Zombies and Libraries

It doesn't get any better than this ...heh heh

Library of the Living Dead  Too bad they are using the dewey system - this could be a fun thing to promote Library Services.  Those of us who worked with the Record Collection in the Education Library will appreciate the clever use of an obsolete medium to stave off a zombie attack.

near accident on the Meewasin this morning

<rant>
I'm gearing up for the annual Queen's House Bike-a-thon later this summer (pledge warning some of you may be hearing more about this around payday)  So this means riding my bike to work a lot.  It is a very safe and pleasant route - I ride down Princess St., turn down a block to take the crossing light at the corner of Queen and Spadina and then I am on the Meewasin all the way including that uber cool bike bridge on the Circle Drive bridge. 

I'm 56 and learned how to ride a bike before 10 speeds were invented.  There was a strong emphasis on Elmer the Safety Elephant and riding single file when with friends, always signalling, etc. and I tend to be the cautious, law-abiding type. 

So imagine my surprise when I almost got hit this morning by oncoming bikers riding two abreast and with a buddy coming out of the Realty Executives' Boardwalk almost into me except one of the on-coming duo yelled "Hey watch out!" and the guy merging into the trail managed to brake.  I'm not sure who  was being shouted  at - me or the buddy but I assumed it was the buddy because I was riding on my side of the trail and had carefully passed two pedestrians and met several oncoming cyclists and a jogger with no problems already.

How did I know these three hooligans were together?  Ummmm well they were all dressed the same:  in City of Saskatoon bike Police uniforms.  Up until now I figured the Bicycle Mounted Constabulary  were there to make the trails a little safer and perhaps to stop cyclists racing several abreast during a busy commuting time and give them a warning.  Now I realize in some sort of twisted motivational logic they are there to model bad uncool bicycling behavior so the rest of us do the opposite. 

I shall retire to bedlam
</rant>

this is Melbourne taking a bath or getting dry cleaned

...actually this was part of the Picassa demo on how easy it is to upload a photo - the truth is Melbourne has some pain from an old knee injury and whenever someone has had a hot bath, after the tub has drained he likes to get into it and soak up the heat - he has us trained to dry the tub after we get out of it - at least in his little corner.  This photo was probably taken in the winter - he has not had any problem finding heat the past few days. - the weather has been what we call "day of the long cat" weather where they stretch out as much as possible on the cool hardwood - or ceramic tile.

I Pad photo

Okay so one funciton on the i Pad I really like using is the camera - it has nice resolution and this photo is the first time I have tried it using artificial light - it had got pretty dark by the time I stopped weaving and I am relying on the lamp here. Also I am blogging from Picasa which is interesting - quite simple and easy but no place to add tags....

This is a test of Picasa blogging function - (Kate;s beauty tip - always pose with a beautiful animal - it distracts the veiwer from your double chin)

Canada Day Weekend Knitting obsession

I am a sucker for varigated yarn and this was a ball of soft cotton textured acrylic computer dyed for a self patterning cowel. (why I bought it is actually another story - as if one needs an excuse to buy vivid yarn) I thought it made terrific baby booties - 4 pairs - no two alike.  On my EDO - July 4th I found myself buying 3 more balls of the stuff.  There are little feet out there just waiting for something gaudy. (photographed with the I-pad I might add - thanks 23 things....will there be 23 booties?)

one for the other blogger

Uncle Lew has been perservering at the blog and has chastized me severly for letting mine lapse....well she has a point...for one thing I am still -about 17 books short of the 23 and recently I found a worthy candidate.

http://tsspivet.com/  it even has a spiffy website.

The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet  by Reif Larsen got mixed reviews - New York Times panned it, and I haven't got to the point where some critics felt disappointed.  But I suspect Nick Bantock fans would love it.

Social Media, politics,

Good advice strikes again

Sara Evans advises - If you want privacy - don't tweet.

Quantum the Invisible NSL Library Cat agrees and has stated many times : the best thing about my life is being invisible.

