So a good friend of mine IMed me the other day and was telling me about how I had to check out WOWIO. I've been trying to take a break from signing up for more sites that I don't need... but My excitement at the number of free quilting books quickly overwhelmed any practical sense of "Do you need to sign up for this?"

So from their site:
"What is WOWIO? WOWIO is a new kind of online bookstore that enables readers to download ebooks for free, using commercial sponsorships to compensate authors and publishers. Readers get free ebooks. Sponsors get a powerful new channel to communicate their message to precisely the people they want to reach. Publishers get a new means of distributing their books, expanding their readership, and monetizing their intellectual property."

Really- it means the $30 C&T Publishing or Martingale Press book that I've been wanting at the shop is free with a couple of ad pages attached to the pdf file. The one caveat is that you have to sign up with a "real" email, not with a free service. I used my school email and have downloaded 9 so far. You can get up to three a day, with a maximum of 30 over the course of a month.

Some quilty highlights: search for "quilt".

Reverse Applique with No Brakez
Jan Mullen
82 pages (May 2003)
C&T Publishing; ISBN: 1-57120-200-5

Wheel of Mystery Quilts: Surprising Designs from a Classic Block
Helen Marshall
98 pages (May 2006)
Martingale & Company; ISBN: 978-1-56477-633-4

Spellbinding Quilts: Wizards, Witches, and Magical Characters to Paper Piece
Maaike Bakker
98 pages (October 2006)
Martingale & Company; ISBN: 978-1-56477-674-7

Quilts For Guys: 15 Fun Projects For Your Favorite Fella
Cyndy Lyle Rymer (Ed.)
82 pages (July 2001)
C&T Publishing; ISBN: 1-57120-165-3

I'm so excited! I'm going to be published! My contributed pages to the etsyjournal project organized by stella and heather has been accepted for publication in the 1000 Artist's Journal Pages book to be published by Quarry Books!

Dawn Sokol is the author/curator of the book, and she runs a great blog called D'Blogala all about journaling.

Getting her email today almost made me forget about the crappiness of the rest of the week!

I am and I admit it!

I love books, possibly as much as crafting supplies. I love to read, and I love to feel a book in my hands. I'd guess that almost 90% of my collection is hardback, so they live all over my house in little stacks and piles. I've recently started organizing, and trying to get my books back in some semblance of order. They *were* in subject and alphabetical order before our move, but they didn't get to the new house that way.

I've been cleaning like crazy, and I have a stack to list on my etsy supply shop. I've got lots of paper crafting books to list mostly, card making and scrapbooking. I do have a couple of fun odds and ends like a book on how to make the real-deal teddy bear. It's an amazing book, great patterns, and cool project but I've come to terms with it- that I'm never going to actually *make* a teddy bear.

I've also been listing noncrafty books on bookmooch.com or registering them with bookcrossing.com and leaving them places. They're both awesome sites, with the same theory about passing on books to others for free. Bookmooch runs on a points system, and you can import an amazon wishlist and "mooch" books as they become available. I'm getting rid of all sorts of odds and ends, and acquiring cool new books in the process. It don't totally get rid of the books, but there's less around? Does that count?

Check them out- they're both well worth the time.