What I Read This Year

Posted on December 27, 2012 by Marlana

Since the year is about to come to an end, I thought I’d peek out of my cave to do my annual reading list. As usual I made a goal of twenty-five books, which works out to roughly one book every two weeks, and I made it to twenty-seven thanks to the cold that kept me in bed for two weeks. I read five books while I was sick. I’m not going to try an summarize each of them but I’ll give a brief opinion about some of them.

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. I loved this book, I couldn’t put it down.
Food Photography by Nicole S. Young. Good overview of food photography techniques. A lot about post processing in Photoshop.
1Q84 by Haruki Murakami. This book is the first two parts of a four book series. I kept hearing how great this book was so I immediately wanted to read it. I had a lot of trouble getting into it at first, it’s a huge book, the paperback is 1184 pages, and it starts out very slow. But I loved it by the end.
1Q84 Part 3 by Haruki Murakami. This is part three of four. It was good, I don’t really remember a lot of it, but I lost interest and never bothered to read part four.
The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins. I read all three books again this year. I didn’t have the money to see the movie when it came out so I settled for reading the books again.
Scared Shitless: 1003 Facts That Will Scare the Shit of You by Cary McNeal. This is just a book of lists. It was fun to read while I was waiting to do other things. I read a little in the car, waiting for my classes to start, I’d read a bit before bed.
Divergent by Veronica Roth. I did a re-read before the sequel came out.
Insurgent by Veronica Roth. The sequel to Divergent, these are great works of dystopian YA fiction. This book was not as good as the first, I thought. The third book should be out in a few months and I can’t wait for it.
Deadlocked by Charlaine Harris. These books just aren’t all that great anymore but I want to finish the series. It probably took me two hours spread over three days to read this. I don’t remember anything that happened in it at all.
Children of Men by PD James. I love the movie that is based on this book, it really is one of my favorites so I’ve wanted to read the book for a long time. It was very different from the movie and I really liked the movie a lot more. This was slow.
A Song of Ice and Fire Series by George RR Martin. There are six books in the series so far, two more are supposed to be coming out sometime in the future. I read all six of them in about two months while I was on my Summer break and as soon as I finished the last one I had two thoughts pop into my head. The first was “What am I going to do now?” since I had been reading pretty much non-stop for two months. The second was “I should just start the series over”. They were that good. I figure I’ll start reading them again in a couple of months. These are the books the HBO show Game of Thrones is based on, I love that show and the books are so much better.
The Hedge Knight by George RR Martin. This is a set of three novellas that take place before the events of ASOIAF. They were very good and I finished them in a few days.
Beyond the Wall edited by James Lowder. This is a series of essays by various authors about the world of ASOIAF. It’s a great companion to the novels.
Carry Yourself Back to Me by Deborah Reed. I honestly can’t remember how I heard about this book but it was really good. It’s about a country singer whose brother is accused of murder. It’s not a murder-mystery book, it’s more about heartbreak and longing and learning to get over it.
Wool Omnibus Edition by Hugh Howey. This a series of five short stories about a post-apocalyptic society where people live in underground silos. It started slow but built up towards the end pretty fast and left me wanting to learn more about how everyone ended up in these silos.
First Shift-Legacy by Hugh Howey. This is a prequel to Wool and, I thought, it was better. It moved faster and gave an interesting look at what happened leading up to the events in Wool. I would love to read more stories in this world. And I think these books would make a great movie.
The Twelve by Justin Cronin. Love, love, love this book. Justin Cronin is master at making you feel like you are right in the middle of the story. This is the second book in “The Passage” trilogy and it was just as good, and very different from, the first. I can’t wait for the third book to come out. Usually the second book in a trilogy feels like filler but this definitely did not.
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. Did everyone read this book this year? It sure seemed like I was hearing about it everywhere. This was one of my favorite books this year, it was a quick read but only because I couldn’t put it down. It was just phenomenal and so nice to see a book that takes place in Missouri that isn’t about hillbillies or meth addicts.
John Dies at the End by David Wong. This is one of the weirdest books I’ve ever read. It’s about two guys who take a drug called soy sauce that opens a portal to another dimension full of monsters. A lot of strange things happen but they’re mostly funny. I actually laughed out loud reading this book a few times. It was really good. The movie is set to be released next month and it looks pretty crazy.
This Book Is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don’t Touch It by David Wong. This was the sequel to “John Dies at the End” and it is just as good and strange as the first. Plus, I love the name. David Wong needs to write more books like this.
Pirate Cinema by Cory Doctorow.This is, I believe, the second YA novel by Doctorow and while I didn’t like it as much as “Little Brother”, it was still pretty good. It’s basically about remix culture, free speech, and copy write laws but told as a story about a band of homeless teenagers living in London. It was good, though.

