Sunday Serenity #257

Soup and sleep have been the essence of my Sunday.  Chicken noodle soup was the only thing that appealed to me earlier today.  The only thing that didn't elicit a gag reflex to think about.

I have slept nearly twenty out of the last twenty-four hours.  And it must be doing some good as I'm feeling better.  Not great but better than yesterday.  The main symptoms left are a sinus headache, dizziness and deep fatigue.  And a hint of a cough that I'm hoping doesn't develop into more.

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Absorbing Dreams

I'm could really use a box of tissues big enough to sleep in.  Or at least one tissue the size of a bedsheet.

Ed and I have both succumbed to the annual pre Xmas bug.  He brings one home from the dock every year courtesy of the truckers.

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Praying For My Sister

Jamie took this pic with her cell from her hospital bed on Thursday

My sister Jamie, is in the hospital again.  She went in Wednesday morning at the University of Washington hospital in Seattle for a procedure, expecting to be home again by Thursday afternoon.  But once again there were complications.  I don't feel free to share details without checking with her first and I haven't had any contact with her since the wee hours of Wednesday.  But here is the FB page for her blog where she has made public some of the back story and you can follow up when she is able to start posting again.

Prayers for her would be appreciated.

Meanwhile I'm missing her most during these hours as the late night hours are when we often chat online or play Words with Friends on FB.

Thinking of you sis.  And praying.

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Laughing Through Life By Connie C. Wilson: Review and Giveaway

Laughing Through Life

by Connie C. Wilson

The simplest way to characterize this little book is to compare it to the humorous personal essays of suburban family life that Erma Bombeck was famous for.   But that doesn't quite cover it.  These short pieces cover the gamut between the personal and the professional life of a working writer, teacher and mother (and now grandmother to the adorable toddles gracing the cover of her book) and those times when the tasks of those roles converged as when she took her teen daughter and friends along with her to the political conventions in 2004 or the Dave Mathews Band concert which she attended as journalist.

There are a number of these I think warrant a 'beverage spew' alert as they are not safe to be reading in front of the computer while drinking hot coffee.  One of them at least I would slap three of those suckers on and that is 'Mrs Malaprop Lives' which is a series of misused words and phrases Wilson had collected from various souses including her own students.  But then I'm a sucker for humor based on language--puns, malapros, riddles and such.

Wilson did not cover the political conventions as an unbiased journalist tho.  She is primarily an opinion piece writer and does she have opinions!  Let's just say she was not that fond of the letter 'W' in 2004 in spite of it being the first letter of her own last name.

Giveaway:

I'm authorized to giveaway one ebook copy and since it is ebook that means this is open internationally.  The ebook is available in several of the most popular formats.

This drawing will be open until Dec 29 2001 As usual I will be using random.org to choose a winner.  

Enter by leaving a comment expressing interest on this post.  Extra entries can be had by:

Following Joystory on Twitter  if you already do leave a separate comment saying so

Like  Joystory's page on Facebook   if you already do leave a separate comment saying so

Tweeting once per day (leave the tweet's url in a comment here)

Add Joystory feed to your reader.   if you already do leave a separate comment saying so

Following Joystory on Networked Blogs   if you already do leave a separate comment saying so

Google +1 this post

For each one you do leave a comment here with the identifying url and/or your username.  Remember leave a separate comment for each task as the individual comments will be the entries that I assign numbers to in the order they are made.

http://www.conniecwilson.com/

Laughing Through Life By Connie C. Wilson Tour

Tour Host: Date of review: (GP)Guest Post, (I)Interview, or (G)Giveaway?

Page Flipperz Nov. 28th I &G Nov. 29th

Satisfaction for Insatiable Readers Nov. 30 G

She Treads Softly Dec. 1 GP Dec. 2 (GP done)

Carabosses's Library Dec. 5 G

Ruthi Reads Dec. 6 G & I Dec. 7

Joystory Dec.8 G

Read More Books Dec 9 none

A Life Sustained Dec. 10 G

Stacy's Books Dec. 12 I & G Dec 13

Book Zone Dec. 14 G

Emeraldfire's Bookmark Dec.15 GP Dec. 16 (GP done)

http://www.virtualauthorbooktours.com/

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Hoping

see more Lolcats and funny pictures, 

...the stats work in my favor today.

