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.