An interesting article on Higher Education

Live and Learn

by Louis Menand from the New Yorker.  Yes it is about the history of and current state of Colleges in the USA but I think can easily be applied to our experience on University in Canada.  I like the way he takes the long view. 
(thanks to Silent Servants for the link)

blush - winner who me? I-Pad 2

I was off on vacation Wednesday afternoon and Thursday for a rehearsal and to sing with the Raging Grannies at the BBQ for Station 20 West so I got the news after I got home from the BBQ yesterday.  Pat phoned and left a message.  What a wonderful surprise!  I also have one very excited geek of a husband now.:-)

Quantum the  invisible NSL Library Cat is also very excited about this I-paw thing - I just hope she doesn't decide to take it apart to see how it works - she spends so much time napping in the Computer Science collection.

Thanks again for all the work the team put into the 23 things.  It was  a lot of fun and sometimes a tiny bit of frustration and I really enjoyed reading everyone's blogs and learning more about other people on staff.  Proud to be working with such a diversely talented group of people 

...um I hope this doesn't mean I have to return that cool little memory stick!

As for the book du jour - get ready - coming to an eager Happy Leopard Representative real soon - Book of Days

way behind on books

This morning I got up and found all four cats sitting in front of my computer monitor waving little Union Jacks and watching coverage of the Royal Wedding.  They wouldn't let me near the screen so I went off to make breakfast.  One doesn't have to be a "Royal Watcher" (like the cats) to get interested in the pomp and circumstance - never mind the hats. 

It got me thinking of a book I read from our Grade 7 class room library The Little Princesses - which was a fascinating insider account of the lives of Elizabeth and Margaret from child hood to the birth of Prince Charles.  I really enjoyed reading it back then and on checking the web today to confirm the title and author I was a little saddened to learn that the writer, their Governess; Marion Crawford was denied permission by the Royal Family to publish a memoir and completely cut off following the publication of this book - though apparently the Royals continued to entertain the publishers who recruited her to write it in the first place.  I had no idea the Grade 7 library shelf contained a book considered "scandelous" in the previous decade.

Wordle & Library Thing

I had seen a wordle before but it was fun making them - I must try Fern's idea of listing some desires or aspirations to make one - while I was playing I just pasted some quotations in and it was funny what words ended up together sometimes.

We had talked at a staff meeting about using Library Thing to list the books we have in the Popular Science Library so that was my plan when I signed up.   - So far I like it quite a bit - though I ended up adding books before the tags on a couple of them and the tags ended up on the next book - a little housekeeping called for there.

Because I have a workplace project earmarked for Library Thing - it is a nice practical place to finish the program.  This has been a good opportunity to learn how to do things I had heard about but not felt motivated to try.  Thanks to the Committee and the individuals who worked so hard to get this all set up.

I have really enjoyed reading people's blogs and seeing all the creative ideas the library clan has.  This was fun.  kthxbai

Another great book

Today's book is Green Glory by Richard St. Barbe Baker - I was reminded of St. Barbe Baker recently when I started looking for material to support a display for International Year the Forests - he is a hero in the world of tree planting - an environmentalist before the term was coined - he was among the first hundred students to enrole at U of S and is buried in Woodlawn Cemetary.  But in the years between - he travelled the world planting trees and encouraging people to plant trees on a massive scale. One of his great ideas was to employ armies to start reclaiming the Sahara by planting trees.  To find out more check out this website

Community Walk

In recent years have really enjoyed using google maps to get directions to places - especially in the city.  It is so much easier than trying to write down directions from someone over the phone, "and then you take a right at the next intersection after Warman road," as a tourist I ALWAYS have a map in my tote bag and consult it a lot.  When people ask directions at the circ desk I find it really handy to be able to give them one of those simiple campus maps.

I found the community walk mapping tool fun to play with - tho when I attempted to create a path from my house to my favorite shops - it had me cutting through busy intersetions, and across people's yards - through their houses - sort of like the crow flies. (if crows really fly in straight lines which I doubt) - so I need to see if I am doing something wrong there.

widgets

I've had a weather widget on my home computer since I got it.  When I don't like its forecast - I google Environment Canada and let the two of them argue.