My sister is in the hospital for yet another stretching out of a scar tissue infested throat.  I've lost count of how many of these she has had in the last two years but it is the one the summer of 09 that always looms in the imagination each time since then for that time complications nearly took her life and she spent a month in the hospital recovering--most of that in ICU.

She was to go into surgery at 11AM Pacific Coast time for a one hour procedure and it is now more than twelve hours later and I haven't heard a word.  The silence on her fb feels ominous as she is constantly updating and commenting on friend's walls.

Have you noticed how hard it is to tell the difference between praying and fretting from the outside?  Today it feels just as hard to tell the difference from the inside.

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Delayed Flight by John J. Smith: Review and Giveaway

 Delayed Flight

by John J. Smith

They were childhood sweethearts.  Then a father's command separated them.  20 years later they meet in an airport awaiting their delayed flight.  Will they finally make the connection or has their only chance taken off long ago?

Jared and Veronica were deeply in love as teenagers but then a confluence of jealousy, lack of self esteem, and lies tore them apart.  Heartbroken, they each ended up in disastrous marriages that ended badly.

Then the week of Christmas 20 years later they were each in a DC airport awaiting a flight to Dallas.  Jared was returning from a business trip and Veronica on her way to visit her college student daughter for the holidays.  Snow and ice storms at both airports delayed the flight for hours and a meddling waitress who seemed to know more than she had a right too, orchestrated their conversation in a way that reminded me of Monica in Touched by an Angel.

Once in Dallas they went their separate ways again with Veronica promising to maybe call him before she headed back east and maybe have coffee or brunch.  But almost immediately that maybe became even more ephemeral when Veronica's daughter, Jeri starts gushing about this wonderful man, her boss, that she thinks would be the perfect match for her Mom.

I can't say much more without giving away plot surprises

Cross a Touched by an Angel episode with a Nicholas Sparks novel and your favorite Christmas Miracle story and you have the essence of this sweet love story.  This would make a good Hallmark or Lifetime channel movie.  The characters are full bodied and interesting.  Even the secondary characters.  In fact I was so intrigued by that eccentric waitress, Max, I wish she had a whole novel to herself.  The writing style is somewhat less mature than Sparks' but it shows much promise and I hope to see more by Mr Smith in the coming years.

.

Giveaway:

I'm authorized to giveaway one ebook copy and since it is ebook that means this is open internationally.  The ebook is available in several of the most popular formats.

This drawing will be open until Dec 27 2001. As usual I will be using random.org to choose a winner.  

Enter by leaving a comment expressing interest on this post.  Extra entries can be had by:

Following Joystory on Twitter  if you already do leave a separate comment saying so

Like  Joystory's page on Facebook   if you already do leave a separate comment saying so

Tweeting once per day (leave the tweet's url in a comment here)

Add Joystory feed to your reader.   if you already do leave a separate comment saying so

Following Joystory on Networked Blogs   if you already do leave a separate comment saying so

Google +1 this post

For each one you do leave a comment here with the identifying url and/or your username.  Remember leave a separate comment for each task as the individual comments will be the entries that I assign numbers to in the order they are made.

John J. Smith

Delayed Flight Tour Schedule

Tour Host: Date of review: (GP)Guest Post, (I)Interview, or (G)Giveaway?

Luxury Reading   Dec. 1 G & GP Dec. 2

Butterfly-o-meter Books  Dec.5 G Dec 2-6 hop

Joystory   Dec. 6 G

Chris Redding    GP (ExcerpTuesday) Dec. 6

Moonlight LGleam's Bookshelf    Dec.6 G & GP Dec. 7

Dragons Den   Dec. 7 None

Page Flipperz   Dec. 8 G & I Dec. 9

The Phantom Paragrapher   Dec. 12 G & GP Dec. 13

Carabosse's Library   Dec. 13 None

Book Him Danno   Dec.15 I & G Dec. 16

Reviews by Molly   Dec. 16 G None

From the TBR Pile   Dec. 20th G Dec. 20th

I'd Rather Be At the Beach  Dec. 21 G Dec. 21

http://www.virtualauthorbooktours.com/

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Yikes.

I'm still working on my review for the blog tour which I'd hoped to have ready to go by midnight. That's not going to happen but here's hoping by 3am my time to catch the east coast wake-up hour.

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Sunday Serenity #256

I've just watched several videos and read several patterns online on how to crochet a rose and I've settled on this one for my first try.  Except that I'm going to be working with size 10 crochet thread.

