happy new year!

My goal for 2012 is to post on the blog more often, and in order to do so I'm going to minimize the "fussiness" of my posts in hopes that I will be able to just post, rather than avoid posting until I have time to do it up "right."  This time never shows up, anyway, oddly enough.

First off, I'm going to highlight two of my Christmas gifts.  I am well loved (or spoiled) and received many more than two, and all of them were awesome and made me very happy, but these are the two that I wanted to share with everyone.

This is Queen Cupernica, a gorgeous handmade bronze and copper dragon that was the final gift to me sent by my Ars Sekrit Santa.  I've taken part in this exchange for five or six years now, and had a great time every year, but this year I was completely blown away by my Santa's efforts.  Not only did he find such a gorgeous dragon to add to my collection, but he put together several different gift packages along with a story explaining her arrival.  My husband was slightly miffed at the amount of effort put forth, as now he had to figure out how to top that!

And the second item is another dragon - this one an Imperial Young Dragon from Windstone.  I've wanted one of this style for years, but they have been out of production since before I started seriously collecting dragons, and the prices on eBay have always been ridiculous.  The company rereleased the design in two new colorways, this gorgeous copper patina as well as an amethyst, and I told my husband about them immediately upon release back in October.  What makes this gift all the more special is that he actually ordered it immediately, a first for him to buy a Christmas gift that far in advance, and even made arrangements so I wouldn't even know it had been purchased until I received it.  So this dragon is more than just another piece in my collection - it is a solid and present symbol of my husband's love for me.  Awww.

Somewhere around December 10th is when I decided that there was no way to finish both of the quilts for my niece and nephew before Christmas, short of taking off work for the last two weeks of the year.  So we moved on and got them some cool toys instead, and the quilts will be their birthday gifts this year.  I've finished about half of the quilting on Averie's quilt, and above is a detail shot showing the quilting in the tower panel at the bottom of the quilt.  I chose to run verticals every third tower, and while they're not all perfectly straight I'm pretty happy with the overall effect.  And as a bonus, the number of towers was evenly divisible by three so I didn't have to do any different-sized intervals.

I've had the first panel of Aidan's quilt set up on the design wall for weeks, and finally pieced it together so that I could (sigh) put it away for a little bit to make a (much smaller) baby quilt for a friend's baby that is due very soon now.  Part of why I hadn't worked on it at all is due to the hassle involved in switching out my main sewing machine from a quilting setup (for Averie's quilt) to a piecing setup (for this one), which I just didn't want to deal with.  I finally bit the bullet and set up my Pfaff 130, and after some fussing with the settings I got a great scant 1/4" seam and was able to put this panel together.  And amazingly, somehow the Pfaff (despite being 60 years old) produced the best patchwork I've made yet - look at how all of the corner points line up in this shot!  And it's that way across the entire panel, I'm just so proud of myself about that!  The final panel size is spot-on as well, so it's not just a consistent seam allowance it's both a consistent and an ACCURATE seam allowance. Wooo!

In December I was enamored of the Sweetwater monthly label crew project, a fabric-covered journal, so I joined the group and also ordered the pattern and the kit.  I picked up a moleskine graph paper notebook to use, and a few days after Christmas I started working on the kit.  My first try didn't turn out as well as I liked, but honestly that's okay as using 2.5" squares made for some pretty patchwork that I didn't really want to cover up with the label.  I did a second version using strips (finally breaking into my prized Northwood metallic batik jelly roll) and a slightly larger size than the pattern called for, and this worked out much better.  This project was also completed on the Pfaff 130.

I did the lining up in border collie fabric, as it makes me so happy every time I see it in my iPad sleeve, and I'm very proud of myself for getting the border collies all facing the same way.  Sadly I scorched the personalized label (the J on the left/top) when ironing it on, so I purposefully scorched my personalized label on the lower right so they would look similar.  The flaps are really a bit too big for this notebook, as I could barely get the notebook inside the cover, so if I make another in the future I will make them a little smaller.  Overall I'm super pleased with the result, and I'm using the notebook to make crafting notes - I hope I will keep it up throughout the year!

