Random Silliness

Wishlist  Crossing my fingers! =)

Multiple reasons for the title. Almost time for Breaking Dawn Pt. 1 which is great. Also, this morning the stepping out the front door was almost like walking on the set of the movie. The vibrant colors of the leaves on the backdrop of dense fog in the area. I was kicking myself for snot having my camera on hand. Moment was gone once back from the school so only for my memories I guess. Majority of my Christmas shopping is done and I will start on the handmade present for the love of my life. I purposely only took on a couple of swaps so I could add extra detail. The majority concern knitting with one exception for coffee and Tea stocking stuffer. I've been assigned my first partner and have already received the yarn I ordered from Knitpicks. It's 100% Wool color Blackberry, it looks very pretty and I hope that she enjoys it. I've cut out the fleece for the stocking. All that is left now is sewing closed and embellishment. There was a Highland Festival recently where I was able to grab a shortbread kit and Scottish Tea for my coffee tea swap so that was great. I also came across a booth selling brooches. These do not have the pin backing on them but are the plastic version of the indigenous plants from Scotland, Heather, Thistle, etc.. I couldn't help myself I grabbed a couple to help embellish the stockings. I enjoy taking few swaps so I can go the extra mile for my partners. I'm a demon on Ebay when it comes to something I think will my partners will really enjoy. Swap-Bot also announced a goodie for the swappers that participate in donating towards their cause. If you send in something you get the removal of one bad mark placed against your profile or in my case a freebie in the future in case this ever happens. Well I can't pass that up. I pasted info below. Every time I go to site my Kapersky goes crazy so to be on the safe side here is a pasting of the info.

*** Having too much fun with links but so easy to make, lol. ***

Donate to the Holiday Gift Drive

Oct 19th 2011 10:50:08 am

It is that time of year again: we are co-hosting another donation drive with The Partnership for the Homeless. You may remember that last year we collected more than 325 hats, sets of gloves, and scarves for the winter gear drive! Awesome! This year, we will be collecting gifts for NYC’s homeless children.

Did you know that nearly 15,000 children live in New York City shelters? The Partnership for the Homeless is a NYC charity committed to building a just and equitable society and creating lasting community change through solution-oriented programs and policy initiatives that eliminate the root causes of homelessness. They provide all sorts of services and support for the homeless in NYC and they would greatly appreciate a donation of gift cards to be handed out to older children at their Children’s Holiday Party on December 10th.

That is where the fantastic Swap-bot community comes in! Let’s put together a huge donation of gifts for The Partnership!!

We can accept the following items for donation: Gift cards in $5 to $10 amounts to stores like AMC theaters, Barnes and Noble, H&M, Gap, Old Navy, Forever 21, Aeropostale, and Target. Gift cards must be new and unused and must be to stores that are accessible in NYC. Gift cards are the most requested item by The Partnership for the Homeless, but we can also accept toys and winter gear (hats, gloves, scarves, etc) donations.

Send your donation to:

Rachel Johnson
Swap-bot.com
285 5th Ave PMB 415
Brooklyn, NY 11215

And here is the extra-special holiday bonus reward for your donation: Each Swap-bot member who mails me a donation of one gift card or item will get one low (1 or 3) rating removed from their account!! You must mail your donation to Swap-bot headquarters (address above) by November 30th. If you do not have a poor rating on your account, you will get a credit for one future rating removal. Each person can only get one rating removed during this donation drive – although you are welcome to donate more than one item! (All ratings removed in exchange for a donation must be at least six months old and/or the user must have exhausted all options for making up the swap. The rating removal credit is meant to remove unfair or unfixable ratings — it is not a “free pass” for flaking.)

International option: If you are unable to purchase appropriate gift cards in your area, I am willing to accept cash donations via Paypal. I will then buy a gift card in your name to donate. Send Paypal donations to rachel -at- swap-bot.com and make sure to mark them as a “gift” instead of a payment. All Paypal donations of $5 or more will count toward a rating removal.




I'm also working on a cause that I think is neat and easy enough for a newbie like myself. You are literally knitting, crocheting an 8x8 square to send to a charity that sews these squares together to make a blanket that they in turn send to Africa. They send other things but I am not that advanced yet. =) Knit A Square So that's taking up time but very rewarding in the end. I am having fun and doing something I enjoy so that about sums it up.

I would love to say that I have been incredibly busy doing crafty things or running dungeons with my guild. In the end I have blown off just about everything else. I do get in a little knitting though but the last month has basically been a K Drama binging session. I have gone through Coffee Prince, You're Beautiful, Hearstrings, and am watching Flower Boy Ramen Shop (?) and My Princess. Earlier I watched the fourth movie in the Takumi-Kun series Pure and am basically just gorging myself on sappy romantic stories. I didn't even finish my Halloween achievements in World of Warcraft. In my defense this is all so addicting. Oh I can't forget to toss in the anime I have been watching also. World's Greatest Love, Chihayafuru and You and Me. I have anime on the way thanks to the low member prices from Crunchyroll. I've dropped so many stitches knitting from reading subtitles it isn't funny. I truly need to start my lessons at Italki to prevent this. I know they are essentially soap operas but I cannot help myself. You're Beautiful especially. I've watched this show twice. My favorite character is Jeremy, he is a doll. My Princess this show is hilarious. I need more of myself in order to get through everything that I want to accomplish. There are just not enough hours in the day. Links, I must add links as I have been coming across some awesome finds lately.

http://www.nigella.com/recipes
http://www.scottishgourmetusa.com/
http://planetgreen.discovery.com/home-garden/sixtysixthings-growhome-containers-withoutgarden.html
http://www.gingercake.typepad.com/
http://www.eatpretty.com/

I have many, many others but will go into more details at a later time. Here are a few I wanted to share and bunches more on knitting coming soon. I am on Ravelry (http://www.ravelry.com/people/mrstlmason) for the knitters out there and still on Swap Bot just limiting myself to knitting swaps at the moment.

