2 posts tagged “fvrl”

Note: This is the first in a series of posts looking back at 2007, in some key areas of my life that were important to me.  

I read this year.

This was a year of rediscovery of books, something I started on last year, but really took it up to another level this year.  In previous years, I did a lot of rereading.  This year, I took advantage of our library and learning more authors.  Although I primarily read Christian fiction, I also got in a lot of instructional books, like knitting and crafting books.

This allowed me to try out interlibrary loan to get some that weren't in our system.  I expanded on my knowledge by creating wikipedia pages or enhancing existing ones for some of the most prolific Christian authors out there (my wikipedia profile lists the most important pages I've worked on).  I have been so helped by having comprehensive lists of the books that any given author writes, and so this is a super thing for me to participate in improving to help others who can't easily find this info elsewhere. 

Because of my reading, I helped out other aspects of my life (craftyness) and started to give of myself as a Library volunteer for the first time since I was a teenager.  This opened new doors for me as a knitter (building my confidence and becoming a help to others), and as a library volunteer, accepting a role for the Friends of the Library group (I'm now the secretary).

Recap: 232 books (plus a few more on my nightstand not yet recorded), with 139 Christian Fiction and 73 knitting (and other ones of other random categories)  There were a few I reread and couldn't reenter into Vox from my personal collection at home, too.

Pictured: My favorite writer this year was Lauraine Snelling, because of reading several series she wrote, but primarily the Dakotah Treasures.  Tracie Peterson's A Slender Thread was probably my favorite standalone book.  Besides those two, I read just about everything Lori Wiki and Beverly Lewis have written this year as well.  The most outstanding knitting book I read this year was Big Girl Knits because it had such valuable information about sizing, and I plan to buy it.

Bonus, a Vox Tip: You can add the year into any URL of tagged items to see just the items for that year with that tag.  For example, if you are looking at books tagged knitting, the URL shows http://kristine.vox.com/library/books/tags/knitting/.  Put 2007 after the item type as follows: http://kristine.vox.com/library/books/2007/tags/knitting/.  Voila!

One of my recent knitting/crafty projects was for the Library.  I've talked a little bit over the last month or so about joining the Friends of the Library group - it's a group of people who do things to support our local library system.  One of the first projects I participated on was as a coordinator for baskets full of donated goods that were going to be auctioned off for fund raising.  I made a pair of slippers to donate before I joined, and then worked on a doll blanket, and turning everything into pretty cohesive baskets.

We took practice squares from the Knit-in and turned them into a doll blanket for one of the basket.  They were a wide variety of sizes, which added a little bit more difficulty!  But I wanted to put a border on each of them, so I just did some of them with a wider border than others.  Oh the joy of circular needles, I just picked up stitches all the way around the square, with some extras in the corners, and then went around and around and bound off loosely.  I did the same after sewing the squares to put a border on the very outside too.

All together, there were 4 baskets, and 2 of them had knitted goods in them (doll blanket and pig that one of the other ladies knitted in the "Fun at Grandma's House" basket, and my slippers and a crocheted blanket from one of the other ladies in the "Relaxation" basket).  So many people donated stuff for them that they were really a labor of love from the whole group.  And plus, they turned out really pretty, and I'm hoping they will raise a nice amount of money for the library. :)