FiOS is in the House

Fault In Our Stars mobile

Can you feel it?

The excitement is palpable. Like locker room smell. Only pleasant. It's composed of a combination of adolescent hormonal reactions and idle time mixed with cute actors and a ridiculously fabulous book by Sir John Green. Only he hasn't been knighted yet.

Fault In Our Stars arrives in theaters June 6th. And even though it's still April, I'm in full FiOS mode. It's what happens to me when kids get this jazzed about a book. Or should I say a book I'm actually that jazzed about too.

And this book is so full of goodness. Hazel and Augustus and their friends and family. The quotable dialogue that from any other author would come across as obnoxious and the first thing you'd do after you rolled your eyes would be to say, "teens don't talk like that." And they don't. But John Green teens do and they're fabulous at it. It has travel and romance and good times and a lot of well-earned pathos.

I'm brimming with FiOS goodness. For the somewhat longest time I was thinking and thinking what I'm going to do to celebrate the occasion of the film's release. I was scrounging on Pinterest for FiOS crafts but nothing spoke to me. I'd pinned FiOS crafts and FiOS quotes (of which there are so so many and so so many people who post them). And then, like lightning, I happened to pin a random Summer Reading Club idea for DIY mobiles right next to a FiOS necklace project. (Note to Self and Others: boys probably don't want to make jewelry crafts).

And then it hit me. And there you have it. My super-fantastic Fault In Our Stars Quote Mobile. I used the same black and white clouds motif, taking quotes I liked best, and strung them onto pencils wrapped in that iconic color of blue seen on the cover of the book. And voila!

Actually, eventual voila! Because first I started a mobile that was chock full of tape and looked like it. So my voila was compounded exponentially by personal grit and determination, which are qualities I don't always possess in the crafting department.

Not only was I a little bit high on myself for the rest of the day. But not a few hours after hanging my mobile in the library, a squealing teen patron approached me about it. I told her that while she couldn't take it when I was done with it, she was welcome to come to my program and make her own!

More on my highly anticipated FiOS party to come!




Pause- It's Summer Reading Time!

Keyboard Letter Macrame Bracelet

PAUSE 2 READ is the theme of Los Angeles Public Library's Teen Summer Reading Club for 2014.

How did such a clever theme emerge, you might be biting your nails to know?

Like many things in many a library system, the teen department is but an afterthought of the children's department. And this case is no exception. The children's Summer Reading Club theme being PAWS TO READ. Awww. Cute, right?

However in this instance, I'm cool with it. There's so much to riff on when it comes to pausing. You could go in the direction of technology and music or movies. Or go the other way, in terms of stopping whatever you're doing to reflect or contemplate or enjoy the present. And getting jazzed for eight weeks of consistent programming, a luxury at my branch where I ordinarily plan but one a month, I'm in full kick-ass crafting mode.

One of my first creations: the Keyboard Letter Macrame Bracelet.

Requires cobbling together and busting up at least three or more old keyboards. Luckily the keys are easy to pop out once you open it up. It's the affixing onto a bracelet that will be a challenge, depending on how the keys affix themselves. In this case, the keys had tiny openings obstructed by a piece of plastic I had to split open with scissors. Once I did that, I could macrame my heart out in any combination of letters I so chose. Just had to super glue the macrame cord into the holes behind the keys at the end and. Voila.

Pretty kick-ass, don't you think?