Ornament Sale on Etsy

 Etsy is holding an ornament sale October 11 & 12, and Reading with Scissors is all in. Check out these new ornaments--perfect for your book club friends, your best pal, or even your own tree.

Rare Reads: Coffee Tea or Me?

For the past several months I've been selling vintage books on a new Etsy shop, Reading with Scissors - Rare Reads. It's a lot of fun searching for treasures in someone's library and finding new homes for them in other people's libraries. 

What's NOT fun is finding something to write about each book in Etsy's Description field. Unless I'm going to read every book (and have you seen my To Read stack??), it's a bear finding something to say. 

That's when I came up with a novel idea--novel, get it? I would find original reviews of the books from back in the day on Newspapers.com and let those writers do my talking. 

It's been going well, and today I was looking for a good quote for a copy of Coffee Tea or Me? That's when I ran across this review by Edyth T. McLeod. Now, granted, I haven't read the book, but...

well, let's just say if you're planning on buying this one to give your daughter who wants to become a flight attendant, you might want to rethink that. You'll thank me later. Hahaha!

Coffee Tea or Me? 21 Dec 1967, Thu San Antonio Express (San Antonio, Texas) Newspapers.com

Fold Your Own Book for Christmas

It's early November, but you've still got time to create your own folded book to set on your Christmas shelf. Yes, you, too, can create folded books, and Reading with Scissors is here to help!

I've added five new Christmas-themed kits to my Etsy store. Each kit comes with a pattern, instructions, a Reader's Digest Condensed Book to fold, and a couple of pieces of cardstock to re-cover the endpapers. And they all ship free. Choose from these designs:

Peace

Believe

Jingle

Naughty

Nice

As mentioned, these kits all include a Reader's Digest Condensed Book, but if you already have a book on hand, I'm selling the patterns and instructions by themselves, too. Purchase a pattern, and you can download it immediately and get folding right away.

And if the thought of making anything for Christmas sends you over the edge, I'll fold a book for you, just get your order in early to ensure delivery before Christmas!

Shop 'Til You Drop 2017

Houston is still recovering from Hurricane Harvey, so holiday shopping may not be the first thing on everyone's mind, but Reading With Scissors will be at the Shop 'Til You Drop Market at the Berry Center on Sept 9, from 9 a.m. - 5 p.m.

I'll be featuring some of my new book-based art.

And of course, holiday themed folded books will be available. And you can order customized folded books before the holiday rush starts.

Shop 'Til You Drop features over 250 vendors (you read that right), so drop by and see what all the buzz is about. See you there!

Boxing Match

If you have been following my blog from the beginning--or if you have been around me for a nanosecond or two--it will come as no surprise to you that I am a clutter magnet. Wherever I go there is usually a collection of stuff that remains after I have left. I leave it there not because I am lazy. 

OK, maybe it's a little bit because I'm lazy.

But more than that it's because deep down inside I am convinced that if I leave something out on a counter or a table, it will remind me to do something with it later. That usually works out like this:

Oh, this wine cork would make a beautiful flower. I'll leave it here on the table and make that flower sometime this week. Then a year later I find the cork under a pile of other saved treasures and ask myself, I wonder why I kept this wine cork??

And it's not like I can help being a clutterer. It has been scientifically proven. Many, many years ago, I went into a job interview and I had to take this personality test. When it was over the test administrator went over the results with me and said, "I think you're like me. Your desk is probably pretty messy most of the time, but every now and then you just get this itch to clean everything up."

BINGO! 

Occasionally the urge hits me to get organized. (If Captain America tells you otherwise, do not believe him.) Recently I walked into my craft room and got that urge big time. So I bought myself a Workbox 3.0 from the Original Scrapbox.

It's not like you can just go out and get one of these things at the furniture store. (Please don't tell me I could have gone out and got one of these at a furniture store.) They are so popular, that you have to put down a deposit and then get in line for the actual delivery--which usually happens a couple of months later. Then you have to be there for the delivery because it comes in a collection of boxes so big, I had to park my car outside my garage for about a week. 

