One Down

I was going to photograph the order for Halifax stationery shop Duly Noted and post it here, but in my zeal to get the job wrapped up tonight, I packed and bagged the whole lot before I remembered. They ordered three dozen each of four different cards--two are designs by former Dawson co-manager Vincent Perez, one is a design by other former Dawson co-manager Carley Colclough, and one is printed from an old cut.

I also wrote and queued up an article on paper grain for Handmade News. I'm turning my bookbinding "inspiration" column Leaf by Leaf into more of a how-to and have re-located it to the Craft Techniques department. It'll go live tomorrow.

Then there were the usual house odds and ends. My studio space is still a disaster. Maybe I'll have some energy when I get home from the printshop tomorrow to organize a bit. Though I also have to start my "Hot Holiday Games for PSP" article.

Photos by Niko of cards designed by Vincent Perez.

Or Falling Off a Bicycle

Well, I managed to do pretty well with keeping up on my NaNoWriMo word counts. Until Friday. I missed a couple of days, but managed to get caught back up again. Then came Friday, and snow, and a full day in the printshop, and driving home in the dark and wind. I was both tense and limp by the time I got in the door. I managed to feed myself some leftovers and then collapsed on the couch next to Bill, who'd had an even worse day of driving than me--his driver's side windshield wiper went on the way in the school and he had to drive leaning over to look out the passenger side. To his credit, he made it to school, did the whole day and made it home again.

And the weekend was full of house things and driving back and forth to Truro trying to get the right bits to install the new faucet, and again no writing happened. So anyway, I'm three days behind on writing, which is really just a point of pride. There's nothing saying I have to complete NaNoWriMo, but I'd really like to. And of course, today is such a perfect day that I've had a really hard time keeping myself inside working. There's a gate that needed disassembling, so I could have the boards to put up a shelf, you see. And now I really want to go out a snap a photo of a mushroom I spied in the undergrowth near the driveway, and I have to move those last couple of gate boards up next to the house, and, and, and.

In other news, I'm working on a fairly large job printing business cards and hang tags for a textiles artist. I had hoped to get started on that today, but getting Bill to school takes precedence over getting me to the printshop. He should have his truck sorted out by tomorrow, though, so I'll head down then. The polymer plates are ready, and they look pretty good. Some of the type is quite small, but I've printed type that small before and haven't had too many problems. So main issue is going to be the pressure on the press. The Vandercook Universal 2 that's in the shop has developed a problem where the press bed won't drop as far as it should, no matter how you crank it. By using very little packing, it's still possible to print polymer plates--as long as the paper isn't too thick. I'll be printing on textured card stock, so I hope that I'll be able to get the pressure to cooperate. Otherwise I'll have to print on the Universal 1 in the Design shop. Which I actually like better, but I'll be more likely to be in the way of some class or another, and the Universal 1 has issues of its own.

(Photo: the Dawson Printshop's Vandercook Universal 2 proof press, before it developed press bed pressure adjustment problems. Photo by Niko.)

Anyway, if I can get that job started tomorrow, I might be able to finish it by the end of the week. Then it'll be back to holiday cards, a 2010 calendar, and book jewelry. And maybe a couple of really fantastic blank journals. Oh yeah, and a binding job. I'll need to start that this week, too.

Like Riding a Bicycle

I haven't written much fiction at all in quite a long time, and that's not a good thing. I've sort of been making up for it by reading a lot, but reading fiction is not the same as writing fiction.

So I signed up for NaNoWriMo this year, hoping to kick-start myself into fiction writing again. With so many other things on the go, I'm not sure I'll manage the 50,000 words by the end of the month, but I'm at 1711 so far, which is just a little over the necessary 1667 a day to reach the goal and "win" NaNoWriMo.

It wasn't until I actually sat down to write this evening that I actually decided what to work on. I didn't really want to work on White Foxes, even though I really would like to finally get it done. I wanted something I could start and finish, not something I was halfway through, even though I'm pretty sure there are well over 50,000 words left to go in White Foxes. I considered writing the second book in the Kentaurs series (I wrote the first one last time I did NaNoWriMo), but I don't really know what happens yet--not even how it begins, except that Octavian goes looking for his brother Archer.

But then I remembered that I had been thinking about making The Fabulous Forays of Aeryn Daring into an illustrated serial novel instead of a comic (hypothetically leaving me more time to work on the long-time-in-progress Fey comic). It's something I already had a beginning for (though in a very different form), notes for the near future of, and a general idea of where it was headed. I suspect it may grow into a series of short serial novels, but I won't know until I get there, I guess. So, 1711 words and it's pretty silly, but I'm having fun and it means that anyone who has actually been reading Aeryn on webcomicsnation might actually have something new to read soon. Cool.

I've attempted NaNoWriMo three times before now, in 2003, 2004 and 2005. The first two times I did really well, ending up with The Secret Common-Wealth (a faery story) and The Madness of Kentaurs (an alternate-world fantasy), both YA novels and both well over 50,000 words. The third time was the year I started at NSCAD and I realized almost immediately that it was a really bad idea to try to do end of term projects, and write a novel. The end of term projects alone almost did me in. So, I know I'm capable, at least.

Here's to hastily written novels!

Catalogues for Sandra Brownlee

I'm supposed to be printing cards today. A Halifax stationery store, Duly Noted, is patiently waiting for an order they put in several weeks ago. Alas, today the car decided not to start. In fact, it didn't even seem to try to start. I'm hoping it's something simple that BillyZ will fix in five minutes after he gets home this evening, but in the meantime, I'm not printing.

