It's my birthday! It's my birthday! Yeah yeah yeah! I already celebrated with my family last week but today I celebrated first by myself by going out to some of my favorite places, and then with my hubby and toddler by having dinner and cake. GF cake at that!! Betty Crocker makes gluten-free cake mix now, did you know that? It's yummy, I'm a witness.

So I went first to the new storefront for I Like You, which is fabulous, I was in there over an hour looking at stuff. I bought some fun hair barrettes for myself, one set with big fabric buttons and one set with Japanese folded fabric flowers. And I walked around looking at things and getting ideas of stuff I want to try to make. One idea is a felt collage. Someone had done a bunch of framed collages of different scenes, using all felt. They were appropriate for kids' bedrooms, although I would put one up anywhere because I have the heart of a kid. So one was trees in a meadow, a couple were sheep in a meadow, and I forget what else. They were somewhat crude in detail, if you know what I mean, and that's what I liked about them. There really has to be a better word than crude to describe a childlike style. But I can't think of one. Anyway. Another thing I liked was a dice necklace. The artist simply put a small screw hook into the dice and voila, necklace pendant! I have a ton of dice so that might be fun to do.

Okay, so that was the first place I went. Next was MCBA at Open Book. They had a gallery show I hadn't seen yet that was all about mail art and self-published art and it was really neato. And they had part of the "None of the Above" exhibit up, which reminded me that I still have time to join in on the fun for this great assemblage. I just need to go to a print shop. So I wandered around the exhibit, and then spent a long time in their gift shop picking out a few things. What I ended up getting: a few fine line black pens for my doodling/drawing; some needles on a stick for bookbinding, several different colors of waxed linen thread for bookbinding, and a "BIY" kit for a different kind of bookbinding than I've done before (that would anything else besides pamphlet stitch).

And last, I went to Big Brain Comics ( I know, that's a really lame link). I slipped in five minutes before closing time so I tried to hurry, and even then I got a 3-issue series of The Muppet Show comics and an anthology of weird fiction that includes pieces from Neil Gaiman, Lemony Snickett, and I forget who else. I also grabbed a couple promotional posters for the movie 9, which I really want to see but haven't had the chance to yet.

There was a book at the MCBA shop that I didn't buy but I want, it's called Re-Bound and it looks really fun. Anybody out there have it yet?