Adding the countdown widget was easy when I followed the instructions correctly (okay the 3rd time - blush) 

I guess the trick is being choosey - what do I really want to know so often that I want it on my desktop or browser opening page?  Too many widgets slow down the startup but some are very handy.  Since I spend half an hour outside between home and work, the weather is important to me.  I just did a little peeking at all the dashboard widgets for Mac users and there are some amazing options - I could calculate stuff to keep my acquarium's healthy or get pasta recipies endless possibilities.... I might never go outside again...umm then I could ditch that weather widget...;-)

Diigo looks interesting

In trolling around the Diigo groups and communities - I kept finding interesting articles.  I could see using this tool to research topics with a lotta help from the other Diigo members.  What I like so far is that it is a little bit like looking at blogs but - sometimes writing a blog feels like shouting down a well - while Diigo is more like talking in a room full of like minded types.  Or maybe a room full of people doing "show and tell" on a mutually agreed topic.

Then I decided to join and the form worked right away - unlike flickr which may be the result of the campus network being less busy this week.  Now I shall have to try the toolbar at home....except I use Safari as my browser at home and I don't think it is one of the approved ones....I shall have to see - may have to start using firefox at home as well.  natter natter natter  ....- on to widgets

This week's book & this morning's news item

Sunday afternoon we were out and about and Murray suggested dropping by McNally Robinson.  Near the entrance, a vaguely familiar looking man* was pitching a book and politely asked us if he could tell us about it. I glanced at the cover and title "South Asian Adventures with the Active Poor" and knew it was the kind of thing we like to read, admire etc. So we chatted.  It was about his family working - with women and children in Bangladesh to set up schools for the poorest neighbourhoods. Star Phoenx Story

Profits from the book support the charity (wow just like Happy Leopard Chapbooks)  We bought copies.
It's a great read - you can go buy your own copy here If you liked Three Cups of Tea, you will like this one too.

*Gem Munro was a columnist in Saskatoon at one time - wrote some great stuff about Riversdale - that's why he looked familiar.

Reading a book set in Bangladesh made me very conscious of how luxurious my lifestyle is and how different from the people in the book. Like how many shelves of books are there in my house ?  I just take being able to read them for granted. ... and then there are those little expensive devices - which leads to the news item:

Tech addiction symptoms rife among students
This story on CBC caught my attention this morning - I know there is a connection between consumerism, and sweat shops, the poverty of Bangladesh and the affluenza of Saskatoon.  I just wonder who the real victims are?

Twitter

Quantum (our invisible Library Cat) has set up a twitter account - with a little assistance from me. We tried yesterday afternoon and the network or perhaps the intertubes themselves were sluggish and it didn't seem to take but this morning everything went clickity clack.....well except I didn't remember our passwurd and had to get them to send me a chance to change it....which worked well.

Surprising number of cats on twitter.Perhaps as Rachel calls them - these "mini-blogs" just beg for playfulness.  We also decided to follow some library twitter accounts to see what sort of thing they tweet.

big discovery - you can say quite a bit with 140 characters.  Not the information Haiku struggle we were expecting.

Social Networking

I was encouraged to get a facebook account when I was on Strike.  I didn't find it too useful at the time and discovered - it is nay impossible to delete a facebook account afterwards. So I deleted everything I had uploaded - and posted a message that I had "left facebook"  but I still get the odd email from someone wanting to "friend" or advertise something even though it is several years since I logged into it.  I guess I disliked how it just added event advertising clutter to my inbox.

I looked at the demographics of  orkut and noticed there are not enough people in my age set using it to show up on the bar graph so perhaps it's a new trick few of us old dogs are learning.