 The last several days have been all about crochet for me and I've been focusing on two things--to finish as many of the small projects I've had on the hook for weeks or months and to learn as many new tricks as I can. Also to finalize all Xmas gift plans.

 I seriously need to get batteries in my camera so I can post pics of the new things I've got going.

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Public Libraries Turn Up The Volume (Literally)

Oh shush kitteh.  You b stuk in tyme warp.

click for article -->>  Public Libraries Turn Up The Volume (Literally):  'via Blog this'

There seems to be a new trend in some library systems.  Especially the bigger metropolis area ones.  And that is to have less 'hush' and more media mashup. Among the changes from the library ambiance I remember from the 60s is story hours for small children that include singing and dancing, media rooms for teens that have video games to play, movies to watch, and video equipment for them to make and edit films.  Some libraries even have coffee bars and allow food and drink and conversation a la cafes.

In other words the library is morphing from that silent sanctuary for study and self-absorbed reading into something more akin to community centers.

Apparently there is controversy about it.  Isn't there always when new ways challenge old ways?  

I for one am all for anything that maximizes the use of the libraries.  Here in the Rogue Valley OR several years ago we had a six month closure of our 15 branch library system for lack of funds and when it reopened the hours for most branches were cut back by half or more.  My branch is open only three days per week for a total of 24 hours.  Even the large Medford branch was cut back to 24 hours, tho they spread it over 4 days.  And when the libraries reopened it was without most of our beloved and experienced librarians.  The job of running them was given over to an out of state company.  And at Medford the few times I've been back since the closure in 2006 I saw more security guards than I did librarians and the whole atmosphere of the place was more like a prison than any library I'd ever been in before. 

Maybe if the library system had been catering to a wider audience, if more people had depended on the system for services they couldn't get elsewhere--like a place to congregate and feel welcome and at ease, a safe place where their kids would want to hang out--just maybe there would have been enough votes to keep the funding.

Libraries all over are in jeopardy of loosing funds during these severe economic times and it is just now when things are so bad in the economy that we need them the most tho it is hard to imagine needing them any less when times are good.  It is just that they are depended upon by the job seekers for access to job listings and use of computers and internet, for would be entrepreneurs for aid in finding all the info they need to start a business, for classes on how to maximize job hunting efforts, write successful resumes, and conduct oneself on interviews.

What do you depend on your library for?  How would it impact your life to be without it?

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33 Years Ago

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The Day After Dithers

It's the post NaNo doldrums.  I have sooooo much on my agenda in the next three weeks.  6 to 8 weeks really.  But I can't think past Xmas yet tho I will need to soon as I'm leaving for Longiew WA on New Year's Weekend for a week or two visit.

But first there are the Xmas fiber art gifts to be concerned with. Also my Mom's 80th Bday on January 3rd.  And the 3 Virtual Author blog tours I'm participating in in the next two weeks with accompanying giveaways. The first on the 6th. And a fourth review copy review that should go up before New Years.

Today tho I gave myself a little bit of veg time.  I watched the first half of season 3 of The United States of Tara over my wake up coffee.  6 episodes.

Then I pulled out my bags and boxes of thread projects in progress to rummage through them and get my bearings.  At one point I had my lap and legs covered and Ed's side of the bed on my right and the area next to the bed on my left.  I bet that was an interesting sight.  Head and shoulders breasting a rainbow surf of fiber.

After a bit of fiddling with this and that I settled for a time on the mini-diaper bag I'm making for my new 3rd cousin (grand-daughter to my cousin) which doesn't need to be finished before I leave for Longview but its concept needed to be proved to insure I don't waste more time putting in stitches that will have to come out again. Like the hairpin lace fiasco the week before Thanksgiving this diaper bag project also had to be unwoven when I discovered the circle had three to five twists in it.  I not sure how that happened but my best guess is that I twisted the chain and the evidence took all of two rows to manifest itself.

The second time I didn't work the first row directly into the chain but worked a row of single crochet before slip stitching the ends together.  It was much easier to keep that strip flat and to tell top from bottom.  This project is using a new stitch.  The Catherine Wheel.  I'm working it in Aunt Lydia's Bamboo size 10 in White and Coral and possible some accents of green and brown.  I'm thinking the brown mostly for the bottom to avoid using white where it will get the most contact with grungy surfaces but to justify that there should be an accent or two of brown elsewhere.  

