Rehashing, Revisiting and Re-reviewing

For various reasons, I've found myself returning to some old posts, reviews, and thoughts, and I thought it might be fun to do a little recap post.

1. Remember this leather composition book cover I was so excited about?  I'm still thrilled with it.  For the last little bit I've mostly used it as a cover for my journal, since I keep coming back to using cheap composition books as journals--fancy notebooks intimidate me, I guess.  The cord has held up well, the leather still feels and smells great and if anything has become more beautiful with time.  I look forward to using it for years to come.  Have any drawbacks arisen?  One minor one, I suppose: it left what look like slightly oily spots on the inside cover of a few of the first notebooks that passed through it, maybe from the adhesive used where the edges fold under?  A small price to pay for the use of that lovely leather, I'd say, but possibly a concern.

2. The Classroom Friendly Pencil Sharpener: a few months in, I'm still pretty psyched about this thing.  I love the point it produces and the way it stops when a point is reached.  No additional downsides have arisen since my initial review, but just to reiterate the two that I encountered: first and foremost, the gripping mechanism leaves little bite marks on the pencil, which may or may not bother you.  Some days it bothers me more than others.  Secondly, though this isn't really a fault of the sharpener and can happen with other sharpeners as well, if the pencil lead is off-center, the sharpener won't automatically stop sharpening after a point is reached...because the point will be lopsided and still sort of catch the mechanism.  Just something to be aware of--if you run into a pencil that has this issue, just turn the crank a few times when sharpening and then stop.

3. Index cards: I admit, for story ideas, quick notes, poems, etc., I've mostly returned to using the small notebook I carry everywhere.  Why?  Because even though it's cluttered and jumbled and can't be reorganized, it's all in one place, bound together so it can't be lost unless I lose the whole thing (an idea so scary I refuse to let it fully take shape in my mind).  I like being able to flip through it when I'm looking for inspiration, and not having to search for a card I used last week.  I still use index cards a lot for to-dos, lists, addresses, etc., so they are always with me...but not as I had envisioned.  I tried to use them for story outlining a few more times, and again found that no matter how much or how little detail I tried to include, once I started writing the story, the story veered away from any  outline.  Maybe this dooms me as a writer, I don't know.  I have stacks of scene cards and character sketches that meant nothing four or five pages into the actual writing.  Will this prevent me from trying again to plan ahead?  Of course not.  There's a fine line between an eternal optimist and a fool, and I walk that line.

4. My use of Circa things has also undergone some revision.  I use Circa for my work notebooks quite a bit, since I like being able to move pages around and like that I can reuse scrap paper by just Circa punching it.  I still use it some for binding typewritten pages, too: one of these days I'm going to put all my old typecasts into a Circa notebook, I think, since I can easily mix all the different sizes of pages I use for typecasts--not something I could do with a three-ring binder.  But for everyday scribbling-in-a-notebook use, I keep coming back to the composition books.  No, I can't reorganize the pages, which means I have page number references and arrows everywhere as I try to make sense of the jumble.  But I like the size, the sturdiness, and they soothe my paranoia about pages going missing.  And they're just so doggone cheap and friendly.

5. Yesterday I stumbled across a post I wrote about a lumberjack throw I made for my first little nephew, who's now...um...three.  Actually had to check the date of the post to remember.  Time flies when you're having fun!  I had every intention of making several more of these in different color combinations for other family members, since they look pretty cool, work up pretty fast, and aren't too terribly difficult to do (I'm not exactly a master of crochet).  I bought at least some of the yarn...but never started.  Story of my life.  Last night I decided to take the first step toward remedying this situation, and finished the first few rows of a second throw, which will use a slightly darker red.  Crocheting is soothing--the rhythm of stitching, the feel of the yarn as it moves through your fingers, the way the piece slowly grows in your hands.  Nice to come back to that.

Finished the lumberjack throw I've been working on..

I'm not good at takin' photos, particularly in indoor lighting, but here's an attempt at a shot:



Eeevil Halvah-cat (she's in a mood today) and messy writing desk in the background...

I'm relatively pleased with how the throw came out, though I missed some boo-boos along the way, and the border is pretty lopsided in places. It's for my new nephew, Bertie, and I wanted something he could use even after the baby stage. This is nicely masculine, I think! I may try it again with different colors. If I could find some grey, I think a black/white/grey combo could be very nice. However, it appears I'm the only person in the world who likes grey yarn. I haven't been able to find it at Michael's or Jo-Ann's here, at least not last time I checked.

I've joined the Evil Empire South....

I've done a bad, bad thing. I have joined -- the cult of Apple. Oh dear...


I swore I wouldn't do this, not because of any short-comings in the products but because Apple cultists scare me. And the commercials annoy me. Could you possibly just advertise your products without being snarky and condescending about it?

But one of the girls at work has a Nano, and after playing with the thing a bit, I was more than envious. The interface is soooo slick. And (here comes the lame justification), I needed something for Teaching Company lectures -- something that wouldn't shuffle the tracks around because it couldn't understand how to actually sort them by name. Yes, I've dealt with that. And something with an easy-to-navigate file system.

I bought this. I should eat ramen for the rest of the year, so I can also get nice Christmas presents. But it does work wonderfully! And it's sleek and (partially) shiny. And now loaded with my own odd mix of music, which means I can go from Merle Haggard to John Michael Talbot to Bob Dylan to Cecilia Bartoli, one after another. Coolness. Speaking of Bob Dylan, I picked up his Modern Times at the same time as the iPod. Nice. Some of it is very much like anything he's ever done (Thunder on the Mountain, for example), and some is just...different. "Beyond the Horizon" is a good example. It's good, but it kind of makes me think "Bob Dylan meets Rogers and Hammerstein." Maybe I'll do a full review one of these days.

I didn't want to spend even more big bucks on a case for it, since it really just needs a bit of padding and something to protect it from scratches, so I whipped up a quick crocheted pouch for it. Nothing fancy, but it works.