catinmylap | Recent Entries

For those who aren't familiar with them, The StoryGraph and Goodreads are what are called by Wikipedia, social book cataloging platforms. They are websites where readers can track the books they read, and interact to a greater or lesser degree with other readers. Both allow for posting public reviews, or for simply privately tracking what you read, for your personal benefit. They are not the only two sites that do this, but they are the only two I've used.

I decided at the start of 2026 to open a free account over at The StoryGraph (TSG), and try it out for a while as a possible replacement for Goodreads (GR). I'll share in this post what I've found so far, as far as pros and cons, and compare the two a little bit. Mind you, I've only been at TSG for a few months, while I was at GR for some 14 years, 12 of those more active years. So, one is very familiar, and the other is all new and I'm still learning my way around it. All of this is as yet inconclusive and not comprehensive. I'm just sharing what I've found so far. I intend to keep both accounts open for at least a year. Next January, I'll decide whether to continue with one or both. This might end up being a multi-part series of posts, because once I've posted this I may very well come up with more pros and cons to share later. And I'm still learning about the newer site, so, yeah, learning curve.

Please note, I realize these things are not important in the same ways to others as they are to me. These are just my thoughts, my pros and cons. Yours may be entirely different. But if you haven't experienced one or the other of these sites, here are some (just some) of their differences. Maybe this will provide helpful information or save you some time.
( Read more... )

The StoryGraph pros and cons

TSG Con: Not very interactive

The StoryGraph does have features allowing for buddy and group reads, but I've never been into either, really. I tried reading groups at GR for a while and found that I'm an independent as well as moody reader, and that made it hard to commit to a group read. This is the problem I have with library books with a due date, too. I can think, oh I'd like to read that, but once the book is there, available to read, especially if it was on hold for a while, I might be in the middle of something else, or in the mood for a different flavor of reading. So buddy and groups reads are not for me, most of the time.

I haven't yet seen a way to simply comment on someone's review and have a tiny conversation about the book, at TSG. There's a heart button, but it's hard to even find people there I might want to add as friends. I suppose this is nice for people who join along with a group of real-world friends, or who have built up a friends list there by joining groups. But it seems a lot easier to build a group of like-minded readers as friends on GR. TSG is not really social media, at least not for me so far. GR is, although it doesn't have to be, because you can keep your account private if you wish.

TSG Con: Needing to add books to the system

I don't typically read a lot of bestsellers, or popular fiction. In fact, I read a lot of more obscure books, including lots of self-published books. Because self-publishers tend to gravitate towards Amazon (hereafter shown as Am**on), and Am**on owns GR, all those self-published books are usually already listed at GR. I'm finding that I frequently have to add a book I just read into the system, at TSG, in order to review it or add my reading data for it. That's an extra step that I'm inclined to put off, rather than do a quick little update as soon as I finish. I have started checking there as soon as I start reading a book, to see if it's listed and then add it if needed, or at least be aware in advance that I'll have to do that.

TSG Pro: Updates and tracking

You can track your progress through a book very easily at TSG, and do so either by pages or percent. Percent usually makes more sense to me, reading ebooks. I like this feature a lot. It's also easy to track rereads there, and I like the way that feature works.

TSG Pro: Reading journal

The StoryGraph has a completely private reading journal you can use, separate from the rating and review function, to take notes as you read, and it's not limited, as far as I can tell, by word count as the private notes are at GR. I've sometimes wanted to leave myself more elaborate notes about a book, at GR, but had to abbreviate or be cryptic about it, and that's a con there, for sure. If you don't care about interacting with other readers, and you do want a private online reading journal and place to track your reading, TSG seems the perfect place to do that.

TSG Pro nor Con: Tags, not shelves

It's hard to say this is a pro or con, because it's just different. I got accustomed to the shelf system at GR, and I use it extensively in a personalized way. But at TSG one uses tags instead. Tags feel familiar to anyone who has blogged or used social media, and I like that some tags at TSG are auto-generated, so you don't even have to add any if you don't want to, but will still be able to use them to find your books. And because of the reading journal feature, maybe I don't need so many custom shelves anyway. They were a way for me to remember things about a book, primarily in case I wanted to reread, review, or recommend it. But I kind of miss the visual display of shelves on GR that shows how many books I have in each shelf. This is probably more a problem of my unfamiliarity and getting used to something new more than a pro or con. Both work, and nothing is missing at either site, in this respect. It's just different.