The last thing I've made recently is a pillowcase, which I made using a tutorial I found online last night.  It came together very quickly, no more than an hour or so from start to finish, and I'm very pleased with how it turned out.  I made it for a guy friend who is recovering from surgery, and who likes blues, so hopefully this navy and royal blue with gray trim pillowcase will be pleasing!  Again I made this on the Pfaff, and it sewed like a dream - even over the final seam where the trim is, which is 10 layers of cotton fabric!  I was amazed at how easily the machine went right over that with no hiccuping or twisting, and I'm not sure my Janome would have handled it as well.  My learning curve on this item is that I didn't have a quite big enough final seam (which encases the raw ends), so I had some threads from the raw edge sticking out from the outer seam which I had to clip.  I've made note of that and will do it better next time - I was trying to avoid moving my seam guide, and just moving the needle position, but I think to encase it properly I need to do a combination of moving the seam guide and being more careful with my ironing to set it up properly.  At any rate, not bad for my first attempt at enclosed seams and a pillowcase!

I'm pretty proud of my final stats for commuting on my motorcycle in 2011.  Of 221 days that I worked in 2011, I commuted by motorcycle for 211 of them, and the remaining 10 days were all commuted by car/truck due to bad weather (snow, ice, below 25F, or flooding).  That's a percentage of 95.5% of days commuted, or an adjusted percentage of 100% - not bad!  My total mileage for the year was 10,541, with nearly all of that commuting as I did just one or two fun rides over the course of the year.  I am hoping to do more fun rides for the year, especially since my new route to work avoids the SR-520 bridge and as such is a couple of miles shorter, meaning I'll need to do a bit more "fun" riding to make up the difference and continue putting on miles at the rate of 10k per year.

According to my GoodReads account, I read 68 books in 2011.  Since I don't record re-reads or the silly ridiculous fluffy romances that I read, my total is probably closer to 100 since I know I reread about 25 books and read more than 7 romances.  Some of the books that I read last year that made it to my "Favorites" shelf are as follows:
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
The Kitchen Counter Cooking School by Kathleen Flinn
Memories of the Future by Wil Wheaton
Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer
Twilight's Dawn by Anne Bishop
Of course, I read many more books than just these six, but of the books I read last year only nine made it to my favorites shelf, so I'd say these are my highly-recommended reads of the year.  For 2012 I've set my challenge to 60 books (it was set to 50 for 2011), and I've already read two - oddly enough, both about knitting!

And of course, I can't wrap up this post without at least one of the border collies!  We took Ezri along with the rest of our club's fast team up to Canada for a New Years Eve tournament, and we had a ridiculously good time.  Dinner, flyball racing, champagne and dessert, and bungee racing, all with a big bunch of our friends - what could be better!  I decided to celebrate with sparkles, including sparkly bright green eyeliner for me and jewels for Ezri, as shown in this excellent photo by my friend Deborah.  Just a dab of eyelash glue secures the gems safely, and as long as the dog doesn't shake before the glue dries, it'll stay put until you take it off.  While we put gems on all of our racing dogs, Ezri was the one who sat still and let me put about 15 on her, and she loved every moment of it!

Happy New Year!

33,333

This morning on my commute to work, specifically at the intersection of 522 and 405, my bike turned over 33,333 on the odometer. This isn't particularly significant for any reason, but it is a pleasing number sequence that amused me. Since I began the year at an odometer reading of 26,383 this puts me at just under 7,000 miles ridden in not quite 8 months of riding, leaving me well on track to clear 10,000 miles for the year. Additionally, since I purchased the bike with about 2,700 miles on it, I just recently turned the milestone of putting 30,000 miles of my own on the bike, which is also exciting. Of course, I am still commuting full time, and here are my stats for that so far this year.

