The Poisoner by Stephen Bates Book Review

 I decided that it would be fun to have a record of the various books that I am reading, and since I just finished this one, I wanted to review it while still fresh on my mind.

The Poisoner - the Life and Crime of Victorian England's Most Notorious Doctor - by Stephen Bates

This book had everything it needed to catch my attention and pique my interest. Poisoner? Victorian England? And add to it a delightfully ghoulish cover, I was hooked. I didn't know anything about William Palmer - who is the subject of this book. 

The book is 318 pages long and packed with information regarding the Palmer case. The author doesn't waste a single paragraph. This book is not a hard read - its written well, in an organized and easy to follow manner. But its not a book you can read in a borderline stupor to simply pass the time. No, you have to pay attention. You can't zone out for a minute, or a vital piece of information might be missed. I did at times find it a little repetitive - but, it is easily forgiven when you understand the method in which the book is written.

Victorian England's most notorious Doctor was William Palmer. His crimes came about in an era where newspapers - thanks to a recent removal of tax on them - hit a new high of popularity and accessibility - and therefore, people were thirsty for sensationalism. And a crime involving poison - and a new poison in Strychnine at that - and a doctor, was just the thing to cause a national stir wild enough that even the Queen herself followed the news. In order to understand this case and what it meant to the public, the author sought to recreate the era for you in the areas that mattered in relation to this case - horse racing, the press, even how the law itself was practiced - all to give you a very real and living picture of life in mid Victorian England.

In this sense, the book almost serves as a history lessen in and of itself. I learned a great deal. Did I necessarily care about all of it? No,(I admit to skipping the last few pages about horse racing.) I wouldn't have minded a little less information in some sections. It sometimes felt like information overload - so don't read it when you are really tired! 

But, when you get to the end, it all comes together so well, I was highly appreciative of the amount of information given. The author successfully brings to life the many different characters involved with this whole ordeal - before, during and even after the trial. You get such a strong sense of who these men were, and the role each one played, be it for better or worse. You get to witness the trial itself - the poor handling by the defense and the masterful precision of the prosecution. You get to read the witness testimonies and see how they were examined and cross examined. Or not. It is a really fascinating view into the Victorian courtroom. And one more point that I want to point out - the author keeps a very neutral attitude about the controversial trial and the character of William Palmer himself. Was he indeed the master of poisons, the cunning, evil serial killer that he was painted out to be? Or a desperate man painted into a corner through bad judgment and a poor moral compass? Did he or did he not poison his victim - was there more than one? And did he use strychnine like the prosecution believed? Read the book and form your own opinion!

Happy Easter 2021!

 It's technically not quite Easter yet but since we did our celebration on Friday, the holiday is pretty much over for me. Friday was pretty fun. I swapped my normal Friday activities with Sunday's which gave me the day to just chill and enjoy the festivities. We did gifts this year. I got an adorable Calico Critter baby bunny in a basket Easter with cute little Eastery accessories that I wanted really badly. 

I still have not yet opened my Critter set. It's so cute I almost hate to take it out of the box. Once I do that it's going to have to be stored away so that I don't lose any of the pieces. But I also can't wait to play with those little eggs that the baby bunny comes with! :D Too, too cute. I will save this for a rainy day, I think. 

Later on in the afternoon, we dyed Easter eggs! I haven't dyed eggs in years, so this was a lot of fun. We just got the plain dye this time, no fancy stuff. I think the plain boring dyes can be more fun in some ways as it is a lot of fun to dip eggs from one dye into the next to mix it up and create some really cool colors. I managed to dye one of my eggs an olive green! I'll have to take pics of them really soon. There is no room in the fridge for them so they will be food for wild animals pretty soon. I am always sad to throw out my Easter eggs. While I don't get quite as attached to them as I do my pumpkins every year, it's still sad. Silly maybe, but I can't help it. 

