Last week I received a lovely package from Michelle. I had sent her some goodies a few months ago from England just for fun… and she sent me a boxful! Thanks Michelle! She is so generous. :)

Yummy yarn! Note pads and sticky notes. Look at these stitch markers that Michelle included because I couldn’t participate in the Hot Cocoa Swap 2. If they were real my chocoholic-boyfriend would have made them disappear quite quickly ;)

Henry of course had to be involved… while I opened the package, looked at the goodies, and took photos. Then he wanted the adorable, soft sheepie!! He tried to run away with it. Silly monkey!

Deb of Booking Through Thursday lost one of her favourite bookstores last week due to a fire. From that devastation, it made her think of this question:

What would you do if, all of a sudden, your favorite source of books was unavailable?

Whether it’s a local book shop, your town library, or an internet shop … what would you do if, suddenly, they were out of business? Devastatingly, and with no warning? Where would you go for books instead? What would you do? If it was a local business you would try to help out the owners? Would you just calmly start buying from some other store? Visit the library in the next town instead? Would it be devastating? Or just a blip in your reading habit?

I love to flip through books, feel them, smell them, run my fingers over the un-cracked spines, leaf through the well-loved pages… so any loss of a bookstore is a big one. Unfortunately a similar thing happened to my favourite used bookstore a couple of years ago. Kestrel Books was on Cambie Street, and a few stores down the dry cleaners caught on fire. It was an old block of building so all these stores were connected in their vents/ducts, so while the dry cleaners burned, the bookstore, the movie theatre, and a number of other stores were badly damaged by the smoke. Kestrel Books also had a resident kitty — an old girl, kind of skittish, and had a condition which made her skinny as a stick — but fortunately she escaped the smoke!

Besides going into any store with a selection of books – new or used – my favourite source of books is the internet. I don’t often purchase books off the internet, I prefer holding the book and leafing through it before I buy it, but the internet has exposed me to so many new authors and novels. If I lost all the book blogs, and author sites, and publisher lists… I’d go crazy! Well no, I’d just have to find a different outlet to “discover” new goodies. I’d probably go to the bookstore more often to browse, or the library, or subscribe to some magazines about books.

I’ve seen this cool meme floating around, and decided to participate. To make your own, go to the Mosaic Maker, and then open another window with Flickr.com. In the Flickr search bar, type the answers to these questions:

1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What high school did you go to?
4. What is your favorite colour?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. Favorite drink?
7. Dream vacation?
8. Favorite dessert?
9. What do you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. One word to describe you.
12. Your nickname.

Ta da!

Can you guess what my answers were! (If you can’t… or just don’t want to, scroll down)

1. Monica (santa monica)
2. fresh fruit
3. Ideal
4. blue
5. Johnny Depp
6. tea
7. sight seeing
8. carrot cake
9. artist
10. love
11. creative
12. monnibo