crafts and hobbies #64: zines

I am slightly fascinated by zines. They were discussed briefly in one of my MLS courses, but it wasn't until I went to a science fiction convention last summer that I actually came into contact with one. Because of that, my experience with zines (which is hardly noteworthy as I have never read one) is mainly of the fanfiction variety. I have friends who write for fan-zines of their favorite television shows, and I have a lot of friends who buy, read, and trade them. It wasn't until I was doing a bit of research after being asked about zines by a co-worker, that I realized how broad and varied zine topics can be.

1) I think making a zine would be brilliant. I love to write (I blog on a regular basis) about anything and everything and could surely come up with something worth zine-ing about. If I made one, it would probably explore various formats, with some pages full of lists, some pages cluttered with words, some pages stark and minimalist, and some pages crammed with useful (or useless) information. I suppose it would need to have a general topic to attract readers - probably something to do with TV (which I watch a lot of) or books (which I read a lot of). Perhaps a bonus baking or crafting section for good measure.

Unfortunately, I am not artistic (as I have mentioned before on this blog), so if any simple illustrations were to be included, they would either be of the stick figure variety, or I would need to recruit a friend's help.

If I were to ever produce a zine, I would most likely do it on a small scale and just send it to friends. It would really just be for me because, frankly, I am not interesting enough to develop a huge internet following. (And I am totally okay with that!)

2) Do zines have a place in the library? Sure. Libraries are all about sharing information, and that includes off-beat, independent works by amateurs. However, zines are much, much harder to collect. Publication isn't pinned down by a big publishing company, content isn't analyzed and cataloged by age, distribution isn't hard and fast. I think there is a place for zines in the library, but building that collection would require dedicated librarians who really knew their stuff. It would take a lot of effort and time and would certainly not be the job of one lone librarian (if a large collection is the goal).

It would also work best if libraries just starting their zine collection contacted those libraries (like Salt Lake City Public Library) with well-established collections to discuss tricks and hints of the zine trade. Why struggle along unaided when there are librarians out there who are probably more than willing to discuss their collection?

(Bonus Slightly Embarrassing Fact: For the longest time, until just last year, actually, I was convinced the word was pronounced 'zInes' instead of 'zeenes'. I have no idea why. Just another quirky personality trait shining through, I guess.)

crafts and hobbies #65: coin collecting

Ah, coin collecting. Some people love it, I suppose. I am not one of those people.

(I do, however, love saying the word numismatist. Give it a go. Nu-mis-ma-tist. So fun! Am I right? Of course I am.)

As part of this training, I visualized the coins in my wallet. Frankly, I rarely have any cash, so hardly ever receive coins when paying for things. (I really love my debit card. I fully admit it.) At the moment, I believe the change compartment in my wallet contains a few pennies, a Canadian nickel (which I have tried to use before - accidentally, possibly), some Euros of different denominations, a random Asian coin of some sort, and the red heart out of a Build-A-Bear. (That red heart is sure to be worth something!) As far as being able to use my coinage, the most valuable coins I currently own are pennies. What a depressing thought.

No one I know personally has an avid interest in coin collecting. My brothers made the effort to collect all fifty state quarters (they succeeded!), but that is about as far as we go. When I turned 8, my grandma gave me eight Susan B. Anthony coins, which I'm pretty sure I still have in a box in my parents' guest room closet, but I was never spurred into a coin collecting hobby of my own.

In the end, I view coin collecting much as I view stamp collecting: It is a fascinating hobby for people with a lot of patience, dedication, time and money. I'll stick to my keychain collection.

(If I did suddenly gain an interest in coins, I discovered via the Professional Numismatist's Guild website that there are number of dealers right here in Houston. None seem to be near me, but when has that ever stopped anyone looking for something specific in Houston?)

crafts and hobbies #66: knitting and crocheting

1) I love knitting. I always thought I would be far too uncoordinated for knitting (two needles, you know), but it is actually not all that difficult. It may have taken me a few years to give knitting a try, but I got there eventually!