Goodreads pros and cons

GR Con: Am**on

GR is owned by Am**on. Okay, yeah, a lot of us hate Am**on, for more reasons than I'll go into here. Not only politically, but commercially, and in how they treat workers, they seem sometimes like the Devil incorporated. That's been true to some extent since Am**on first existed and presented a threat to independent bookstores. I used to belong to an email list-serve called DorothyL, which was a forum for people who either loved reading mysteries or wrote mysteries, or both. It seemed to be PC there to hate Am**on. But then Am**on started helping people self-publish, so that changed a little. Very little. In recent years, there seem to be many more reasons to hate it. I have a problem more recently with their ownership of ebooks I've purchased. I mean, huh? I'm still somewhat addicted to shopping there, because low income here and low prices and convenience there. But I want to get away from it at least a little, as much as I reasonably can. Monster corporations are not our friend. Unless you have little money and need low prices, and then, just like with Walmart, it's complicated. But this is the main reason I'm looking at other e-readers, and decided to try TSG.

GR Con: Site updates

What site updates? GR hasn't updated their software much since Am**on has owned it. It's still its clunky, slow old self. TSG is new and shiny. And it seems to actually get updated.

GR Pro: Social interaction

One thing I have liked about GR for years now, is that I can gear my following and friend adding there to what I read. I've learned a few tricks there to figure out how to find people, through reviews by others of books I read, and through the member compare feature, so I find reading friends I have something in common with, and get book recommendations that suit me (and they get the same from me), and we sometimes discuss particular books in the review comments. I'm not that social a person, being rather introverted, but this I like. It's just enough socialization around books, while remaining independent in my reading, to suit me. I haven't found ways to do that at TSG yet. I don't know if it's possible. It seems much more geared toward privacy and personal tracking of one's own reading, unless you want to do structured buddy or group reads.

There is a downside to this capability at GR, in that if you let it this puts you in a kind of reading silo, where you only see new books in one or two genres, reviewed by friends. I watch for that, and try to add some other flavors of readers into my friends mix, and that works for me. I also, of course, have real-world friends there, and they aren't moving over to TSG, so that's a drawback as well. (I've had the same problem in the past, trying to escape Facebook, when all my friends and family seem to want to stay there.)

GR Pro: Review visibility

Reader reviews are important to me, and this is a critical part of that social media aspect of GR. I see all my friends' reviews. I could see every new review on GR if I want, in my feed, every day. I mostly just choose to see my friends' reviews, but it's up front and visible in my feed, the first thing I see, and I can read what they thought of the books they read. Most of my friends there, and I, review nearly every book we read. A few years ago, I stopped reviewing books I give 3 or less stars, mainly because I got tired of writing negative reviews. But if I like it a lot, I review it. I'm not seeing reviews on TSG. I have to go looking for them, and I find there aren't that many. Maybe because it's a relatively new site? I don't know, but I miss that. I also find that reviewers on GR are a little tougher, more particular, than reviews on Am**on, so I feel as if I get more honest reviews at GR. I haven't done that comparison with TSG reviews, because I've seen very few.

Reviews help me decide what to read, and the more honest the better. It's important to me to know the drawbacks to a book, even if I don't mind what others consider negative. It helps me not waste time (or money) reading books I won't like. I've even seen warnings on GR about plagiarism, so it seems important. Even if I don't wind up agreeing with a review, every review helps.

I suspect that the reviews on GR help Am**on sell books, so that's why they're an upfront feature. At TSG I feel as if they're catering more to private enjoyment of books, and there's nothing wrong with that. It just might not turn out to be everything I'm looking for. If it isn't, I might stay there anyway for the features I like. As I said above, I haven't decided yet. I'll give it at least a year to decide.