I wish I had batteries in the camera so I could have shown a pic of the twisted version and now of this one which is looking good as I approach the end of row three (counting the row of SC) and can see no twist in the nascent tube--an unintentional Mobius Strip--as before.  I'm anxious to see the bag grow--I think I made the circle bigger this time around--but I decided I needed to set it aside and start working on an Xmas project.  But every one I thought of was missing something--something not yet bought in a couple of cases but mostly it was thread colors that were still on the hook with other projects.

For example my Kelly green was involved in the bright zig zag bookmark pictured above that I began last June!!!  The same week I began the pink, purple and peacock zig zag and the primary color block and the black and white zig zag.  None of which are completed yet.  To get the Kelly green freed up tho I had to free up the red, yellow and blue that was in use for the primary color squares bookmark.

Both of those bookmarks were in the exact state seen in the picture above tho that picture was taken last summer in August.  The PPP zig zag has progressed since then and is nearly long enough to suit me but it wasn't in play today.  I set about finishing the primary square first and making those last three squares took less than an hour!  And just as Ed got home from work about 11pm I was starting the last stripe of Kelly green in the zig zag.  The green stripe at the top in the picture is the last stripe before the middle red stripe after which I began a mirror image of the first half.

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I'm All Worded Out

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NaNo Writing Buddies

Less than 24 hours to feed my words into the verifier.

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It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

This week, after the NaNo finish, I will be busy finishing up the reading of and prepping reviews for the three virtual book tours. that I will be participating in in December  And in each one I'm honored to be offering a giveaway of an ebook copy of the book. 


The drawings are open internationally.  The dates of the tour for each are listed below above each book's  cover.  The links in the image captions take you to the book's amazon.com page and the author's web page.

Mark your calenders and join the tours.

 December 6

Delayed Flight
by John J. Smith
They were childhood sweethearts.  Then a father's command command separated them.  20 years later they meet in an airport awaiting their delayed flights.

http://www.writersalcove.com/

 December8

Laughing Through Life
by Connie C. Wilson
Personal essays ala Erma Bombeck.

http://www.conniecwilson.com/

December 14

Youth and Other Fiction
by Jonathan M. Cook
The first half is a lead up to a terrible school shooting  in the POV of the  shooter.  The n the story jumps ahead some years as the shooter's best friend returns as a teacher.

http://jonathanmcook.com/

http://www.virtualauthorbooktours.com/

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Sunday Serenity #255

The First Stitch by Francis Day

I got a brief visit from my mom and sister today.  They were traveling through Phoenix on their way back to Longview from Gerber CA where my Mom grew up and where they spent Thanksgiving.  I wish my camera had batteries and I could have gotten a pic of the three of us for this post.  Instead I went looking on art.com for images to reflect family, mothers, sisters etc.  Found a bunch and tried to pick just one but I couldn't choose among these three.

The sewing theme was major during our visit as I shared with them several of the new crochet projects I've started since I was there last summer.

I will be going up New Year's weekend to celebrate Mom's 80th birthday on January 3 with my family.

Sister by Karen Tribett

Young Mother Sewing by Mary Cassatt

I just adore Mary Cassatt's art!!.  I used to have a poster of one of her Mother and infant portraits.

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Starting To Look Doable

Four more days of NaNo and I'm at 42288 which leaves me 7700 or so to go or 1900--well closer to 2000 word days.  Doable but I'm so ready for this to be over.

As for quality? UGH. I had to change my font to white on a white background so I couldn't look and be tempted to constantly backspace and second guess.

Pardon me if my posts are little more than LOLcats or YouTube over the next several days.  Unless i get batteries for the camera so I can post pics of the crochet.    My point is more pics less words here so more words there.

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Calibre--ebook Library Manager. Free!

Every since I got the Kindle for PC I've been going crazy downloading free ebooks.  If I'd limited myself to Kindle format only I might have been OK with the managing system on the Kindle ap but I started collecting from other sites than Amazon and in other formats.  The formats included TXT, HTML  PDF and  EPUB but I had a problem with EPUB in that my computer had no application able to open the files and there were books I could find only in EPUB format and besides downloading an EPUB was a matter of seconds to have the book on my computer and ready to read whereas there was issues with all of the other formats.  