I'd have had the order finished a couple of weeks ago, if not for a couple of rush jobs that I didn't feel I could turn down (not to mention that the extra income is very welcome since we just bought a house). The first job was the certificates for the Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia’s Masterwork Award. (How could I say, "No," to the Lieutenant Governor?) The design had mostly already been completed when the Dawson Printshop printed last year's certificates (I was in Pennsylvania for a few weeks when that happened). Former Dawsonite Carley Colclough did the rest of the design long distance from BC, and then I made the polymer plates and did the printing.

I miscalculated a little when getting the paper together; the paper was from the Colours line by Papeterie St Armand, which is rather smaller than most of the stock we use. And the certificates are quite large. I had thought I would get four certificates from each sheet, but was only able to get two. This meant I didn't have enough paper to make many mistakes. I cut a lot of scrap for testing and re-used some of last year's discards. I managed to print all six certificates (the five finalists and one winner) without a single mishap, which has to be a record, considering it was a four-colour job. It was nerve-wracking, to say the least. I'm very proud to have printed something that will have the Lieutenant Governor's signature on it.

The second rush job was binding the exhibition catalogues for Sandra Brownlee's show at the Mary E. Black Gallery. The show is called Departures and Returns and is on right now, so if you're in Halifax be sure to check it out. It's textiles, but her notebooks are also on display, so there's something there for book people, too.

A few of the 72 softcover catalogues had already been sewn, but I did most of them. Then I had to glue on an inner cover--it's like a wraparound cover you'd see on a paperback, but instead of being the actual cover, it's what the dustjacket wraps around. Then I had to tip in a plate to each copy and fold and install the dustjackets. It took me two full days of work to do all 72--good thing I sew fast. And I was very happy that the books all had their sewing holes punched already, which saved me some time.

On Monday afternoon as I was sewing the catalogues, I got a slightly panicked call from Sandra. She'd decided she was really unhappy with the cover size of the deluxe edition of the catalogue (which I wasn't working on), and wanted to know if I'd be able to help put them together if she changed the size. So Wednesday I drove to Joe's studio where Joe and I and a couple textiles friends of Sandra's worked on covering and attaching the new boards. The originals had been made larger to accommodate some weavings Sandra wanting to include. She decided to re-do the weavings at a smaller size, so the covers could be made to a size that fit the pages of the catalogue. We completed 12 of the 30 in the deluxe edition, which was plenty for the show's opening--Sandra can finish the rest at her leisure now that the show is installed and opened.

So today I was meant to be in the printshop, printing, but am not. Instead, I'll get the files ready to send to film to make the polymer plates for this year's calendar (flying machines! wood type! days of the week!), and I'll start on the next batch of tiny book jewelry (the Japanese-style binding, as I have to get more materials for the European-style ones) for the Halifax Crafters fair in early December. And perhaps I'll make some paste and get to work backing some suede with kozuke for another batch of mini SteamBooks. Maybe I'll even make a couple of larger ones this time.

And maybe, just maybe, I'll get a bit of work done on the website and do some writing. but that is probably wishful thinking. Oh hey, it's almost November. I have to decide if I'm going to attempt NaNoWriMo this year. Now that I'm not in school, it might be an achievable goal. And I really need to get writing fiction again.

Moving to the Country

I meant to have a nice detailed blog about the house--I even took a bunch of pictures--but since we have less than two weeks now to finish packing everything and get it to the house, and I'm working on a print job (meaning I have to be back and forth to the printshop), and the usual writing work, I haven't had time. Plus when I have had a moment free, we've been at the house, where there is no internet yet. So you'll just have to wait for the big house post. In the meantime, here's the outside.



It doesn't look like much, but oh do we have plans. It's solid, and that's the main thing (well, except for that deck, which needs jacking up and new boards). What we really fell in love with was the property--four acres of trees and meadow. And a cave.



It's a small cave in the gypsum bedrock, but a cave nontheless. Water trickles out of it, and cool air even in the heat of summer. And I met this lovely fellow there:



Naturally, I didn't get too close. I was close enough, though, that I learned porcupines talk to themselves as they trundle along.

Latest Writing: Flying, Books, Words

• Leaf By Leaf: The Beauty of the Book Form (HandmadeNews.org)
  
  Can the way a book looks (and feels and smells) influence your experience of reading it? I think it can, and in this installment of my column, I tell you why. (Books and photo by GILD Bookbinders on ArtFire.)





• Sunday Word Find: Painterly Pursuit (HandmadeNews.org)
  
  I use BillyZ's easel in the living room as inspiration for the latest word find. Because the puzzle has switched from Wednesday to Sunday, I made a new graphic. It's still not ideal, but just changing the text from Wednesday to Sunday actually makes it work a bit better.





• Leaf by Leaf: It's What's Inside that Counts (HandmadeNews.org)
  
  So after using one column to talk about the outside of books, this time I talk about the insides, and include a bit about my process of artist's-book-making. (Photo and artist's book by AnnaHawthorne on ArtFire.)





• Sunday Word Find: Drawing Dreams (HandmadeNews.org)
  
  My latest word find is all about drawing, since a lot of art and craft beings with sketches and jotting down ideas. Of course, drawing is also an art of its own.






• Complete Guide to Flying Games for PSP (AboutPSP.)
  
  I love to fly, and I like to play video games. There aren't all that many flight sims for PSP, so it was a reasonable goal to make a guide to them. So I did.

Best Promo Video Ever

What a great way to promote your work this is. (I have one of his rings. It fell behind my desk and I'm going to have to move the whole desk to get at it. Grrr.) I could totally see Dr Shallowgrave in something along those lines, though I'm not sure how I'd work my art/craft into it . . .