OTOH I sometimes enjoy seeing the tweets that are embedded in some of the blogs I like to visit or news sites - they sort of remind me of that cute little "today's smile" joke box on the front page of the old globe and mail.  What I find really lame are the twitter sites that people of importance have set up because it is the trendy thing to do but don't bother maintaining - or only tweet such safe things that you might as well wait for their annual newsletter. They tweet formal announcementish things that I would expect to find somewhere on their blog or website like "events" or "press releases"

Twitter seems to work best in very specific communities of interest -  How could a library best use this form of communication?  Maybe immediate things like "our photo copier is out of order - the closest one that works is in the Blah Library."  or "will the person who spilled that latte all over the serials reading area table find somwhere else to study?" - okay maybe not that.  ;-)

Using Flicker

Well whatever was causing problems went away and I was able to upload and play around with flicker.  I think it is an invaluable tool for informing the world about invisible library cats - so that's something - when April  1st lands on a Friday it is safe to talk about these things.

George the Library Cat

At this link: "http://www.flickr.com/photos/christchurchcitylibraries/3394740380/"
you will find this lovely photo of a Library Cat: George who was cat in residence at Canterbury Public Library from 1963 to 1976 in the city of Christchurch.


Here is another photo of George that I really liked which appeared in the Christchurch Star Feb. 21 1975.



we don't have any photo's of the Natural Sciences Library Cat "Quantum" because she is invisible.

And an appropriate book

On Photography by the late Susan Sontag is a very thought provoking treatise on the uses of pictures. When I think how exponentially the number of photo images has increased since this book was written - it sort of boggles my mind.

flickr as a lurker

I have enjoyed finding things in flickr over the years - especially when relatives post photo streams of my great nieces and nephew - wonderful tool for sharing family photos around the globe. Especially for me since none of my family lives in Saskatchewan - or the prairies.

I have never been tempted to share many of my photo's before this exercise because - 1. I take really dull photos which only really appeal to me, 2. see 1. 3. Years ago when I took up photography (using a dark room and all the chemistry involved) it was such a complex process and every shot you took had a cost attached even if you bought bulk film (which was beyond my level of dedication) and processed it with a contact sheet instead of prints. (really this paragraph IS going somewhere) I had the rules instilled into me that were articulated in this assignment - ie you need permission to take pictures of people and to publish or post them. In fact we were also aware, us photography buffs at the time, that it was very rude to take pictures of people of certain ethnicity and we should be very sensitive to cultural attitudes towards cameras.

A few years ago ( OKAY about a decade ago ) one of my friends complained bitterly to me that she HATED how people with digital cameras at conferences felt they could just shoot random pictures of participants and audiences and post or publish them. Yet we all seem to do it. Only at the culturally sensitive events do they announce that you can request the photographer remove you from any pictures prior to posting or publishing them.

So I like taking pictures of animals and inanimate objects - no permission documentation required

Flickering access

So I am caught in a revolving door - I bravely filled in the option to set up my own flicker account to share a series of photo's showing evidence of alian life in the Natural Sciences Library. Cool I can use my google account to set up a flicker account. But everytime I try to sign in - it tells me that I have signed into Yahoo successfully. However the connection between my google account and my yahoo account has failed so please sign out and sign in again with the google account. Same message every time. (maybe I should be using the beta version of the April 1st GMAIL Motion or Google Docs Motion - (very cute - I like the pictures) I fear it will be gone April 2nd.)

Maybe the network is a little busy or something - I will try this again. Meanwhile I will try and see if I can find some more evidence of alien life here ;-)

UPDATE - we have contact!/

and another book

Okay I spotted this book while rough-shelving on my circ shift - finding books with cool and enticing titles - an occupational hazard yes? Dung Beetle Ecology edited by Ilkka Hanski and Yves Cambefort was published by Prinseton U. Press 20 years ago. I guess it caught my eye because, clenching my insufficiently gloved hands walking to work this AM (it was a mitten morning - should have checked) I was thinking about my post winter, ready to almost overflow composters and how I better really deal with them this spring. So the benefites of rot are high on my radar today.

Just a quick glance at the preface tells me Dung Beetles are good parents - building nests like birds and nurturing their young - some birds and Dung Beetles produce only one offspring per breeding season. So clearly they have to take good care of them, invest in college funds, the best summer camps, get braces on their teeth...dung beetles as helicopter parents - who knew?*

Yes I am going to check it out - not exactly lunch time reading but still more interesting than Dan Brown.

