From Thursday, May 11, through Thursday, June 1, I will be taking a bookbinding class that’s required for my Book Arts Certificate (and which is always offered on Thursday evenings for some reason). Since Thursday evenings are my time for putting linkity together, I have a dilemma. A month without linkity seems a little extreme, doesn’t it?! How would y’all feel about maybe two Saturday linkities during that time?

Contest(s)

• Bookwyrm Knits is running a contest through the end of the month and the prize includes fountain pens, some ink samples, a self-inking Spiraldex stamp, and a blank journal. Make sure you read the details – comment early, comment often. 🙂 Closes 8 am PDT, April 30.

Bookity

• New releases: Smart Bitches (romance), Tor.com (genre-benders, scifi) and Gizmodo (scifi and fantasy)
• Linkity from Smart Bitches.
• Extended version of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.
• The 2017 Hugo Award finalists.
• “When meditation doesn’t work, try journaling to stay sane“. Yes. Do try it! 🙂 It has been immensely helpful for me.
• “10 everyday phrases that come from printing“.
• “Scientists create a wheel of old book smells“.
• High school vocabulary test.

Think, Learn, Do, Make

• Hostile micronation warning!
• On scientists naming things.
• States of matter.
• How do centaurs eat?
• “The mystery behind Minnesota’s Devil’s Kettle waterfall has finally been solved“.
• Maybe another piece of the complicated puzzle that is celiac disease.
• “Court rules Civil Rights Act of 1964 also protects employees from sexual orientation discrimination“.
• I am unsurprised that we are stressed by climate change.
• But hey, Minnesota is the least-stressed state. 🙂
• April’s unusual holidays.
• Explore historic London with a combination of Google maps and old photos.
• Infographic of the most expensive ways to cross the US.

Cookity

• Chopped chickpea salad.
• Weeknight vegetable stirfry.
• Cheesy vegetable melts.
• Feta salsa.
• No-bake sheet pan yogurt lemon tart.

Gluten Free

• Pasta frittata with goat cheese.

Artsy Crafty

• Make your very own Wonder Woman plush uterus.
• 3D printed knitting.
• Knitting linkity from knittyBlog.
• Knitting linkity from kmkat.

Cool

• Truly spring must be on its way to the Twin Cities…
• LEGO Nye’s Polonaise! (That’s not going to mean much to you if you don’t live in the Twin Cities.)
• LEGO version of Guardians of the Galaxy 2 trailer.
• Scifi short about an astronaut.
• A little more from Elsewhere University…
• Dinosaur mugs.
• Linkity from kmkat.

Cool or Wha…?

• 2001: A Space Odyssey swag.
• Upcoming X-Files book for kids.

Wha…?

• tRUMP on SNL.
• Cap’n Crunch infused beer.
• “Scientists want to use color-changing rainbow poop to diagnose your bowel problems“. (“Ma’am, you’re either dying or you’ve eaten a luridly colored Oreo recently – we just can’t tell.”)
• “You can now rent a Texas home that looks like a cowboy boot“.
• Cadbury Creme Egg pizza.
• Spaghetti doughnuts.

LOL

• Tiny Godzilla!
• For scale.
• In which we are all Ivanka tRUMP’s neighbor.
• Basketball autocorrects.
• Security advice. (Hover cursor/long-press for additional text.)

Teh Cute

• The owl and the pussycat (no pea green boat in sight)! Cheetah and babies! Baby penguin! Kittens! Baby kea! Baby lion!

Reading Update
White Corridor (Bryant & May #5) by Christopher Fowler. I gave it a couple of chapters, but it wasn’t working for me at all. It felt different from the other books in the series somehow. DNF.
Battle Street Bolero (Bone Street Rumba #3) by Daniel Jose Older. Very satisfying conclusion to this trilogy.
Improbable Libraries: A Visual Journey to the World’s Most Unusual Libraries by Alex Johnson. Very cool look at the many, many different ways that libraries reach people and people reach libraries around the world.

“What socks?” -Mayhem

Oh, these socks? 😉 These were for my SIL’s birthday… her March 2016 birthday. I finished them the day before her March 2017 birthday. Yay?!

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Welcome back to Art Journaling Monday! 🙂

• Hope.
• No one’s careful…
• Let America be America again.
• Rainbow critter!
• I am the Bill of Rights. Revolution intact.
• Very bright write over.
• Eye exam.

10 journal prompts to get you thinking about politics… if you can stand to do so.

