Thank You Very Munch

Have you ever had one of those days when you just wanted to...

...scream?

Me too.

There are just some days when it's all you can do to keep your head...

...on.

When it seems like everything around you is just...

...wrong.

Speaking of wrong, it was hard to get this guy to look right. When I set up him originally he looked, well, kinda stretchy.

 

So I made one of these to hold in the sides. Actually, Captain America and I made it together.

 

Here he is using power tools to cut the edges of the frame.

It took us several attempts to get the angles right.

Math was never our strong suit.

It makes us go

But eventually we got it right. See how it holds the edges of the book in?

And how nicely the book fits?

Munch better.

Book Review: Moll Flanders

Title: Moll Flanders
Author: Daniel Defoe
Format: Kindle/Audible Whispersync
Reading Dates: Jan 7, 2013 - Jan 26, 2013
Rating: ***

Moll Flanders led a scandalous life back when most people thought that was a bad thing. In this book she relates her life from her inauspicious birth in the Newgate prison, to her industrious rise in society as a young woman, and through her years as a thief and whore. Her words, not mine. OK, maybe mine, too.

I found the first part of the book entertaining as Moll always seems to find herself associated with the wrong type of men. About halfway through the book she is forced into thievery and at that point I thought the book really slowed. There seemed to be a non-stop catalog of all the things she stole and how.

The final part of the book, which Moll herself says will be less interesting to the reader, was indeed less interesting, but Defoe does a nice job of tying up all the loose ends before the end. There are better classics, but I'm glad I read this one.

Used Whispersync to both read and listen to this book via Audible. The technology worked better for me this time than last, but there were still a view glitches. Davinia Porter's narration was great as always, but the audio quality of this recording seemed to be lacking. Porter's voice seemed to get quieter and the end of many sentences and I wouldn't be able to hear exactly what she said. That being said, it was a free book, so for that it was definitely worth it.

What Is The Question?

You know I love my RDCBs, the rainbow of colors, the patchwork quilt of covers.

They are a little bit amazing when you think about it. Always four stories in each volume, each 144 pages. It takes a special kind of talent to condense a book in exactly 144 pages. Every time. Think about that guy's job!

But sometimes you need to step your game up a bit. You can't settle for the condensed version. You need the real thing in all its unabridged glory. I'm talking about literature, people.

See...

I was reminded of this the other day when I ran across this copy of The Complete Works of Shakespeare at the Goodwill Store. I got it for a good price because apparently Shakespeare had a ghost writer named G.B. Harrison and this is one of the few copies where his name was accidentally printed on the spine.

I took it home and set it on my table. What should I make of this book? I asked myself. That is the question. 

No it's not.

That is the question (in 3 fonts).

Circle Work

I didn't put up very many Christmas decorations this year. That doesn't mean that I had my house put back together any earlier than I normally do. 

Remember these guys? 

They finally came down yesterday. On the 33rd day of Christmas my true love gave to me...

Don't judge me.

One of the reasons it took me so long to take down the wreaths is this guy. Remember him? 

Well, he went in the attic a long time ago, but he haunts my dreams anyway. In a good way. I think. 

I'm hooked on those little circles. I love the way the book circles set off the colored circles and visa versa. 

So instead of putting up the rest of my Christmas decorations, I might have got a teensy bit obsessed with those circles.

Because I covered this apple.

And then I made this teal flower...

and I liked it so much, I made a brown one, too.

There is something calming about taking all those kitschy pictures from the RDCBs and punching them into nice pretty circles. 

There's a quill for the center and then another between layers to give the flowers some dimension. 

Before I knew what was happening, January was almost gone. I looked at the calendar and realized that February was less than a week away and I still had Christmas wreaths on my front door, so yesterday I finally took them down. 

But I kept looking at that center. The one with all the Christmas stuff on it...

...and I covered it with circles.

Four layers of circles. 

The colored ones came from a hardback atlas I bought awhile back. There is something calming about taking Venezuela, the Indian Ocean, and parts of Canada and punching them into nice pretty circles.

I hung the wreath near one of my bookshelves.