I have to write this down before going to bed. My first mistake was learning of Samurai Fantasy's existence. Second mistake was watching this thrilling short film of the yaoi nature with tons of sex scenes, extremely bad plot, and really bad animation. All around bad or really corny it is a toss up at the moment. The reaction rolling around in my head right now is I can't believe I watched it. It's so bad I want to watch it again. Reaction definitely bordering on fascinated horror and extreme laughter. My poor Rurouni Kenshin I shall never look at you the same way again. I am not recommending this movie, in fact save yourself and never, ever watch it. I want my 30 minutes back, but at the same time want to see Kenshin as the uke again. Good taste is warring with fan girl tendencies, this is a nightmare.

I have tons of ebooks...tons. While I am waiting for the money that will fall into my lap to purchase the Samsung I am drooling over I am also looking at efficient programs to store and read my books. Reading through various blogs I came across Calibre. I was searching for an alternate way to view kindle titles I'd purchased from Amazon for my phone. I will never own a kindle I just don't like them. A lovely person suggested Calibre and upon installing and retrieving files from my phone I can read them larger on the laptop. I am not a fan of their reader but this program is a work in progress so I imagine the reader will change in many ways during the course of fine tuning the program. In the short time I've started using this program I'm attracted to the way it's laid out. I consider it to be very user friendly. On their site they also give you the opportunity to become a developer and to also report bugs or changes that you as the consumer would like to see added to the program. You are already able to convert books to different formats, to store, backup and even connect to itunes. I am pretty sure I could send books to Samsung with send to device feature but unable to try this yet, lol. The program will also hunt down other titles from the authors in your library and show where to purchase additional works from the author from different stores and their prices. I'm impressed and right now there isn't even a charge for this program. They are asking for donations which I think are well deserved. I donated and would definitely purchase a finished product in the future.

http://calibre-ebook.com/

You're probably going to see many posts from me concerning this anime. I love this anime just cannot keep up. Eventually I am going to need to restart back at the beginning once I have all of the series for it and XXXHolic. Not to mention the manga also. Maybe it's better to read the manga first. Incredibly frustrated I went to a forum to read up on the ending which made no sense what so ever. The storyline on this one is so messed up it lost me a while ago. I currently have yet another rerun playing on Funimation, hence the source of my frustration this morning. Watching an OVA the other evening and Kurogane cutting off his arm to save Fai my inner fangirl is still squealing in delight over that one. I would say right now this series is a bad addiction. You just can't walk away from it not matter how much it drives you crazy.

So this past month I discovered many things and will focus now on the top one on my list. Avid reader and watcher here I frankly just can't get enough of anime. Refocusing on Ipads, well they maybe huge but I just want a bigger screen than my Sony Ebook reader so I'm not squinting at my manga. I'm also not rich so paying 7plus for the Ipad is a little too extravagant for my needs. Through research I was introduced to the Samsung Galaxy Tab. It meets all of my requirements so it's essentially my new best friend. I know other hardcore readers like myself agree. We subscribe to many online sites like emanga and Crunchyroll for example paying for the access to new works and series from artists we enjoy. I want to have access to these books while I'm waiting at the school or just being lazy on the couch. I can't do this with the laptop so I have found my alternative.

I am alive after the crafting free for all. Learned a bunch and crafted enough to want to take a break from all. Granted I am still seeing atc swaps on SwapBot and the hand is just itching to click especially on the Steampunk Halloween ATC swap. Alas I am worn out!!!! In the meantime have watched tons and I mean tons of anime which means more reviewing. And catching up on the posts of pages I have favored on here. Love these guys. Well for another day. I just viewed a lovely naughty amv from one of my fave makers ThreeMadCookies and it is naughty. I am going to place a rating of R on this one and for the ones that do not like boyxboy pairings your really not going to want to click this. I'll reiterate I love these guys. I wish I had your skills my amv's suck in comparison. I'm having creative envy over here. Well here it is and it's a naughty one, those not into that you've been warned.

I really need to add more but busy, busy, busy. Artful Gathering is going wonderfully and I finally figured out how to order off of Amazon.JP so loads of fun over here. Adding a link that was tweeted not too long ago, looks fun!

http://blog.craftzine.com/archive/2011/07/make_your_own_fun_photobooth_p.html

• Tue, 20:14: RT @TheYaoiReview: YAOI CONTEST: Win a Copy of Viewfinder V4! First time in English! http://bit.ly/qW5N9v #yaoi @digitalmanga @yamaneayano