Meetup report and stuff

First of all, for Sherlockfan, who asked if my new enthusiasm for lace would mean the end of my cross-stitch projects:

No, of course not! When have I ever let a little thing like having only so many hours in a day stop me having multiple projects on the go at once?

The above is my current project. Or at least the bit I’m working on at the moment – it’s actually something I started years ago and put aside when something new and shiny presented itself. But I dragged it back out the other day and started work on it again. It’s actually almost finished – probably just a few more weeks to go (it’s a HUGE picture), but to preserve the mystery* I cropped everything out of the photo except the bits I’ve done most recently.

*Actually, I think somewhere back in the dim and distant past of this blog you’ll find a photo of the work in progress on it, so a pretty easily solvable mystery if you’re really determined 🙂

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Meetup tonight, and we were back at Cafe Bleu (where Justin from Jasper was very relieved to see there were only the four of us!). Most of the evening was spent de-briefing from the convention and planning for our next expedition (Dunedin for the booksale), but there was also the usual gossip and giggles of course, and we even discussed books occasionally!

I was very restrained and didn’t pick up any books (I was slightly tempted by a couple, but Mt TBR is tottering, so I left them for the others to take. And I contributed several (The Cat Who Talked to Ghosts by Lilian Jackson Braun, Ukranian Folk Tales retold by Christina Oparenko, A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas, Irish Girls are Back in Town, and The Pact by Jodi Picoult), so I’m feeling very virtuous about reducing the total number of books in the house (well, I would be, except for the three bags of unregistered books lytteltonwitch gave me as we were leaving…)

And I missed a great Markeroni opportunity, because Cafe Bleu is actually IN a listed building! But of course my camera’s batteries ran out at the weekend, didn’t they? And did I remember to replace them before I threw my camera in my bag this morning? Nope. Of course, I could have just claimed the snarf without a photo, but it’s more fun if you have a photo. So I’ll just have to wait until next month (or next time I happen to be walking through Cashel Mall).

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And a few recent catches:

The Bold Thing by Mark Daniel – took nearly a year to be caught, but it got there in the end.

Mister Wolf and Me by Mary Francis Shura – and in comparison, a very quick catch.

Agassiz Stories: Night Travellers and Ladies of the House by Sandra Birdsell – proof that the lost property box isn’t always the end of the line for books.

Nice New Neighbours by Franz Brandenberg – I released this book in the wild while showing libertine101 around Christchurch before the convention. That night at dinner, I met bookworm76, who exclaimed “oh, I found one of your books today!”.

Out of Africa and Shadows on the Grass by karen Blixen – released in Christchurch, caught by an anonymous finder a couple of months later, who re-released it in Washington DC, where it was very quickly caught again by another anonymous finder.

Lost for Words: Creative messages for all occasions by Louise Jourdan and Kathy Schmidt – another book released in the wild during the convention and caught by another conventioneer.

Trixie Belden and the Secret of the Unseen Treasure by Kathryn Kenny – finally, a book I released during the convention that was caught by someone *not* also at the convention!

The Four Seasons by Mary Alice Monroe – a quick catch from the gardens.

John Walker Champion by Ron Palenski – after the convention we took some of the leftover books and released them around the area. And later that day MarcieNZ found some of them.

The God Boy by Ian Cross – she didn’t find this one, though, which was picked up by a new member…

Mobil New Zealand Travel Guide: South Island and Stewart Island – …who found this one too.

Blameless by Thom Lemmons – this was an exciting catch to get, because it was one of the books we released on camera for CTV’s bookcrossing item. And even better, the catch came just in time that I could email the reporter and let her know before the item aired, so the presenter mentioned the catch in her intro.

The First New Zealand Book of Lists by Dale Williams – another catch from our post-convention expedition. Obviously all that publicity had an effect.

The Governor by Keith Aberdein – and another one.

Final Reckoning by Melita Baker – a catch from the Tranzalpine.

Free Flight by Douglas Terman – lytteltonwitch told me the Halswell quarry is a great places for catches, and she was proven right with my first release there.

And last but not least: Criminal Seduction by Darian North.