Nerdy, but in a crafty book-loving kind of way

Happy Friday! These are some of my most recent Flickr favorites. I just love seeing what beautiful things my contacts and fellow group members are photographing. You can click on the image for complete photo credits.

You may (or may not) have noticed a little bit of blog housekeeping this week, in the form of a new photo for the banner, and some re-working of the sidebars.  Yeah, it’s those sidebars again.  The changes are mostly aesthetic in nature, but there’s one nifty thing I’m kind of proud of: the book list.

I’m always admiring those lists a lot of you creative bloggers have on your sidebars – I see them mostly on Typepad blogs.  You know which lists I mean?  Check out places like Soulemama, Vintage Chica, and Uncommon Grace (go ahead, I’ll wait). Call me easily-influenced, but I’ve gotten some great wish-list fodder from them.  The way I see it, if I am drawn to your blog as a reflection of you, then chances are I’m going to like a lot of the same books that you do, right?

That’s one reason why I’ve been trying to have something similar on this blog ever since I started it.  I won’t bore you with the details of why it rarely worked-out, but I will tell you that I think I’ve gotten it licked finally, and all it took was opening my own little amazon-based bookshop.  Being a small independent bookseller myself, I’ll admit I was conflicted about this.  If it made sense for me to sell every book I’ve ever loved under the umbrella of Polka Dot Creations, I’d do it in a heartbeat.  But realistically, it’s hard enough for me to handle a book store with only one specialty, let alone all of the other topics that interest me!

So, for now, amazon wins my support in terms of “all of those other topics.”  I’ve set up the shop with categories that correspond to those on this blog, and I’ve only included books that I consider to be permanent parts of my book collection – things I’d recommend to you if you asked me in person.  The first page of the shop is filled with the books that are on my current reading list, and those are also the ones that appear to the left on the sidebar. Just what I wanted!

Here’s where it gets even cooler:  If you happen to be reading a post in the polymer clay category, the sidebar list will be replaced by a random selection of my favorite clay books, and will link back to Polka Dot Creations!

Not impressed?  Well, trust me when I say that is way cool from a computer nerd standpoint, and reinforces my love for WordPress and the handy things that can be done with it, if you spend a little time boning up on the available function library.  I heart WordPress.

I can feel your eyes glazing over by now, so let me just leave you with this:  Thank you.  Thank you for your past and future patronage of Polka Dot Creations, thank you for shopping in my new little bookshop and allowing me to have a tiny slice of amazon’s enormous pie, and thank you for visiting here!  I’m inspired to write, and make, and photograph knowing that there is a friendly audience around to receive it.

Have a great weekend!