GR Pro: Ease of use with a Kindle (hereafter Kin*le)

GR's ease of use with a Kin*le is what got me to be more active at GR in the first place. I was a member there for a couple of years before I got my Kin*le, and even then it took me a while to figure this out, but it's incredibly easy to send a book rating and add the book to your shelves, from your Kin*le, as you finish reading a book. It's a built-in feature of the e-reader and Kin*le ebooks, that interaction with Goodreads. I finish reading, and up pops a window asking me to rate the book. I do later have to go to the website to add more detail to the book listing, but that provides the impetus, the starting point, to adding the books I read to GR.

I guess you could say it's one more reason to hate Am**on for getting people hooked on it. But it has been a convenience.

Now that I'm accustomed to habitually using GR and TSG, this doesn't seem as necessary. Now I automatically, out of habit, think about tracking and reviewing what I read. But it helped me build that habit. Until I started doing that, my updates of Goodreads were sporadic at best, and I had no record of my reading, and maybe not even quite as much incentive to read more. I don't know, because I have no record of how much I read before that. But I read a lot now, and it's all tracked by me. For anyone who is new to using an online book tracking program, this could be a definite pro for GR and not for any other site. If they read using a Kin*le.

However, I don't think this is a reason, in and of itself, to stay only with GR, or with Kin*le or with Am**on. Habits can be established in other ways. You could add a note at the end of a book at the time you start reading, to remind you to update TSG or whatever other program you use, when you finish. After some time of doing this consistently, you will remember. It's just a habit, not proprietary to Am**on.

In closing, I know I'll think of more pros and cons, so this may be updated later, or I may add another post about it.

My apologies for the word replacements if they seem cryptic or confusing. It's just that I've spent a lot of money on you-know-who's products through the years, and I refuse to provide free advertising for them now. Not that my little blog post matters, but....

On The StoryGraph I am @wildviolets_bk
On Goodreads I am Barbara K.

Also posted at my blog, Wild Violets, https://wildviolets2.wordpress.com/2026/05/08/trying-out-the-storygraph-vs-goodreads/

I still own a lot of paper books, but since first getting a Kindle back in 2014, I buy very few paper books. I find ebook reading to be more convenient, more portable, easier on my arthritis, and better for reading in bed at night, which is when I do the bulk of my reading. I do buy paper books when it comes to crafts, art, lots of color illustrations or larger images that I need to see clearly, and ... for a certain kind of relaxation that comes from just being by myself with a book. There's a kind of peace in a paper book that doesn't rush me or ... I'm really not sure how to describe what I'm trying to pin down, but it applies mostly to poetry and a few other types of reading. Maybe I haven't thought it through enough to put it in words. But there's also the way that I read nonfiction, in which I like to take notes. I've found in the past that using a pencil to lightly take notes in margins is actually helpful to me, and if I'm careful about doing it judiciously can even enhance my rereading of those same books.

In any case, the past year's realization that I don't even own the ebooks I "buy" has made me not only want to get a different e-reader, but also want to own paper copies of more of those books that are special to me. I don't mind borrowing ebooks for my daily fiction fix. I've done that for years, borrowed ebooks from the library or from Kindle Unlimited (which I actually prefer over the library because there's no due date, and I'm a moody reader), and I'll likely continue to do that, because as a retired person, my budget is limited. Even nonfiction is often borrowed at first. If I decide it's a book I'll need or want to refer to or reread, or that I want to take notes in, then yes, I may buy a paper copy. But I always wait, now, because some of those books don't age well in my memory. I find that I can do without them after all, or I realize they don't make as much helpful sense as I thought at first. Sometimes it's almost like the author sold me a bill of goods, and I have reader's remorse. I can think of lots of self-help or self-improvement books that's true for. Some concepts or advice can make a lot more sense on the page than they do in the living of them.

But paper books. There is something about that old favorite in paper form. I can still remember the smell of a new book we got in third or fourth grade, when we studied Japan. I collect paper copies of Mary Oliver's poems, so I can hold them lightly in my hands and and flip gently through the pages as I read. I have some antique books of literature and poetry that I'll never let go of, no matter what their value. Selling them would be like selling my mother's wedding ring. I couldn't do it. I rarely cook out of a cookbook any more, but I have some older cookbooks I will likely always keep.