Fun fact - you can bake brownies using PEEPs as a sweetener. We ended up with several packages after a mix up of who loves which candies, so I decided that I wanted to experiment and see if I could make a batch of brownies with no sugar and just melt these nasty mothers (that nobody wanted to eat) down to sweeten the brownies with.  My thought was to melt them down via a double boiler and then add them into the dry ingredients. I added some (almond) milk into the bowl to encourage the melting action that showed no signs of happening the first several minutes of this experiment. I was thinking that I might have to scrap this whole thing - I mean,  those things could outlast the apocalypse! After awhile though, they began to soften and turn into a sticky, sweet, bubbling mix of goo. I used peanut butter instead of regular butter, and I added that to this bubbling mixture so that it would melt. I honestly added a little too much, and it was the all natural ground up at the local health food kind, and therefore, I ended up adding just a pinch more sugar to counter balance the lack of sweetness that a Jiffy peanut butter would not have had. Overall, they turned out pretty good. Maybe a little bitter, which likely came from the coffee that got spilled in the batter. But not bad, considering I just threw ingredients together and hoped for the best. I've got 2 more boxes of PEEPs to melt down and eviscerate so next time I will make some frosting to accompany the next batch of brownies I make. :) That was fun. It was fun to experiment to see what could be done. This has probably already been done, but given how much Google sucks any more as a search engine, I couldn't find any recipes that used melted down PEEPs as a sweetener. 

Over all, it was a good holiday that ended with eating some of the yummiest pizza that I have made in awhile. I topped it with finely chopped leftover London Broil, red pepper, tomato and green olives. Delicious! 

Of Winter Storms and BJD wigs

 So this has been quite a week for the bulk of the country. First we had Winter Storm Uri come through and tear things up. Then we had Winter Storm Viola come through and wreak further hell on us. (And here I was blaming it all on Uri.) Luckily for me, my area survived just fine. We had our ice storm. Nothing really came of it except a thick coating of ice on the trees and other surfaces. The roads were fine pretty quickly after the initial ice storm.

 Then we had the snow come through with more cold temperatures. The morning after some snow came along the previous night with the threat of more coming, the humble space heater that single handedly heats the space where I spend 90% of my time died. Wanna talk about some fantastic timing, geez. We raced off to town on borderline sketchy roads before lunch with the hopes of finding a replacement before the weather got worse. And wouldn't you know it, not a single freaking store had one in stock in the entire town!! Where did they all go?? As a last ditch effort we went by our storage building hoping we had one stored away in there and lo and behold, we did. Whew! No freezing until the one I ordered finally made its way here or they restocked in town!

That was the extent of any real drama for me during this rotten stretch of weather. It's been cold, but nothing that bad. We never lost power. We never had the roads completely shut down. They weren't always perfect for driving, but I was surprised to see that finally, FINALLY, the local government figured out how to prep the roads for the incoming weather AND take care of them during it all! I feel really fortunate as it seems like all of the surrounding areas were hit pretty hard. Though nothing can compare to the horror going on in TX right now. Those poor people. 

Speaking of TX, I had some wonderful luck this last week. I am in desperate need of wigs for my BJDs. Desperate. I don't want to buy anything from China right now. Domestic shipping can be challenging enough. No way I want to gamble with any potential drama with overseas shipping. And that, of course limits my choices by quite a bit. Especially now the Monique is going out of business. So, I decided to check Den of Angels MP like I periodically do and I found a really nice looking fur wig for really cheap! So I messaged the seller ( who, you might have guessed is in TX) and lucky, lucky me! She had a bunch of wigs that she had been meaning to list that she said she would give me a deal on if I wanted any! Yes, please, don't mind if I do! I picked out 6 fantastic fiber wigs (one is a gift for a family member) and she let me have them all plus the fur wig I had originally inquired after for $45! OMG! What a fantastic deal! It might be awhile until she can get them in the mail but it's totally fine with me. Thankfully she is doing okay as I heard from her today. That's the most important part. My dolls can just wait until everything is safe for trips to the post office. :) I'm just so thrilled to have been given such a wonderful deal. All of my big dolls will have a wig! It's like winning the BJD wig lottery!

Once my wigs get here I will attempt to do a proper photo shoot showcasing each wig. Eep! Exciting stuff!

Day 1 Critter Challenge

 So I was recently challenged to a Critter a Day sewing challenge. This means that I must complete 1 piece of clothing a day for MY Critters. It doesn't have to a complete outfit. But it must be one piece and it must be photographed and posted about to complete the challenge. I have no idea if I can do this but it would be good for my self esteem to actually be able to complete something like this. And it would be wonderful to make items for my own Critters instead of spending 100% of my sewing time on projects for others. I've been struggling with completing anything at all lately. And maybe taking a little bit of time for mine but refill my creative tank that has been near empty for the last half of the Year that Must Not Be Named. Any ways, here's to hoping!

First piece completed is this Newsboy hat for my Caramel dog. His name is Heart Valentine. This is technically my first run of the hat pattern so I might do some tweaking on the next one though I am actually happy with it. 

The rest of his outfit will be a white shirt with a red bow tie and red pants with chocolate brown suspenders. Going with the whole Valentine's theme here! :D Tomorrow I will make the shirt.