Valentine's Day Cards

 There are several styles of cards I enjoy making.  Some including stamping, watercolor, die cutting, foiling, etc.  Sometimes I enjoy what I will call paper crafting.  It involve using patterned paper and ephemera (usually die cut piece I receive).  The Valentines Day cards I made this year involved using Tim Holtz Palette Ephemera pack that was included in the February card kit.  I was very much inspired by Vicky Papaioannou's video.  

February Book Wrap-up

 

Take Me - I'm Cozy

 We attended a concert of the West Virginia Symphony last Saturday evening at the Clay Center for the Arts and Sciences.  My attention was caught by the yarn b0mbing of the sculpture in the area outside the Center.  Be sure and read the message in the last picture of what is pinned to the scarves..

Summary of January 2025 Reading

 

20th Anniversary

 I am shocked and excited to say that today is the 20th anniversary of this blog.  It all started on January 31, 2005 with this post:

I've always thought that this would be a strange thing to do -- an online journal -- blog sounds so -- well -- yucky. I've seen so many interesting blogs lately concerning knitting, so I thought that I would give it a try.

I am a multi-tasking kind of individual. I am a mom -- I have two sons -- an eleven year old and an eight year old. I am a wife, a daughter... I am a research associate in endocrinology. I volunteer at my church as the chairman of our Nurture Committee.

I also am creative -- that is, I like to create. My current hobby is knitting. On my needles right now are two scarves. Both are being knitted in farrow rib using Encore bulky yarn -- 75% acrylic and 25% wool. They are for my two sons. One is red and black; the other is forest green and black. I must finish them at the same time in order to please both sons. :)

You can tell from the post that the blog began as a Knitting Blog, and was in fact only about knitting. There were some "life" posts, but it was mainly knitting.  In those 20 years, I've posted 359 times (including this post). 

A few things have happened on the blog since then.

• I learned how to add images to posts.  At the beginning, I was posting the images as separate posts.  
• I was a part of a blog ring, but those have gone away.
• I changed the template to this kind of dreamy blue one with a sailboat you almost can't see.
• As my hobbies expanded, I changed the name to Sandpiper Creates (although the address has always been mom4gj.blogspot.com).
• The new template gave me the ability to add pages, so there is a page for each type of hobby and there is a library page that is linked from my other blog.
• I started a second blog for faith posts (sandpipersthoughts.blogspot.com).
• I am still a mom - but the sons are men now.  I'm still a wife, but our marriage is older (and still wonderful). I work at a different place doing a completely different job; I've been there 16 years.
• There have been some years that I didn't post much, and two years (2007 and 2008) where there were no posts. I made a decision along the way that I wanted to keep the blog up and running. My goal now is two posts a month, which is manageable.  Expect that same schedule this year.

So, here we go, into year 21, full of creativity and life.   

Reading Stats 2024

 For the past few years, I have shared my reading stats.  Maybe it makes me a little nerdy - but I'm not.  I'm very nerdy, and I like statistics.  So here we go for 2024. 

I read a total of 67 books in 2024.  This compares to 56 books in 2021, 35 in 2022 and 52 in 2023.  This is higher than any of the previous years that I have tracked.  I'm not sure why. I seemed to have read more at the end of the year:

The graph above is from my Story Graph account - an account I started in 2024 for its statistical tracking.

Here are how the stats worked out:

Question 1: What was the format of the book?  Hard copy? Kindle? Audiobook?  Audiobook is the winner, at 80%.  I read a lot as I drive to work, using audiobooks, so this is not surprising. I started reading from my Kindle more at the end of the year, using a 5% of the book per day goal.  Amazingly enough, when you read a book, you eventually finish it.  :-)

Question 2: Had I read the book before?  Again this year, to make sure I didn't get in a rut of only re-reading books, I set a goal of at least 30% new books. 52% were new books to me.  This is down from last year, but I'm OK with that.

Question 3: What was the genre of the books I read?    The winner this year was romance, at 36%. followed by fantasy at 25%.  Last year's  "winner" was mystery.  Another one of my goals for 2024 was to read at least 4 "spiritual development" books.  I read 6; that category came in at 9% .

Question 4: When were the books published?  39% of the books I read were published between 2020 and 2024; close behind that was 30% of the books from 2010-2019. 

Question 5: I gave each book a star rating of 1-5.  I gave each star rating a definition (which is too much stuff to share in this post) - fiction and non-fiction had different rating definitions.  My average rating was 4.0.  My lowest rating was 1.5, and the highest was 5.  

This is my Goodreads profile if you are interested in seeing what I've read.  This page is my Blog Library.  I list faith books here (or other books I've blogged about) with links to the posts.

Reading Goals for 2025

On September 8 I wrote about my 2024 reading goals.  While you can see from that post that I have a few concerns about setting reading goals, I do like having them overall, and want to set some for 2025.  

1. Read 50 books.  So far this year (as of December 19), I've read 64 books.  I've already met the 50 book goal, but 64 books seems like an anomaly compared to previous years.  I'm going to keep the number at 50 for 2025.
2. Read 18,000 pages. My average book size this year was 360 pages.  If I read 50 books, that will be 18,000 pages.  Number of pages is a new goal for me.  I'm able to do it because I have created a Story Graph account.  Story Graph will convert audiobooks to number of pages.  
3. Read at least four Spiritual Development books. 
4. Read at least 30% new books.  As of today, 53% of the books I have read have been new to me.  I like re-reads, but I don't want to only re-read.  Hence this goal.

This isn't a reading goal, but I also want to revamp how I track my reading in my bullet journal and in my reading journal, so I'm giving that some thought. 

I'm keeping updated accounts in both Good Reads and Story Graph.  So far that hasn't proven to be an issue at all. I like what each one provides even though at first blush it might seem duplicative. 

I love data!

By the way, this is an image from UnSplash of someone else's library. Do you love to look at pictures of wonderful libraries?  I do.