February 22, 2023
Needle Felting
Do you like poking things into other things until they ultimately make one big thing? We do, too! Needle felting is a fairly simple idea made into a fun hobby, and you don’t even need experience with knitting or crafts to take it up. Here’s the run-down:What is it? Transforming wool into 3D objects using a barbed needle.What do you need? Just three things: Roving wool, a felting needle (not a tapestry or sewing needle), and a felting surface like a sponge or foam pad.How do you do it? Tear off a piece of your roving yarn, roll it into a ball of the desired size, and place it over your felting surface. Use the needle to poke the ball in a straight up and down pattern until the fibers start to bond and the felt begins forming. NOTE: You’ll know you’re getting there when your ball has shrunk up a little.What can you make? Anything you’d like, but for beginners, we recommend something small that can fit into the palm of your hand, like a mushroom (consisting of two colors) or felted animals heads with less complex shapes (a bear head with one big circle as the head and two smaller circles for the ears.)What is the cost? If you’d prefer to buy everything at once, a typical needle felting kit that comes with a spectrum of roving wool colors averages around $18-$30 online. If you’d rather start with just the needed pieces, the individual needles are typically $3.50 for a pack of two, the roving yarn anywhere from $8-$15 depending on how much of it you purchase. If things are getting serious with you and your newly acquired hobby, consider buying a needle grip, average cost varying between $10-$25.
Did I mention my grandparents are creative people? The idea of birdhouse building comes from my grandpa, who built many birdhouses for my family over the years. My family still has a few scattered around the yard, though not many birds seem to prefer them to the surrounding patch of woods and swamp. However, these are a great idea for open yards, gardens, and urban environments where trees are not as plentiful.
Did you know that peppers are tropical plants? How about perennials? They’re a fruit, too, in case you were wondering. Fear not! We’ve got all the tips you need for growing bell peppers in our cold little climate, right here:
As winter winds down (or maybe, knowing our area, as first winter winds down and makes way for second winter), now is the time to get in the cold-weather sports you haven’t yet had time for. The Marinette Community REC Center’s ice-skating rink might be just the thing. It’s not strictly “outdoor fun,” as the arena is enclosed, but you’ll enjoy plenty of wintry air and exercise! 
Main Street Antique Mall (715/901-3315): This antique shop is located on Main Street, with eye-catching window displays that showcase vintage items, including a beautiful piano. There are aisles full of well-lit glass cases that contain endless shelves of valuables such as tableware, books, jewelry, handmade artwork, and collectables including cars, dolls, clothing, and sports cards. This store is also organized with booths that hold items such as glassware sets, rare vintage cameras, books, holiday decorations, and furniture such as couches, office chairs, tables, and dressers. In addition to the booths, there are pantry-like side rooms that have themes, for example, a room dedicated to Christmas and another filled with antique tools. I discovered a wall of clocks, which shows an example of the intriguing categorization and a reflection of the aesthetic of the store, as pictured here. Visit the Main Street Antique Mall Tuesday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. or 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturdays.
Allouez Cottage (920/639-6111): Located on South Webster Avenue, this antique shop has an upper and lower level and contains a wide variety of new and second-hand goods ranging from home and yard categories to fresh, locally made products. This store is organized by individual booths and rooms and areas. A large category displayed throughout the store is home décor, including signage, hand-painted stones, stained glass, vintage framed pictures, kitchen cookware, and glassware sets. Some rooms have their own theme: the garden room, the basement library, the toy area, and the winter and holiday section. In addition to the garden room, the outdoor theme is prevalent throughout the store with unique pots, lawn ornaments, and plant shelves. A great feature of this antique store is that it is age inclusive; for example: a toy section boasts Barbie dolls and action figures, vintage cars, and children’s books, and a significant section contains new and used Pokémon cards. Also, the area that displays the clothing and jewelry is categorized by type: there are racks of everyday clothing, a separate section for cold-weather accessories, and jewelry cases filled with rings, necklaces, and 
bracelets. There is a kitchen section that holds the locally made products: Amish Country popcorn, Maple Buzz maple syrup, Door County Coffee, and Artison
You may be wondering: What does a 1990 film called Troll 2 have to do with food? A lot, actually. The plot of Troll 2 revolves around a family on a vacation in a small country town called Nilbog. Yes, for you sharp-eyed readers, that’s “goblin” spelled backward. This is because Nilbog is a town run by goblins—goblins who feed unsuspecting victims delicious, slime-covered meals in order to turn them into plants. Incidentally, the goblins are vegetarians. I’m sure you can tell where this is going.
When you think of “so-bad-it’s-good” movies, what usually comes to mind? Typical responses I hear are something like Tommy Wiseau’s The Room, or maybe a hastily written Hallmark movie that trips and falls over every cliché in the book. To me, the de facto “so-bad-it’s-good” movie is 1985’s The Peanut Butter Solution. This Canadian children’s movie is nothing short of a fever dream and is definitely a movie you’d want to watch, and make fun of, with a couple of good friends.
