Making Progress Slowly

 
The Halifax Crafters Winter . . . um, I can't remember what it's called this year, but it's the funkiest craft fair in town, and it's coming up very soon (next weekend) so I am in a mad frenzy to get everything done. I've spent the last couple of days working on a big batch of book jewellery, and it's still not done!

Here's what it looks like so far:

Those are the Japanese bindings, all done and ready for their hardware. It looks like such a tiny pile, now, but there are 26 pendant size and 34 earring size tiny books in there. Here are the English bindings, not done:

I'll be changing gears a little bit today, to print some more gift tags on my Kelsey parlour press here at home, and getting paper ready to print business cards and book jewellery cards in the Dawson Printshop tomorrow before the Letterpress Gang meeting.

As for cards, I've printed all I'm going to get done this year, and am just waiting on envelopes and polybags (fingers crossed that they will make their way swiftly from Ontario to here, or else I will be stealing bags and envelopes from other, non-holiday, cards). The calendars are printed and just need their final trim and hole-punch, which will happen tomorrow. They need polybags, too, which are also on order.

The other task this week is to build some kind of card display for my table, probably out of foam core (they make a nice black with black core that won't even need covering if I cut it well). I used to borrow the spinner rack from the Dawson Printshop, but I find that most people only look at what's in front of them, and don't actually turn the rack.

So that's what I've been doing. Phew! If I make it through this week, and next weekend, then I just have the Letterpress Gang Holiday Printers' Bazaar to prep for, but I'll mostly be using the same inventory I already have. I may try to print one more quick card in the intervening week, but I also have an xmas present for a friend that I want to get done so I can deliver it before I take off for the west coast on the 21st, leaving boy and cat to fend for themselves (well, technically boy will also fend for cat, but you know what I mean).

Octoberpus! Also, a Fox.

OK, I promised a sneak peek at the new calendar I've been working on, so here's a terrible iPhone photo of the October page.

Once I do the final trim I'll scan all the pages and take some artsy photos for my Etsy and Artfire shops.

The other big bit of holiday printing is this year's card design, the snowflake-catching fox. Here's a scan of the front of the printed card.

It's so hard to give any real idea of what a letterpress-printed card is actually like in person. Neither a scan nor a photograph can do it justice. It's something you have to touch. I love the tactility of letterpress, but it's so hard to convey to online customers . . .

Jewel Books and Jewel-Tone Thread

Sorry for the lack of updates. I can say I've been very busy, but when am I ever not busy? At the moment, I am working on turning this:

 Into a whole bunch of traditional European style tiny books for pendants and earrings, and this:

 Into a whole bunch of Japanese 4-hole bound tiny books, also for book jewellery. And, as luck would have it, and with perfect timing, today's mail brought this:

 6 new colours of waxed linen thread, perfect for traditional Japanese-style bindings (and other bindings with exposed stitching, like cross-structure and coptic). The green is not as bright as I had hoped (I just got the sample card with my order, so I was looking at computer screen images), but it's still a great colour I'm sure I'll use over and over. Of course, now that I have the sample card, I want one of each colour! And also, my thread box (a very nice wooden sliding-lid box that used to have a bottle of Alberta Springs whisky in it) is no longer big enough. So I shall have to be on the lookout for a replacement. Or an addition. Or else making a new one will go on my to-do list once the holiday rush is over.



And that reminds me--I went and signed up for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), but after 3 days and only 750 words, I realize I have too many projects to finish and too many things to make for the craft fair to start writing a new novel, so once again I'm going to quit before I've really got going. I have the consolation that I've already successfully done NaNo twice. What I really need to get done is the re-scanning and re-lettering of issue 1 of Fey, as I got a nice letter from the National Library of Canada asking where their two copies were, since they gave me an ISSN ages ago.