Archive: January 7, 2009

I love keeping this list. The final Books Read count for 2008 was 356. That was largely picture books, but I’m still impressed with that number.

I want to distinguish the picture books from novels and chapter books this year, but that gets really tricky. Some books straddle the line between picture book and chapter book, and not all children’s novels are simply “chapter books,” which I think of as a category of simple children’s books for  next-step readers; after picture books and early readers, there are chapter books. Like Clementine, or Junie B. Jones. These are in a different league from His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman or the Harry Potter books, which are also considered children’s books. So I’m making this incredibly oversimplified, with room for interpretation.

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CoastersSo the first things I’ve been working on for my Etsy store are coasters. Waaaay back in April of last year, I made my friend Maggie some coasters for her birthday. It was the subject of my very first post on this blog. I loved those coasters, and I decided that would be a good thing for me to make. But I wanted to speed up the process and do some cleaner, simpler designs to start with. So I’ve been working on all kinds of color variations and patterns, and these six are the first successful batch of combinations I’ve made. I’m really excited about them, and I’m becoming a little obsessed with coasters. They’re incredibly satisfying to make because they’re so quick, and they let me try different fabric combinations without the commitment of a big project.

Read more on Coaster Bonanza…