"Straighten up!" I heard one of the books whisper. "The lady is obviously crazy and you don't want to end up like that guy."

Butterflies and Flowers

Many years ago I applied for a job that required me to take a battery of tests--IQ, aptitude, personality--the whole gambit. When I had filled in all the bubbles that could possibly be filled in, the HR guy sat down with me to analyze the results.

"I'm guessing," he started, staring at the print-out and then looking directly in my eyes, "that your desk is pretty messy."

Wow, I thought, that's a heckuva test.Which questions told him that? And is it in my best interest to agree or disagree with that statement?

"But," he continued, "I bet you're like me. Every now and then it just gets to be too much and you have to stack it all up and clean it all out."

Has he been talking to my husband? To my mother? That little piece of insight was dead on. Sometimes I like things nice and clean and sometimes I like a big jumble.

Example #1:
 

Chair in my living room                                                   Chair in my TV room

Example #2:

China we eat on sometimes

China we eat on other times

Example #3

                         

    My Christmas tree 2 years ago                                             My Christmas tree this year

Example #4

This very clean and simple Valentine's book

My latest creation that would look right at home in a Victorian bed and breakfast

Ladies and gentlemen, there's a lot going on here. We have butterflies. Plural.

 

Big butterflies...

...and little butterflies 

...and flowers.

Lots of flowers made from pictures I tore out of RDCBs, each with its own jeweled center.

And, of course, those botanical end papers, because let's face it, there just isn't quite enough going on already that a few dozen more flowers won't fix.

This English garden wannabe is made from a copy of Bruce Wassterstein's Big Deal, an insider's account of the high-flying world of mergers and acquisitions.

And now it's butterflies and flowers. Cleaning up a mess indeed.

Book Review: The Eyre Affair

Title: The Eyre Affair
Author: Jasper Fforde
Format: Audible
Reading Dates: Nov 20, 2012 - Jan 7, 2013
Rating: ***1/2

I became a Jasper Fforde fan about a year ago when I ran across Shades of Grey. It became an instant favorite of mine, and I was excited to delve into another Fforde novel.

Like Shades of Grey, The Eyre Affair is set in a dystopian world, this one an England that is somewhat controlled by mega-corporation, Goliath, and that is still fighting a 100+-year-old Crimean War. Thursday Next is a LiteraTec, part of a Special Operations team tasked with preventing crimes against literature, who gets called in when the evil Acheron Hades finds a way to enter literary works and kill characters off, changing the novels entirely to the outrage of the reading public.

I liked the character of Thursday Next. She's smart, resourceful, vulnerable, and loyal. This is the first of several Thursday novels, and I liked her enough to read another one. That being said, I didn't think this world worked as well as the one in Shades of Grey, and given a choice I would read that sequel first. There was too much "different-ness" in The Eyre Affair, especially in the middle of the book, that it got in the way of a pretty good story. (Vampires and werewolves--really?) By the end, however, when Hades attempts to change Jane Eyre Fforde gets back around to clever twists that make reading him him fun. Satisfying ending!

I listened to this as an audiobook and Elizabeth Sastre does an excellent job as a narrator. Good "Thursday" voice and a host of other voices to give life to all the fun characters in this book.

L is For the Way You Look at Me

I am still learning how to be a crafty person and so I seem always to be woefully behind for each holiday. Most other crafty people have been showing off their Valentine's stuff since the day after Christmas, but I just finished my first Valentine book last night.

Buy me on Etsy.

I think this book is kinda cool for several reasons:

1. It's got a really, really shiny red cover, almost satiny.

2. It's a funny little book that, pre-alteration, acts as a kind of Magic 8-Ball for the lovelorn. Ask the book a question, open it to a random page and get your answer. There are only a few words per page, so folded, the book doesn't have all those jiggly lines of text that folded RDCBs do. Everything is very, very white!

3. It's got a cute little heart where the O ought to go because I could.

4.  Like all the folded books, it almost looks like it is moving as you walk by. It's hard to show this in still pictures. In fact in still pictures it always looks like there is a very dark space in the book, but that's just the part of the book directly in front of you. As you walk, that dark space moves.

See what I mean?

I LYve that.