Days Worked: 146
Days Ridden: 138
Bad Weather Days: 8
Absolute Percentage: 94.5%
Adjusted Percentage: 100%
Temp Min/Max: 25F / 82F

A few weeks ago I got a new back tire, and I chose a Pilot Road 3 based on the recommendations from some of my online riding friends. The difference from my old worn tire to the new PR3 was just stunning, and not only due to the difference in age/wear. The back end of my bike "sticks" like it never did before, giving me way more margin for safety and improved cornering, and I am super pleased with it. Chris just had to replace both tires on his bike, and he went with Pilot Road 2's, and I think he's happy with them as well although he hasn't had them for very long. I'm hoping we can do a ride for fun over Labor Day weekend, though I haven't actually tried to plan anything so who knows if that will work out. We still haven't visited Mt. St. Helens, and that's something I would very much like to do, so maybe I'll try to make that happen.

I'm currently reading a very interesting book, New York: The Novel by Edward Rutherford. The novel is (clearly) set in the city of New York, and each section follows a few people through a pivotal point in history for the city. I'm just over a third through the book, and so far have read the sections covering the change of New Amsterdam to New York, as well as the American Revolution and the surprise choice of a new American capitol rather than the city of New York. It's very well done and I'm really enjoying it, as not only the major issues of each time period but also the minor issues are illustrated by the characters living in that time, from slavery to interactions with Indians to war profiteering. I had originally heard of this author by an Amazon recommendation for another novel of his based on London, but that one wasn't available for Kindle at the time so I eventually picked up this one when it went on summer sale a few months ago.

I think I've posted about it before, but if you love reading then you really should check out GoodReads. It is an amazing resource where you can list books you've read, review books simply (by 1-5 stars) as well as by written review, and additionally list books to read and further categorize your lists. So in addition to the standard lists, I also have one for my book club where I've tagged each book we've read, as well as a smaller list of books I might not finish for various reasons. The "to-read" list is amazingly helpful - any time I see a blogger, news story, or friend mention a book that sounds good, I'll just hop over to GoodReads and toss it into my to-read pile. Combined with the app for my iPhone, I'm always ready with something else I wanted to read when I finish what I'm working on for my Kindle! So far this year I've read 43 new books, although my total-read is higher as I'm not counting rereads (about 19 so far this year) and truly trashy novels (probably at least 10).

Finally, my friend who is a writer requested that her friends post books that "would make them miss their bus stop" for her birthday, and a few days later she collated all of the recommendations into a single Amazon list. It's a great list of fun reads, and I will definitely be perusing it further soon to add more books to my ever-growing to-read pile!

The Kindle is probably one of the best things I've ever bought...at this point I can't imagine bringing home so many paper books as are on my to-read list. I'm still buying books in physical format, of course, especially quilting books and those for my "apocalypse" library which are useful information on homesteading and other topics that would be useful when the internet is no more. But for the vast majority of books, I much prefer to buy them for my Kindle and not have to deal with the physical paper copy, to the point that I will just move on to the next book on my list if I can't find a Kindle version. It's going to be very interesting to see how the eBook market shakes out over the next few years, with publishers fighting a losing battle to keep eBook prices high ($15 for an eBook? not even!) combined with the different standards in place. We shall see...

the books of 2010

Last April, I found and joined an excellent website - www.goodreads.com. It's a combination of a book review site, library management tool, and Facebook, where you can mark/sort/rate/review books you own or have read and share these with those who you friend. While I'll probably never manage to put every book I've ever read into the site, it's been wonderful for tracking books I've read as you can sort by "read by" date. I used to write mini reviews of books I read when I had a LiveJournal (well, I still have it...I did pay for a permanent account!), but after a while I got tired of doing them and stopped. This site is great because you don't have to put in a review, but it does prompt you to do so when you mark a book as read. There is an option to keep a "books to read" list, and between that and the matching Goodreads app on my iPhone, that has helped me immensely in keeping track of books that catch my interest for later reading.

