Instructional Videos: Knitting & Crochet

Youtube isn’t merely a source for music videos, trailers, and the most recent internet phenomenon. It is also an excellent source for instructional videos of all sorts. You can learn everything from martial arts moves to how to tie a Double Windsor knot in your tie. I run the Knitting Circle here at the Fremont Main library. (Third Wednesday of every month. Bring your project and join us!) So, today I was doing a bit of searching on Youtube on the topics of knitting and crochet. Unfortunately, most of the videos I discovered don’t allow embedding, so you’ll have to follow the links below to watch the video of your choice.

Try Something New:

* How to Crochet Basics – Chain Stitch for Left-Handers

* How to Crochet for Beginners : How to Make a Crochet Chain Stitch

* How to Knit for Beginners : How to Cast On in Knitting

* How to Knit for Beginners : How to Make the Basic Knit Stitch

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13 Vampire Books

Thursday Thirteen #34
Well, It’s been an eventful week. I finally started the Twilight series and I was in a car accident over the weekend. (These two events are not in any way related, though, in case you are curious.) So, while I’m stuck at home recovering I thought I’d offer you a list of 13 Vampire books, in honor of my new favorite series. Do you have a favorite book with a vampire character? Please tell me about it. I’m always looking for new vampire books.

They vant to suck your blood:
1. Dracula by Bram Stoker – The classic. This book is largely seen as the grand-daddy of the entire genre.

2. Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice – This book may not have been the sole one responsible for the resurgence of interest in the genre, but it certainly had a huge influence. I loved this book in High School, but I never read further than book three in the series.

3. Twilight by Stephenie Meyer – Complete and total book crack. I finished reading it on Thursday, and faced with waiting until Saturday for book two, what did I do? I read it again on Friday. I admit it. I’m addicted. Unfortunately, I have to wait until I go back to work to get ahold of book three.

4. Fledgling by Octavia E. Butler – This book is on this list by special request from my boss who adores it. It’s a good thing that we have it at the library, as it looks like it’s going on my hold list.

5. Guilty Pleasures by Laurell K. Hamilton – As this series progresses it becomes more and more about sex. What character did I read up through Obsidian Butterfly for, though? Not Anita Blake, although she is also quite interesting. Nope. It’s all about my favorite psychopath, Edward. Sometimes I wonder about me.

6. Bloodlist by P. N. Elrod – Set during a time of gangsters and nightclubs, this book features a vampire who is also a detective. I highly recommend the first six books of the series.

7. Vampire High by Douglas Rees – What is this normal human doing at a High School populated by vampires? Why…to be on the Water Polo team, of course! Vlad Dracul Magnet School needs a water polo team, after all.

8. Bloodwalk by Lee Killough – Bloodwalk is actually two books in one about a police officer who investigates something a bit too closely, and ends up becoming a vampire. How can he balance his old life and his new life?

9. Blood Price by Tanya Huff – This series was recently made into a TV Show. The show was okay, but the books were better.

10. The Silver Kiss by Annette Curtis Klause – A melancholy story about a young woman, her dying mother, and a vampire.

11. Companions of the Night by Vivian Vande Velde – If Kerry Nowicki hadn’t hd to go back to the landromat int he middle of the night to retrieve her little brother’s stuffed bear, she would never have met Ethan…and discovered that vampires exist.

12. In the Forests of the Night by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes – This is the first book that Ms. Atwater-Rhodes had published. Let’s just say that in her world, Vampires aren’t the only non-humans out there.

13. Children of the Night by Mercedes Lackey – The only one of the Diana Tregarde books that I like features more than one kind of vampire. …And the one of the more traditional variety is a good guy.

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Don’t Worry Bear

Friendship is one of life’s sustaining pleasures, but what do you do when your friends are far away? Or even worse, what do you do when your friend is a caterpillar and he’s gone into a cocoon? You watch over your friend, of course: in the dark, in the wind, in the rain. And even if your friend is gone for a really long time, you never give up waiting for them to come back. But what about when you come to check on your friend one day and the cocoon is empty? Where has caterpillar gone? Will Bear ever see caterpillar again? This is Bear’s dilemma in Greg Foley’s latest sweet and subtle exploration of friends who stay connected no matter what.

If you like Don’t Worry Bear, be sure to read Thank You Bear as well, a story of how one person’s (or in this case, one mouse’s) point of view changes everything.

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Are you ready for school?

Summer is coming to an end. There is only about a week left for everyone to pack up all those fun or boring summer memories and get ready for a new school year. School supplies, check. MAZE day, check. Class schedules or placement lists, check. Get up early, almost. Visit your local library, not yet.

Visit your library today or tomorrow! There are many reasons you must visit your library before school starts.

Reason #1– If you have read enough hours for the Summer Reading Game but haven’t claimed all your prizes, there is still time! You have up to the day before school starts to turn in your gameboard for prizes.

Reason #2–Go chat with a children’s librarian and find out what is available for you in the coming year. Just tell them what grade you are in, they pretty much know some “standard” projects you will be given in the coming year, and tell you how you can make the best of your library resources. Do you know that the library has online databases that could be great help with your projects? Do you know there is a free online home work help that is available everyday until 10 pm?

