I've been plunging into my TBR shelf lately, and have had some hits and misses.

The Winter Queen by Boris Akunin was excellent, including a twist ending worthy of Agatha Christie. It's a mystery novel translated from Russian, set in the 1870's, primarily in St. Petersburg and Moscow. There are startlingly lyrical passages interspersed with ( Read more... )

Today, I made bread, picked up necessities at Target, put up two pictures in the bathroom to distract from the !!PINK!!, figured out how to get photos off my new camera and online, posted pictures of my knitting swap package and my in-progress socks on Ravelry, and put in suggested changes for my wedding album.


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Spent most of the morning deskeining my yarn, microwaving it and hanging it up to dry. Jim will be glad it's out of the freezer. I'm missing one of my knitting needles though, which makes me upset. Knitting with one needle is like some kind of zen thing, like the sound of one hand clapping... perhaps interesting philosophically, but not very ( Read more... )

I suppose I should update ( Read more... )

Right now, I'm roasting some beets. I've never roasted beets before. I was not aware that they would turn my cutting board permanently red. I'm puzzled about what to do with the stems - I've heard you can eat them, but how? Cooked? As salad? These looked pretty questionable, so I didn't have any issues with throwing them away, but I'm curious ( Read more... )

2009 Book Challenge: Read 9 books in 9 categories in 2009.

This shouldn't be too hard, since I get to pick the categories! ( They're under the cut )

Since I finally have the picture uploaded, I wanted to show off this pair of mittens. I call them Peacock Mittens since the yarn looks purple and green in the sun. I imagine that if peacocks wore mittens, these are what they would choose.


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Lately, I've had some projects going, and I feel like posting about them ( Read more... )

Would it cause problems to make an apple pie with unpeeled apples? I have a bunch of sliced apples left over from taking to a party Friday, and it would be easy enough to turn them into a pie, except that they'd still have peel ( Read more... )

I met up with a friend from work today and saw the new vampire movie, Twilight. I can't say it was very good, but it wasn't as bad as I had expected. Of course, my expectations were abysmal, so "not as bad as I had expected" doesn't mean much. Most of the plot consisted of the protagonists throwing smoldering glances at each other, and all the ( Read more... )