Monday Book Giveaway (November 9, 2009)

Three books to give away, three winners! Congratulations to:

• Sue R.! As the first winner, Sue gets her first choice of the three: Grundish and Askew by Lance Carbuncle.
• Kat Bryan! Kat’s first choice was The Long Sleep by Stephen Mellor, so she gets her first choice too.
• Stephen! Stephen gets his second choice, Shapeshifter, The Demo Tapes: Year Two by Susan Helen Gottfried.

Congratulations, winners! If you’ll send your shipping information to katrina (at) stonoff (dot) com, I’ll get your books in the mail.

For next week, you can choose any book I’ve mentioned. It can be a book I’ve referred to casually on the blog (like that really big book you’ve all heard of that you cannot mention by name), a book I have given away (like Something Missing or Big Numbers), a book I’ve reviewed (like Mark of the Demon or the books listed here and here), or any book that appeared on one of my giveaway shelves.

Comment below with the name of the book you want, and come back next week to see if you’ve won. Contest open to anyone on the planet who has access to reliable mail service.

Now, the hat:

As promised, I went to Portland to get pictures of the fascinators. A fascinator is sort of like a hat except much smaller, more like an ornament than a head covering. They are usually very showy, with feathers or beads that stick up and out of the hair, and are worn at dressy occasions. They can be on a headband, a comb, a barrette, or bobby-pinned into place. My favorite fascinator designer is Taissa Lada (who I discovered through her Live Journal).

Sadly, the fascinators I loved at Nordstrom were gone. However, there were fun head ornaments, similar to fascinators, and I took pictures of some of them.

This one is a rose made from a strip of black and pinkish-gray knitting, set on a thin black headband. I like the width of this headband, but chose not to buy it for two really good reasons.

1. It brings out the salt-and-pepper in my hair (EEK!).
2. Kim, my favorite sales clerk ever, said, “That looks like a bird’s nest in your hair!” I’d hate to give a passing bird any ideas.

Note to self: when you fall in love with something at Nordstrom, buy it. I should also have bought the miniature top-hat set at a jaunty angle on a headband that I saw in a quirky little store in Portland a couple of months ago.