Just yesterday I put together a small stack, for my bedside, of the kinds of books that make for brief daily reading. You know, the kind with writing prompts or thoughts for the day. Lots of white space and lots of room to think. In choosing them I rejected some themes and included others. I'm in the mood for changing my life in small, incremental ways, maybe my routine, or what I'm thinking about when idle. I suited the selections to where I am now, and I highly recommend these kinds of paper books to have on hand for unsettled times. Books that provide a moment of peace or a question that you can carry into the day, or into sleep.

Pleasant reading, friends.

This was also posted at my Wordpress blog, Wild Violets: https://wildviolets2.wordpress.com/2026/05/07/paper-books/

Just a quick post here, for anyone who followed my other blogs.

I no longer own the website/domain gaiastream.com, or the blogs I hosted there. I had to give them up. They're gone. My only blogs now are this one, CatInMyLap, and one called Wild Violets over at wordpress.com.

The link to my blog there is Wild Violets, but there are very few posts there as yet.

I turn 68 in a couple of days, and it has gotten me to thinking about aging and how we experience it.

The primary effect I've noticed, for a long time, about getting older, is that one's perception of time seems to speed up. Things take me longer to do, and the time passes so very quickly. But someone once explained part of that to me as a matter of proportions. For instance, when you're 10 years old, a year is a whole tenth of your life so far. At 60 years, one year is only a sixtieth of your life so far. It's a much smaller chunk of time in proportion to what you've already experienced.

In my own experience, other than that sort of time warp that happens, age has little effect on my state of mind. I still always have plans and ideas I want to carry through on. Possibly even more, now that I have more time to think about them. While I tend to think longer about things, that's because I've learned from experience that reacting too quickly is what can get me into trouble. It's not the mind but the body that starts to get in the way of doing everything the same as I used to. And yet, there are things that can affect the mind in ways I hadn't considered before, and they're maybe not so much about aging, but about the state of the world, and indirectly a result of aging, of retiring, of medical problems that seem to sprout like weeds as we get older. Side effects of aging, not the process itself.

For about four weeks now I've had some lower back issues, but instead of getting better on its own as it usually does, it has gotten worse. Now it's affecting one leg, all the way to my knee, and that knee refuses to do the things it normally is happy to do. It's beginning to get me down.

I had a court date last Friday (I'm being sued over some debt - I tried to do debt settlement and while two credit card companies agreed to settle, one bank decided to sue). So I had to walk a little ways in the court parking lot and then through the courthouse, both coming and going, and on the way out, my knee decided to give out on me, and I nearly fell, and then barely made it limping back out to the car. It's been bothering me ever since, and with the debt we're dealing with already - some of it medical - I'm trying to just take care of this on my own.

I think the back problem not getting better right away has more to do with anxiety over the lawsuit than about age, because when I'm anxious I tend to tense up, and I've been in an almost constant state of anxiety since I started this debt settlement journey about 1-1/2 years ago, and that anxiety has ramped up quite a lot since the lawsuit began in late April. But even before that, I had noticed that my anxiety was having an effect. I had started making a pair of hand-knit socks that wound up being so tightly knit they wouldn't fit, and I didn't even notice while I was knitting them that I was knitting so tightly. I'm an experienced knitter, and these were not my first socks, so it wasn't that I didn't know how. It was stress.

So this back and knee problem has given me some idle time to think about age, and how it works.

The body may slow down, and yes if there's cognitive decline the mind as well, though thankfully that's something I'm not dealing with, at least not yet. But while the body starts to go, the mind still feels young. Experience changes that a little, but honestly most of the time I still think as though I'm a young woman. When I dream at night, my dreaming self is maybe in my twenties or thirties. It's hard to say, but there's definitely no question of aging. There might be older people in my dreams, and I'll think of them as old, but not myself.

My mom used to say, in my parents' later years, that my dad was a young man in an old man's body. He would still try to do things around the house that he had done when he was younger, and didn't seem to accept that he couldn't. I recall once calling them, when if I recall correctly they were both in their mid-seventies, and her telling me my dad was up on the roof. I sort of panicked and asked what was Dad doing on the roof!? He was trying to do some minor repair there and had no patience with waiting for or attempting to get someone younger to do it.

That's how it feels. You still have all these plans and ambitions, and even needs, and it's hard to tell yourself you can't. I'm not even sure it's a good idea to tell ourselves we can't. But slowing down is always, I think, even when we're young, something to consider doing. Thinking things through, planning out how one will accomplish them, and not just reacting to everything. That's always good advice. So maybe the advice for aging is the same as that for growing up. Don't be in such a hurry.