In February of 2009. I purchased a Kindle after the second generation version came out. It's been one of my best purchases to date, and I've purchased over 160 books so far - being able to carry a hundred or more books in less than the space of a trade paperback has been very addictive. I've even given a Kindle to my mother as a gift, keeping her on my account so that we can share books! With the advent of the Kindle 3 recently, and the lack of global access on my original Kindle 2, I bought myself a new one a few weeks ago and gave my older one to Chris. Just last night the new skins for them arrived and I was able to put them on - purple lacquer for me, and red fire for him!

Travel with a Kindle is definitely easier as well, as I no longer have to practically pack an extra suitcase just for the books! I haven't missed paper books too much, although there is no digital replacement yet for the beautiful full color cookbooks and sewing books that I use (and received many of for Christmas!), as the Kindle is so small and light that even the slimmest trade paperback is large and heavy by comparison. Love, love, love my Kindle!

So back to the books - since I joined Goodreads last April, I've marked up as read 51 books (although I didn't mark up any of the truly trashy novels that I can read in an hour!). I'm guessing I probably read around 90 books last year, which is a bit under previous years' book counts, but I've traded off some reading time for quilting and Warcraft time.

The best book that I read for my book club last year was The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot which delves into the story of the origination of the HeLa cell line from a young black woman in the 1950s, bringing up all sorts of interesting ethics and rights questions along the way.

The best fiction book I read last year was Outlander by Diana Gabaldon, which uses an excellent time-travel mechanic to place a woman from 1947 into the mid 1700s before the Jacobite Risings in Scotland. The historical references have been fascinating and the character development excellent, and I'm about a third of the way through the sixth book in the series.

Probably the worst book I read last year was Piers Anthony's Climate of Change, a long-awaited final entry in his Geodyssey series. Like the also long-awaited entry into his Incarnations series, Under a Velvet Cloak, it seems that the author has given up on the vivid settings and characters he's written in the past in order to concentrate solely on tawdry sex. While sex has been a thread of several of his earlier books, it's never been as central (and as boring) as in these two novels. When your reader is thinking "oh god they're having sex AGAIN and it has nothing to do with the plot!!" you're doing it wrong.

I'm looking forward to seeing how many books I read this year - and maybe with a Kindle, Chris will read more this year too!

so, what about the bikes and the books?

Recent updates have included the border collies and other topics, but what about the first two topics that are in the name of this blog? Well, don't worry, for books and bikes are still very big parts of our lives! We are both still commuting via motorcycle, although we are prepared with the two all-wheel-drive vehicles should the dire predictions of a very cold and snowy winter come true. And we are both still going through books, especially now that Chris has discovered his love for audiobooks which he listens to while commuting and doing chores around the house.

My bike just turned 25,000 miles a few weeks ago, and had its last major service at 24k miles...except for replacing the belt on the belt drive, which will be done this weekend. I put that off until after the Can-Am trip, as the 24k service was expensive enough without adding in that replacement cost as well! As of today, I've worked 195 days this year and ridden to work 180 of them, with 3 days unrideable due to weather and 4 days unrideable due to the bike being in the shop. So out of 188 possible days I could ride, I've ridden a total of 180 for a percentage of 95.7% - pretty awesome! Just about each one of the 8 days that I didn't ride was for a reason like taking the dogs to the vet, or bringing things to work to be shipped (EJS lights, anyone?). The former reason doesn't apply anymore, unfortunately, as dogs are not even allowed on my work campus anymore (not even in your own car), so if they have to go to the vet I either have to miss most of a day of work or have Chris drive to work and trade me the car/dog for my bike when it's time for their appointment.

Chris' bike is just over 32,000 miles and is currently in the shop for not only the 32k service but also because his speedometer assembly died last week, meaning neither the speedometer nor the odometer are working properly. Other than shop time, he's ridden nearly as much as I have, although now that he has his own office at work and since dogs are welcome, he may end up driving more often so he can take Jadzia to work with him. She's quite a good office dog, as it turns out, happily greeting people or snoozing in her bed under his desk, and she's excellent at guarding his office against prankers when he's away for a meeting.

