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Archive for the ‘Pencil’ Category

Last weekend, K. and I had a great time trying out shrinky dinks. I did the Hypnotoad – All glory to the Hypnotoad – from Futurama and Blinky, the 3 eyed fish from The Simpsons, who lives in the lake behind the nuclear power plant. K. did the Triforce symbol from Zelda and something, which I can’t remember from some other video game. It was such fun! Here are some pics:

Hypnotoad in progress

We used a pencil to draw a draft of the outlines before we did them in more detail with a very fine black marker. Afterwards we colored everything with simple colored pencils. The hole on the top of each we did with an ordinary hole puncher. I was little worried that the holes might be too large, but it shrank SO much, that it’s now the perfect size to draw a string through them.

Here are our shrinky dinks right before shrinking. I put a 1 Euro coin next to them for reverence.

Before shrinking…

And here they are after shrinking. They shrank so much that all of them are really tiny now, especially Blinky.

…and after shrinking!

Doing them was fast and real fun. Oh and I just love how they turned out. 😀

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Twilight

My attempt to copy the from cover of the "Twilight" book

My attempt to copy the from cover of the "Twilight" book

A couple of months ago I read all four books of the Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer. Actually there was quite a hype made around those books and especially the movie of the first one. Usually if a book is that much pushed it can only mean two things. Either its very bad and needs a lot of publicity to get it sold (which it mostly the case in my opinion) or it really is great and deserves to be read! (which is the exception to the rule!)

As luck had it, I was able to buy all four of them really cheap and at once started to read.

<Sorry folks better not read any further from here if you haven’t read them yet! This might contain a few spoilers!>

The first book called “Twilight” starts out quite nicely. Painting the scene of a small rainy town, which appears to be quite the perfect setting for vampires. The main character Bella Swan moves there to live with her father, as her mother is getting married and she doesn’t want to live with her and her new husband… Anyway Bella starts school and there is this strange guy and of course she falls in love. But he is distant and there is something dangerous but very fascinating about him….

Until then the book really is good. But that’s where the whining starts and it hardly lets off till the end. If you look at the book critically nothing happens until the very end, when Bella is nearly killed by another vampire and gets rescued by her heroic Edward (This part is great put it’s really short compared to all the whining and mooning after him)!

That’s where the first book ends and the others start off. I won’t summarize each of them. I’ll only say that the story gets lots more interesting with the second and third book. It’s here that werewolves (bid surprise ;)) enter the scene!

In the fourth the whole clan of the vampires, whose ranks Bella has joined by now is threatened by an opposing very mighty clan of Italian vampires. The author really did a nice job building up towards the climax with the two parties facing each other. And the werewolves finally decide to join the ranks of the “good vegetetarian” vampires (Btw. the Cullen’s, the good ones, only drink animal blood instead of human blood). But just as you get ready for a bit of fighting and bloodshed, the whole thing gets resolved in a totally unbloody sort of way. Bella more or less suddenly developes an amazing gift and the others flee… (In my opinion a bit of fighting would not have hurt the book at all, as this peaceful end not only makes the oposing vampires look pathetic, it too leaves the reader quite unsatisfied!)

<From here it’s ok to read again… done with the Spoilers>

In spite of all my critcism I rather liked the books! The books make an interesting and easy reading (especially the last 3). Besides it really is a nice story, even if there is lots of whining (especially in the first book)!

For everybody who is interested now, here is the full summary.

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Handle with care

Handle with care

“Handle with Care” is a book written by Jodi Picoult, who currently is one of my favorite authors. This book is about Willow, who was born with osteogenesis imperfecta also known as brittle bone disease. When her parents face finacial ruin they consider sueing for wrongful birth. But to complicate matters further, the doctor they are about to sue is the best friend of Willows mother…

The book is wonderfully written, with lots of unexpected twists and turns. What really makes it special, is that the different main characters, such as Willow’ parents and her sister but also the doctor and the lawyer are telling part of the story. (… and infusing their very personal opinions and views.)

I enjoyed reading the book immensely, in spite of the rather unexpected ending (… which I won’t give away in case somebody still hasn’t read it ;))

Anyway the picture, which I added to this post, I my version of the book cover! (In case anybody wonders how the original looks like, I linked a picture of it to my drawing!)

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