Thursday, December 22, 2011

As has been my habit for the last 12 or 15 years when I’m selling my mixed metal jewels at the Bah! Humbug Festival in Chico, after the busy weekend at the fair, I’ve been going out each morning to the thrift stores to harvest books for my next book sale in Caspar coming up on January 22nd of 2012  at the community center there. So far I’ve gone to 5 stores with 4 left to go. If I go to Oroville later in the week, there are 4 more to visit. I probably won’t get up to Paradise this year but there are several more there that I visit periodically. At this point I am very, very selective in what I buy since I have so many books but I almost always find at least a few worthwhile things in Chico. At this point I’ve acquired about 20 books and 6 CD’s.

I’m enjoying looking at a guide book to California dragonflies, an interesting illustrated history of jigsaw puzzles, a history of military fighter planes, the story of Buffalo Bill( lots of cool pictures), the story of the women who had a strong effect on the history of this country during and just after the revolutionary war, and two Garfield comic collections. Below is a copy of a poster I made for one of
my book sales a couple of years ago. When I get home and take pictures of new books I'll make a more current one. 

During each year I visit thrift stores all along our trail as we travel on our circuit of art shows & festivals on the west coast and in the southwest. When we were doing a lot more shows in past years, I sometimes visited as many as 100 thrift stores in a year’s time. Now, as our show schedule takes us to fewer and fewer fairs, the number of stores is probably down to less than 50.
To find out more about our jewelry and that business check out our jewelry blog at www.mixedmetaljewels.blogspot.com
On that blog are pictures of our jewel work and our show schedule as well as information about how we make and design the jewels that we sell.                                                                                            

Friday, December 9, 2011

My next book  sale is at the Caspar Community Center on Sunday, January 22 of 2012, just before my birthday on the 28th. During the monthly fund-raising, country gourmet breakfast at the center I sometimes (5 or 6 times a year) fill up an adjacent room with books, tables and tables full, 50 or 60 boxes in all. A truly crazy endeavor for a 4-5 hour sale. It's made me really strong though, lifting and toting all of those books, and really, I love doing it, bringing a high quality selection of books for children and adults for my friends and neighbors and visiting breakfast eaters to browse through. And quite a few of them get taken home.