Review: Pattern Recognition by William Gibson

When William Gibson first wrote his cyberpunk novels, Neuromancer and the rest, in the early 80s the idea of the internet, of cyberspace, was so new and unknown that it might have turned into anything. It was all (almost all) speculation then, what the technology might become. Now that the internet has become a ubiquitous presence in nearly everyone's life, I don't think there's so much room to imagine what might be as there is to imagine how we might use what we've got. Pattern Recognition was Gibson's first step away from speculative science fiction into the present day.

Opening paragraphs:

Five hours' New York jet lag and Cayce Pollard wakes in Camden Town to the dire and ever-circling wolves of disrupted circadian rhythm.
It is that flat and spectral non-hour, awash in limbic tides, brainstem stirring fitfully, flashing inappropriate reptilian demands for sex, food, sedation, all of the above, and none really an option now.
Not even food, as Damien's new kitchen is as devoid of edible content as its designers' display windows in Camden High Street. Very handsome, the upper cabinets face in canary-yellow laminate, the lower with lacquered, unstained apple-ply. Very clean and almost entirely empty, save for a carton containing two dry pucks of Weetabix and some loose packets of herbal tea. Nothing at all in the German fridge, so new that its interior smells only of cold and long-chain monomers.

Origami Quilt, Attempt #2

I spent a massive amount of time today crawling around hands-and-knees on the floor pinning this sucker back together. I did it once before, two years ago, but after leaving the quilt rolled up and/or stuffed into one of those zip-up pillow bags and/or shoved from one storage location to another, it was in very wrinkled shape.

So yesterday, besides sewing all those blocks for Modify Tradition (one more today, I'll post a photo at the bottom of this entry later), I took at all in the pins basting it together as well as all the pins holding the petals closed (straight-pins in that case) and ironed both the top and bottom again. Today my back hates me because I pin-basted it all over again.

Now I'm itching to get it quilted (before it wrinkles all over again), but I'm no less terrified, two years on, of the quilting process. I've never done anything so large before (about 6-ft square) or with this kind of batting (the crap stuff no one but ladies as old as my grandmother uses, which I'm using because she prefers quilts made with it to those made with warm & natural style batting) or that I care so much about. I've done a few baby quilts, but any time I make anything bigger I get scared off trying to quilt it because I love them too much to ruin them.

I think I'm just going to do something terribly basic - a criss-cross grid through all the white squares and then... I don't know. I'll have to figure something out for the green. Maybe I'll figure out some sort of leaf or flower type thing I could put into those. In any case, I want to get the quilting done by the end of the month so that I can move on to other trouble-some finishing touches in December. (Opening all the flowers, stitching down the petals, sewing a button into each flower center. Binding. I've never done proper binding before and I might not this time either, maybe just rolling it over from the back.)

When I first started this quilt, two years ago, I made myself a set of goals about it. This many flowers folded by this date, then this many blocks stitched together by this date, and so on. Which actually really worked for getting the top together, but then I totally crashed and burned once it came to quilting. I stitched one line and then picked all of it out because it looked so very, very bad. Then I rolled it all up and stuffed it away. But I cannot, must not, do that this year.

As I've said, rather morbidly, before... my grandma isn't going to live forever. If I want to give her a gift from my own hands, of a quilt, as some kind of thank you for all the many quilts she's hand-stitched and quilted for me... then I need to do it now. And if she dies before I give this to her, I'll never want to look at it again.

And that's enough of that train of thought. So here's another photo...

This block, also for Modify Tradition, was meant to be one giant bow-tie, but I have a definite bias against asymmetrical blocks in samplers. If I knew the quilt would be done on point, I might be willing to do it, but in case it's not... I made my own symmetry. Also, I wanted to use more than two fabrics, which I couldn't do with a traditional bowtie.

In any case, I like my fabrics here a bit better, but I'm finding the gold much too dated looking. I don't know. Maybe I'll go back to the fabric store and see if I can find a different yellow to replace it with. It'd be easy enough to pick apart the two blocks using it so far so that I could replace it with something better and maybe brighter.

Modify Tradition

I've started following a new quilting blog called Modify Tradition, which is attempting to create a modern looking sampler quilt using traditional blocks. They're talking a lot about different elements that often appear in modern quilts, most of which has been pretty interesting.

In any case, below the cut will be close-ups of each of the blocks and a little blurb about each.