On the books side of the equation, I joined the website GoodReads back in April, and am really enjoying its features quite a bit. Every book I've tried to find has been in their catalog, and with the combination of lists and custom lists available, I've found great utility in keeping track of books I've read, books I want to read, books that we've done for our book club, and so on. Of course I'm positive I haven't entered in every book that I've ever read, but I've currently got 605 books in my "read" category with another 31 in my "to-read" category. You can see what books are in your friends' lists, including seeing how you both rated the same book, write reviews, update on your reading progress, and so on. If nothing else, I'm loving it for the "to-read" list that works both online and via my iPhone app, so that if I see something interesting I can just toss it onto my list and pick it up later. So far I've read 47 books since April 1, when I joined the site, although I have read quite a few completely trashy novels that I don't put on the list. ;)

Chris doesn't find the time to sit down and read like I do, and he also does not read at the crazy speed I am able to, so he's recently found that he loves audio books since he can listen to them while riding/driving or doing other things around the house. He's gone through more than a basic Audible subscription in the past few months, and even found a neat sci-fi/fantasy book club online that he joins in every month by getting the book via Audible. This has worked out well since he can listen to a book, tell me about it, and I can read it quickly enough that we can discuss it soon thereafter. Yay!

I wonder how many more books we will go through before the end of the year...

...the wonders I've seen.

My name is John Crichton... an astronaut. Three years ago I got shot through a wormhole. I'm in a distant part of the universe aboard this living ship of escaped prisoners, my friends. I've made enemies. Powerful. Dangerous. Now all I want is to find a way home, to warn Earth. Look upward, and share... the wonders I have seen.

On March 19, 1999, the pilot episode for Farscape aired. Originally planned for five seasons, the last season was canceled and the story arc compressed to close out in four seasons, later followed by a four-hour miniseries to fully end the storyline. Chris first started watching the show around 2003 with a friend who loved it, and I watched the series around 2005. Along with Firefly, I think it's one of the best science fiction shows in recent years, and it's really too bad that it got canceled. Where else would you find a Jim Henson muppet as a main character, complete with a flatulence problem? At any rate, on the tenth anniversary earlier this month there were limited edition shirts available on Zazzle, so I picked up one for each of us. The front simply states "...share the wonders I've seen." while the back outlines the "Farscape 10th Anniversary Uncharted Territories Tour." I'm wearing mine today.

Yes, I'm a nerd. If you read this blog, you should know this by now.

It's been a little over a month since I got my Kindle, and I love it more than I had originally thought I would. I knew it would be a bit of a gamble, no matter how much I liked it in the short time I had played with those owned by friends, but I'm certain now that it is a gamble that has paid off big time. I've bought 17 Kindle books so far, although two of those were free purchases and one was an oops, and have read most of them already. Books I've read on my Kindle so far include
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
World Without End
The Shadow Queen
Renegade's Magic
Dragon Harper
Wishful Drinking
Twilight Saga (Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, Breaking Dawn)

I am currently reading The Buried Pyramid, Coraline, Anathem, and Red Mars. Ten books in one month isn't unheard of for me to do, but having the Kindle with me makes reading more much easier, especially with the large books. I'm also reading multiple books simultaneously, which I've never done before, and am actually rather enjoying. I only have one physical book on my reading list (and I'm about halfway done), and that is the copy of Ender in Exile that I received for my birthday. I've also bought and downloaded Wil Wheaton's 2008 chapbook Sunken Treasure, as well as copied over the NAFA and UFLI flyball rulebooks. Finally, there are plenty of free Kindle books available, including this page of converted Gutenburg Project books. All in all, I'm completely thrilled with my new Kindle and I happily use it every day - probably only second in usage to my iPhone.

I love technology.

I love technology

Through the power of the internet, I have just purchased a PDF copy of Wil Wheaton's new book Sunken Treasure and sent it to my Kindle.

The future is now and it is awesome.

so, where are the books?

I named this blog "Bikes, Books, and Border Collies," but until today I haven't made a single post about books. This has been slightly on purpose, as while I enjoy writing and talking about books, I didn't want to lock myself in to writing reviews of all the books that I read. I did that for a time on livejournal, and my own psyche made me feel guilty when I fell behind, so that I finally stopped posting entirely with this as one of the reasons.

