Monday Book Giveaway (January 12, 2009)

First the winner! Congratulations to Dawn M.! Dawn chose Bone Crossed by Patricia Briggs. Dawn, if you’ll send your shipping info to katrina (at) stonoff (dot) com, I’ll get your book pre-ordered for you!

Now, for next week. One lucky winner will receive all three of the books from Brenda Novak‘s suspenseful Last Stand trilogy: Trust Me, Stop Me, and Watch Me! I’ve only recently discovered Brenda Novak — it’s a story, so come back later this week to hear it, but she’s wonderful!

Want the set? Comment below before noonish Sunday, and come back next Monday to see if I’ve pulled your name out of one of my hats. Contest open to anyone on the planet who has access to reliable mail service.

Now, the hat. There was no possible way to actually draw the names from this hat, so Dawn M. was chosen at random. But here’s the hat anyway (there’s another photo after the cut).

This one feathers the line between a hat and a fascinator because it’s more a decoration added to a headband than an actual hat, but it’s made from traditional hat materials rather than just feathers, etc. The black fabric is called crinoline, or crin, or sometimes horsehair (though it hasn’t been made from actual horse hair in a long time). It’s a stiff, woven polyester that holds its shape well and has a shimmery, ethereal look.

I bought this one at the little boutique in Foothills Mall in Tucson where I bought several of the others. Believe it or not, I’ve worn this hat as much as any hat I own. For some reason, when it’s appropriate to wear a hat, it seems the more outlandish the hat, the better. Or maybe that’s just me.

This one is very hard to store because it’s on two perpindicular planes, so it’s taken a bit of damage. You can see in the next photo that the velvet flower is a little squashed. In fact, I thought I had regretfully let this one go until Mars brought up an “empty” box for me to wrap a Christmas gift in, and I found this hat in it. Happy day!

I have to say — this one looked a lot better on me when I was 20 years younger.

Edited to add description of the fabric (once I remembered the word and did a little research about it).