Gotta Love Free Books!

 Two years ago, a friend of mine organized a community book swap.  It was held in the resource room at her local library.  The premise was that people brought books to swap--minimum of one book required for admission, attendees could take home as many books as they wanted, and at the end of the swap all 'homeless' books were donated to the library for their annual used book sale.

I ended up being unable to make it to the swap, because K2's funeral ended up being scheduled for the same day.  My dear, dear friend, when she heard of this conflict, told me that she'd had numerous people give her boxes of books they no longer wanted and wished to donate to the swap without attending, and invited me to her house to check out the donations.  I found about a dozen books in those pre-swap boxes and being able to take them home even though I wouldn't be able to be at the swap itself helped brighten up a really dark time.

Her book swap was such an overwhelming success, and she had so many requests for another book swap in the not too distant future, that she did!  It needed a larger venue, so that had to be obtained before setting a firm event date.  Ended up being in the Fall of that year.

That one I did attend.  It was another, even larger, impressive turnout of people and books.  Such a big turnout that there wasn't enough table space for all the books brought to be swapped.  And thus was born a semi annual event: the community book swap.

Last year, there was a Spring swap (which I attended and stood in line for almost an hour to get into as there was so many people wanting to swap that the room was at maximum human capacity and people had to be let in only as other people left) and a Fall swap.  The Fall swap had some changes made, such as you could buy an early admittance for $5 and get in an hour early for 'private shopping' before the masses were let in.  That helped a bit with shortening the line, but the turnout was still bigger than the event venue.

This year, the Spring swap was at another new, even larger, location.  The 'early bird special $5 admission' was again offered.  Frugal me, I went for the (free) general admission time and had no trouble getting right in.  I went with only six books to donate (apparently I didn't read much at all between October and March), but came home with sixteen.

Some are for the grandkids to read, some are in brand new condition that I will probably give as gifts, but mostly they are for me!  I was especially excited to spot this book:

Back in 2013 & 2014, when I was learning to knit, I learn to how to knit socks on double pointed needles, and also the Magic Loop method using a circular needle.  At that time, I found that I prefer double points.  2015 or so,  I first heard about the Two at a Time (TAAT) method, and it intrigued me but not enough to seek out more information and give it a try.  I even heard of this exact book, but there was so much stuff going on in my life at that point that I was far from trying anything new that I suspected might require my complete attention to learn.

But now, it's 2025 and I'd actually recently been thinking about maybe adding this book to my list of things I wanted to request from the library. To see it sitting there, in front of me, on the "Crafting" table at the book swap surely was a sign from above!  So I grabbed it and stuffed it into my bag.

Imagine my complete and utter delight when I got it home, was showing off my prizes (new books) to DH, opened the book and there, tucked inside by the previous (now unknown) owner were two sizes of needles needed for some of the patterns in the book!  Woo hoo!  A book teaching the method, 17 patterns and two sets of needles for knitting with!  WINNER WINNER!!

Gotta love free books!