So that’s it. The whole list is on Goodreads, too. Right now I’m working my way through two books: Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, since I’ve been told for years that I need to read it, and Sucker’s Portfolio by Kurt Vonnegut which is a book of short stories being released serially on the Kindle. The next book I’m going to read is House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, which just looks insane.

Happy New Year!

A Few Quick Things

Posted on November 28, 2012 by Marlana

So, I’m posting this from my Nexus7, we’ll see how it goes. First off, my domain name is expiring and I’ve decided not to renew it. You’ll still be able to get to this blog, just change the URL to http://stitchingforsanity.WordPress.com. I’ll fix it so the rss will be the same. Next, I’m almost done with school for the semester. I start my practical finals tomorrow and then the written are next week. I only have one semester left and then I’m done! I’ll be graduating in May and I’m pretty excited. I have no idea what I’m going to do after school, though. I’ll just have to see when I get there. I guess that’s it for now!

Another Year

Posted on October 31, 2012 by Marlana

Today (the 31st) is my birthday and I turned 35. I can’t believe how fast the past five years have gone, it seems like a few months ago that I was joking around about turning 30 and here I am, 35! I don’t freak out over getting older, it’s something that happens, everyone does it. I don’t have to like it, I’d be happy being 25 forever, but I can’t stop it so I may as well try to enjoy it. Honestly, my early twenties were pretty fun, my mid and late twenties sucked ass, my early thirties were ok, I have a feeling my mid-thirties are going to be much better. Five years ago I never would have pictured myself where I am today, in school, especially culinary school, and really trying to put my life back together.

As for this little blog, honestly, I feel like a craft blog is limiting and I don’t feel right expanding the focus of it here. I don’t really knit much anymore, I don’t have the extra money these days, mainly what I do revolves around school and reading and watching movies and just doing stuff with my friends. I’m getting back into fashion (which I think is from wearing my uniform all the time) and playing around with my hair and makeup. And cooking, lots of cooking. So I’m thinking about shuttering this blog and starting a new one. We’ll see, I’m going to try to make up my mind here in a few weeks. I’m too busy right now.

I went to a Halloween party Saturday but I don’t wear costumes (no money!) but I did wear a dress. I do own more than jeans and t-shirts and copious amounts of sweaters. Here I’m wearing a black button up shirt dress that I bought at Wal-Mart last year, it’s cotton and has a fitted top and a full circle skirt bottom, a pink cotton cardigan that I knit years and years ago, black tights and black flats. I need a better way to take pictures of myself than the full length mirror propped up against my desk. I’ll figure something out.

Happy Halloween!

Some Food

Posted on September 13, 2012 by Marlana

I’m back in school and back to baking now, so that’s about all I’ve been doing. I have time for other things but I’ve had horrific allergies lately so I’ve been dealing with headaches every day that are so bad I can’t stand to even look at the computer. So here’s what I’ve been cooking.

This is a flourless chocolate torte. It is super rich and moist and fudgy. I love it. If you want to make it, I put the recipe right here. We made a Creme Anglaise sauce to go with it and that really cut the richness of the cake, the sauce made it a lot easier to eat. This cake is super, super rich.