Chainsaw Man feels like what would result if Quentin Tarantino made an anime, which is to say it’s violent, irreverent, and every character is the worst person you’ve ever met. It’s also a great time!
Shiki follows a rural village beset by a rash of mysterious deaths, with several shifts in perspective along its 22-episode run. Don’t let the silly character designs fool you; Shiki is one of the more reflective horror anime out there. What begins as a slow-burn mystery turns into a study of the human spirit when faced with something incomprehensible, to devastating results. Shiki is an underappreciated (and frankly underrated) gem. Also, few openings are cooler. Unfortunately, at the time of this writing, Shiki is unavailable for legal streaming in the United States—Funimation’s license for the series expired in June of 2018. Anyone wanna go splitskies on a box set? Only $150 on eBay!
One of my all-time favorite films, Perfect Blue is a 1997 psychological thriller directed by the masterful late Satoshi Kon. When Mima Kirigoe, a member of a Japanese pop-idol group, decides to quit the group in order to pursue a career in acting, she finds her sense of reality shaken as she is pursued by a stalker.
Come Home, Indio: Cartoonist Jim Terry, whose mother is Ho-Chunk and father is Irish American, shares his experiences as a mixed-race man who never quite felt like he belonged anywhere. The child of alcoholic parents, Terry went through his own struggles with alcoholism, and it wasn’t until he sought belonging in both his father’s and his mother’s communities, including attaining his “spiritual awakening” at the Dakota Access Pipeline protests in Standing Rock, South Dakota, that he went into recovery and found his place in the world.
This is How I Disappear: In this graphic novel, Mirion Malle tells the story of Clara, a millennial woman struggling with writer’s block, depression, a “useless” psychologist, and a demanding job in publishing. While Clara has no trouble advising her friends over their woes, she doesn’t do as well when it comes to asking them for help in return. Note: Contains mentions of sexual assault and self-harm, as well as depression. 
All Good People Here: In this New York Times bestseller, Ashley Flowers, host of the popular true-crime podcast Crime Junkies, tries her hand at fiction. All Good People Here follows big-city journalist Margot Davies as she returns home to Wakarusa, Indiana, to care for an uncle with dementia. When a five-year-old girl in the town goes missing, the similarities to the murder of six-year-old January Jacobs have Margot and the rest of the community recalling that cold case from long ago. Jacobs was the same age as Margot, who has never been able to shake the feeling that she could have been the one who was kidnapped 20 years prior.
In the small town of Uzumaki, Kirie Goshima and her boyfriend start noticing strange occurrences that all seem related to spirals, almost as if spiral shapes were somehow haunting the town or infecting things that get too close to them. A gripping tale, the manga Uzumaki is uniquely disconcerting with how it blends modern life with a surreal otherworld of disturbing impossibility, all visually striking thanks to Junji Ito’s unparalleled style. If you like horror but don’t interact much with Eastern media, give it a Google or pick up a copy! Or, if you have too many books and not enough time like me, be sure to keep an eye out for the animated adaptation currently being worked on. And in the meantime, you can check out an animated collection of shorter works recently released on Netflix: Junji Ito Maniac: Japanese Tales of the Macabre.
The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake follows six extraordinary magicians as they are selected to become part of the elite and top-secret Alexandrian Society, whose members consist of all the world’s most powerful magicians. Once a part of the Society, they will have access to all of the lost knowledge and arcane secrets of history, using them to gain wealth, status, and more magic.
Did you ever watch the 1980s classic The Breakfast Club and think it’d be better if it had some ghosts or demons in it? Probably not, but if that sounds intriguing, your wish is Sokoloff’s command. Her tragically underrated book The Harrowing features five students who—like the Brat Pack actors from the aforementioned ’80s classic film—each fit into a different stock-character category: the goth girl, the jock, the flirt, the brooding musician, and the “scholarly eccentric.” But instead of detention, all are simply stuck at Baird College for a variety of personal reasons while their peers go home for Thanksgiving break. They form a tentative friendship despite their differences, until a bunch of strange happenings have them suspecting each other of pulling a terrifying prank on the rest of the group. It’s either that, or Baird’s labyrinthine, storm-battered halls are actually haunted. It’s not a spoiler to reveal that it’s the latter. The secret as to what’s doing the haunting both terrified and delighted me, as it was a supernatural big bad that I hadn’t heard of until reading this book. Sokoloff, a former Hollywood screenwriter, spins an engrossing gothic tale with plenty of scares and a twist ending that would turn M. Night Shyamalan green with envy. The book had been out of print for a while, but Little, Brown imprint Piatkus books recently had the good sense to rerelease it both in paperback and ebook formats.