Have Tweet Will Twitter (Patagonia, AZ)

These are my favorite Twittering buddies. Which ones?  ...all the ones with feathers, of course!

Have you heard the latest tweet?

The 50 Megaton Tweet by R. C. Wade

This is a quick read of 68 pages.  The author mixes documentary facts on the fast-growing social media with a "what if" scenario that causes a devastating chain reaction.  This isn't one of my usual reads.  I like reading books that takes me away from daily problems, but this book is worth reading.  I think anyone that spends a lot of time using the social media should read this book.  I have learned a lot about the impact social media has had on our daily lives.

What if a tweet and a video were sent out showing our President had been shot with no confirmation from anyone in the White House?  What if another senator tweets that the President has been shot and another tweet spreads there is a government conspiracy?  We know from the past that leaked information can spread like wildfire, but how would we react if we received this news?  

What follows in this story is a chain reaction from news media to government to Joe Public to the World.  It is an interesting and scary concept.  I would like to think that we the public would not react in such a devastating way without getting confirmation from either the news media or our government despite our feelings of distrust for both.

I actually found the age of instant information and social media history more interesting than the story.  Such as the impact it has on today's TV news media and how our government uses it.  Anyone can become famous with a cell phone  and internet access by being Joe-on-the-spot reporter.  As we are finding out - absolutely nothing is safe from the public. Social Media's impact on our society has truly taken over the way we share and process news.  One thing that is prominent in this book is our lack of responsibility for not double-checking the facts before forwarding, retweeting, or re-posting online information.

Two more notes:  This book is written by an independent writer which means he published this book on his own (no publisher) through  Kindle and it is the only version available for now.  If you are interested in reading his book, you should be able to download the Kindle version to your computer or cell phone by installing Amazon's free app Cloud.
Also, checking information is easy with snopes.com - excellent source for rumors and facts.

More Tweeters!

Here are some new photos of my feathered friends.  Mr. Cardinal has been hanging around quite a bit this winter.   He seems to enjoy the free meals that Dan provides for all the birds.

Northern Cardinal

Doesn't this guy look like a black Cardinal?  I cannot pronounce his real name so that is his nickname: Black Cardinal.  His chirp is quite distinct.  It sounds like a short dog whistle.  I keep expecting to hear his whistle and "here boy!".  I saw this guy a couple of times last year, but never got a good picture.  This year, the Phainopepla has been sighted quite a few times around the Center and on the trails.  Gotcha!!

Phainopepla

The Preserve is starting to get busy with Birders and birds.  We have one unusual sighting of a Rusty Blackbird...sorry, no photo.  It has brought out quite a few Birders looking for that one bird to check off their life list.  I was sort of hoping we would not go through this again...oh well.

Eastern Bluebird

We have one more week here and we are off to Benson, AZ for a month.  I'm ready for a break and a change of scenery!

On The Cutting Board

I finished all the faces and now I have started appliqueing the Cuddly Critters quilt top.  Here's the Dog!  He came out better than I had hoped.  

One more paw and then on to the next face.....  Happy Quilting!

Wool 2 - Proper Gauge (Blaine, WA)

It took me awhile to finish the second book Wool 2, but not because of the story.  I was reading this book on my cell phone while waiting on whatever we were waiting for at the moment.   Yep, I now have Kindle on my cell phone.  Oh, I do enjoy my new toy!  Now, I am always happy when someone tells us there will be a wait.  I immediately pull out my phone...time to read...yes!

By the way, if this is the first time you are reading the Wool reviews - here is the first one.  There are six in this series and I plan to read them all.

Anyway, back to the book.  I loved it!  The second in the series of Wool had my full attention and I can't wait to start the next in the series.

Wool 2 - Proper Gauge tells us more about the community living in the silo.  How they manage to survive for a couple of centuries.  So if I understand knitting and gauging:  in order to have proper gauge, you need to knit a sample to make sure you have the correct needle size and tension.  If you don't do a sampler, your finished project may not come out correctly.  It might be too big or too small or too tense.  So, like knitting, a Mayor should know the proper gauge of her community, but does she?

I like the way the author Hugh Howey introduces the reader to the community by following Mayor Jahns and Deputy Marnes down the spiral stairs to the deep down depths of 144 floors to the mechanical floor.  Their mission is to interview and hire a new sheriff.  Along the way, they make stops on different floors to visit people and to conduct business.  Each level plays a key part in the community.  There is a floor for growing produce, raising animals, living quarters, and even one floor for Intel security or as many of us think of them - "Big Brother".

Hugh's imagination is out of this world or is it under this world?  Well, I loved it and I don't want to say too much if you are interested in reading the Wool series.

