Odd Thomas

Ack!!  I've been working on this review for a month now, and I'm finally putting it up, I can't believe it's been this long!!

I got 'Odd Thomas' for Christmas, and I was going to save it for a new reading list, but I was so excited by what Monica at Spilled Ink and my Grandmother (who's so hip and up-to-date that she reads novels like Odd Thomas) have been saying about the Odd Thomas books that I told myself I would just read the first couple of chapters and that's it.  Yeah.  Well, that did NOT go as planned.

I couldn't put the book down!!

Odd Thomas felt fast paced, but it really wasn't.  To put it into perspective, the book is 500 pages, and the book covers a time span of 48 hours.

Yeah. 

Even though Koontz takes 500 pages to cover a 2 day timespan, the book doesn't feel slow at all.  The book feels super fast-paced, and you'll find yourself saying 'Just one more chapter!' and then 10 chapters later, 'I should probably stop now.'

I really like most of the characters in this book.  Odd is just so sweet, and I love his attitude towards everyone and everything.  I like how he calls people he respects 'Sir' or 'Ma'am' even if he is really close to them, like Ozzie.  My view on Stormy Llewllyn, Odd's 'best girl' as he calls her, is kind of mixed.  At the beginning I just really didn't like her, she was sooo sarcastic, and I thought sometimes she was bit mean to Odd.  Towards the end she grew on me more, and I was able to really see something in her relationship with Odd.  She still isn't my favorite character in the book, but my appreciation of her character has grown.

One thing I really love about this book is the Catholic element.  It's really awesome to see that an author can write a book with Catholic elements, and the book (and the author) can still be a success!  Of course, the book isn't a Catholicism-in-your-face type of book, and the good points with the Catholicism are very much balanced out by all the ugliness that Odd Thomas encounters throughout his adventures.

A word of warning, this book contains some mature content, a LOT of scary, gross, guy-dead-in-the-bathtub moments, and some language.  Definitely don't let a 10-year-old read this.

All things considered, this is an awesome book, you need to acquire it now if you don't already have it.  It will keep you on edge the whole time, and it has quite a few twists and turns along the way.

Stocking Update: Week 1

First week of Stocking updates!  Yay!

So I started the stocking like, two weeks ago, and normally the only chance I get to work on it is on the weekends, and at The Needle Club (a girl's crafty group where I live).  So I don't normally get a lot done.  If it was my younger sister who is crazy about crafts and will sew and crochet all day long, she'd have it done by now.  But I don't have the luxury of that much time :P

Oh yes, and please excuse the low quality of some of the pictures.

Before I started taking photos of this project I finished the stocking front, which was mostly a lot of sequins and embroidery.

Pretty snowflakes!

Then the fun stuff started!!  The snowman has, well, a snowman butt bottom, so I sequined it and appliqued (fancy for sewing it onto the main body of the stocking) it, and it actually turned out pretty nice.  I had some problems with sequins that wanted to keep falling off, but it looks pretty nice now.

Then I did the snowman arms and mittens.  The arms were pretty easy, just sequin, stuff, and applique.

I never actually got a picture of the arm by itself.  Woops

Then came the mittens.  There's not one, not two, but THREE pieces to the mittens.  And how they were supposed to go on was kind of confusing.  And never mind all that, I also had to have my first experiment and embroidery!!!  O.o  And, yeah, that didn't turn out too well.  I think one of the lines turned out pretty well, but the rest were a mess.

They don't look terrible in this picture, but trust me, they are worse in real life.

I've been told that practice makes perfect, but, uh, I'm not sure I'll ever get anywhere near perfect.

I finally figured out how to put the finger ends of the mittens on, and it turns out I'm not supposed to sew all the way around the edge of the fingers when you applique the mitten fingers on, so that way the snowman can hold his lights.  Yeah........

But all turned out well, and I'm working on sequinning the snowman middle, so that should be on by next week!  But for now, there are two floating snowman arms.........  Hey, if I could I would put the head on next and then we could have a floating snoman snowman head too!

For some reason this reminds me of the Cheshire Cat.....

Experiment Post: Intro

Okay, so I've decided to start a, uh, what should I call this?  An Update Series?  How about I just give background information and maybe it will explain itself.
I'm making a Christmas stocking for my youngest brother, who isn't born yet, but will be in January.  We'll call him Peanut :) It's a tradition in our family (has been for like, almost three generations) to make each other's Christmas stockings, so I have the privilege of making Peanut's stocking!  I'll post updates here every Saturday.  I'll include some pictures and an explanation of my adventures while making the stocking.  Trust me, it gets pretty crazy sometimes, and all I'm doing is making a stocking!!
This is the stocking I'm making:

Pretty cute right?  And simple, which I like because it means less work!  Well, actually I wish there was more detail, because then there would be more fun.
I already started the stocking before I decided to do this, but I haven't gotten too far, so nobody's missed much :)
I'll start posting updates every Saturday, so look out for my first post tomorrow!