When I was in grad school I had some friends who crocheted, so I asked them to teach me. I got the hang of that fairly quickly, but I always thought it was too inhibiting. There is only so much you can do with a crochet hook and, in my opinion, a lot of it just isn't all that attractive. Shortly after graduating, while working for a different library system, one of the library assistants started a teen knitting club. She repeatedly offered to teach me how to knit, but I kept refusing. (The whole two needles thing, again.)

Then I started working at my current branch, which has a firmly established stitching group that meets twice a week, and finally decided to give knitting a try. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that knitting is actually easier than crocheting! Sure, my knitting style is kind of off-beat, but the finished products look great, so I guess it really doesn't matter.

I have a very short attention span, so I usually stick to knitting smaller projects. I've knitted hats of various styles (one of my own design!), an ice cream cozy, and scarves galore. Anything more than a scarf and I would probably lose interest halfway through, and it would be months and months before I picked the project up again. (If I'm being honest, I have a couple of scarves that have fallen victim to that very fate.) I would love to eventually knit a throw, but I'm positive it would end up taking me several years of stopping and starting to finish.

2) As mentioned previously, the branch I work at already has an established stitching group. It was in place well before I started working here, and has been going strong ever since. In my experience starting other groups (ex: book clubs), it is always easiest to have one person in charge and a core group of at least a few people to get things off the ground. It is possible to start a group without any people previously committed to it, but it is much more difficult. If I were at a branch with no stitching group, I would try to scout interest among patrons (perhaps through signage in the stitching section), staff, friends and family members before actually setting up a meeting. It would probably still be a slow build, but starting with some attendees would at least carry the group for the time it takes for other people to find out about and become interested in the group.

Finally, to prove that I actually do knit and didn't just make all of this up, a picture of a hat I designed and made earlier this year:

crafts and hobbies #63: digital scrapbooking

When I was in high school, I used to scrapbook. Scrapbook in the traditional paper sense. I have one scrapbook that is sort of complete, but I was never very good or very dedicated. If I'm being honest, I mainly scrapbooked because all my friends were scrapbooking. It was the cool thing to do. I've long since given up the hobby after realizing that I lacked the talent, time and money to really pursue it.

Digital scrapbooking, like regular scrapbooking, is just not for me. I have always felt that scrapbooking was more for the artsy people than the crafty people. You need to have a good eye for design and a creativity to experiment with new things. I am just not an artsy sort of person. I have friends who make gorgeous graphic images and co-workers who can turn out fantastic signs for events. I can do neither. (Can't you tell from my glorious sample scrapbooking page up there?)

But, I spent some time playing around with scrapblog and managed to turn out something resembling a scrapbook page. It's not amazing, but it works, right?

My biggest complaint about scrapblog is that a lot of the features aren't free. I had to do a lot of browsing to find the free backgrounds and stickers, which seriously limited what my finished product would look like. Had all of the features been free (like with some other sites), my page probably would have been prettier.

crafts and hobbies #62: decoupage

I have massive amounts of dislike for decoupaging.

There. I said it.

When I was a teenager, we had youth activities at church every Wednesday night. One night during my high school years, there was decoupaging. We were all given a hand mirror (it was an all girls activity, obviously) which we were supposed to decoupage. I did mine, but it was pretty much a hideous mess of epic proportions. The finished product was so awful looking that my mom, when she came to pick me up, said, "Wow. What went wrong here?" Talk about motherly love, eh?

Unfortunately, she was speaking the truth. I am fairly certain I ended up throwing the poor mirror out that night. I didn't even let it finish drying! What was the point?

That was the first and last time I attempted the art of decoupage. I hope never to do it again.

So this post doesn't seem too dreary, let me add this: Decoupage may not be for me, but when it's done well, it can be quite stunning. Those suitcases linked from the main post, for example, are fantastic. I would love to own one. (Some of the other stuff... maybe not.)

crafts and hobbies #61: craftspiration!