*some of the facts in this paragraph are from the preface some from my overly colourful imagination

Something Wiki this way comes

I left a comment about my cavalier suggestion to the members of a three person subcommittee I have been named to that we could use a wiki - I realize now in the usual burst of 23 things creativity I should have phrased the email more like this:

"When shall we three meet (if at all) in Thunder Lightening or more of this da*n snow & slush?

"When the hurley burley's done? When the deadline's come and gone?

Process burn and report bubble wing of data, eye of newt cackle cackle
by the pricking of my thumbs etc etc (well I HAD to justify that title somehow).

At a glance Wikispaces looks pretty friendly (why does free stuff on the web so often look easier to use than the stuff the U of S IT people slave at providing for us) I feel like an ungrateful technowitch.

Podcasting and another book

Two birds with one Post. The Best Laid Plans by Terry Fallis has been recommended to me by two people and I picked it up on the weekend.  Like other readers I couldn't put it down except under great pressure.

So this winner of  Canada Reads this year has an interesting history.  It was podcast chapter by chapter, and then self published before it won the Leacock Medal.  So that was the podcast I headed for.  I managed to subscribe to in on  my I-google page but I find I am rather clumsy at doing more than directly downloading to the computer.

I love listening to recorded books when I am weaving or sewing etc. so this is an option which is easier than borrowing cd's from the public library and with none of the annoying skips one often encounters on library cd novels. I guess Terry Fallis could also be the poster boy for successful self publishing.

On the road with the Grannies

This was not the absolute first time I have tried using the video function on my camera but I really only tested it a bit and lost interest - nothing like this 23things program to motivate me to use the technology at my fingertips. It was the first time I had opened and used I-movies which made for an interesting evening. Editing is fun, once you get the hang of it and like many cub reporters I kept kicking myself I didn't record this or that - the audience applauding would have made sense or presenting the grannies with a cheque for Station 20 west. ..ah well - it is really just a first effort at this youtube cinematography.  The hard thing is using the right


language - I want to call it "footage" and "filmclips" and other things from another format.  How would I use this in the library - we have talked about putting little video items on our branch webpage to explain things that are frequently asked questions or to serve as an online orientation.  Maybe my next opus will be "Raging Grannies go to the library"

Things I found tricky - duh don't put your camera on its side to take a vertical shot - you have to rotate it and i-movies tends to centre and cut people's heads off (you probably noticed that during Eileen's solo)  I also found i-movies a little annoying in that I never could figure out where my files were being saved to - so it took heading for bed and getting up again hours later to get it onto youtube - a learning curve but enjoyable.

Week 6 starts late for me

Well I am off to Yorkton tomorrow with the Raging Grannies We come home Wednesday and I expect to be back at work on Thursday, though I have a meeting as a Shop Steward with someone on Thursday afternoon so I am not sure if I will get a chance to tackle this week's things until Friday or later. However I hope to try to make a film clip of the Grannies big tour - THAT will be a fun challenge.

I look forward to getting caught up when I get back.

Tally ho!

Keeping up with the books

This week's book was a recording read by the author and very well produced.  And well it should be - it is a great story has won a Newberry, a Hugo, and various other awards.

Neil Gaiman is a very creative writer and The Graveyard book is a terrific read.  I think my favorite thing about the recorded version was the use of a very nice version of  Danse Macabre as the theme music. Nice touch!

In other threads (bad pun) I have been posting, on the weekend I finished the peapod.  But I had to curtail knitting almost completely for this week because my wrists are making nasty little comments about such obsessive knitting, mousing on the computer and threatening an rsi if I am not more mindful.  So this week has been dedicated to more "wrist-friendly" activities.

but i HAD to finish the peapod before taking a break. Obsessions are like that.

Prezi

So the assignment is to make a Prezi about music....and after an evening of enjoying Tom Lehrer clips on you-tube - decided - why not take one of my favorite songs by him to celebrate the International Year of Chemistry - so I had my you-tube. 2 actually - they are both fun - one is a tiny bit more educational than the other.  If it seems a little off topic - count your blessings - it was this or Gregorian Chant.

