More bracelets

A friend told me that she loved looking at my bracelet photos, so why not? Here's a few more:



Two more diamond patterns. The lower one is one of my favorite bracelets. So many diamonds!



I made these earrings (along with a matching bracelet) for said friend for her birthday. These are the first earrings I made, so I think they turned out pretty well.



This one has the most threads I've worked with in a bracelet (19) and is also the most complicated...there are a few mistakes, but it's coming together. I'll post pics when it's done!

And that, my friends, is all. More later! :)

Epic bookshelf quest...completed?

Remember a while ago I was looking for a bookshelf picture that kind of fit me in personality?
Check this out:
http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/onblack.php?id=3008001862&size=large

(Um...I keep trying to add a link but I can't figure out how to do it. I'll have to show it like this, but if anyone knows how to add a proper link, let me know.)

Woo! I think we have a bookshelf! At least for now. I'll keep looking, of course.
Ok, that didn't sound nearly epic enough. Ahem...QUEST COMPLETE! Or...is it!??! Dun dun dun...

Sci-fi lists part two

Yay, I actually posted soon after the first one! Good for me.
So, here are a bunch of other science fiction books that I've read recently:

1. Fahrenheit 451 (By Ray Bradbury)
This one is more of a "social sci-fi" book than the other ones, and because of that I didn't love it, but it was good. I think the stuff about censorship and the pretty clueless society was very important. Did the people even know about the war going on? I don't remember. I listened to the audio book, and I can't remember who narrated but I thought his reading style really fit Bradbury's writing style.

2. The Giver (By Lois Lowry)
This was a book I'd been planning to read for ages, and I finally did because of my book club. It's another dystopian book (weird...my spell check doesn't have the word "dystopia" for some reason), although this one is more anti-utopian than anything else. It's kind of creepy and the writing style is uniquely vague...although sometimes I did want the author to elaborate on things more, especially the ending.

3. 2001: A Space Odyssey (By Arthur C. Clarke)
Because of this book I learned how to spell "odyssey"...yay! As with Fahrenheit, I listened to it on audio book. I haven't seen the movie yet, but I just might because of the book. I actually wasn't too impressed with it...I thought it was a bit boring, even the whole "HAL" thing (not because the events were boring, but because of the writing style)...at first. Then I got to the ending. I stayed up really late listening to the ending, and after that I lay awake in bed thinking, "WOAH...that was...WOAH". I don't really think I'll be reading the sequel, mainly because I loved the open-ended conclusion, and I don't want that to be spoiled. Unless the sequel is really, really good...(?)

4. Sphereland (By Dionys Burger)
This book was written in Dutch (or something like that), and I was reading the translation, but I can't remember who the translator was. Anyway, this isn't so much science fiction as "math fiction". It's a sequel to "Flatland" (by Edwin A. Abbot), a book about shapes living in a two-dimensional world. "Sphereland" further explores that concept, with some new ideas about curved space and other cool things like that.

There are still lots of books sci-fi books I want to read...right now I want to focus on various classic authors like Orwell and Asimov. Maybe I'll blog about that, too! Oh, and more Larry Niven, of course. Wish me luck!

Sci-fi lists part one

Since I love reading and I love to make lists, I'm going to make a list of some recent science fiction I've read. WARNING: If you don't like lists, don't read this as you'll find it boring.
I'm generally a fantasy-reader, but recently I've started to love science fiction as well. It actually started through my obsession with the Lord of the Rings movies last fall (still haven't read the books by the way. I know, I'm a bad fantasy lover). This January, I was looking for an online audio book to listen to when I came across "Ringworld" by Larry Niven. I thought, "Oooh...it has 'ring' in the title! Like 'The Ring'! Awesome!" So I downloaded it. I had no clue what it was about, and I'd never heard of Larry Niven, but I saw it had won a sci-fi/fantasy award, so I figured it must be good.
Let's just say I found a new obsession. So...from classic fantasy to hard sci-fi. Kind of a big leap, but I have to say that sci-fi really isn't that different from fantasy. Anyway, it turns out that not only is Larry Niven famous among the sci-fi crowd, but he's written a lot of books and short stories. So, here are the books I've read so far:

"Ringworld" and its sequel "Ringworld's Engineers"
(Ringworld was awesome, the sequel not quite as great...and I'm afraid to read the third one as I've heard lots of negative things about it)

Fleet of Worlds
(I was very excited to find out about this one because it was about one of my favorite characters from Ringworld. It's really good too! This one is co-authored by Edward Lerner)

Protector
(I mainly read it as background info for "Ringworld's Engineers"...I didn't like it as much, but it was still fun for its ideas)

And these ones I'm still reading:

Neutron Star
(I'm actually almost finished with this one. It's a good short story collection that would make a great introduction to Larry Niven's universe)

Three Books of Known Space
(An omnibus with two novels and lots of short stories. I wasn't too impressed with the early stories, but I'm reading the first novel and it's very interesting)

Juggler of Worlds
(Sort of a sequel to "Fleet of Worlds"...not as good as Fleet but not bad so far. It seems to contain a lot of stuff about Niven's short stories, so I want to read lots of those first before finishing this)

This turned out longer than I expected it to be, so I think I'll split it into two parts and make the second post (which will be about various non-Niven books) sometime soon (if not tomorrow, then this week). I may also make a more in-depth post about Ringworld or one of the other ones...I dunno. Would you want to read it if I post it? Leave a comment.
Seriously, if anyone reads this blog, leave a comment. I'd like to know who reads it. I don't bite. =)

Diamonds

Hey guys, can you guess what my favorite shape to knot is? ;-)

Hathaway House

Hey, sorry I haven't written in a while. It's not because I can't think of anything to post (that's usually what happens)...I've just been lazy. I have a bunch of things to write, and I promised myself I would write them this weekend. So...here we go. I'll just split the things into several posts because then it looks more productive. :)
First off, I wanted to say that my friends and I are putting on a play, called Haunting of Hathaway House. I can't remember who it's by....*grabs script*...ok, it's by John Murray, apparently. I haven't heard of it before we put it on, but I'm not really a script person (as you might've guessed from my "Script Frenzy" post), so that's not saying much. Our play is actually part of 3 one-act plays. I like the idea of a bunch of short plays, rather than one long play, if only because more people get to take part.
Hathaway House is sort of a ghost story, but it's not very typical for one. It's more about the atmosphere than the story, and the 3 scenes don't really connect all that much...well, they do, but not as much as one would think. It's pretty creepy, too...that's always a plus in my book!
I've been in two plays before, but it feels like the last one was ages ago...I've really missed it, so I was super excited when I was invited to take part. I love acting (although I don't know if I'd want to do it professionally). For me it's very much about making friends and having fun as well as the actual production. So...yay!
Wow, this post sounded so much better in my head...oh well, it's not horrible and it kind of makes sense. That's always good.