Books for Breakfast

Ok, third attempt to write this entry – the last two times I got about one paragraph in, and then somehow managed to click the wrong thing and lose it again – I’m not normally that technologically incompetent, I think it was just tiredness (late night last night, and then up early this morning). But I’ve just had an hour’s snooze, and I feel a bit more awake now, so hopefully I won’t do anything dumb this time! Anyway…

Last Sunday of the month today, so I spent the morning at our Bookcrossing Breakfast meetup at Trattorie. We had a really good turnout: me, lytteltonwitch and her ex-husband, awhina and meerkitten, BizzieLizzie, her son, and her nephew, and rozyglow, who has been a member for a while but hasn’t made it to a meetup before. As well as the usual chat and swapping of books, we managed to decide on the final design for the convention logo, and talk to the manager of Trattorie about having our farewell convention breakfast there. He said he wasn’t planning on opening at all over Easter, but if we can guarantee 30 people coming, he’ll open for breakfast on the Monday – so, like everything to do with this convention, it’s all dependent on the number of registrations we get. Of course, we could find another cafe that’s going to be open anyway to have our breakfast at, but we were hoping to go to Trattorie because our OCZ bookshelf is there. I told him we’d talk to him again in a few weeks, so fingers crossed that we get loads of registrations in before then!

I picked up a few books (of course): One Hundred and One Ways by Mako Yoshikawa, and three books by Kathleen Rowntree: Between Friends, Brief Shining, and Outside, Looking In (I hadn’t actually intended to take all three of them – awhina had brought them to the meetup, and she and lytteltonwitch were talking about what good books they were for a nice light read, which sounded very appealing in my tired state, so I decided to take one home to try out. But when the meetup ended, the other two were still sitting on the table, so I thought I might as well take the lot – I’ll read one, and if it’s good, read the other two, and if not, take them back to another meetup sometime). I managed to get rid of more books than I brought home, at least – I passed on Walking Through Tigerland by Barry Oakley, Shadows from the Fire by Mary Ryan, When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka, and The Biggest Modern Woman of the World by Susan Swan, and finally got round to dropping off Curious Questions by Max Cryer, Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery, Barbie’s Star-swept Adventure by Suzanne Weyn, and The Mystery of the Green Ghost by Robert Arthur in the OCZ, which I’ve been meaning to do since Christmas.

I had a brilliant (I hope) idea the other day while I was looking through my embroidery bits and pieces. I came across some of the little kits they sometimes have on the front of cross-stitch magazines (usually for greetings cards). I’d made up a few of them, but had never actually found a use for them, so they were still in my “useful things” bag. One of the kits which I’d made up was a little notebook with a beaded cover. Looking at it, it occured to me that little notebooks are something very useful to all bookcrossers (handy for noting things like where you’ve released books, so that you can make proper release notes when you get back to a computer), and that notebooks might be a good thing to add to the convention goody bags. So I decided to have a look at notebooks the next time I was in town. Anyway, MrPloppy and I went up to Northlands yesterday, so I had a look in Whitcoulls. The nice decorated notebooks were all over $5, so too expensive to buy one for everyone, but then I noticed that one of the items in their “Back to School” sale was those little 3B1 notebooks we used to use at school for spelling lists and things. They’re pretty basic and ugly, but they were only 5c each! And so, a plan was born. I bought a pile of them (plus a few slightly more expensive ones in other sizes, just to provide some variety), some stickers, some holographic cover-seal, and a pack of coloured paper, and then went to the Warehouse and bought some cheap packs of sequins and beads from their craft department, and when I got home proceeded to start turning ugly plain notebooks into beautiful hand-decorated notebooks:

[album 128913 notebooks1.JPG]

I had great fun coming up with different ideas for decorating them, and I’ve still got loads more ideas for the rest of the notebooks (in fact, that’s why I was up so late last night – I had an idea to cross-stitch some little pictures onto perforated paper to glue on the front of a notebook, and (as always) what I expected to take half an hour to sew actually took a couple of hours, and it was nearly midnight before I remembered I had to get up early in the morning!). You’ll also see in the above photo the beaded notebook that started the whole idea off, plus a couple of cover-kit cards that I’ve converted into notebooks by gluing little pads of paper inside.

I think they’ve all turned out really well so far – should make a nice wee memento for everyone of the convention, and best of all, even with all the decorative bits the total cost will work out to less than 50c per notebook!

Currently reading: White Rose by Amy Ephron and Between Friends by Kathleen Rowntree (depending on my mood)