On The Cutting Board
I finished marking and cutting out all the pieces for my True Lover's Knot quilt blocks.  All by hand.  It took quite a few days, but it is so much more relaxing to sit in a chair and cut each piece out with scissors.  I don't know about you, but after an hour or two of cutting with a rotary cutter, my shoulders are in knots.  Maybe it is because of the height of my counter.  I don't know.   I do know that I am more relaxed when I am doing everything by hand.

Do you remember my Bunny wall hanging coming in this cute box?  Well, I just could not get rid of it so I put all my extra needles in it along with some thimbles.  

Maybe I will stop losing them now.  I can only hope.  I'm still looking for a few things that I have squirreled away and I have no idea where I put them.  I should make an inventory list with location of all my sewing items......okay, that just wore me out just thinking about it.

And that is as far as I got in the last couple of days.  The sun has been out so I am spending more time outdoors soaking it up.  Of course, the cats are quite pleased with the extra time outdoors.

Calendar Girls

Chris:  "The flowers of Yorkshire are like the women of Yorkshire. Every stage of their growth has its own beauty, but the last phase is always the most glorious. Then very quickly they all go to seed." 

Happy Quilting!

Short Story ~ "WOOL" (Patagonia, AZ)

Sitting Pretty

Wool by Hugh Howey

Of course, the title caught my eye, but "Wool" is not a story about a group of knitters.  It was one of  Amazon's suggestions probably because I recently uploaded "Journey to the Center of the Earth".  A book on my 'must read' list.  I'm not a big fan of sci-fi post-apocalyptic stories.  Usually, I find them too depressing.  The reviews for "Wool" were outstanding.  I read the first pages online and I was hooked!  I had to read the rest of the story.

Imagine spending your whole life underground.  Never seeing the sky or feeling grass beneath your feet, but you do know the outside world use to exist from old picture books.  Does it now?  According to the outside cameras - no, but wouldn't you be curious anyway?  Be careful of what you wish for, you might get your wish.

I know this is a science-fiction, but it did not feel like one.  This felt more like a study on human nature.  A society built from unusual living conditions and the circumstances of why they have survived inside a silo for many generations.

Metaphorically speaking:  Humans are like spun wool woven together to become the fabric of a community.  There is strength when tightly woven together, but if one of the threads come loose, others might follow.  Soon the tightly woven community is compromised and weakened to a breaking point.  How does a community prevent their survival thread from unraveling?

I also became curious about the author and why it was selling for such a low price.  I found out that Amazon Kindle now offers writers a chance to sell their stories without a publisher.  Hugh Howey is one of them and he has become quite popular.  Better yet...he has more "Wool" stories and I have a feeling I am going to read all of them.

On the Cutting Board
I just finished the second Cupid mug rug so it needs a little ironing.  Feet and wings are ready to sew together.  Now I just need to find some time to get some sewing done on the machine.  And I need to start going through my stash for the next two Rabbit mug rugs.  Oh, and I can't forget to look for red, white, and blue for the Uncle Sam mug rugs.

When I get tired of hand sewing, I have been working on crocheting the second baby blanket.  Got to use up all that extra yarn I ordered.

I had to add this one from LOLCats......Happy Quilting!

Finished Another Block!

Well, I can’t believe it.  I have actually finished another block and I still have over a week before the end of November!

I have my fingers crossed that I will be able to keep this pace up and finish the quilt on time.  Oh, I do uncross my fingers while quilting.  Yea, it would be hard to hold a needle with crossed-fingers. 

I need to finish the two sashings before going on to the next block.  Even though they are more detailed, they are small and don't take more than a couple of evenings to finish.

I finally broke down and bought my first Kindle Book from Amazon. It finally came in the mail from being on backorder.  I swore I would never get an electronic book because I like the way books feel while reading them. I guess I am a Traditionalist in more than one way, but I'm going to give this a try because this Kindle has a different screen that looks like paper and I can enlarge the fonts so I don’t have to wear my reading glasses all the time.  I just won't have pages to turn.  Hmm.  Well, I'll give it a try.

The best part is that I don’t have to wait to find a bookstore. This Kindle has 3G so it is independently connected to WiFi and I don't use up our limited BandWidth.  Now I can download my new books as soon as I get the urge to buy another book.  This is going to be great!

The main reason for buying the Kindle is for storage. I have a lot of books. Books I have not read  yet and books I plan to read again. I have been trying to get rid of each book after finishing it but then I buy two more!  I finally admitted that we do not have the space for a large collection of books, not to mention the weight they add to our motorhome. So what have I been doing with the extra space?   Yea, you guessed right! Fabric and projects are filling up those empty spaces. At least they are lighter. ;0)