I enjoyed working in Prezi - it seems a lot more intuitive and less clunky than powerpoint.  I did have a bit of bother figuring out if a change was saved or if I had to "do" something.  I found I was exiting to view and then going back into edit little bits - there has to be a more elegant way to do this - Maybe I should watch the video again. (you remember RTM and RTFM (military) I bet those initialisms have NOT migrated from
newsgroups to text messaging - when was the last time you saw a manual?)

enjoy:

Elements my dear Watson on Prezi

a 24th thing

Last year when I was appointed to the campus EAP board I was curious about how the service has changed since it have been contracted to Human Solutions  One aspect of their services is a website chock full of resources from articles and newsletters on specific topics to a personal health assesment tool that lets you track and store information on a secure site for yourself and your family  to mulimedia e-courses on things like taking control of stress or retirement planning.  Given the computer savvy nature of this workplace I was shocked at the low utilization stats on this resource.

Then I found out why.

I tried registering on the site and did not get my confirmation and password email.  I waited.  I waited some more.  I called their 1-800 number where a helpful person suggested I try clicking on the 're-send my password' button and then checking my spam report.  Still no sign of it.  Though I did report the possibility that people registering using a U of S email account might have their confirmation going into the spam file to the Board and HR person in charge.

It has taken a while, but finally this registration/password notification bug is fixed. (it was getting eliminated at our end as unwanted spam and not even clearing into the "suspected spam" report that we receive - someone in IT had to "whitelist" the sender)

So even though this online resource is not part of the 23 things, it is part of your compensation as a U of S employee and has a variety of topics covered from parenting skills to pre-retirement planning. I think this is a subtle and convenient medium for delivering advice and information on sensitive issues. 

By the way, in the process of exploring the site and testing the registration process I did manage to register very easily using a gmail account, as did a couple of colleagues who helped me test it with their campus, as well as Shaw and hotmail accounts - so you can use a personal email to register if you prefer. BUT now the campus email works too.

Another book (book 5)

Castle Waiting by Linda Medley is a graphic novel which is now enjoying popular success after a difficult effort at self publishing.  Read all about it on this blog.

brilliant observation

Vagueness  by Clark Whelton - sort of thing the Shoemaker might enjoy

"The decline and fall of American English, and stuff"

Time for another book

Who knew the periodic table could be so fascinating? The Disappearing Spoon is a romp of colourful characters, interesting adventures, and very well explained science.

Full title: The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements  by Sam Kean  Please don't recall our copy - I have it in the Chemistry display.

out there in the ether

Google Documents do work seamlessly  - I had not been tempted to try them before but now that I understand the shared editing capacity I can really see the appeal.  I had a conversation about google documents on my way to work this morning - which being the break and being here earlier (early is a concept that I am generally allergic to) I have been getting rides with the resident tech support instead of plodding though the snow. (not only does he fix printers, get the lids of jars and remember the co-op number, he reaches things on high shelves AND drives a car to work) 

The idea of storing stuff on free server space out there seems just a little nervous making.  What happens if the great google disappears - how dependent should we allow ourselves to be on this benevolent web based empire?

yes it is a hollow fear - the documents can be downloaded for local warehousing as well.

But setting that aside what a better way to share documents than the tedious MS office  which is always upgrading and leaving one third of the various committee members behind and unable to open the agenda or minutes and the recently upgraded folks not geeky enough to grasp the concept of  saving things as text files or in previous incarnations of word.

Google documents - very collaborative friendly.  We have come a long way from copying things out on velum.

The madness continues

 It was a long weekend - I spent as little time as possible near a computer, I tried the tomato (below) I started on the pea pod...two sets of dpn's feels like I am holding a little hedge hog as I knit. 

Book 3

The Archimedes Codex: revealing the secrets of the world's greatest palimpsest by Reviel Netz and William Noel.

When you work in a library, stumbling across fascinating books is a bit of an occupational hazard.  I have been reading this one during my lunch breaks for a while.  It's part of our Popular Science Collection.