I'm determined to not chalk my current limitations up to age so much as to stress, and thinking about ways to deal with that. There was a time, years ago, when I used to meditate every day, and I'm open to trying that for a while to help with this current anxiety. I'm still determinedly, inside, that woman in her twenties or thirties, with plans.

This is very interesting.

Watch on YouTube

But one thing to remember is that Xylitol (aka birch sugar) is toxic to cats and dogs, so if you decide to try her regimen, keep the Xylitol completely out of reach of pets.

Yesterday was World Tarot Day, which I posted about on my blog, Spirit Blooms.

For those who've ever wondered about the effects on the environment of books in various formats, you might be interested in Books and Carbon Footprints on Mystery of a Shrinking Violet.

I hope everyone is having a great 2023 so far, and a prosperous Year of the Rabbit. I know the news is bad to depressing, and it's hard to pay very much attention to that and keep one's spirits up. I find I have to spend time away from it, remind myself what I'm grateful for, and keep moving forward with projects and plans, and pet care.

My pets are my personal playmates, friends, teachers, healing influence, and always my babies. My two indoor cats, Frodo and Persia, will be 12 years old this spring. I can't believe it's that long since we bottle-raised all those kittens we rescued, of which they were the two we kept. I don't know what my life would be like without them.

I'm working on getting my tax information ready to go, at the moment, and I'm contemplating spring.

I posted a few times on my other blogs since my last post here, so here's a little catch-up:

Swatches Yarns and Frogs (my knitting blog):

How knitting plans change
in which I switched gears from sweater planning, knitting and maybe frogging, to quickly make some fingerless mitts for my spouse who badly wanted some.

Fingerless mitts
in which I shared the finished mitts.

Mystery of a Shrinking Violet (my books and writing blog):

My Year 2022 in books
in which I listed my favorite reads of the year

Valentines Day Jane Austen variations
one of which is a repeat and one a new-to-me book, both featuring valentines

The Journal Project (my journaling blog):

The variety of journals I keep
in which I share most of the journal formats I currently use, and why so many

I'm also now at Instagram, as mysteryofashrinkingviolet .

I hope you'll visit me at my blogs or on IG, or just here at DreamWidth if you wish. Comments always welcome.

Current Mood: content

I've been blogging over on Mystery of a Shrinking Violet (MSV).

My December 15 post, Revisiting Two Favorite Austenesque Stories covers my reread of two favorite novels, one that includes a spin on a traditional Christmas carol, and the other one with Mr. Darcy sending valentines.

How did Jane Austen celebrate Christmas? I asked that question and followed a meandering path into the past on December 25th.

On December 27th, I followed up with a previously unknown-to-me Tolkien story, Father Christmas and the Goblins, as well as a knitting video from Fruity Knitting that includes a fascinating visit to a Medieval-themed Christmas Market in Germany.

There are a couple of newer posts as well on my knitting blog, Swatches Yarns and Frogs. They're mainly links to a couple of knitting videos on YouTube, one covering the Clasped Weft Join for joining non-felting yarns, and the other sharing a video on some knitting history.

I hope to share a lot more in the new year. Right now I'm tired. I did really well increasing my sleep hours earlier this month, but suddenly this last week of December I can't seem to get more than 5-1/2 hours a night. It's having an unfortunate cumulative effect on my energy level and brain power. We had some rain last night, and usually rainy weather helps me sleep, but nope. Maybe tonight. I still need to set up my bullet journal for 2023, which isn't really a big deal, as I keep that really simple, but it takes a little thought and time to get it ready.

I wish you a wonderful last few days of 2022, and Happy New Year!

Really interesting video here, about the consumerism around Christmas celebrations in the US today.

Watch on YouTube

Years ago my spouse and I decided not to do the gift thing anymore. One reason was we couldn't afford it, especially gift exchanges with extended family, so first we let them know we weren't doing gifts and didn't want any.