Once at my house Captain America and I had to carry it piece by piece up those stairs you see against the wall.

Then we had to put it together. That took a couple of evenings. Putting one part together...

and then others...

...and finally snapping all the pieces together.

So what's it look like now with all my stuff in it? Check it out...

I love bumpy names

I love bumpy names. Like this one...

...and this one.

All those lumps and humps make for beautiful folding.

Capitola's Election Special

We're back with the Rare Reads Book Club and Capitola. For those of you who don't know what we're talking about, catch up here and here.

In the meantime, it's Chapter 2 and once again we are starting in the middle of a story with a bunch of new people we know nothing about.

It begins with somebody named Old Hurricane raging that another guy named Black Donald has tricked him by disguising himself and freeing some prisoners. Hurricane is furious! Mad at himself and everyone around him who didn't recognize the dastardly Donald.

"I've coddled him up with negusses! I've pampered him up with possets and put him to sleep in my own bed!" cries Old Hurricane.

Sounds pretty serious! What in the heck are negusses and possets anyway? cried Stephanie.

Google to the rescue. A quick search of the word negus brought up two definitions. The first is a king, specifically the title of a sovereign of Ethiopia. That revelation brought me to a very interesting article on the origin of the word negus and its use in modern-day music, but after reading that article, I figured that the second definition was probably the one that E.D.E.N. Southworth meant here. A hot drink of port, sugar, lemon, and spices.

A little more searching, and guess what. There are a few recipes for negusses floating around the Internet, like this one from Jane Austen's Cookbook and this other one from Esquire magazine. It was invented, according to the Esquire article, by Colonel Francis Negus in the early 1700s, and, since it is served warm, makes a dandy mid-winter drink.

Posset, it turns out, is another kind of drink--a drink made of hot milk curdled with booze and typically flavored with spices--which sounds kind of ewwww until I realized that pretty much describes Bailey's, Kahlua, and Rumchata.

Interesting tidbit, according to the website, historicfoods.com, a posset was served in a posset pot that had this little pipe sticking out of it. Once set, a posset settled into three layers. The top layer was the foam on the top. People called it the grace, and they ate it with a spoon. The middle turned into a spicy custard, also consumed with a spoon. The grace and the custard sat on top of the boozy stuff at the bottom that you sucked out of the posset pot through the pipe.

So Old Hurricane went to the trouble of concocting a dish like that for Black Donald and then Donald turned around and tricked him? No wonder Hurricane was ticked.

In the middle of this tirade, we read:
"'Uncle!' said Capitola."

Hey, we finally meet our heroine--at least I think she's going to be our heroine. And she's Old Hurricane's niece. The pieces are starting to fall into place. But her interjection doesn't stop her uncle from continuing to rant--this one for your election enjoyment:

"...at the very next convention of our party I'll nominate him to represent us in the National Congress; for, of all the fools that ever I have met in my life the people of this county are the greatest! And fools should at least be represented by one clever man--and Black Donald is the very fellow! He is decidedly the ablest man in this congressional district."

Finally, the party breaks up and Hurricane--whose real name is apparently Major Warfield--goes out to take care of his animals and that's when a servant tells him about the beautiful young girl who has been brought to the nearby Hidden House.

"She had better be dead than in the power of that atrocious villain and consummate hypocrite!" the Major rails. So Colonel Lenoir's reputation precedes him.

The chapter ends with Capitola also finding out from her servant, Pitapat, that there is a new neighbor at Hidden House. Capitola immediately decides to arrange a visit to the consternation of poor Pat, who has been told by Major Warfiled not to spill the beans about the new next door beauty.

"Now why doesn't he wish me to call there? I shall have to go in order to find out, and so I will," thought Cap.

I think I'm gonna like this chick.