Combining Passions

Anyone who has been paying attention by now has realized two things. 1) I love being a librarian. 2) I love to knit and crochet. And now I shall combine those two.

Have you heard of Yarnbombing? (That blog isn't the only one. Go Google it. A Google images search is even more fun. It's a real thing, getting bigger all the time.

Look at these bike racks outside the Berkeley Public Library

It's not quite yarnbombing, but a library in the UK created a knitted garden that is an amazing and ongoing intergenerational community art project.

Somewhere in these stories a project for my library was born. This fall is the 25th anniversary of the Loussac Library. To celebrate that we are inviting the public to knit or crocheting hats to decorate the statues and busts of famous authors throughout the library.

We are calling this Hats Off To Loussac Library. Hats can be dropped off between August 1st and September 5th at any Anchorage Public Library location. They will be on display between August 15th and September 17th at Loussac Library. After the anniversary, all hats will be donated to charities.
Click for more information

Happy Knitting! Happy Crocheting! And as always, Happy Reading! (It might be fun to listen to an audio book while knitting and/or crocheting a hat. That's my plan.)

What if it's in my pants?

Conversation I just had with a library patron, a regular. He's a 10 year-old boy who walks to the library everyday with his 12 year-old brother, uses the computer for as long as he can, hangs around other kids using the computers, and then goes home. They both have library cards, but they don't bring them. This means I log them onto the computers instead of them being able to do it themselves. It's not really a big deal except when they make me redo the reservation three times so they can sit at a specific computer. That led to this conversation.

Me: You know this would go a lot quicker if you brought your library card. You could log yourself into whatever computer you wanted.
Kid: What if it's in my pants?
Me: Your library card?
Kid: Yeah, what if it's in my pants?
Me: The pants you're wearing right now?
Kid: No, other pants.
Me: Like pants at home?
Kid: Yeah.
Me: Okay, tomorrow, before you come to the library, take your library card out of the other pants and put it in the pants you're wearing.
Kid: Okay, yeah.
Me: You're on computer #6.

I don't know if he was making a very lame 10 year-old boy attempt to embarrass me (it's in my pants!) or he was just confused. Either way, a slight failure to connect.

And then I taught a 40 year-old man how to double click. Yep. A day in my glamorous life as a neighborhood library manager.