Another Book Sale in January

I really enjoyed doing the book sale at the Caspar breakfast on the Sunday after Thanksgiving in November, it felt like coming home in a lot of ways. A lot of my book customers and friends welcomed me back and bought lots of books. We also set up our display of mixed metal jewels and did quite well also. Before the sale I had a dollar number in mind of what I would like to make but thought it was reaching a little too much, at the end of the sale we had actually made twice that much money. Wow!

I plan to do it again in January, at the Caspar Community Center breakfast on the 27th, from 9am to 2pm. Hopefully my back, which I sometimes have problems with will let me do it. I will have a totally different selection of quality books this time, I plan to bring around 25 boxes. Annie Lee will also share the space of the north room with me with her fascinating selection of Guatemalan treasures. Hope to see you.

Books, books, books and more books

Well, it looks like doing book sales at the Caspar Community Center monthly breakfast is probably over for me, it's been almost a year since I did one and I don't have a wish to do one now. I did them for 11 years. A lot of people, when I tell them that I'm no longer doing books sales, they say something about all the lifting and toting must be hard and get old. Actually that's one of the things about the sales that I miss the most, that and talking to friends and people about books. The exercise involved in lifting and moving 50 or 60 boxes of books 4 times during the course of a sale & afterwards made me really strong and flexible. I'm 73 and it's still easy for me to move boxes of books up and down stairs and such which I still do at my house as I try to figure out what to do with the 300 or 400 boxes that I have left. Whoa, where did all these books come from?

I'm slowly evaluating them and deciding where they go. A couple of boxes a week generally go to thrift stores and each time I walk towards downtown Ft. Bragg I drop a bag of books, CD's and magazines off at the free box at the Ft. Bragg Library. I'm also getting a number of boxes of books that I'll have for sale at the Caspar Community Center's Flea Market on May 22nd, these books will be all $2 or 3 for $5. Some interesting books I'm trying to find a home for. I also sell a box of books to a used book store every once in a while and still list more valuable books on the internet and plan to increase that effort as time goes on.

I got an iPad for my birthday and one of many uses I found for it is checking the online value of books when I'm looking through books at thrift stores (yes, I still look but don't buy very many, just things for myself and things that have more value.) The iPad has more than paid for itself by doing this. I never check more than 2 or 3 at a time but am surprised at how many books I find that are worth $25 to $150. It's an interesting game, like panning for gold. I probably shouldn't be telling you this. Oh well.

I'm enjoying being semi-retired from my jewelry business also, down to 18 yours a week and doing very few art shows. Business is really good though and we are making some interesting jewels. We'll be selling our mixed metal jewels at the Mendocino Street Fairs on Saturday of Memorial Day Weekend, May 29th and also this summer on two Saturdays in July, the 2nd and the 23rd.

And finally, I've turned a good part of the large upstairs portion of my house into an art studio and am enjoying taking the time each day to draw, paint and do collage work and see that continuing to develop for quite a while. I'll post some pictures of what I'm doing on my flowering pixels blog in the next couple of months.

A book sale hiatus

The Bookster will take a break from book sales for a while. He wants to take more time for other activities in his life. Check back here for an updated schedule.

Books at the February Breakfast

I wasn't sure I was going to sell books at the Feb. breakfast because my old body has been sending me pain signals but I managed to ignore them enough to get a book sale together so I'll be there with books from 9am to 1pm on Sunday, Feb. 22nd. I'll take March off to do other things with my grand kids and then I'll be back with books for the breakfast on April 26th. Breakfast menu below.

First Book Sale of 2015

Starting out this year with a book sale at the breakfast on January 25th. A lot of new ones as usual. When we were doing a week long sale of our jewelry up in Chico just before Christmas I was able to harvest books at all of Chico's 7 thrift stores and found some neat things. Didn't get to Paradise or Oroville this year as I do sometimes, maybe next year. I have a couple of individuals that I will be visiting before the sale and expect to score some interesting things there also. I get carried away with this book thing sometimes. A relatively healthy obsession though.
Annie Lee will join me in the Community Center's north room with her usual excellent selection of fabric items from Guatemala.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Last book sale of the year.

I'll be bringing books to breakfast on Sunday, November 23rd, this will be my last book sale for 2014. Since we aren't selling our mixed metal jewelry at an art fair on Thanksgiving weekend for the first time in 37 years we will also bring a couple of cases of our latest jewels to this book sale so our local customers can take a look at what we have been creating. We just had a very successful time selling our jewels at the Sacramento Arts Festival a couple of weekends ago and on our way home I harvested a goodly number of books at thrift stores in Petaluma, Sebastopol and Santa Rosa, an area where I have consistently good luck in finding interesting items.
I'm busy processing them now to have them ready for this coming Sunday. My friend Annie Lee will be joining me in the north room of the Caspar Community Center with a selection of brand new Guatemalan imports that she has recently returned with.

Breakfast with books

These monthly Sunday breakfasts have been going on for a long time, 7 or 8 years, I lost track of exactly when. I designed this poster about 6 years ago or so, did several other designs before I arrived at this one. I change the color palette each month and am always looking for new color combinations.

I'll have a quite a number of new books at the book sale in the north room of the center while breakfast is going on and for an hour or so afterwards.