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January 1, 2016 Jen

Have a very happy new year everyone! I had a ton of fun creating and swapping and "meeting" so many incredibly talented crafters. I can't wait to see what 2016 brings! #happynewyear #craftacular2016
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#swapaddict: A Guide to Online Craft Swaps is now available on Apple iBooks, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Google Play, Kobo and Bibliotheca

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The Light of the Fireflies by Paul Pen. This book was... something. It was this month’s pick for my IRL book club so it’ll be interesting to see what others thought. I found it sad and creepy and unsettling. The main narrator is a little boy who lives in a basement with his family, they don’t go out, ever, so he’s never seen the outside world. His family was disfigured in a fire and have literally walled themselves off from society. The writing is good, it’s apparently translated from The original Spanish. The characters don’t have names, they’re referred to as mom and sister and grandma, etc which is unusual I think. The story was troubling but kept my interest all the way through. I feel like it is one of those stories that will sit in your brain for a while. It’s a quick read and definitely an unusual book. 3.5/5 stars ⭐️ #19IGRC #19readingchallenge #justjoshinreads #2019readingchallenge #goodreads #readersofinstagram #readersofig #booksofinstagram #booklife #bookstagram #booknerd #booksarelife #booklover #bookblogger #reads

On The Come Up by Angie Thomas. This month’s pick from @bookofthemonth — finished the same month it arrived, even! This is Angie Thomas’ much-anticipated followup to the sensational The Hate You Give, same universe but different, unrelated story. Thomas does an amazing job immersing the reader in the world and its characters and illustrating how society is designed to keep some people from succeeding. Systematic racism, poverty, violence, drugs, all work against families who like everyone just want the best for their children. Like THUG, the main character is a teenage girl, Bri, who is trying to survive and thrive in a neighborhood rife with gangs and drugs and despair. She’s also balancing high-school life at a fancy arts school across town where she and her friends are bussed to increase diversity (and therefore grant money.) Her dream is to be a rapper and make it big to help her family escape the neighborhood that killed her father in a gang-related murder and hooked her mom on drugs. Her mom Jay is clean and doing her best to provide for Bri with help from her older brother Trey. After Bri is physically detained and thrown to the ground by school security guards, she turns her anger into a song that goes viral in her community. What follows is a series of pretty poor choices on her part in effort to make it big, but she alienates her friends, lies to her family and incites a gang war. I really enjoyed this book and it’s definitely a world very different from the one I live in. Bri’s Mom and Brother are the outstanding characters in this book, they both do everything they can to give Bri the best life they can. (Even when she manages to do everything she can to sabotage their hard work.) The family has been through it all and still hold the heads high. All the characters are complex and human trying to make their way in a complex world. 4/5 stars ⭐️ #19IGRC #19readingchallenge #justjoshinreads #2019readingchallenge #goodreads #readersofinstagram #readersofig #booksofinstagram #booklife #bookstagram #booknerd #booksarelife #booklover #bookblogger #reads #bookofthemonth #bookofthemonthclub #youngatheartyareader #ireadya #yareader #yareadersofinstagram

The Devil in White City by Erik Larson. I was inspired by an post on Instagram encouraging reading books that have been on your shelf a long time. This one has probably been unread on my shelf the longest, seriously years and years. I was vaguely familiar with the HH Holmes story because it came up in a crime literature class in college, but I wanted to know more, plus this book has been hyped forever. I’m glad I read it but I can’t say it’s a favorite. I found it very slow for the first 2/3 and it almost seems like two books, the story of Burnham and building the world’s fair and the HH Holmes creepy hotel of horror have very little overlap and each could stand alone. (Though tbh the building of the fair portions of the book weren’t that interesting to me and read more like a history textbook than I would like for a recreational read.) The history of Chicago was enjoyable The last 50 or so pages redeemed the slowness of the bulk of the novel and increased my opinion of it. The whole book is incredibly well researched and intelligent, but there were so many peripheral characters in the architecture portion I just wanted to fast forward through some of those chapters. I will definitely look forward to checking out Jackson park next time we are in Chicago, I didn’t realize the museum of science and industry is built on the north end of the park where the world’s fair took place, we’ve visited that museum dozens of times and had no idea. I feel like I am the last person on earth to read this book so there’s nothing new in this review, but I’m happy to have one book no longer languishing on my shelf. 3.5/5 stars ⭐️ #19IGRC #19readingchallenge #justjoshinreads #2019readingchallenge #goodreads #readersofinstagram #readersofig #booksofinstagram #booklife #bookstagram #booknerd #booksarelife #booklover #bookblogger #reads #unreadshelfproject2019 #unreadshelfproject

This is probably the only quilt I’ll be finishing for a while so at least it’s a good one! I picked up the #layercake on daily special from @missouriquiltco and it is perfect for this sea turtle themed baby quilt. I enlarged the geometric turtle pattern from @quietplay and did simple patchwork surrounding it. Sending it off to be quilted today. #quietplaypatterns #justjoshinquilts #quiltsofinstagram #jjquilts2019 #seaturtlequilt #seaturtle #missouristarquiltco #msqcshowandtell #babyquilt #handmadegifts

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon. I feel like this is a book that everyone has already read and I missed it somehow. I picked up a copy last month and devoured it in a weekend. I truly enjoyed the story and the author captured the rigidity, repetition and quirkiness of Autism in a realistic and relatable way. Having only read the blurb on the back and seeing it on lists of books with neurodiverse characters I expected it to be more of a detective-with-autism caper than a heartfelt, emotional story of a boy, his world and his place in his family. I truly enjoyed this book and the sweet, sad, innocent and vulnerable Christopher. 5/5 stars ⭐️ #19IGRC #19readingchallenge #justjoshinreads #2019readingchallenge #goodreads #readersofinstagram #readersofig #booksofinstagram #booklife #bookstagram #booknerd #booksarelife #booklover #bookblogger #reads

I haven’t sewn anything since right after Christmas. I’m almost completely packed in my sewing room so it’s probably going to be a while before I’m at the machine again but I taught a paper piecing class yesterday and I made these cute economy blocks as a sample. I found a handful of black and white 2.5” squares for the middle and picked some rainbow colors for the accent. Not sure what to do with them but they’re cute. #economyblocks #paperpiecing

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