Crafting time! Now that the hardest part of my summer is over, I thought I'd tackle these crafting posts. Here goes!

1) I like crafts, but I am not always all that crafty. Does that make sense? I spend a lot of time looking at crafting blogs and wishing I could sew or knit or decoupage as well as that person, but I'm just not all that crafty. (I do knit, and I'm actually fairly good, but that's the extent of it.) I have previously spent a lot of time on Craftster and Instructables, but have yet to make anything I've found there.

For this post, I spent some time browsing through a few of the tags on One Hour Craft. I hate to admit it, but I am unimpressed with that site. For many of the crafts under the teen crafting tag, the picture link is broken. Why would I make a craft if I have no idea what the finished product is going to look like? That is poor craft blog design. The blogger clearly needs to host the pictures herself instead of just borrowing them from outside sources. I am also unimpressed with the quality of the crafts on that site, so didn't find anything I wanted to make.

I tried to find something on Repurposeful but, while I did find some handy hints, I didn't find anything worth crafting. BUT! I did find this little pincushion on a blog I check frequently. I would like to make this.

2) As far as crafting tutorials go, I like a combination of written (with pictures, always!) and video. It really depends on what it is that I'm trying to learn how to do. With knitting, for example, if the stitch doesn't make sense as described in words, I usually search YouTube for a tutorial. (You can find anything and everything on YouTube. I swear it is so.) Sometimes a good video is the only thing, short of an actual person teaching me, that makes the stitch work in my mind.

the end

Potluck #56: Texting

In the previous post about Twitter, I mentioned that I hadn't started texting until last September. It wasn't that I didn't want to text, I just didn't want extra fees on my bill. It was fortuitous that I added texting to my cell phone plan when I did, because it ended up being the only way I could communicate with people during Hurricane Ike. Now I use texting all the time. It's handy for the times when you want to tell someone something, but you can't call them. I also use it to text messages to Twitter and get Twitter updates from my friends.

I never use texting lingo. It's not that hard to type the whole word, so why would I use ridiculous abbreviations.

As for texting while driving, I don't do that, either. How irresponsible and dangerous. I'd rather not cause my own death or someone else's because I couldn't wait until I parked to send a text.

Potluck #56: Twitter

Ironically, I just started incorporating Twitter into my daily internet life a couple of weeks ago. I had tried using it last year but, at the time, I didn't have text messaging and it wasn't as fun. Now that I have texting capabilities, Twitter is a blast! I can tweet from places where I wouldn't normally be able to get on a blog. Last year I took a vacation and was at a hotel without free internet. It would have been fun to tweet from my phone occasionally and tell people about the cool things that were happening.

On my own Twitter account, I tweet about whatever comes to mind. It's nothing earth shattering, but it's my life. I also reply to friends and celebrities I follow. It makes it more like a conversation between friends and less like tweeting into the void.

I have used the search function before, but I gave it another whirl today. I did a search on Natasha Richardson to see what people were saying about her unexpected death. There were thousands of tweets on the subject, each one expressing sadness for her family and shock that such a seemingly minor accident could have caused her death.

I know some people think Twitter is a waste of time. Why would anyone want to know what's going on in someone else's life at any given moment? Personally, I think it's fun. I especially like following some of the more verbose celebrities (like Stephen Fry). It's a peek into someone else's life. I say, tweet away!

Potluck #55: Facebook

Ah, Facebook. I've been on Facebook since my very last semester as an undergrad. That was when it had just barely started and was only open to college students. (Sometimes I think it should have remained that way.)

I've been on Facebook for several years, but I rarely use it. It's kind of funny, really. I think that because I was leaving college right as it was beginning, I missed out on the key period of my life when having Facebook would have been crucial to my social life. ("Crucial.") My brothers are all younger than I am, and all 3 of them are addicted to Facebook. I'm not sure 2 of them could go a day without checking. I, on the other hand, log on once every couple of weeks to sort through friend requests and delete all those pesky application invites.

