Books to Love

Winter respite (thank you very much). When January swoops in, freezing cold,  I'm a happy camper back in book world. I have a serious problem with books, and they've been piling up around here begging to be read or re-read. Downtime is good. I took pictures of piles of my favorite art and craft books, and thought I'd share them with you all over the next few days.

The topmost, You Are Here, is a book of maps (think: personal geography). I haven't bothered to read the words; there are a lot of big ones in here. But the visuals are enough as far as I'm concerned. Extremely cool maps, imagination maps. Here is one of my favorite juicy pages. First of all, it's red. and I love the trippy mountains.

The next one in this pile is a Japanese craft book, Free Hand Embroidery. I love it. Here is a picture from the inside. This is just full of fabulous photos and inspiration - if you enjoy hand sewing. It makes my fingers itchy to stitch.

Kanzashi In Bloom is fun if you feel like folding fiddly flower petals from fabric (alliteration not initially intended but then exploited). I didn't like the directions for glueing the fabric flowers so I hand-sewed them. Much better results. I also used a light iron-on interfacing with silk and made a few very pretty blooms. I do like my Japanese crafts and this one is in English by Diane Gilleland.

The Uncommon Quilter and Felt Fabric and Fiber Jewelry are both lovely books. I get loads of inspiration from both.

Least you think that I buy all  of these books, I find many of them through my library system. Very lucky, indeed, since I'd need to move if I owned every book I love.

(This would have been a better post if I hadn't used up so much of my computer time tonight watching The Mean Kitty videos on YouTube. Darn!) Enjoy a browse and let me know if you have favorite books!

xo D