The Giddy Globe

Here is another really funny and super-awesome LibriVox audiobook! Neeru discovered and BCed it, while I did the prooflistening.

A perfect day in London

It’s called the “Giddy Globe” and was written by Oliver Herford. Actually it’s a geography book, but it’s hilarious. Best read along with the Project Gutenberg text. The pictures are just too good to miss.

Here is a short summary:

Is there a genre called FUN? Yes, and this is it! Insanely humorous geography that will have you rolling on the floor laughing with your sides hurting. (Summary by Neeru)

Oh and here is another expample taken from the book:

The Friendly Cow. From an instantaneous photograph of animal cracker. Owing to the high price of living the cow was partially eaten by the author before the photograph could be taken.

To be sure the Earth produces the Tobacco Plant, and many other things that we classify among the needs of Man, including the “Friendly Cow”—

She walks among the flowers sweet
And chews and chews and chews,
And turns them into friendly meat,
And pleasant boots and shoes.

So, listen! It’s fun!

Der kleine Lord (Little Lord Fauntleroy)

Last week I finally finished my German Solo. It’s Frances Hodgson Burnett’s “Der kleine Lord“, which in the orginal is called “Little Lord Fauntleroy”. (click booktitle for etext) Here is a short summary:

Der kleine Lord

Cedric Errol, ein kleiner Junge aus New York, wird von seinem kaltherzigen englischen Großvater, dem Earl of Dorincourt, trotz der standeswidrigen Ehe seines verstorbenen Vaters, als einziger Nachfolger für den Grafentitel bei sich aufgenommen und aufgezogen. Seine Mutter, eine bürgerliche Näherin, darf dasAnwesen aufgrund von Voreingenommenheit und Standesdünkel des Earls nicht betreten.
Nach und nach aber schafft es Cedric, mit seiner freundlichen Art das Herz des Großvaters zu gewinnen…
(Zusammenfassung von Wikipedia und Elli)

I hope you’ll enjoy the listening experience as much as I did reading the book. Here it is: DER KLEINE LORD

I started this Solo way back in May 2009 (not even a month after joining LibriVox) and it’s very special to me.  It more of less chronicials my time spent recording for LibriVox almost from the day I joined until now. In the course of this solo project:

1. I completely changed my reading style (and hopefully improved it too)

2. I got a fancy new mic (which brought a huge number of new difficulties… will blog about it some time soon)

3. changed my recording software (from Audacity 1.2.6 to Audacity 1.3.7.)

4. developed editing skills (at least I think I did)

5. discovered noisecleaning (acutally I changed headphones and the new ones all of a sudden made me realize the awful hum my computer was producing)

6. completely changed my method of levelling and amplifying

7. and did my very first attempt at doing different voices (I hope I managed to keep them consistant)

I could list many more things, but I think that’s enough!  So please forgive slight inconsistancies in qualitly, reading style… and just enjoy yourselves! (In case you like F. H. Burnett, there are several other books by her in the LV Catalog)

Mr. Snow 2010 ;)

We’ve had lots and lots of snow over the last few weeks, but it almost always melted the moment it touched the earth. (I just love it when it snows…. except when I have to get up extra early to remove it ) But this weekend it didn’t melt and covered everything in a lovely thick blanket! (YAY) And so I used to opportunity to fool around a little.

Let me introduce you to Mr. Snow 2010:

Mr. Snow 2010

And here is Mr. Snow 2010 modeling an “old” hat. (which in my opinion makes him look incredibly like my grandpa! )

Mr. Snow with Hat

Btw. I’m about to finish one of my current solo recordings for LibriVox.org. But I’ll blog about that seperately!

A little princess in graphite

When looking through my folder of drawings I discovered that I did the same motive in graphite too. So here it is:

Drawing with a graphite pencil

Besides this being what I consider a “bad” drawing…. I’ve aged Sarah considerably and  if you look closely you can see that I’ve given her a very straight profile with a rather strong jaw (almost bordering on a mandibular prognatism)… I didn’t not like drawing with graphite much. So far charcoal is my fav., even though I’m still in the testing phase! 

Charcoal pencils

After a really long pause of practically drawing nothing, I really started to feel like doing it again last week. But, alas I could no longer find my old, much beloved drawing pencil. (Actually it’s a just an ordinary one… something you get everywhere. But somehow this one  was special and  just perfect for drawing.)

So I’ve treated myself to my first real set of charcoal pencils. They are super awesome and came with a lot of additional things (some of which I’ve never seen before… but I guess YouTube will soon remedy that )

Anyway here is something I’ve done about a year ago, with my old drawing pencil:

Drawing with ordinary pencil

And here is the same motive drawn with the new charcoal ones. I love the outcome, though it’s just a rough draft:

Drawing with charcoal pencil

In case you are wondering, the original I’ve copied is the cover of F. H. Burnett’s “A little princess“. I’ve somewhat aged Sarah, but well I think there still is a fair likeness.

