Notes
Finished reading: Storm Front by Jim Butcher 📚🎧
James Marsters reads the audiobook and he’s great.
Finished reading: Protecting What’s His by Tessa Bailey 📚
Finished reading: The Last Wicked Scoundrel by Lorraine Heath 📚
Finished reading: Midnight Pleasures With a Scoundrel by Lorraine Heath 📚
This is an absolutely bananas book. A great ride.
🔖 Read Why I’m One And Done (And Not Feeling Guilty About It) by Stephanie Fallon (The Good Trade).
My experience is so similar to Fallon’s. Before having M, I thought maybe 2 kids. But he’s very high touch and when people ask, I always say, “I don’t have enough Kimberly for a second kid.”
Been watching the Disney original movies in the Zombies series and these are thinly veiled metaphors for prejudice against different groups.
Original Zombies: racism (zombies basically stand in for Black people).
Zombies 2: prejudice against Indigenous people, settler colonialism (werewolves stand in for Indigenous people)
Zombies 3: prejudice against immigrants (aliens stand in for immigrants)
I’m curious to see what they do in Zombies 4, which we’ll watch tomorrow.
Finished reading: Stranger in My Arms by Lisa Kleypas 📚
Finished reading: Because You’re Mine by Lisa Kleypas 📚
You should go vote for my colleague and friend Erin Dawson Linn & her spouse Alder Linn in the America’s Favorite Couple contest. These two’s wedding was probably the most beautiful I’ve ever been to and left me in happy tears and feeling grateful for all the love in my life. I still have the little bottle of olive oil with a heart charm that they gave out as favors on display in my living room. These are two kind, loving people and it would make me so happy to see them win this contest and have more amazing adventures together!
💬📚 “Each [major innovation in industrial farming] has benefited the biggest [farms] and penalized the smallest.” Mark Bittman, Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History of Food, from Sustainable to Suicidal
📚 Leigh Bardugo has a picture book about death and grief that she wrote with John Picacio available for pre-order.
[This book is] for kids like me who spent a lot of time in graveyards reading epitaphs, who didn’t quite feel safe among the living.
This book is for me. 💀🖤
Finished reading: Somewhere I’ll Find You by Lisa Kleypas 📚
They’ve scheduled a 90s Dance Party for our work retreat in a couple weeks. I am tempted to send everyone Rebecca Schuman’s The 90s Are Old Longreads series to read.
Just go ahead now.
Finished reading: The Bladesmith Queen by Sarah MacLean 📚
📚 Hear me out: sun-soaked summer gothic literature. These Summer Storms by Sarah MacLean. The Villa by Rachel Hawkins. What else?
Another day, another autoimmune flare, another medical specialist, another round of blaming myself for chronic illness and also telling myself I should not blame myself. The road goes ever on and on…. (Advice not requested.)
📚 Reading Zoraida Córdova’s Labyrinth Lost and realized I had the perfect bookmark for any book by this author.
Finished reading: Surrender to the Devil by Lorraine Heath 📚
Lorraine Heath is so good at the job.
Finished reading: A Curse Carved in Bone by Danielle L. Jensen 📚
This companion-sequel to A Fate Inked in Blood spends the first third or so revisiting the first book but picks up in the middle third and is gripping and full of revelations for the last third. I highly recommend the duology.
Finished reading: These Summer Storms by Sarah MacLean 📚
I will follow Sarah MacLean anywhere, from Whitechapel to Narragansett Bay. If you like family narratives with a strong romantic thread, read this book.
Finished reading: Three Simple Rules by Nikki Sloane 📚🎧
“There was something about trains.” 💬📚 Reading Sarah MacLean’s These Summer Storms while actually on a train.
Finished reading: The Rose & the Dagger by Renée Ahdieh 📚
Another excellent book!
My First Skirt Sketches 🧵
Here are my first sketches for my Skirt Skills class with Brooks Ann Camper. I did a yoke for each waistline because my tummy hurts often enough that I want a friendly waist for it. I also sketched with real shirts I actually have, tucked in, since I often do tuck in. (Usually with a French tuck, thanks Tan France!) My plan for my skirt is to make something lightweight that I can wear to my job as an elementary school librarian early in the school year, then transition to fall and winter with leggings. Each sketch includes a pattern inspired by fabric available from Spoonflower and a bookish graphic tee that I actually wear to work.
Brooks Ann has a great way to create a custom croquis to draw clothing designs on your own body, which is how I got these sketches that actually look like me.
Sketch 1: Pencil skirt
The pattern inspiration for this skirt is Stack of Books by Kassi Simpson and the shirt is It’s Me Hi I’m the Librarian by Yaquetees.
Sketch 2: A-line skirt
The pattern inspiration for this skirt is Red Crimson Pink Blush Roses by Elda & Oak Design Studio and the shirt is the Book Nerd Floral Unisex T-shirt by Out of Print.
Sketch 3: Tulip skirt
The pattern inspiration for this skirt is Pumpkin King Stripe by Disneybound Dresses and the shirt is the What’s More Punk? t-shirt from the Mt. Pleasant (VA) Library Friends.
Drawing these was super fun and has really inspired me. I’m beginning to understand and imagine so many possibilities for designing my own clothes, especially for cosplay.