"At 2pm on October 29th, 1998, at Christie’s auction house in New York, a very special old book was sold to an anonymous collector for $2,000,000. This collector deposited the manuscript at The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore in order to conserve it, image it, and study it. The book is special because it contains seven treatises by the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes. Two of these treatises, The Stomachion and The Method exist nowhere else in the world."

So part of it reads like the script for an action thriller - who is this anonymous collector? Part of it takes you back to the scholarship of Archimedes - ancient communications - I just read a lovely bit about how scrolls of papyrus which were made in Egypt, shipped to Syracuse and Archimedes  carefully wrote down his findings in the form of a letter to Eratosthenes in Alexandria. - so that scroll made it's way back to Egypt. That we know about it is mere happenstance and it provides a great example of how remarkable the codex find is in itself. Medieval repurposing the original treatises into a prayer book and the late 20th century imaging technology to read the original manuscript and how it all comes together - a true story that makes Dan Brown's fictional concoctions pale in comparison without any of Brown's gratuitous sex and violence.

Google Reader

Hoo Hah this little 'thing' seemed to set itself up. I was already logged into my 23things account in another program and when I opened Google Reader in another tab to take a look - hey presto! it populated itself with all the blogs I follow and the news gadgets from I-google. To paraphrase Mehitabel (one of my literary heroines) : "Archy what in hell have I done to deserve all these applications"  Now I just have to see if there are design customizations.

Friday wind up

So today I took time to browse some of the other 23 thing blogs. WOW excellent participation and some really interesting blogs folks! Idj (my resident geek who is also great at getting the lids off jars and reaching high shelves) remarked that the rhyme gadget was pretty lame and I agreed so it is gone! (it was ugly and rhyming "orange" with "bright orange" or "frog" with "tree frog" is not too useful).  Also I had to bring the finished eggplant into work for show and tell.  Yes my desk is a little more of a disaster because I am working on a display - and must make every effort to keep little knitted vegetables from invading it.

The 23 Things bit

Almost through week 2 and although I have worked on blogs before - I am trying out different features with this one.  After the I-Google assignment last week I got interested in 'gadgets'  not the odd little things I don't know what they are for that collect in the kitchen junk drawer or the basement tool box....you know "parts" of things that didn't fit when you put it together and the growing collection of Allen Wrenches.  So trying to find and control "gadgets" that I like has been a preoccupation. Alas like that physical junk some of them are sort of what you need but not quite.

For me 23 things is a exercise in "old dog + new tricks" and the books thing - well you know old dogs are often fond of our old tricks too.

woof woof

last night's book

Last night Beth and I had the first of our annual little series of Chap Book workshops at Art Placement as part of their February paper and book making supply sale. This year we have been learning the Coptic stitch style of binding and this book was one of the samples I made a few weeks ago using up some of my stash of paper scraps. 

 

so far my favorite resource on a simple but elegant way to sew up a book  using the coptic stitch is a series of youtube clips by jaescala ( University of Wisconson Art Professor Jim Escalente )

It's wonderful to have such a great resource available online but it is really nice to get together on a cold winter night in a warm bright gallery with a dozen people and play together at learning how to do it.

more stuff related to yesterday's book

http://www.yarnharlot.ca/blog/ Stephanie Pearl-McPhee  has published some fine books of that select genre "knitting humour" her blog is fun too.

AND my copy of the book arrived yesterday! and the eggplant is growing well.

today's book

Amigurumi Knits

by Hansi Singh

No I don't know how to pronounce it but I think it is highly addictive.  Last week it I saw it on my friend Lynne's coffee table - it was a public library book, she was leaving on a trip, she gave it to me.  Yesterday when I renewed it in my name at the Francis Morrison Branch, it took a little fiddling because it was from another branch, the Library Assistant looked at it and said "we should have a copy of this one - do you mind if I show it to the person who does the ordering.  By the time she was back there were now 3 library staff admiring it.  I am two thirds of the way through the egg plant.  With any luck my very own copy will be between the doors when I get home.

picture courtesy of Amazon - you need to follow the title link to actually look inside.