With that said, I love reading and I love books, as anyone who has spent any time with me will know. My total time reading fluctuates from month to month, depending on travel, free time at work, and time spent in Warcraft, but I typically read 80-100 new books in a year, with a few rereads of old favorites mixed in. I belong to a book club with several women from work, where we have read everything from nonfiction (The Female Brain) to juvenile fiction (Harry Potter books 6 & 7) to serious historical fiction (Mary, Queen of Scotland and the Isles) to trashy fiction (The Bergdorf Blondes) over the past three years or so. I spend a lot of my own allowance money on books, and usually have a stack of " books-to-read" sitting in my office to work through as time allows. I also receive books as gifts, and have several from Christmas and my birthday waiting in the current stack. However, since I ride a motorcycle to work, my cargo capacity is limited, meaning that it is difficult to take Anathem or Mary, Queen of Scotland and the Isles or World Without End with me to work, where I tend to have a free block of time available to read while I eat lunch. So these books have sat in The Pile, wistfully waiting for a flyball tournament, free time at home, or a trip away to be read and loved.

Now, enter the Kindle, the e-book reader that Amazon debuted a while ago. Two of my friends have the original version of the Kindle, and absolutely adore it to any who will listen. I started considering one in late January, and my interest was definitely piqued by the announcement of Kindle2 in early February. With my annual review last week including information on my bonus, I went ahead and bought one on Thursday with next-day delivery for Friday, so it was waiting for me on my doorstep when I returned home from work on Friday. Over the weekend I have played with it a good bit, and completely read our next book club book (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society), and am firmly entranced by it and thrilled to have it. My only issue now is wishing I could "trade-in" some of the hardbacks in The Pile for Kindle versions! I may just take a few of them to Half-Price Books in order to do so...

From the first opening of the box, I was impressed with the presentation of the Kindle. Amazon has definitely taken a lesson from Apple in the importance of having good packaging, and just opening the layers with pull tabs printed "Once Upon A Time..." made me smile. The e-ink display was set to a diagram asking me to plug in the Kindle, then turn it on via the power switch, making it the easiest gadget start-up I've ever seen. Within five minutes I was reading my book club book comfortably from my couch, having bought it via the built-in connection to the Kindle store. Over the weekend I read quite a bit, obviously, and I never had any eyestrain or issues with the text - in fact the adjustable text size came in handy when I took out my contacts before bed on Friday evening. Many people whine about there not being a backlight in the Kindle, but I find this to be a bonus rather than a problem, as backlit screens are more difficult to read and draining on the battery. The Kindle is reputed to last 4+ days with the wireless signal turned on and 14+ days with it turned off, and I'd much rather have that and deal with my own lighting than to have to plug it in every day. After all, it is a book replacement, and complaining that you need the same conditions to read the Kindle as you would to read a book seems a little prissy to me.

I've used the file conversion offered by Amazon to convert and send two PDF files (the two flyball rulebooks) wirelessly to my Kindle, which worked beautifully and inexpensively at just $0.10 apiece. I also downloaded quite a few books from The Gutenburg Project, which provides various digital copies of copyright-free and copyright-expired works. Of the books I downloaded, namely a copy of Grimm's Fairy Tales and nearly all of the Frank L. Baum Oz books, I was able to directly drag two to Kindle (.txt files) and have about 75% of the others converted by Amazon to Kindle format and sent back to my email account for free. There are a few books that could not be converted, for some reason, but I have not had time to fiddle with it to find out why. All of the converted files look just fine on Kindle, and although the first disclaimer bit is often oddly formatted the actual book text has been perfectly fine. Finally, I can browse the Kindle store from Firefox and buy things for download, to have them already there and waiting for me the next time I turn my Kindle on. How cool is that! And as a last interesting touch, when you put Kindle to sleep it displays a random picture that so far includes author portraits, manuscript pages, and the Kindle logo.

So far I am quite happy with my purchase. Yay for technology meeting reading!