TXT format was OK as I could read in any text ap.  My preference being Whiz of course.  I would always copy/paste the text out of Notepad into a WhizFolder document which I could turn into a hyperlinked file with a table of contents and have plenty of space to make my own notes.  But that was time consuming and I had to hunt down the metadata myself if I wanted it--bookcovers, author, title, publisher, tags, etc.

HTML limited me to reading online unless I wanted to copy/paste the text into Whiz.  But HTML books were split up into chapters and thus there could be anywhere from 5 to 50 separate open-copy-paste-fix format issues tasks to get the whole book.  I did this for the complete plays of Shakespeare and for Proust's Remembrance of Things Past and both took me hours.  It was worth it as I enjoy reading and annotating ebooks in Whiz but the tedious chore that was had me hesitant to do it very often.  

PDF is nice in many ways but it won't allow me to word wrap to a narrow column which is essential for me for faster reading as due to my lack of peripheral vision my eyes tend to get lost traversing back to the beginning of the next line when those lines are longer than five words.

One of the things I discovered the week I started reading in the Kindle for PC was the by enlarging the font and narrowing the line I could more than double my current reading speed with tree books of regular font for which my speed has fallen to 20 pages an hour at my peak before eyestrain drops it even further.  On the very first day with the Kindle for PC I found myself reading forvan hour without noticing any eyestrain and when I checked how far I read I found it to be 25% of a 255 page book.  Which works out to 63 pages.  

It has been over 15 years since I averaged above 60 pages an hour.  Ten years ago I was at 50.  20 years ago at 60 to 70.  In highschool and through my early to mid 20s I pushed 100 pages an hour for most fiction.  It has been very frustrating to loose the speed and the ability to read for long hours without eyestrain.  Reading on the computer screen has given that back to me.  That is probably why I found myself spending more and more time on the computer and reading news and blogs online.

So when I encountered a EPUB I couldn't get in other formats I decided it was time to figure out what I needed on my computer in order to read EPUB documents.  A quick Google search brought me to Calibre.

Not only could it open EPUB documents in its viewer it could convert them to the Kindle format, PDF, HTML, and many others.  And if that wasn't enough it can manage a large ebook library, sync with reader of your choice, and download news from around the world.

All of that and it is FREE!

Here's a few of my free ebook sources:

Adelaide

Gutenberg

Open Library

Free-ebooks.net

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Happy Thanksgiving

Me, senior year high school, November. This was a senior Home Ec project in which I prepared a whole Thanksgiving dinner for a crowd. My teacher came to evaluate. We combined the event with a housewarming as we had just moved here in September and with a church potluck as the construction at the church precluded it being held there. The potluck part was desserts and salads and beverages. It looks so serene but there was a frantic fuss below my feet as a busted pipe was flooding the basement where several long tables had been set up for the expected crowd.

Mom made the outfit I'm wearing for an 11th grade project in Colonial American History in which my cousin's 2 yr old Sarah dressed in a nearly identical outfit joined me in demonstrating children's interactive nursery rhymes from the era.  There was also a big white sunbonnet to go with both or our outfits.

And yes, for those of you who have seen this over there, I totally cribbed this from what I wrote in my Facebook album.  Was just too beat to try to say it all again fresh.  We just got home from our family Thanksgiving get together and since festivities began at 2pm I had to get up at 11:30 after only three hours of sleep. (Ed's swingshift messes with my sleep schedule) I woke with a headache, had to jump right into getting ready to go without my zone over coffee while waiting for my Focus taabs to kick in hour.  Then a major social occasion in a crowded poorly lit (for my RP eyes) room.  My nerves are as frayed as the first several feet of that thread I've been practicing hairpin lace work with.

Arrgh that sounded whiny.  And ungrateful.  In spite of everything I listed above I enjoyed myself, enjoyed the visits with my niece, nephew (the one who lived with us his last two years of high school in the late 90s) and grand nephew (9 years old and another reader in the family).  The food was excellent and I am grateful to all of the cooks and grocery shoppers and kitchen cleaners.  None of which I contributed to--the shopping and clean up because of my eyesight (lack thereof) and the food mostly because I don't have my own kitchen and my MIL's kitchen is not organized or lit to accommodate my eyes.  Ed shopped for and made his savory bread pudding which has been a hit at every family thing for five or six years now so we didn't just mooch off the rest of the family.