(Sorry for the poor pic quality… I’ve just done a quick iphone shot of the. Somehow it’s really difficult to get them digitalized without altering them completely. )

Books I’ve read 2009

So here is what I’ve read in 2009…. as far as I’ve managed to keep track of things, that is. Joining the One Book A Week Club at LibriVox helped a great deal…:

1. Deeper by Jeff Long: Good but with a rather strange ending
2. Just another kid by Torey Hayden: interesting
3. Twilight children by Torey Hayden: interesting but it’s always the same
4. Brisingr by Christopher Paolini: Great, much better than Eldest
5. Heartstopper by Joy Fielding: good
6. Glück ich sehe dich anders by Melanie Ahrens: didn’t like that one, too depressing
7. Spuren im Schnee by Julie Hill: didn’t like that one either
8. Twilight by Stephanie Meyer: more or less ok, but not nearly as good as I would have expected given the hype
9. New Moon by Stephanie Meyer: liked that one better than Twilight (finally the story starts to get interesting)
10. Eclipse by Stephanie Meyer: ok too
11. Breaking dawn by Stephanie Meyer: ok too
12. Change of Heart by Jodi Picoult: Great, one of my favs
13. Copycat by Gillian White: Great, must have read it a 100 times
14. The probable Future by Alice Hoffman: Great but a little strange (will def. reread it some time)
15. Tintenblut by Cornelia Funke: Great, one of my favs
16. Tintenherz by Cornelia Funke: Great, one of my favs
17. Tintentod by Cornelia Funke: Great, one of my favs
18. A thousand splendid suns by Khaled Hosseini: Good
19. Clover by Susan Coolidge: love it
20. Thrid Degree by Greg Iles: great book, author is one of my favs.
21. What happened to Nancy by anonymus: ok
22. Miriam’s song by Miriam Mathabane als told to Mark Mathabane: good
23. Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane: great
24. Where are you now? by Mary Higgins Clark: good, author is one of my favs.
25. Host by Stephanie Meyer: never finished reading that one, the Twilight series loads (!) better, but I didnt get through the first couple of pages
26. Der kleine Lord by F. H. Burnett: love it (recording it as a solo, but haven’t quite finished it yet)
27. In the High Valley by Susan Coolidge: love it (my first finished solo)
28. Me&Emma by Elizabeth Flock: awesome
29. -32. A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin: all time fav (i’m more or less reading it on and off constantly)
33. Alice’s Abenteuer im Wunderland by Lewis Carroll: loved it (duet with Kara)

…kinda lost track after that.

There are loads and loads more (and not even counting all that I’ve listened to). But I guess I’ve listed the most important!

I’m always on the lookout for good new (or old ) books to read! So if you’ve suggestions, they are always welcome!

What Katy did next

"SHE WAS HAVING THE MEASLES ON THE BACK SHELF OF THE CLOSET, YOU KNOW"

Another of my BCing projects has made it into the LibriVox Catalog a couple of days ago! (YAY!) The funny thing is, that it got cataloged much later than some of my others, though it was the first one I ever started! (Soooo please be kind, if there are a couple of mistakes still in it!)

“What Katy did next” is the third book of the famous “What Katy did” series by Susan Coolidge. If you’ve been following my blog, you’ve probably noticed that I’m quite fond of the books… and that I’ve read the last one “In the High Valley” as a solo. Now only “Clover“, which is the fourth is missing before the whole series is complete!!! (Ya, I’m still working on that one, but it’s taking longer than expected… too much work and too little time to record/edit…)

Anyway here is a really short summary:

KATY WAS FEEDING GRETCHEN OUT OF A BIG BOWL FULL OF BREAD AND MILK

What Katy did next is a lovely book about the grown up Katy, traveling all through Europe with Mrs. Ashe and her daughter Amy. On her journey Katy meets many charming people and encounters very different ways of life…. also there is a big surprise in store for you! So here it is: WHAT KATY DID NEXT

Listen! …and meet again with Katy, her loving family, vivacious Rose Red, funny little Amy, pretty Lilly and all the others!

Just a short note at the end: A special thanks so Lucy for MCing!

And of course thanks to everybody else too! Great job, all of you! *wild cheering*

Just another pair of odd socks ;)

Hey, everybody! Sorry to blog about my pathetic knitting yet again. But I just need to show off a little. So here is my second pair of really weird socks:

My second pair of odd self knit socks

And another pic of me wearing them:

Odd socks

So, done showing off. I promise to blog about something completely different next time!

Woes of a first time knitter and another awesome podcast

My cute pink socks (ya, I’m talking of the oddly colored ones I did myself ), of which I’m still incredibly proud, have decided to be come larger and larger and larger… Don’t ask me what I did wrong, but they are getting bigger by the minute. At first they were a wee bit too tight, but now they are huuuuuuuuuuuge… but they are still really comfortable, though they no longer look stylish (let’s not go into defining that word… but what else would I say abt. them )

I’ll post a pic next time with one of them in comparison to one of my normal ones! It’s well worth seeing.

Something completely different now. There is another super awesome LibriVox Community Podcast #109 out. Neeru and Dii did the hosting this time. The podcast is about the past year and everything we hope to achieve next year. Also it’s got a couple of segements from 2009ers talking about their achievements (Me included of course, though Neeru read it out for me…. sore throat, yet AGAIN)!

Anyway, have fun listening!

Odd socks and a happy New Year

Proudly presenting (as promised a couple of blogposts earlier) my very odd, really colorful and wonderfully weird pair of self knit socks:

My very first pair of oddly colorful self knit socks

And here is a picture of my modeling them. It took me quite some time to get them into the right light! (Well turn my feet in a way as to make the mistakes less visible. ). Btw. I’m sitting on the kitchen floor… best color for a nice contrast and best light!

Me, sitting on the kitchen floor modeling my socks

Ok, done showing off! A very Happy New Year, Everybody!