Another reason we stopped even gifting each other was that too often what one person wants and what another person thinks they mean or chooses, or buys instead is all off-kilter. And that's not a very thrifty or intelligent way to spend money. We don't read each others' minds, and gifting always seemed like an awkward process of stress, trying to get it right, wondering if we got it right, and overall angst. Not to mention the experience of shopping during the holiday season! Who needs that? There have been some years when we had an allowance for gifts for ourselves, and that worked okay, choosing what we wanted for ourselves that we could buy with that amount. But even that seemed forced, like we were trying to make more of the season than we felt.

My husband is agnostic, and I follow a spiritual path that isn't Christian (by the usual definition, at least), and sometimes we celebrate Yule, sometimes Christmas. We grew up celebrating Christmas, so it just seems like the thing to celebrate, sometimes with his sister, sometimes by ourselves. When my sister lived in the same county we tried to get together for lunch or dinner sometime in December.

But we stopped decorating some years ago, mainly because at that time we had a cat who was especially mischievous, and we didn't want to spend December yelling at her or keeping her out of one room or another. One of those years I had a tiny tree decorated with tiny teddy bears - I still have it tucked away in a closet, and have thought about getting it out this year, but haven't. I really don't miss it.

I might put a couple holiday towels up in the bathroom, do some house cleaning in case someone drops by, and we'll probably plan a slightly more special meal for one of those days, the Solstice or Christmas Eve or Christmas, to commemorate the season. But that's pretty much all I expect to do.

Don't get me wrong, we are not scrooges. We're just really limited financially, and energetically. We're getting older, he has health issues, and I'm spending most of my time scrambling to make a few extra dollars. We just don't have anything leftover, and we both insist on not feeling badly about that.

I love seeing decorations in people's photos. A couple of my social media friends had such beautiful trees that I turned their photos into wallpaper for my computer. I switch out pictures on social media for holiday themes, and we love getting cards - and we send some too most years. But all that spending and shopping? I'm really happy to have given it up long ago.

It always bothered me, especially, to hear in the news how important holiday shopping was to the retail and other industries. Why oh why should an economy rely so much on consumerism that isn't good for people's financial well-being, or for the environment, and stresses everyone out?

So I guess I am at war with consumerist Christmas, and I feel fine with that. It took years for me to feel fine with it, but as time goes by it feels more and more right. I love lights, I love some decor, and Christmassy stories, but I can do without the shopping, spending, gifting frenzy just fine!

I've been busy the past week, working on some projects that are likely to take a long while to bear fruit, and which sometimes make me wish I was triplets, that is, if all three of us could agree on what needed to be done and when. But I'm staying busy and having fun. Meanwhile, every now and then harsh reality breaks through, such as the night we went outside and found water flowing out of the street.

The main water pipes on our street are quite old, and the upper part of the street, north and uphill from us, had pipe repaired several times last spring, and then replaced completely during the summer. The water company told us then that we could expect our end of the street to have pipe replaced early in 2023. But the pipe didn't quite survive that long. When the pipe burst just north of us the other night, they shut off the water, and worked all night long, making a lot of noise that badly freaked out one of my cats. But that also meant some hard work for the repair team, and a boon for us, when the water was back on by morning. It's just a patch. They'll still be tearing up the street out in front of our house sometime in the next few months.

I've also been reading, knitting, and blogging. Some book reviews, and other blog posts from the past 2-1/2 weeks:

On Mystery of a Shrinking Violet - my books and writing blog:

Three Simple Lines: A Writer’s Pilgrimage into the Heart and Homeland of Haiku, by Natalie Goldberg

Grammar for a Full Life by Lawrence Weinstein

The Classic Tradition of Haiku: An Anthology by Faubion Bower

The Flame Ignites by Donna Fletcher Crow

The Last House in Lambton by Grace Gibson

On Swatches Yarns and Frogs - my knitting blog:

Thrift Shopping Again with Arne and Carlos

On The Journal Project - my blog about journals (including planners and note-taking):

Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte

A Brief Followup to Building a Second Brain

4 of 5 stars

fiction, humor, mystery-suspense, science-fiction, series

I think this almost qualifies as a cozy mystery, except that there are dead bodies, it's not always cozy, and it's also science fiction. The story takes place on a space station, SK2, which is basically an entire enclosed community, where people live and work long-term, if not their entire lives, and which has obvious socio-economic strata. Kudos to the author for concise world-building, and just enough detail in some strange circumstances that I could picture what was happening, without feeling buried in descriptions. The narrative moves along nicely, with something new always going on, and some twists in the plot that jolted me a little but did not stop the flow, and increased my involvement and enjoyment of the story.

