Round Up

Do you believe it-It's 2010-Good Grief I'm old.

01-02-2010 is a palindrome.

Bookshelf wallpaper-why not just have the real thing.

I would love to work for a publisher, and I think Penguin would be at the top of my list. Now they have Penguin Classics on Air. Of course at the very tippy top of my list is Persephone Books.

50 Best Design Blogs

I remember many years ago when I bought the very first issue of Utne magazine and I felt like I was home. Some magazines just seem to feel like a warm, comfortable hug, and that's what Utne was for me. I subscribed for years, and now I wish I had saved all of the issues. Hindsight is indeed 20/20. Anyway, I digress.

In one issue of Utne they had a small article on a tool lending library. If memory serves it was located in San Francisco. I just thought that this was the coolest thing since sliced bread. Why buy a floor polisher when you could borrow it from the tool lending library. And after providing the Utne link I see that tool libraries are still all the rage. Here is a current Utne article on how to start your own tool lending library. And here is a list of tool lending libraries. (I digressed again)

After reading that article I kept coming across articles about bartering and a moneyless society. Last week I found Kashless.

When I was decorating my house for Christmas I was looking for pine cones to add to my mantle village. There's cones a plenty where I live so I just went for a walk and came back with my bounty. I've always been fascinated by pine cones. There are so many different kinds. I started wondering about what type of tree produced the largest pine cones.

The world's largest pine cones or seed cones are produced by tropical cycads, yes tropical. These Coulter pine cones are hefty (way to big for my little village, the villagers would be terrified). Here is more information on the Coulter pine cone. The Coulters may be the heaviest, but the Sugar Pine cones are the longest. Unfortunately all of these large cones, both in heft and in length, are from trees that seem to be indigenous to the Western part of the country.

There is even a pine cone festival.

New York University's (NYU) Fales Library acquired the now defunct Gourmet magazine's cookbook library.

I love, love, love stationery and I love when I find companies that are printing unusual items. I have fallen head over heels for Rifle Paper Company.

There's lots of books on my TBR pile and lots of books on my TBR virtual list. Two that I can't wait to read are:
1. Cranioklepty" Grave Robbing and the Search for Genius by Colin Dickey
2. 14 Cows for America by Carmen Agra Deedy

15 Incredible Library Special Collections

That's all I have for this week. Happy 2010 everyone.

"And now we welcome the new year, full of things that have never been." Rainer Maria Rilke