working on that anyway, but I hate to not have a sweater that fits! I'm still deciding what to do about it. I think what happened was that I used the wrong material. Cotton fleece just wasn't stretchy enough...well, it stretches but it clearly doesn't want to or like it. I should have done it in wool of some variety. Acrylic probably would have worked too. I may frog the thing and do something else with the yarn. Don't know.

So what have I been doing these past months? Well, in fiber-land, I taught myself to knit and it really caught my eye, moreso that crochet. So I've been a knitting fool, making my DH some things, and a baby sweater for a new addition to the family (on DH's side) and I'm currently working on the Rogue sweater. It's turning out great, though I think when I'm done I'm going to put the cable needle down for a while! I'm also surprised that none of the people who make it have been accosted by some crazed Lord of the Rings or Dungeons and Dragons fan..it's kinda fantasy-ish. I suppose, if I ever run into those problems, I'll let you know!

Sweet!

Okay...so I frogged it. The sweater was just TOO big. But now? oh, now it fits like a dream. :)
I swear I'll get this picture thing figured out soon! I've done about 6 or 7 inches below the armseye..it's starting to look like a real sweater now. Or maybe a sweater-vest.

I also found a knitting circle! I found them on the internet, and their day to meet is Thursday, so I'm going to head out and see what I can find.

This sweater is starting to look SWEET!
I think it will need some embellishment when it's done....I'll be looking for ideas....

Sweater Sense

Okay, I've been negligent about posting my progress because I've been making so much..well, progress! I got my neckline issues figured out and have even gotten so far as to join up under the arms...which is where I sit now. As I look in the mirror, I realize...it's loose. Really loose. Now, it fits through and around my arms comfortably, but the size around the back? Huge! That negative ease is just that...gone somewhere else. Now, since I signed up to crochet my favorite sweater, not my favorite sweatshirt, we might have something of an issue. If it tightens up in the next row or two, it should be okay...so for now, I'm going to switch to a smaller hook, which I planned to do anyway, and start decreasing by two stitches under the arms instead of just one. If this doesn't help, I may try and put in some decreases down the back as well...so for that, I have two questions.:
1-does the decreasing show the way the raglan increases do? and
2- is there such a thing as a princess-seamed sweater?

'cause if I can save it through some creative decreasing, I will...I really really don't want to frog it!

And I will post pictures soon, I promise. I know this site looks really dull without them. :)