In my breads class last Friday we made (clockwise, from top left) cheddar biscuits, plain biscuits, lemon cream scones, and white chocolate macadamia nut cream scones. The scones disappeared as soon as I got home and I made some white gravy and had some biscuits and gravy over the weekend. Tomorrow we’re starting on yeast breads in that class.

Along with the flourless chocolate cake, last week in my pastry class we made Sacher Tortes. This is a chocolate cake with apricot glaze in between the layers and covering the top, and then a chocolate glaze is poured to completely cover it. I decorated mine with some white chocolate. As you can see, my decorating skills are lacking, it’s a little messy, but in my defense the chocolate started hardening up in my piping bag so I couldn’t get it to come out evenly. All the white chocolate slid off the top on my way home from class anyway, my glaze hadn’t set up all the way. This cake was about twice as rich as the flourless cake. The chocolate glaze was just insanely rich and I put some amaretto in it, that didn’t help a bit. It was really good, though.

The week before last, we made Chestnut Puzzle Cakes. This looks like it was harder to put together than it actually was. The cake itself is a chocolate and white chiffon sponge cake and the frosting is chocolate and chestnut Swiss meringue buttercream. The whole trick is in how the cake is put together. I can’t explain it good, but it really isn’t hard. You can see my whole decorated cake here. I fell in love with Swiss meringue buttercream after making this cake. It’s a bit more time consuming than regular buttercream, but it has such a light, fluffy texture and it’s not overly sweet. It just tastes so much better than any other frosting I’ve had. Next time I make a cake for myself, I’m making this frosting.

The frosting really isn’t that hard to make. You just take some egg whites (we used 2 cups, but we made about 3 pounds of frosting) and sugar (1 pound, 4 oz in our recipe) you mix the egg whites and sugar in a bowl over boiling water and heat it to 140°F, whisking the whole time. Then you take it off the heat and whip it until stiff peaks have formed (we used our big Hobart stand mixers). Then you make the frosting. We used two pounds of butter, ten ounces of margarine, the Swiss meringue from before, and two teaspoons of vanilla. You mix the butter and margarine and hold at room temp. Once the meringue is whipped and lukewarm, you lower the mixer speed and add the vanilla and then gradually add the butter and margarine mix. And that’s it. It takes a while but the frosting is so good when it’s done that it’s worth the trouble.

We made muffins, too, in my bread class. I ended up with about four dozen muffins, blueberry, chocolate cherry, carrot cake, and cornbread. They were all really tasty, especially the chocolate cherry.

Tonight I’m back to my pastry class and we’ll be making a fruit tart and a frangipane tart. It will be really nice to have something that isn’t super rich chocolate to eat. Not that I’m complaining, the chocolate is good, but I’m ready for something different and I’ve never had a frangipane tart before.

The End of Summer

Posted on August 23, 2012 by Marlana

Summer is over, for me anyway. I go back to school tonight. I hate night classes. Yuck. I’m starting my Classical Pastries and European Desserts class and we’ll be making plain and chocolate sponge cakes that we will use to make a Chestnut Puzzle Cake. In fact, looking through my syllabus, I can see that we’ll be baking lots of cakes and tartes the next few weeks. Yum.

I’m not really ready to go back to school yet, I had so many things I wanted to do this summer that I just didn’t do. And then the last month just flew by. I did do a few things, cleaned up my room, went swimming a few times (it was too hot to swim this summer), read the “A Song of Ice and Fire” series, and spent a lot of time procrastinating and not doing anything. I can’t complain, really, I just wish I had got more done.

I did knit another Orthogonal (the Leethal mystery knit). I’m still not sure how much I like it but it’s almost done, just some finishing left to do, so I’ll give it away or something. I don’t know.

And then a few days ago I started this crocheted ripple clutch, or it will be a clutch when I’m done. I’m using my scraps from Orthogonal and I only have an inch or so to go on it. I have some mustard yellow fabric that I’ll use to line it and close it with a magnetic snap. Shouldn’t be too hard to do.

