I had a spare 15 minutes yesterday, and spent it in the local Oxfam bookshop. I normally nip in there to fuel my fiction addiction, but for once decided to go down to the crafting section to see what they had in. I recognised many of the books there as ones I’d already have, but picked up two new ones: Designer Needlepoint edited by Hugh Ehrman, and The Art of William Morris in Cross Stitch. Together, the two came to £13, which is more than I’ve spent on just two books in ages (especially from a charity shop!).

The former book contains designs to be executed in tapestry, with Appleton wools the primary colours. It’s been a long time since I’ve done tapestry – I only did a few cushions before I moved over to doing cross stitch, and I’m not particularly interested on going back. However, there are some great designs in it by people such as Kaffe Fossett, so I’m sure that I could take a stab at converting the colours over to DMC or Anchor and give them a go.

I’ve always quite liked William Morris, and have always fancied doing some of his designs (I have several Beth Russell tapestry books sitting on my shelves). However, again it was the tapestry. However, this Morris in Cross stitch book will give me the opportunity to do this in another medium

There’s a new initiative for women going on right now over at BlogHer called BlogHers Act.

BlogHers Act will take on two things –

1. Making a difference on a single global cause

2. Identifying the top four issues that women online want the U.S. Presidential candidates to address in order to win our votes in the ‘08 Election.

Imagine the opportunity that’s in all of our hands right now.

All of us know the positive, productive, monumental ACTION of bloggers, especially women bloggers, when rallying around a problem, an issue or an event. Since we started blogging a few years back, we’ve witnessed – and been so lucky to be a part of – countless moments, big and small, when bloggers worked together to make a difference.

There’s more details if you follow the link above. Basically, you blog your opinions, tag with “BlogHers Act,” and leave the link to your post as a comment to the post linked above. Or, if you’re not a blogger, you can simply comment your opinion on that post. Here’s a week one round-up. And the deadline’s this Friday, June 15th.

So if you want to participate, sit down right now and blog it, or add your comment today!

OK, as some one from outside the US, my ability to influence the first bit is small. However, the global issue for me is something easier. For me, one of the most important global issues is literacy. It has been shown that where women in particular can read and write, then infant/child mortality rates reduce, education levels rise, and the earning power of people increases.

I also heard a saddening statistic a few years ago, which I hope isn’t true. Only 2% of Americans read 5 or more books *a year*.

Can we not promote reading within our own communities, and also arrange for reading and literacy to be promoted in communities less well off than our own?

Another round of tab closing….

I found a copy of “The Art of Embroidery: Inspirational Stitches, Textures and Surfaces” at a website called The Book Depository. UK based, many of the books are cheaper than the equivalent on Amazon.co.uk (they also do a comparison with Amazon), as well as offering free P&P. At £15.00, it’s a good £9 cheaper than Amazon are selling it for!

Cameoroze has a stitching blog here. I’m sure I’ve come across her years ago, but cant remember where – I think perhaps over at About.com. She also has a Stitcher’s Studio.

Speaking of about.com, I really did enjoy being on there – at least I used to. I even considered applying to be one of their editors back in the day. However, I spent some time there doing some research a few years ago, and my spam rate shot up like nobody’s business. I backed away from about.com, and after a few months and some hard work with the spam filters, the spam rate dropped back down again. Coincidence? mebbie. mebbie not. I haven’t spent an awful lot of time on about.com since, just the odd click or two, but I back away again as soon as I know where I am. I certainly don’t post there or do much navigation around the site, which is a shame as there is a lot of stuff there, including free charts.

I’ve found another podcast called CraftSanity, which has an associated blog. Each edition has decent length interviews with people within the Crafting world.

Episode 43 is an interview with Melissa Alvarado and Hope Meng who, along with their friend Melissa Rannels, co-own Stitch Lounge.

Episode 49 is an interview with Heather Holland-Daly, a cross stitch designer. She has her own website Monsterbubbles, and I was particularly interested in seeing how she presented her work, especially in light of the “How Much?” post I made last week. I found the website to be very pale – pink and green, whilst good for a logo (and I like the logo!), I think is a bit wishywashy. Her “Gallery” and “Stuff” is cluttered and out of date, and the pictures of her stuff makes me want to buy either the completed item, or the kit to do it with, I cant see any option of how to buy direct from her, or which internet/Bricks and Mortar shop I need to go to. (And the thumbnails in the gallery – just plain annoying! grrrr!)

Episode 53 has an interview with Carol Sauvion, the executive director of “Craft in America” which was shown on PBS recently. I’ve heard decent things about it, and wonder if it’s ever going to be shown outside of the US. (I see the DVD is available from PBS’s website – and, unfortunately perhaps for PBS – at Amazon.com for $8 cheaper).

Before I left Ireland, I set up StitchNBitchIe, the Irish Yahoo group for Stitch N Bitch. On the weekend, they took part in the World Wide Knit In Public day, and a summary (with pictures!) can be found here, thanks to Lien (who I’ve never met!)

Right, think that’s enough from me for the mo! (I’m getting tired and making more and more mistakes!)

For perhaps the first time in what seems like ages, I went into a bookstore, to actually look for a specific (type of) book! Normally I wander round, see what’s on special offer (3 for 2 or half price etc), but this time I went into Borders in the Bullring to look at their crafting books. Now I found it interesting that there were several shelves dedicated to knitting and quilting, but only a few inches given to sewing itself and even less given to cross stitch. Is cross stitch a dying art? Anyway did find this book The Art of Embroidery, which looks quite nice as a text book kind of book and at £26 is quite a hefty price tag. Found it curious that Borders had 2 on the shelves, and Amazon lists it as 4 – 6 weeks job. Abebooks has it at about half the price, though I dont know how much I want it.

Anyway, didnt buy anything in the end and was a little disappointed at the stock available from, admittedly, this single bookstore.

Also noticed that they have no “Mind, body and spirit” section in the store. Considering a conversation I had last night about Tarot Cards, I find it a trifle curious that such as store wouldnt have such a section, though never mind!