Lisa: Book Festival

Now that everything is covered in snow and ice, I'm really starting to miss the fall. It's my favorite season, but it always seems to rush by so fast! In honor of the Season That Was, I thought I'd post a few pictures from a day of perfect fall weather.

A month ago, Sarah and I went to the annual Great Salt Lake Book Festival at the downtown library.

Since I'd never done it before, the first thing we did was to walk down the skywalk. It's a great place to take pictures of the city.

This is on the roof of the library:

At the tippy top of the skywalk, we found this at the beginning (or end) of the stairs. I think more things should have words on them.

Can you make out the Beehive Bail Bonds sign? I don't know why I love that sign.

At the bottom of the skywalk, there's a plaza that offers a nice view of the City and County Building, which you can see behind Sarah.

My favorite part of the Book Festival by far was the hands-on stuff sponsored by the Book Arts program at the University of Utah. We made paper out of jeans:

...and put together these really neat little notebooks. I think I need to buy a bone folder, an awl, and an X-acto knife so I can make more of these at home.

For lunch we headed up the street to Cafe Rio, where we tried to determine if this gentleman in front of us in line was in Halloween costume or not. Thoughts?

Then it was back to the Book Arts area to make another book, this time featuring a secret message compartment and a very saucy witch.

Lest you think I completely avoided the educational parts of the festival, I also got to see Shannon Hale demonstrate how to use a slingshot.

Blake, Marci, Charles, Mindy, and Charlie joined us for dinner, and I managed to hold Charlie for almost five whole minutes before he heard his dad's voice and started to cry. All in all, a success!

In other bookmaking news, we made these at a recent library program. The covers are cut out of pastel-colored manila folders, and the pages are just regular printer paper folded in half and tied in with a narrow ribbon. Easy peasy!