Seattle Antiquarian Book Fair

The Seattle Antiquarian Book Fair is happening this weekend, October 12 and 13 at Seattle Center Exhibition Hall.  Book dealers from all over will be displaying thousands of rare books, maps, photos, and ephemera - and it's only $5 to get in for both days.

 The Book Arts Guild will have a table at the book fair, and I will have some recycled blank journals and linocut postcards for sale there.  I am looking forward to seeing  the work of other Book Arts Guild members.

2013 Outdoor Book Sale

We had our annual outdoor book sale last weekend, followed by a barbecue and hanging of art on the outdoor gallery in the alley behind our building.  Both events were a lot of fun and widely visited by Pistil Books' regulars, as well as many people who didn't know they had an internet bookstore in their neighborhood. 

Here's the staff of Pistil Books:

Troy, Sean, Amy, Tim, and Nathan.

This Sunday, Pistil Books will have a table at the Slow Food Sunday lunch at Bastyr University.  We will be selling copies of Erin Coopey's The Kitchen Pantry Cookbook, as well as a selection of cooking and gardening books from our inventory.

I highly recommend Slow Food Sunday - I went for the first time to the June lunch. A guest chef and volunteers cooked up a delicious buffet style lunch with fresh, local food, live music, and a presentation by Bastyr University students, all for just $12.  It's a great way to meet other people interested in sustainable, local, food and food culture.

Book Arts Guild

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I joined the Book Arts Guild

(only $20 for a year-long membership) a couple of months ago after a friend and drawing teacher invited me to go to a BAG lecture by a book artist friend of hers who was in town for the event.  The lecture was held in the Special Collections/Map Room in the basement of the Suzallo Library on the UW campus.  I graduated from the University of Washington many years ago, and Suzallo was one of my favorite places, with its beautiful stained-glass-filled graduate reading room, giant card catalog (no longer in existence), and endless stacks.  I went to another lecture again recently, this time by Genie Shenk, who makes books based on dreams using mica.

After her presentation, we toured the exhibit of her work set up in the Special Collections reading room - somewhere I had never been and would like to visit again.  In addition to Genie's lovely work, the reading room had other book and library-related artwork mixed in amongst the tables and shelves.  One of my favorites was a real card catalog of about twenty drawers, each drawer containing its own mini-exhibit:  a drawer full of used pink pencil-top erasers; a drawer full of leaves; baby bottles with artwork inside them, etc.

Save the Date: Pistil Outdoor Book Sale, August 17

Adventures in English