I also took a couple of old shirts that I have that are too big and tailored them to fit. I forgot to get any before pictures, but I’ll try to do a bigger post on them next week. I’ve never altered a shirt before and couldn’t find much about how to do it online so I’ll try to write up some pointers. It really wasn’t hard once I figured out what to do but I did a lot of pinning and basting before I sewed. They fit really good now. I’ll try to get that next week.

That was fast

Posted on July 24, 2012 by Marlana

I’m already done with my cross stitch that I started last week. I really hadn’t intended to finish it up so fast but I didn’t have anything else to do over the weekend.

So here’s the finished piece. It looked better in my head, and Photoshop, than in person and it looks a lot better in person than the picture. I think it’s good, though. I’m not entirely happy with the antlers, I wish they were thinner, but they look fine. If anyone is interested in the chart you can get it right here and I’ll try to put a link to it in the sidebar or something, too. I used DMC 435 and DMC 501, double stranded in the pattered areas and single on the backstitch. My original plan was to do the backstitch in black but I’m happy I went with the other color, I don’t think black would have looked as good. The finished piece is about six inches wide by seven or eight inches tall and I used 18 count Aida but I think it would look good on linen, too. It might even be better on linen. Back when WalMart stopped carrying embroidery supplies I bought a bunch of Aida and I can’t find any of it, this was the only bit of it that I have and I have no idea what happened to the rest, I guess I lost it when I repainted my room a few years ago.

So now I’m back to not having any projects going and since I can’t afford to buy anything, I’ll have to dig something up. I just have no desire to knit right now and I haven’t since about May. I think this is the longest I’ve gone without knitting since I started in 2000. What I need to do is get my wheel out and finish up the Shetland I started spinning last year at this time but I really don’t feel like doing that either.

Yesterday market my tenth year blogging here. It’s been fun even if I just haven’t been too into it the past year. I guess I finally need to rethink some things and get my motivation back.

Becoming a Habit

Posted on July 21, 2012 by Marlana

Neglecting the blog is getting to be a habit. I need some motivation but I really don’t feel like sitting down to write every week that I’m still not knitting, all I seem to be eating are packaged veggie burgers and salads and I’m only baking bread, and it’s the same bread once a week for a month or so. I’m boring, people.

So, here it is.

Look at that, I made bread. The same bread I showed last time.

Oh, look, more of the same bread, just a different shape. Seriously, though, this plain white bread from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day is really good and super easy. And I’ve been using the same bowl, without washing it between batches, to mix and store my dough in and I’ve notice each loaf tastes a little better than the last. It’s that little bit of old dough that really gives more depth of flavor and a moister (is that a word? It is now, I guess) texture. I love making bread and having fresh bread every day but I’m also really lazy (well, tired, I haven’t been sleeping good, again) and this method is perfect. I can have fresh bread in about an hour and a half with about five minutes of active work time. I don’t know if I’ll keep this up once school starts, though, since I have a bread making class, we’ll just have to see.

I finished my blackwork sampler. If you look at it really hard (or not so hard, in a few places), you can tell where I ran out of one color floss and had to switch colors. There are four shades of blue here but it’s not obvious in person. This is about six inches square and done on 18 count Aida.

Here’s the beginnings of a new piece, my own design. I spent a couple days getting my chart just right and now I’m off. I worked on this for quite a while last night and made a ton of progress but I kept making mistakes and having to rip out stitches. I’m not giving anything on it away, I’m going to attempt to update the blog every few days until it’s done and then I may just pop the chart up here for free. I’ve gone crazy making cross stitch charts this week. I’ve been making them out of pictures, old drawings that I’ve done, Threadless t-shirt designs. I have a ton of floss just sitting around and I’m itching to use some of it. Expect to see lots of embroidery and cross stitch coming up. Unless I get bored with it and then I’ll just move on to something else. Maybe I’ll finally get back to spinning.

I’m dog sitting for my cousins this week while they are in Florida. I love their dog, she lived with me for three months last year and it’s been too quiet with only the two cats and Sally. Too bad it’s so hard to photograph black dogs because Chippy is so scruffy and cute.

I’ll try to think of something better for next week. Maybe I’ll make some ice cream or something.

Stitching for Sanity

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