ishkabibble: January 2019

Whoops, one more recap post! This is my annual "I do occasionally read words instead of writing too many" post where I cover what I read for the year, plus a bit of a ramble. I wound up trying, and failing, to keep track of the manga read. There are just too many! It's especially "bad" in the winter when I curl up with the cats and my laptop and just... binge read all evening. Imagine all the crafting I could have done! Oh, well, I am enjoying myself either way. :)

image via Google image search

Italicized is a book I have never read before.
Italicized and bolded is never read and a new-to-me author.

Jingo (Terry Pratchett)

The Last Continent (Pratchett)
Carpe Jugulum (Pratchett)
The Fifth Elephant (Pratchett)
The Truth (Pratchett)
Thief of Time (Pratchett)
The Last Hero (Pratchett)
Night Watch (Pratchett)
The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents (Pratchett)
The Wee Free Men (Pratchett)
Monstrous Regiment (Pratchett)
A Hat Full of Sky (Pratchett)
Going Postal (Pratchett)
Thud! (Pratchett)
Wintersmith (Pratchett)
Making Money (Pratchett)
Unseen Academicals (Pratchett)
I Shall Wear Midnight (Pratchett)
Snuff (Pratchett)
Raising Steam (Pratchett)
The Shepherd's Crown (Pratchett)
The Unadultered Cat (Pratchett)
Gilgamesh (Stephen Mitchell)

I started the year continuing the Discworld series. They just kept getting better! I was surprised at The Last Hero since I didn't realize some would be young adult novels too. There wound up being several like this which made for quick and enjoyable reads! I had hoped to finish the series by June but sometimes there wound up being too much of a delay between books (some had to come from the far corners of the state). I finished in the middle of July. It's great to have them all read though bittersweet that there won't be any more to enjoy. I cried reading The Shepherd's Crown.

My husband got me The Unadultered Cat off of my wishlist for Christmas last year thinking it was part of Discworld. I had that book on my list before I ever knew of the Discworld series! I have no idea where I had heard of it though.

After Discworld, reading books kind of slowed down as I worked on getting caught up on our National Geographic subscription. I had several months worth of backlog to get through. There were a few library book sales during the downtime and I stocked up on some new (and old) material. So, this year isn't as good as previous years in terms of numbers. And now I have a new series of books to watch for hah.

My husband wanted to read a bit more in terms of stand-alone books (most of his reading is on the computer) and wanted to keep track of them.

Ringworld (Larry Niven)
Eat That Frog! (Brian Tracy)
Creativity, Inc. (Ed Catmull)
Gilgamesh (Stephen Mitchell)
Extreme Ownership (Jocko Willink & Leif Babin)

I'm really glad he's joined a bookclub at his work! He seems to be enjoying it too, even though they only read one chapter a week of their chosen book. I often feel like we're holding library books hostage but the librarians are great at encouraging keeping them until they're finished. :)

owned media - why yes, we DO like Asimov, have you noticed?

Because we've gotten a healthy collection of books, one of my ~~goals~~ whims for 2018 was to sort of organize them so I wouldn't wind up with duplicates. I think a lot of people might use GoodReads or something similar to track their books. My solution was simple and less elegant: a Google spreadsheet! We had already started one for our CDs ages ago (we have as many CDs as books -- we love music!). It eventually grew to have separate pages for manga, movies, and video games. I like this method because it's easy to search on my phone whenever I ~~accidentally~~ find myself in a bookstore or at a thrift store. According to the sheet, we have 275 books (excluding manga, my craft books, and some miscellaneous items). It sure felt like a lot more when we moved...

I think this year I will tackle my craft books. I really like vintage craft magazines and books. Ravelry is a great place to log them but not all of them are listed and I have no scanner to contribute. I think it will be easier to have everything in one spot anyway.

thread stash

On a stitchy note, I also have a spreadsheet for my floss. :) I think we just really like spreadsheets (I also have them for sewing machine attachments and my Corelle set, and my husband has several for his things too). If you're interested in this stitchy one, you can find a copy here. You'll need to save it to your own Google account if you want to use it. She has since updated it to contain the fabric calculator and floss availability, but the newest colors are not in there. They're easy to add if you have basic spreadsheet knowledge.

Okay, that's all the recap posts for me. I've already started on 2019's list with a whopping three finishes. They're children's novels though, so nothing too extreme. :) There's still a little time to enter the first of 2019's Year of Giveaways, if you'd like!