Triana Moore is a "space janitor" - she's a worker in a section of the space station from which the cleaning bots are controlled, and consequently has camera views of many parts of the station. So it's not surprising that if a vacuum bot comes across a dead body, Triana or one of her coworkers is likely to see and report it. But some odd things happen after she reports a body, and the next day she can't even remember what happened. Eventually she teams up with a lone security officer named Ty O'Neill (for short - he has a long name), and they're off on a risky investigation that takes them to all parts of the station, and includes Triana getting to eat some higher quality foods that she doesn't ordinarily get a chance to indulge in on her meager pay. I really liked the bits about the food. Highly recommended.

I am so inspired by this YouTube channel, Edible Thoughts Makes. Most of her videos are longer, between 50 minutes and an hour, and they always feel like a visit to a friend who loves to knit.

This is just a short, 4-minute take on how she folds her hand-knit socks. I like this method, as with only one toe tucked into a leg, the leg doesn't get stretched out.

I finally am close to having enough hand-knit socks to dedicate an entire dresser drawer to them. A small one first. Later a larger drawer! There's nothing I find as cozy as hand-knit socks - yes, even here in Southern California.

Watch on YouTube

Welcome! This journal is mostly friends only. Feel free to add me.

My novel, Shadows Fall, written years ago, is available again, as a Kindle-only ebook at Amazon, to purchase, or to borrow from Kindle Unlimited:

Shadows Fall on Amazon

I don't really have a post to write today. But that whole Starbucks red cups ridiculousness inspires me to resurrect this post of mine from a couple of years ago. Warning, it's long. But it gets across what I think. I'm not really ready to think about the winter holidays yet, as for me autumn has barely arrived and I still don't know what we're doing for Thanksgiving.

Why and what I celebrate this time of year

I like to think I'm a minimalist, but my homes, and even my bedroom as a kid, have never shown any indiation of that. I guess I like to think it only because I detest housework so much, especially dusting, and a little minimalism would definitely cut down on the need for that silly, overrated, overly-perfectionist thing called housework. Especially the dusting part. Yuck! But let's face it, I'm a clutterbug, and I don't clean very often or very well, and I'm quite relieved that the cats like it that way, well at least most of them. Tara is a bit of a clean freak and she's always trying to tidy up after the rest of us, to no avail. But she keeps trying. She is even the first cat I've ever known who doesn't mind the vacuum cleaner. She also has the perfect coat for dust-mopping, although we don't currently have the right flooring for much of that. Poor thing, her talents are wasted here.

So what does any of that have to do with Russell Crowe you ask?

Well it all started with an article linked on Facebook, about knitting being good for you, and that article's mention of Russell Crowe knitting, and a link to another article about that, and me wanting to see a photo of him doing so (I mean, come one, don't at least half of you want to see that?), and a search that almost failed because WTF is wrong with Google today? But I came across a non-knitting blog that had the photo I was looking for, and off in the margin the blogger had linked to a tour of her house that had been posted on a design site. I looked at the photos tagging her home as maximalist, and oh gosh I thought I'd come home - not to my real home, alas, but to a home I could love. Her final photo of a pile of glitter with this written in it was the clincher:

"My favorite thing about my home is it's okay to make a mess."

Searches online can be so weird, leaving the oddest trails, something that fascinates me no end. I discovered this as soon as the world wide web was born, at a time when I was writing fiction, and my research time suddenly went through this weird sci-fi-ish time dilation phenomenon, and I knew I was in trouble because the internet would suck me in and I'd forget where I lived if I wasn't careful.

P. S. Apparently Russell Crowe does not knit, the photo was staged. Well poop! It's a nice photo anyway and a nice plug for knitting.

*Public post*

We are suddenly getting wet here, really wet. A little rain was forecast. We got a lot. Well, a lot for our formerly drought-dessicated condition to absorb. We're on restricted water use, so the yard has gotten pretty dry.