Based on all of that, it's not shocking that I learned a thing or two from this post. For instance, I had no idea that Twitter could connect with Facebook. I thought the Facebook statuses were something completely separate. They are, but they can also be your Twitter update. That's kind of cool. If I cared at all about Facebook, I probably would link the two.

Despite rarely getting on Facebook, I do have a few applications loaded. My favorites are definitely Flair (because who doesn't love a button?) and SuperPoke (for when you just really need to chunk a sheep at someone). Flair is kind of addictive. On the rare occasions that I do get on, I always end up sifting through flair, seeing if someone has added new flair for my favorite tv show, actor, animal, movie... It's so fun!

So I may not be the dictionary entry for an obsessive Facebook user, but I do appreciate it enough not to delete my account. I have people friend me that I haven't seen since elementary school. People I was friends with for a year before moving out of state. When someone really obscure finds me, it's fun to get a peak into the kind of life they ended up having. For that alone, I'll continue to remain on Facebook - peripherally!

Books, Readers & Beyond: #54

1) I have been a member of several book clubs in the past (my membership usually ended when I moved) and run on at my library now. Of the past book clubs I have attended, only one worked really well. I stopped attending one book club after the moderator had us read half of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol one month, and the other half the next month. That book is about 100 pages long. One meeting would have sufficed.

The book club that worked was an all girls book club I attended during grad school. We were all at a similar place in life and had a fantastic time reading classics we'd missed in school and meeting to eat, discuss and gossip. This and the book club I currently run are the most successful ones I have personally attended.

In regards to online vs. in-person, I prefer an in-person book club. For one thing, I love how chaotic and noisy book clubs can be. When a good discussion (either on the book or that favorite tv show) really gets going, there are interruptions, talking over each other, cheering, and the occasionally table slap. They are fun. You don't get this same feel in an online book club.

2) As previously mentioned, I already run a book club at my branch. It has grown over the past year and has become a fairly well established club. The members get along well and even do things together outside the library. Sometimes we pick books everyone likes (good discussions), sometimes half and half (bad discussions) and sometimes everyone dislikes the book (great discussions!). No matter how we feel about the book, though, we always have fun.

I did attempt to find a title to suggest to my group using Reading Group Guides. Ironically, the teen book recommendations sent me to another site I've looked at before, teenreads.com. We have already read several books on the list and there is one on here I've been trying to get the book club to read for months: Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli. I have had several people (and now a website) tell me this is a fantastic book club book. Maybe with these additional positive reviews, we will actually read it. (There is also a list of discussion questions for this book, which would be incredibly helpful.)

3) I searched for One for the Money by Janet Evanovich on LibraryThing, where it had an average rating of 3.98 stars out of 4, and on Goodreads, where it had an average rating of 4.07 stars out of 5. The LibraryThing rating is a tad higher, but both are comparable. I think it is safe to assume that a lot of people really, really love this book! Frankly, I don't find this surprising at all what with how popular that series is just with library patrons.

Books, Readers & Beyond: #53

I'm going to say this up front: I buy all of my book from Amazon (or a seller on Amazon), Barnes & Noble or Half Price Books. In my experience, independent booksellers usually can't match or beat the price a big retailer can set, so there's no point in shopping at the smaller stores.

1) The closest bookstores to my branch are, of course, the college bookstore and In & Out Textbooks. However, neither of these are mainstream book retailers, so they hardly count. (They also have no real web presence.) Another close bookstore is The Book Attic, which sells new and used books. It has a website which allows users to search books that might be available in the store and gives general trade information, etc. Because of the location of this library, there aren't really any close mainstream book retailers. The closest Borders or Barnes & Noble is anywhere from 20 to 30 minutes away. (These both have extensive websites that have already been discussed in this exercise.)

