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It's been a crazy fun summer with lots of travel, but there's one thing left that I think I need to do. It's called the Neshoba County Fair and it's a true Mississippi original. Or at least that's what I'm told.

Here's what I know about it.

It's a county fair that takes place for one week in the middle of the Mississippi Delta. So, that part is normal - funnel cakes, candy apples, corn dogs, you know the drill.

What's not normal is this:

Many families own cabins on the fairgrounds and move in for the week of the fair. Did you hear that? MOVE IN! These so-called cabins are very expensive wooden sheds (read:no sheetrock) that have electricity three weeks a year and are as coveted as grandma's diamond ring. It's near impossible to get such a cabin unless it is willed to you, or you feel like shelling out a truck load of money. Seriously, I was too embarrassed to even type the figures.

The cabin folk cook a mess o' food, take it down there, and then just porch sit, or drink and ride the occasional ferris wheel for seven days straight.

The kids run around with dusty, dirty feet and sleep in rooms that house like eight double bunk beds. That's bunk beds with double mattresses on top and bottom! So eight of these babies and you got 16 sleepers. I'm pretty sure that 16 beds is actually considered a small cabin bedroom.

Today, I asked my friend Lauren what food she was taking, because there's nothin' like a slew of southern casseroles to tempt me into making the two and a half hour journey over there, but it was WAY too much to type. I saw the list though - she had scribbled it down on multiple spread sheets with a grocery list as long as my novel's first chapter.

So, I plan on checking it out maybe Tuesday and I'll take plenty o' pics to share. I'm secretly hoping to get inspired for a future novel. It's entirely possible - in fact, I'd say it's likely.

Kirsty reports from the London Book Fair.

First impressions? Wow.

I have never been to the London Book Fair before, and I’m not sure I knew what to expect as I approached the forbidding entrance to the Earls Court Exhibition Centre. As soon as I was through the front door, though, I was swept up in a mush of people and sound, everyone and everything seemingly zooming in a multitude of directions. After a minor panic of “where the hell am I going?” I found the ‘Exhibitors’ door, flashed my snazy LBF badge and that was it. I was in.

Chaos presented itself to me, albeit it suited and booted chaos, and I decided the first order of business was to find the OUP stand. L605 my post-it note said. “That’s all well and good,” says I, “but where on earth is it? And more the point, where on earth am I?”. There was no use looking at the map on the wall. There were so many people peering at it that I fear it might have well as been a Tube map for all the good that was to come out of it.

But, we bloggers are brave and hardy souls, so I took a deep breath and threw myself into the throng. As luck would have it, the OUP stand has a large blue tower in the middle of it, so I located it relatively quickly, accdentally swinging my laptop bag into only a handful of other visitors. It, like its partners around it, was a seething mass of table and chairs, and what I presume to be very important meetings. I wouldn’t disturb anyone, I would just go wandering. Who knew what bookish delights lay in wait?

And here is the highlight of Day One so far: crabcakes. Freshly cooked crabcakes, prepared before my very eyes. Look! See?

They were delicious. And as if that wasn’t enough, look what I, er, accidentally stumbled upon next door:

Champagne, you say? Well, all in the name of blogging! See what I do for you readers? Such a hardship.

Catch up with me over the next three days as I bring you the best of the London Book Fair 2008 - and especially check out the edited highlights of tomorrow night’s Oxford World’s Classics Official Launch! I can’t wait. I love my job.

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This is my new logo, created for the web page for the The Valentine's Trunk Show in February. This is such a nice idea for a fair, all the vendors are displaying their handmade things in a suitcase each and then we can mingle and have snacks. I love it. Obviously I will have to find and buy a charming vintage suitcase. I was thinking this could become the perfect place to store my shop between shows.

As you know I also love the Workroom so I think it's the perfect venue. If you haven't been yet, you have to come just to gaze adoringly at Karyn's covet-worthy shelves of fabric.

My two older brothers always had fun telling me all their ghost stories and spooks lurking around our house back in Manila. Those days were priceless!