Well I need to either get busy with something (NaNo novel, review book reading, Xmas crocheting) or better yet just crash and get a good sleep before starting fresh in the morning.  Sleep is the best cure for the whiny whether it manifests in a 50 week or 50 year old.

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United States of Tara

Well I just discovered another TV series to binge on.  I've had Season 1 of The United States of Tara in my Netflix DVD queue for a year and finally sent for them.

I watched all eight 20+ minute episodes on disc 1 today.  I was blown away.  It was difficult not to put in disc 2 but I had to be firm with myself as I discovered I can't crochet while watching this.  I can't take my eyes off the screen for two reasons--there is too much info in facial expression and body language and they talk too fast for me to catch everything so I have to have the captions on.

I did  a little research before starting this post and discovered the series has already had its finale. Apparently this Showtime original Emmy winning hit series lasted only three seasons.

I put it in my Netflix queue because I've liked John Corbin ever since he played the DJ in Northern Exposure.  He plays the husband of Tara who has multiple personalities.  They are parents of two teens and live a fairly sterotypical suburban middle class lifestyle--except for Tara's inner menagerie that is.  And though I am still entralled by John Corbin, it is Toni Collete as Tara who keeps my eyes glued to the TV.  The talent she displays in portraying multiple fully embodied characters is astounding.  But she could not WOW us with the acting if the writing wasn't astonishing.

When I saw Stephen Spielberg's name in the title credits on the second or third episode I was at first surprised as this isn't the kind of thing I'd associated with him but surprise morphed instantly into 'Ah, no wonder it's so good.'  I do believe if i'd known of his involvement it wouldn't have taken me a year to send for the discs.

Two of Tara's alers--the teenage T and the dude Buck--have potty mouths.  As does Tara's own teenaged daughter.  It is difficult for me to listen when the languages get nasty. I still have a bit of tthe sensibility of the fundamentalist I once was--my inner Alice.  Alice is a Tara alter who is an uptight, prissy 50's style housewife (shades of Brie from Desperate Housewives) and in one of the mother/daughter encounters between Alice and Tara's daughter Alice literally washed the girl's mouth out with soap, slapping a palm full of restroom dispensor liquid soap into her mouth.  I was both horrified and applauding.

With two more discs at home and a forth one on the way I'm going to be seeing a lot of Tara over the next several days.  But I will also be rationing it to those times I can't crochet like over my wake-up coffee while I wait for my eyes and brain to focus and my motor skills to return and after a few hours of crochet or typing when my eyes and motor skills have gone on strike.

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A Measure of Blues

So, that pretty cruise blue bamboo hairpin lace project pictured in yesterday's post?  All gone baby.

I got it off the loom and worked one whole side of the loops crocheting together bunches of four and got a quarter of the way up the second side when I realized two things:  the apparent mess was not apparent, it was not going to smooth out and tighten up and look like this once both sides were finished; and I had half a layer of thread on the tube--not enough to finish the side.

I think what happened was that I missestimated the width between the poles on the loom and set them half an inch too wide which made the loops too big to be filled by the called for eight stitches so the whole thing looked loose and sloppy.

I considered taking out the double crochet and going back over the loops with fewer and smaller stitches purposely making a lacier look but two things bothered me about that: I didn't have a pattern for a different stitch and I'm too new at this to improvise; and I was daunted by the thought of sorting out those loops again once I'd removed the stitches.  

After discussing it with Ed I was inclined to agree with his observation that I could probably remake the loops faster than I could sort them out.  Picture 3/4 inch loops sticking out of every stitch on both sides of a strip of single crochet and that's about what you have when you remove the strips from the loom.  It resembles a pole dancer's boa.

So when I returned to my workstation (urm bed) I took one more brief look at the mess and then picked up the nearly empty cardboard tube and started winding the thread off the strip back onto the tube while watching a video taking care not to watch what I was doing so I wouldn't feel too sad.

Hours and hours and hours of work down the tubes  Or rather, back on the tube while my eyes were glued to the boob tube.  Chalk it up to learning I guess.

Speaking of learning: I'm ready to admit that the learning curve for hairpin lace is too steep for me to expect to get proficient enough quick enough to do any of the larger sized projects I had in mind for Xmas and Bday gifts in the next couple of months.  If only I could have bought the loom and started practicing when I first started drooling over the images of hairpin lace on the crochet sites and blogs.  Want to see what I saw?  Try this: Google images: hairpin lace

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