2) I searched for Janet Evanovich's One for the Money and found it available at most sites. On PaperBack Swap you can get the book for the cost of one previously mailed off book. On Amazon you can buy the book for $11.16 new or as little as $3.73 used. Ironically, HCPL does not have this book as a ebook or audiobook download. (And the HCPL site crashed my internet. Nice bonus.) Because the book is not in the public domain, it won't be on any free sites. You can, however, purchase an audio download of the book on Amazon.

3) I greatly dislike ebooks. I may have a laptop, but huddling under a blanket on the couch and reading a book online is just not the same as cuddling up with a nicely worn paperback. Certainly there are some advantages. A search function could be helpful, the ability to read while unobtrusively sitting at a computer. But there are more disadvantages. You are constrained by power, for one thing. If the electricity goes out, you either go without or use up all the battery power. If the power goes out and you have candles, you can still read a book. Reading a book for an extended period of time on a computer screen also tends to strain the eyes more than reading a regular book.

I suppose there are uses for ebooks, but I prefer the good old paperback, myself.

Books, Readers & Beyond: #52

Looking back, it seems I haven't participated in iHCPL since last March. That's a long time! I guess there's no time like the present to post again...

1) For the first exercise, I picked one of my favorite Meg Cabot books, Size 12 is Not Fat. It's a chick lit mystery. What could be more fun?

Using Novel List Plus (which is the slowest website known to man. I rarely use it when patrons are standing at the desk because it takes at least five years to load), I found an article with a nice list of mystery chick lit novels in the same vein as Meg Cabot's Heather Wells mysteries.

1 - Foul Play by Tori Carrington (Sofie Metropolis mysteries)
2 - One for the Money by Janet Evanovich (Stephanie Plum mysteries)

There were others, of course, but those were the most interesting looking. Ironically, none of these books were on the list from the What Should I Read Next site. That list was mainly filled with YA books. I know Meg Cabot writes YA, but this particular series is definitely for adults. That site was not helpful.

I tried using the two booklist sites, but they were too complicated to use for finding read-alikes for a specific book. They were both great resources, but seemed overly complex for this assignment. So instead I used the "Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought..." feature on Amazon.com. This is actually my favorite reader's advisory tool and the one I use most frequently. While the results there did lean a little more towards YA or chick lit, the Janet Evanovich series was included. Much more helpful than some of the other resources.

2) For this portion, I used Mid-Continent Public Library's Juvenile Series and Sequels database. Kids and teenagers like series books, so this seemed like a safe way to go. This site features a handy series subject search function, which brings up long lists of books on animals.

For the fourth grade girl interested in animals, I would probably recommend any of the books from Ben M. Baglio's Animal Ark series (#1 is Kittens in the Kitchen) or, for something classic, Hugh Lofting's The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle.

For the thirteen year old boy interested in ghost stories, I ended up using a different site. I tried using the Library Booklists site because they have a link to horror stories for YA readers. Unfortunately, most of the links to the actual lists were broken. What an incredibly frustrating experience! Clearly, that site has not been well maintained. I did finally fine a worthwhile list here. I would probably recommend Andrew Nance's Daemon Hall and Anthony Horowitz's More Horowitz Horror.

3)Using Novel List Plus, I would recommend Dan Simmons, Charles Grant and John Saul. Using Library Booklists, I eventually (after a really long time) reached this site which had a link to a list that recommended Stephen King, Greg Bear and Peter Straub. Unfortunately, it took at least five years for the site, If You Like Dean Koontz" by Wake County PL to load. Inconvenient.

4) For this part of the exercise, I used Mid-Continent Public Library's Juvenile Series and Sequels database. I've used this database before and always found it incredibly helpful. (Of course, I always forget about it when I need it most and end up relying on the internet at large to answer my questions.) According to that resource, this Tamora Pierce book is the first book in the Song of the Lioness series. The whole series is as follows:

1 - Alanna: The First Adventure
2 - In the Hand of the Goddess
3 - The Woman Who Rides Like a Man
4 - Lioness Rampant

Pretty cool site!