The really funny thing about these socks I “finished” a few days ago? I discovered them when I was looking for something else… and they only needed two ends woven in to be done. Of course, I do remember moaning and bitching about the skein of yarn I used for them, which I firmly believe should’ve been sold as seconds due to the truly alarming number of ends in it. I’d planned to knit these matchy matchy, but by the time I started the second sock, I knew that wasn’t going to work (too many knots) so I knit it from the opposite end of the skein.

“What are these things on the floor?! They seem somehow familiar, maybe from a long, long time ago.” -Mayhem

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Congrats to Dianna, who won Chyna Doll (Horizons #4) by Mickie B Ashling! Chyna Doll is being released today by Dreamspinner Press.

Random bonus picture from my weekend. I call it “Pinata Aftermath” – only five minutes earlier, this monkey had a body:

I’m still puzzled why a yarn designer looked at this colorway (blue/green/brown/black) and decided it needed hints of pink (not visible in the photo), plus sparkles. Yes, all of the little light-colored flecks are sparkles. Link to Ravelry project page.

“My goodness! MORE socks?! What is going on around here?!” -Mayhem

“Mmmmm… sparkly socks…” -Mayhem

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Congrats to Val, who won Secrets and Charms (Secrets #2) by Lou Harper!

Since I totally don’t feel like writing a Misadventure, I’m declaring a Misadventure amnesty day. Here, have a cute picture of a cat and a sock instead (click picture to embiggen):

“I love you, sock.” -Mayhem

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Bookity

• New releases: Fiction Vixen (UF/romance), AAR (romance), and Tor.com (PNR)
• Book and publishing news from Dear Author.
• “Romance is not a feminist genre – and that’s okay“.
• Yet another reason reading fanfic lures some of us away from mainstream fic.
• Bring “squick” back to fandom.
• Important announcement about parentheses.
• Some Goodreads humor.

Do, Think, Learn, Make

• “If you threw cookie dough at the sun, how long would it take to bake?“
• Neil deGrasse Tyson will have a late night science talk show called Star Talk.
• Tour the Sriracha factory.
• Theater attendance hits a 19-year low.
• “Why the flu vaccine doesn’t always work“.
• The things that will be more expensive in 2015. (via Lifehacker)
• “Why are there so many dead malls? The middle class is dying, too“.

Cookity

• 7 meatless main dishes.
• 15 vegan recipes.
• 15 freezer-friendly main dishes.
• 17 make-ahead soups.
• Sweet potatoes with chickpea tomato sauce.
• Lentil soup.
• Sweet potato lentil soup with curry and lime.
• Shrimp and corn tamales with miso butter. (via The Kitchn)
• Sugar cookie popcorn. (via CRAFT)

Gluten Free

• Hot chocolate mix.
• Easy oatmeal muffins.
• Chocolate chip scones.
• Taco soup.

Crafty

• Knit some geeky mittens.
• Knitting linkity from kmkat.

Cool

• An extremely Minneapolis photo of someone ice fishing on Lake Calhoun in Uptown with the downtown skyline as backdrop.
• Smartish 9-volt battery that will contact you when your smoke detector goes off and before it starts beeping that horrible low-battery warning.
• Small LEGO scenes.
• LEGO-inspired furniture.
• Exoplanet travel posters from NASA.
• The Hubble Telescope celebrates its 25th anniversary.
• Photo of the Andromeda galaxy.
• Poignant short film about space exploration.
• Animation about hiding our true feelings.
• If you’ve missed playing The Oregon Trail…
• Design a hedge maze for the hotel from The Shining.
• Linkity from kmkat.

Cool or Wha…?

• Water bottles that look like rolls of film.
• Supercut of all the times Carl Sagan said millions, billions, etc.
• Life-sized cake of Dame Maggie Smith from Downton Abbey. (via The Mary Sue)
• R2-D2 projection keyboard.
• Jaws-themed baby crib. (via Tor.com)

Wha…?

• “Belfie Stick”, so you can take selfies of your butt.
• The Handicorn.
• Self-adjusting smart belt.
• Japanese domesticated owl cafes.
• GM will use OnStar to send coupons to your car.
• Drive a car remotely with a smartwatch – what could go wrong?
• Swarovski fitness tracker.

LOL

• 11 autocorrect sexts.
• How worried you should be when things happen in the movies vs in real life. (Hover cursor/long-press for additional text.)
• Should’ve done something like this when Chaos was wearing the Cone o’ Shame.
• Decorating tips from Basement Cat.
• Exploration!
• Maybe you should put that cat on a diet…

Teh Cute

• Tiger and babies! Lioness and babies!

Reading Update

• Look! Over there! In the sky!

“Hmm. The socks appear even when there aren’t any naughty boys around…” -Mayhem

And without Mayhem:

Ravelry project page, if you’re curious about the yarn, etc.

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