Reason #3–Find out what special programs your local library will be offering and don’t forget to register early. Some programs have limited spaces. Did you know that the Centerville Library offers one-on-one reading assistance throughout the school year? Did you know that there are kids book clubs at most Fremont libraries? Did you know that the Fremont Main Library offers computer/Internet classes for kids? Irvington Library may start the Chess Club again? There are much more to choose from, and we are always planning new ones. You can find program information at the library, or check them out on our online Event Calendar.

Reason #4–Volunteering opportunities for high school students. Service Learning is required to graduate high school and rules are getting stricter this year. Have you ever considered doing your service at your public library? General volunteers are needed at all Fremont libraries, but Centerville Library is currently recruiting teen volunteers for their 2008-2009 reading programs. If you like working with children and have a grade of B or above in English, you should seriously consider this opportunity.

Reason #5–Find out if there is anything different at your library after the summer.  You can tell us what your detective eyes have found by entering it in the comment box.  

So, what are you waiting for?  Go visit your library!

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Yet More Book Adaptations

Carter Beats the Devil by Glen David Gold (book) is in development now for AMC. It is rumoured that the project will be ready for the 2009 pilot season.

The film rights for Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series have been optioned by Universal Pictures. They are reportedly planning to start with book one, The Eye of the World. (imdb listing)

Goosebumps, the series of Children’s horror books written by R. L. Stine, may also be headed for the big screen. This should make the folks who enjoyed the television version pleased. They’re looking to start with one film and then build it into a franchise, by the way. We should know if the deal has been finalized in a week or so.

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Thirteen Things in the Solar System

Thursday Thirteen #33
My husband recently got a job working with NASA. I adore NASA, so you can imagine how happy this makes me. This week I bring you Thirteen Things in our Solar System in his honor.

13 Things in the Heavens:
1. The Sun – Our very own star doesn’t seem to have its own proper designation, beyond the Latin “Sol” so beloved of Science Fiction writers. It burns in space a mere 92.96 million miles away from us. At its core, the temperature is a toasty (approximately) 27 million degrees Fahrenheit.

2. Ceres – Ceres is a dwarf planet named after a Roman goddess. It lives in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and is the most massive known body there. It is 950 kilometers in diameter.

3. Jupiter – The largest planet in our Solar System, Jupiter has a whopping 49 officially named moons. Its Great Red Spot is a huge spinning storm that has been going on for a very long time.

4. Neptune – Spinning serenely through space 2.8 billion miles away from the Sun, it takes Neptune 165 years to make one complete orbit. The reason for Neptune’s bluish color is still unknown.

5. Mars – I love the red planet. Did you know that Olympus Mons is the largest volcanic mountain in the solar system? For more information about this planet, check out the Phoenix Mars Mission site.

6. Venus – Only slightly smaller than the Earth, Venus actually rotates in the opposite direction. Venus has no moons.

7. MakeMake – Named after a creator god of Rapa Nui, MakeMake was officially named and listed among the ranks of the plutoid dwarf planets on July 2008. Now…if only I knew how to properly pronounce that…

8. The Kuiper Belt – No, this has nothing to do with Sports Announcer, Dwayne Kuiper. It’s an area of icy bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. Its existence was only confirmed a decade ago.

9. Io – Io is one of Jupiter’s moons, and the most volcanically active body in the solar system.

10. The Oort Cloud – Not, as you might imagine, a cloud of Oorts. The Oort Cloud is the outer edge of the solar system and its vast spherical cloud of icy bodies is the source of long-period comets.

11. Pluto – Poor Pluto was downgraded to a “dwarf planet” on 24 August 2006. It lurks in the Kuiper Belt. No spacecraft has visited Pluto at this point, but New Horizons is on its way.

12. Saturn – Saturn may not be the only planet with rings, but it certainly has the most beautiful ones. It is listed as having sixty moons at this point, but not all of them have been officially named.

13. Eris – Eris was originally known as Xena. It is a Kuiper Belt Object that is larger than Pluto.

Sources:
* Encyclopedia of the Solar System (2nd ed.), Edited by Lucy-Ann McFadden, Paul R. Weissman, and Torrence V. Johnson
* NASA: Solar System Exploration

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Betsy Who Cried Wolf

Everyone knows the story of the boy who cried wolf, right? But what happens when the wolf crier isn’t a boy, but a Betsy, and the wolf isn’t just any old wolf, but a Zimmo? And Zimmo is a hungry wolf indeed, starving actually. He’s so hungry, in fact, that he’s come up with a desperate plane to eat the sheep Betsy has been charged to watch. Zimmo feels just terrible getting Betsy into trouble with the farmers, but he has to eat, right? Trouble is, just when he’s about to get himself a sheep dinner at last, Zimmo smells something else, something far more appetizing and wonderful than wool. What he smells is Betsy’s rhubarb pie, and pie’s better than sheep any day. In a sweet and funny twist on a familiar tale, Gail Carson Levine shows that sometimes a wolf in sheep’s clothing might turn out to be just the opposite, especially when there’s plenty of homemade rhubarb pie to be had.

Place a hold.

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