Luckily we got some much needed yard work done the two days before the rain. There were some trouble spots that had to be done, still a lot of work to do out there. We needed this rain to help us see better what still needs doing in the yard. Branches that didn't seem to need trimming yesterday now droop under the weight of water and say, "Trim me or I'll brush you with my wetness each time you walk by." The walkway is narrowed by plants spreading out to soak up the rain.

I think my brain works better when it rains. But my sinuses and lungs are in shock.

Unfortunately Southern California doesn't handle rain well after a dry spell. Oil builds up on the road surface and cars slide around easily, drainage culverts get clogged with fallen greenery and trash, and back up. I remember when I worked on North Island (Naval Air Station), the whole place would flood from the first big rain of the season. If I had leave to take, I'd take it on the first day of serious rain, because otherwise you spend hours more in traffic both going to work and getting home. The less cars out there the better on days like that.

We're told we might have an El Nino rainy seasons this year, but real drought relief will require serious snow pack in the Sierra Nevada. I hope that's in the works.

I found a few gems today in the Ravelry listings of sock patterns. Now and then I find a pattern I'd really like to try that isn't available in English. Some are in Japanese, which I haven't yet found a solution for, so I just try to ignore those patterns, but it's kind of like trying to ignore a chocolate cake.

One of the patterns I looked at today was in German, and although the designer didn't provide any translations, she did provide a link that seems really helpful, it's to a pdf International Glossary of Knitting Terms. So I thought I'd provide that link here as well as a few others. I don't usually make my posts public, but this one will be.

Vogue Knitting English to various languages (select your language and click "Go")

VK International Knitting Terms

The blog String-Or-Nothing links to the pdf I mentioned in my first paragraph above.

The forum Dave's Garden has a page full of international knitting term links, here.

Happy knitting!

First the weather. Yesterday we just had a shower here and there, but today it's honest-to-goodness raining. I awoke thinking the sun wasn't up yet, but it was nearly 8 o'clock, so that didn't seem right. We have thick, dark cloud cover and incessant rain. It's the first rain like this we've had all season, and hopefully the water it leaves behind will last the trees long enough that we won't need to run the irrigation for a while. Water has gotten so pricey here, I really dread the drier months. Hooray rain!

Poor Raven, our black, indoor-outdoor cat, wanted in the worst way to go outside, though. He went out once, and came back five minutes later. An hour or so later he begged me to let him out, so I went out with him and sat in K's chair on the porch while Raven sat under mine and watched the rain for a bit. Finally he looked at me, headed for the door, and came back inside with me. He's not happy about it. Aren't we humans supposed to be able to control the weather or something?

I know, I know! You have snow, tons of snow, but here rain is a big deal. We sorely need it.

* * *

In a prior post I mentioned how much I detest filing and paperwork. I really do, but the thing I hate about it most is paper cuts. The little nibbles on the cuticles as well as the ones that go deeper and actually bleed. At one time I worked in a photo processing lab, back in the days before one-hour processing, when we ran miles of film or paper through machines with tanks of chemicals. Some of the work had to take place in complete darkness, and splicing reels of photo paper together in the dark means paper cuts. Having to dip one's cut fingers into a tank of chemicals to save a strip of photos means pain. Later I did my share of filing in an office job. If you've never tried to knit or crochet with those little cuticle cuts you get from filing, you don't really know paper cuts. Today I dread having to handle much paper. My aversion is so strong that the last time I needed to go through some envelopes and shred some items, I decided to wear gloves. At the last minute, I thought "How silly!" and didn't put on the gloves. The first envelope I opened got me. The flap snapped back as if it was alive and cut me. So much for thinking gloves are silly. I know it's a little thing, but seriously at that moment I felt as if the universe was out to get me.

Down with paper cuts!

Welcome! This journal is mostly friends only. Feel free to add me( Read more... )

Profile

CatInMyLap

Wild Violets

May 2026

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
					1	2
3	4	5	6	7	8	9
10	11	12	13	14	15	16
17	18	19	20	21	22	23
24	25	26	27	28	29	30
31

Syndicate

Page Summary

Style Credit

Base style: Ciel by carisma_sensei
Theme: Altair by dancing_serpent

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

Page generated Sep. 24th, 2026 11:33 pm