January 2021 First Reads

 January is another two-book month.  Nine to choose from

1. Suspense - Shadow Box - Luanne Rice
2. Cont. Fic - Hadley and Grace
3. Thriller - Not One Of Us
4. Historical Fiction - West With Giraffes
5. Espionage Thriller - Water Memory - Daniel Pyne
6. Literary Fiction - Gerta
7. Memoir - Widowish
8. Global Fiction - the Ardent Swarm
9. Picture book - Sadie Sprocket Builds a Rocket

Scratch the suspense and thrillers off first (plus the library already has them on order). Contemporary fiction doesn't sound that interesting, neither does the memoir.  Ardent Swarm will work for one of the Read Harder prompts, so it's a possible, but the library has it on order too. 

 So, Sadie Sprocket, West with Giraffes, Gerta, and Ardent Swarm.  Library has West and Ardent on order, so Gerta is a definite.   West sounds good, but is long, and that works better in print for me.  Ardent has some iffy reviews, but I got it anyway. 

More puzzles

 The first puzzle of 2021 is finished, finally.  

 

 

 

And the second one as well.  This one is a 500-piece Okta-puzzle from Springbok, circa 1967, with art by Sam Savitt.  It's called "Mares & Foals" for obvious reasons.  

I love any puzzle company that makes pieces shaped like these: 

And the third one is in progress.  It's a vintage Whitman puzzle with a photo of the Grand Canyon. 

 

 

This one is tricky - about half the pieces don't actually interlock, the curves just fit together.   

  

 

Projects - January

 I was energetic after New Year's Day and managed two projects.  

The first is part of a plan to retire the cardboard boxes that the Christmas ornaments are in right now. The boxes are old, and a mouse got in since last year and at least only ate one ornament.  

So, plastic tubs.  You can find some with cardboard dividers, but those are flimsy and don't fit snugly enough to keep things from wandering in the box.  I've been watching Adam Savage's podcast and Youtube videos lately, and he mentioned making foamcore dividers for his drawers a few times.  So, inspiration.  Two sheets of foamcore (from Walmart, because Michaels is out of the larger sheets), and the hot glue gun, plus two tubs from Walmart.  And here we are. 

I've got some Sterilite organizers with small dividers for most of the ornaments, so these will be for the loose plastic balls, the star, and the larger (less fragile) ornaments that won't fit the other boxes.  And at the same time, I'm planning to thin out the ornaments, because we have more ornaments than we can fit on a tree right now.

On the same Walmart trip, I found a string of wired LED lights for half price.  I have a string somewhere already, but can't find it, so I bought another one.  (Story of my life, and the reason I am trying to declutter.) 

We bought two tree toppers like this one a few years ago.  The spring method of mounting them doesn't work on a fake tree as well, but I'm not sure how to fix that part. 

 

The star looks nice, but then it seemed like it would be nicer if it glowed.  For a few years, we just stuffed the end of the light string inside the star, but the colors weren't right for me.  This year, we tried a string of battery-powered lights, but the only ones I could find in the house were Halloween lights.  Orange.  Okay, but not great. 

So, after an hour or so, and some swearing, I managed to fit the string of lights and wire inside the star, and even distributed evenly so it's lit nicely.  The lights are battery-powered, with a built-in timer - on for 6 hours, off for 18.  

Pandemic puzzles - Owls

 I started a new puzzle for the new year.  Cobble Hill puzzle, picked out by people who have a very high opinion of my puzzling abilities.