Notes about this blog

So I decided to blend my three blogs here into one. I haven't been keeping any of them as up to date as I'd like, so I suppose I thought maybe I'd keep on top of it a bit better if I don't feel as if I have so many things to tackle. If I update once a week on any of my given subjects - books, crafts, or food - I think I'll be happier than if I feel that I need to do something with all three.

I've been playing around with my tagging today, trying to work out the best way to make things findable but not have so many the tags become useless, and I wonder if maybe I should have something very general as well as all my specifics - a tag for book posts, one for crafting posts and one for food posts - so that if someone is interested in one thing but not another it'll be easier to filter out the stuff that doesn't interest them. Hm.

I'm trying to figure out if this program has an option for "cutting" long entries, so that part of them is hidden, rather than every long post being a mile long. Guess I should search through the help files. [ETA: Success! Now to go through and do that to my longer entries... one of these days.]

Also, I need to/want to figure out how to adjust the size of this blog - it irritates me to no end that blogger sets all their layouts to such a small size. I'd prefer it to a be a percentage. For example, the width of my content should be about 80% the width of the screen, with 80% of my content devoted to the entries and 20% devoted to the side bar. I don't know if I have the patience to filter through the html and fix it though.

Review: Ghost Story by Peter Straub

One of my favourite websites, The AV Club has a monthly book club (link leads directly there), which I've never quite managed to participate in because either the book hasn't arrived on time, I haven't been interested in the book, or I haven't finished reading the book by the discussion dates. (In that last case was the lovely Little, Big by John Crowley. I never did write about that book because as much as I liked it, I equally didn't like it, and didn't know how to articulate the way I felt about it.) I did manage to read Ghost Story by Peter Straub not just in time, but a week early because I had the discussion dates confused.

I'd probably never have picked this book up – it's a ghost story and I do avoid most thriller/crime/mystery novels, except for young adult books – if not for the book club. And I can't decide if I'm glad to have read it or just indifferent. The general gist of the story is that four men, who are creeping up close to retirement age, are haunted by an occurrence from their past, metaphorically speaking, but increasingly it seems also to be a literal haunting with consequences reaching far beyond their own lives.

Opening paragraph:

What was the worst thing you’ve ever done?
I won’t tell you that, but I’ll tell you the worst thing that ever happened to me… the most dreadful thing…

I found this a pretty entertaining book. I don't usually get scared by fiction (if you want to scare me, give me a book about true crime, something to do with creepy cults who kill their members or other people and that'll freak me out more) and wasn't scared by this, but I could see how it might have worked for other people, the buildup from unease to knowing something is happening to being in the midst of a city-wide haunting.

Channa Masala with Curried Potatoes and Peas

So it's been a while. I don't know. You know, I cooked and took pictures and blah blah blah but I guess I needed a break. Maybe I still do. We'll see what happens, I suppose.

I've had a craving for Indian food for a while and the last time I tried to make it - Butter Chicken from scratch - it really didn't work out. I mean, it was okay, but I do think my garam masala is dead (I don't make my own) because it just didn't taste right. And neither has any other Indian food I've tried to make in a while. I mean, it makes sense, I suppose, because I probably bought that jar of garam masala two years ago. Definitely time to be picking up fresh. Though I don't know from where, since at least the last time around I was able to buy it made fresh, not made by... McCormicks or whoever and sitting around a warehouse for an age before getting to a store and sitting there for an age.

Review: Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

When I bought Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game (well, "The Ender Quartet," really) I knew next to nothing about it. I knew it is a highly regarded science fiction novel, originally published when I was a young child. (The story the novel was based on was published in 1977, the novel in 1985.) I knew too that it seemed to be a polarizing book – people loved it or hated it without so many opinions falling somewhere in between. As for me, I loved it, flaws and all.

Opening paragraphs:

"I've watched through his eyes, I've listened through his ears, and I tell you he's the one. Or at least as close as we're going to get."
"That's what you said about the brother."
"The brother tested out impossible. For other reasons. Nothing to do with his ability."
"Same with the sister. And there are doubts about him. He's too malleable. Too willing to submerge himself in someone else's will."
"Not if the other person is his enemy."
"So what do we do? Surround him with enemies all the time?"
"If we have to."

Ender's Game is military science fiction, taking place in a future where the human race has banded together to fight off the threat of invasion or destruction by an alien race known, for their bug-like appearance and hive-mind behaviour, as buggers. The world has become so over populated that there are strict laws limiting the number of children a family might have, but the governing body will make allowances for families raising child geniuses who as children may train to become soldiers to fight in the bugger wars.