Aloha, friendly readers~ I hope you all are enjoying your worldly weather. We've had a huge snowfall for our neck of the woods. It has been many years since the area has seen this much. It was wonderful. I restocked our snow ice cream for when we forget what winter is like in the midst of summer. We shoveled snow (a lot of it). Luckily my shoulder has healed nicely. Last week was the first week it felt "normal" so it was good timing, and the shoveling of the snow didn't do anything other than make us sleep really well. :)

scale in inches

Of course, now they're threatening the same thing could happen this coming weekend! I wonder how much of this current snow will melt before then. Certainly not the mountains of shoveled stuff! Oh well, I love it all! :D This was a lovely atmospheric gift which segues nicely into the next item of interest, January's Gifted Gorgeousness!

click for more info!

First up, I made my first ever shawl! It's a shame I couldn't get better pictures of it; this red just seems impossible. It was made to match this hat, gifted to my husband's grandmother back in September. I spent quite a while looking for a pattern to try! I wanted it to have shells (like the hat) but still have somewhat open stitches so as not to be overly warm.

didn't mean to match the carpet

Technical Details

"Tranquil Tea Wrap", crochet, freebie pattern by Lion Brand Yarn found here (ravelry).
My ravelry project page here.
10mm (N/P) hook.
Yarn: Caron Simply Soft in autumn red.
Started: October 17, 2018, Finished: October 21, 2018, unknown hours.

As you may notice, this was a blazing fast finish (for me) at only four days! I think the gigantic hook helped though it felt odd using one so large. Plus the sitting around at grandma's house made for excellent crafting time. I made a few modifications, namely doing another repeat of the pattern to make the shawl longer. I also did not do the edging as the pattern indicated, instead opting to keep the scalloped edge of the shells as the last part. Afterwards, it received the spa treatment of a gentle wash and then a light blocking. I don't much care for blocking acrylic but it opens up the shells and spacings so nicely.

assembly in progress

Next up, yes, finally the husband cube, and finally a cube~! I had fun with this...mostly. I used iron-on interfacing to give the rather floppy jobelan some stiffness and to close up the holes in the fabric weave so stuffing wouldn't leak out. Also it helped with this very fray-some fabric! I outlined each of the glyphs in DMC 310 and then went insane and joined them together with gold metallic floss because I enjoy suffering, apparently. I wanted to do it this way to mimic the logo of the series which is in black and gold. I then braided a small loop of black and gold crochet thread which must (must!) have something wrong with it as it is incredibly fragile. I may at some point go back and make another, sturdier loop of something else but for now, I'm waiting to see if it's okay as-is.

assembly complete!

I rather like how it turned out, though it is much bigger than originally anticipated. I don't think he'll be taking it to work after all, so it is proudly displayed atop our media cabinet where most of our video game consoles live. As I was stitching it up, I had to laugh at myself. I was stitching it on the closed top of the sewing machine. Wouldn't that have made quick work of the cube!

what a crazy floss toss

For Christmas, my husband got me the remainder of the "old" floss colors of the DMC collection! I would be complete now if it weren't for those silly new colors. :) I greatly look forward to bobbinating these but I've run out of plastic storage containers. It's so hard to find them in colors other than pink, blue, purple, and clear. There used to be a whole bunch of options available! Even eBay has failed me. I'd really love a yellow one but alas, I'll probably just wind up with another clear one.

a year of giveaways!

Lastly, I've been toying around with this idea for a while. I have a small pile of patterns I've picked up in various thrift stores so I wanted to try a Year of Giveaways! Each GG post in 2019 I will have one chart up for grabs, and I will announce the winner in my random end of/beginning of the month post. Since these are all thrifted designs, some might have some markings on them. I will make note of the ones that do in their individual posts. Here is the first chart!

PFC #14

This is an older Homespun Elegance stitch from the Plain & Fancy Collection called "Snowmen - Tall & Small". This a totally clean (was it ever stitched?) chart. They're really cute and I love the idea of having a twig broom embellishment! No fancy extras will be included in this giveaway to cut down on shipping costs so you will have to source your own twig haha. I will ship the pattern worldwide though!

Gifted Gorgeousness Giveaway Guidelines

Be a ~~minion~~ follower (upper right corner of my blog)! Feedly, bloglovin', etc. do not count as there is no way to show it! I am sorry; blame blogger for this one.
Comment and tell me you would like to be included in the drawing!
Open worldwide!
No winning twice in a row (example: the winner of March's drawing would not be eligible for April's).
Closing date: January 29th, 2019 23:59 CST.

Thanks for reading this edition of Ishkabibble Babble and good luck to anyone entering! \:D/

what to do after it snows?

2018 Recap: Books

January GG ~ From the Last to the First