straycat911

I'm a photographer and book editor and my passions are for words, images, and travel. I love language (I'm a grammar fiend and a great quote or twist of phrase is one of my favourite things) and books and animals. I support and volunteer with animal rescue organizations, and my dog is a rescue. I've recently become involved in dog agility, and I'm excited to see where my efforts lead -- so far my dog is doing pretty well! I speak English, French, and Latin. I collect bookmarks, drink a lot of tea, and am trying to figure out where my creative passions lie. I'm very interested in altered books, book art, bookbinding, and altered art in general, but I'm just beginning to explore these areas. I'm also learning to crochet and can't wait to start making amigurumi critters. I'm changing a lot of things about my life right now, including exploring new creative pursuits. If you're interested, I'm tracking this journey on my blog (see link at top). I recently moved to Kingston, Ontario, Canada, with my husband and our large orange dog.

I love, love, LOVE to travel and have been lucky enough to visit every continent except for South America and Antarctica. This past spring I visited Spain and Morocco. I'm currently planning a trip to the Northwest Territories to visit a friend of mine who is working as a nurse in the town of Inuvik.

I enjoy cooking, and use my slow-cooker and bread machine regularly. I generally cook very healthy food -- I'm always on the lookout for new and interesting salad recipes -- but I also love to make elaborate desserts, usually garnished with berries or dark chocolate shavings!

I collect bookmarks of all kinds -- I rotate my bookmarks by switching to a new one every time I start a new book. My friends and family bring me back bookmarks when they travel, and I also love homemade bookmarks. If you're sending me a bookmark, I would appreciate if you could put your name (or a nickname) and city or town on it somewhere (most people put it on the back) so I know where it came from! Thank you!

I read a lot. I always have a few books on the go and I'll read just about anything. I have very eclectic tastes, and my favourite authors -- Charles Dickens and Stephen King -- might seem a bit contradictory, but Dickens is a master of amazing phrasing and King is a master of plot and character, so I think they complement each other rather well! I enjoy reading all kinds of fiction, travel memoirs (and other memoirs), anything to do with history or language, graphic novels, and ... oh, just about anything. A list of other favourite authors would be quite long, but a few names spring to mind: Michael Chabon, Rudyard Kipling, Neil Gaiman, Wally Lamb, Robert Graves.

I love old movies (Alfred Hitchcock, Billy Wilder, film noirs), and I'm a big zombie movie fan (Romero movies are my favourites, especially the original Dawn of the Dead). Some other films I've really enjoyed are Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Man Who Wasn't There, and The Power of One. I like watching kids' movies when I'm sick or feeling down, and my favourite is Labyrinth.

I don't really watch much TV. I do like Scrubs and Arrested Development, though, and I've recently been watching Glee and Dexter.

I like light green, robin's-egg blue, and chocolate brown. But I like most colours, really! Not a big pink fan, although I think light pink looks nice with a dark brown. Orange is a very happy colour for me.

Board games, zombies, labels, bookmarks, book plates, old books, bookcrossing, postcrossing, amigurumi, cooking and baking, handmade or otherwise beautiful paper (I love Japanese paper), loose-leaf tea, red wine, dark chocolate, spicy food, retro stuff (especially anything from the forties or fifties), old maps and globes, vintage travel stuff, Archie comics, vintage Nintendo and Mario Brothers stuff, healthy eating, BBC Radio, Freddie Mercury, Edward Gorey, Ogden Nash, Roald Dahl, Quentin Blake, woodcuts and woodcut-style art, screen-printing, scuba diving, downhill skiing, ballroom dancing, grammar, big dogs, hedgehogs, monkeys, cows, llamas, penguins, socks with animals or stripes on them, a good turn of phrase, swirls, polka dots, gerbera daisies, sunflowers, musicals, classical (Greek and Roman) history, old typewriters, blank notebooks.

I never flake on swaps, and I always let my partners know if there's a chance I'll be late! If you don't receive something from me that you were expecting, please let me know so that I can resend.