The Blackwork Bands project designed by Peppermint Purple is done and added to my page of finished needlework pieces.
I Finished It!
Author: Cyn
Cyn is Katie's mom, Esther's Mémé, and a technical professional. She lives in the Atlanta area with her life partner, Rick, and their critters.
Blackwork Project 2
I’m almost finished with the second blackwork project I started to keep me busy each week while waiting for the next pattern drop from the 2020 Stitch-A-Long. This one is also by Peppermint Purple. She calls it Blackwork Bands.
Stitching Post
I mentioned on my needlecrafts page that I’ve been enjoying blackwork lately thanks to Peppermint Purple’s 2020 Stitch-A-Long A Year of Blackwork. I described it to someone and she said she’d like to see it, so here’s a photo of what I’ve done so far.
Poetry: Against Entropy
By John M. Ford
The worm drives helically through the wood
And does not know the dust left in the bore
Once made the table integral and good;
And suddenly the crystal hits the floor.
Electrons find their paths in subtle ways,
A massless eddy in a trail of smoke;
The names of lovers, light of other days;
Perhaps you will not miss them. That ís the joke.
The universe winds down. That ís how it ís made.
But memory is everything to lose;
Although some of the colors have to fade,
Do not believe you’ll get the chance to choose.
Regret, by definition, comes too late;
Say what you mean. Bear witness. Iterate.
More Changes to the Site
Okay, I’ve finished moving the material from my cross-stitch pattern, home education, relationships and community, and fibromyalgia sites. Woof! Now I just have this site, my portfolio site and Rick’s stub of a site to maintain.
I had a new theme that I really liked for this site, but Google’s search console threw a fit about clickable items being too close together for it to work well on mobile devices, so now there’s a different theme. For now. I’m not too happy with the mobile navigation menu on this theme, because it throws all the pages in one long list instead of showing just the top pages. I’ll deal with it ’til I find something better, though.
I’ve made a little progress in getting more quotes into the database, but it will probably take years to get that back to where it was.
What happened to the quotes?
At some point, all of the many, many thousands of quotations that were stored on my blog went 404. That’s highly annoying. I have many more, but it’s going to take a lot of work to get them uploaded. The first file I came across in my archives was all about chocolate, so that’s all that’s in the database at the moment. (I do like chocolate, but not to the exclusion of all else!) I’ll work on getting the others put in place after I do the more urgent site updates.
Edited to add: Ack! I found an old comment that said there had been 13,064 quotes in the database back in 2008! I don’t think I have THAT many in my other files!
Moving Things Around
I’m tired of maintaining umpty-leven web sites, so I’m moving things off my subsidiary sites and back to this one. There may be some oddities and broken links here and there for a bit as a result. I’m trying to update a lot of things as I go, so it’s going to take some time to complete this project.
Review: Marque and Reprisal by Elizabeth Moon
Marque and Reprisal by Elizabeth Moon
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Another decent, though not amazing, book from Moon. I messed up in not doing my review as soon as I finished, because I moved straight on to volume three in the series, Engaging the Enemy. Obviously, the series did get more engaging in book two!
View all my reviews
Review: Trading in Danger by Elizabeth Moon
Trading in Danger by Elizabeth Moon
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I wanted to like Vatta’s War as much as I did The Serrano Legacy, but this one nearly lost me at some points. Maybe it’s intended for a young adult audience? Considering the age of the main character, that may be the case. Still, I always enjoy Moon’s writing style, and she creates great universes. Definitely worth a read.
View all my reviews
Review: The Peter Grant/Rivers of London series by Ben Aaronovitch
Lies Sleeping by Ben Aaronovitch
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I just finished Lies Sleeping after reading the entire series straight through, so this review is about the series as much as about the ultimate entry in it.
Wow! I’ve been immersed in the marvelous world Aaronovitch created for us, and it’s a shock coming back. His world lives right next door to ours, changed just a bit so that magic is in use next to cell phones and deities walk and work amongst the “normal” folk. His descriptions of London and its surrounds are amazingly rich. The slang and British references are occasionally mysterious to this American reader, but I got enough from context to push right on.
I think Lies Sleeping might be intended as the last book in the series because it wrapped up pretty much all of the plot threads that have been building from Rivers of London to Lies Sleeping. If that’s the case, I’ll miss Peter and the rest of the characters. I can hope that Aaronovitch will give us more in the future, though. I will certainly be watching to see what he does next!
#LiesSleeping #NetGalley
View all my reviews