One More

Yesterday I polished off Introduction to Bookbinding and decided that while it's a reasonable book in its descriptions of how bookbinding is done, it's not really one I could recommend to someone wanting to actually try bookbinding for the first time. Not nearly enough diagrams, for one thing. You kind of already have to know what the guy is talking about in order for it to make sense. Anyway, some interesting differences between what he says and what I learned.

In addition to books, I tend to accumulate unread magazines, which I've also been working to catch up on lately. I'm totally up to date on Fine Books & Collections and the CBBAG newsletter, though I still haven't read the CBBAG journal (first issue!) yet. I'm working on the latest Wired (which I subscribed to a couple of months ago), but haven't cracked the latest Mac World yet (boy got a free short subscription when he bought his iMac). At least I'm not behind on it yet. I have an issue or two of Skeptic, which is a thick tome and tends to get left till last. And then there's a year's worth of Scientific American from when I had a subscription (2006, maybe?). I just got a couple of back issues of Biblio on eBay that I'll start soon, though I'm trying to decide if I should grab a couple full years worth from another seller, even though it means I'll end up with doubles of about six issues (it would also mean having all 3 years worth of the magazine). I have to decide on that soon, as the auction ends late tonight. And finally (maybe--there may also be unread magazines lurking about in here that I'll find as I organize) I have two and and half issues of Book Collector to get through. It's only quarterly, but it's a thick, text-heavy journal that takes me a while to plough through. Even though I could never afford to actually collect most of the books they cover, there is all sorts of useful information for bookbinders and scholars-or-books in there. They used to have actual bookbinding articles, but I don't think they do that much anymore. It makes it worthwhile to look for back issues on ABE, though.

So anyway, aside from reading, I've basically been taking it easy this summer. Probably drinking a bit too much cider, but at least I've been getting lots of sun and bicycle exercise. Today has gone and got a bit overcast, and last week I had to take the bus once due to rain--I'm hoping the sun comes back so I can avoid the bus to work and ride my bike for the rest of the summer.

Work is good. I'm working on a series of "wanted" posters for famous figures in book and print history. Of course I started with William Morris. I did some proofing on Thursday and stuck one of the early proofs up on the shop wall. Apparently, two people asked about buying it, and one was serious enough that she left her card and wants us to post her one when they're done. I hope she's not disappointed that the final poster isn't the same brown ink on off-white laid paper as the proof. Instead it'll be red text and black image on a sort of soft grey almost-handmade St Armand paper. I'll get started on the final printing on Wednesday.

In other news, the boy and I are contemplating a road-trip to the States near the end of the summer. I really need to get to BC to visit everyone there and sort out my stuff that's in storage, but as it turns out, Bill hasn't been to visit his people in longer than it's been since I've visted mine. Plus his best friend will be visiting his family in the same area around the same time and he lives in Japan, so this could be the only time in a long while that Bill would be able to see him. My only hesitation is the cost. Though we will have people to stay with.

The idea is to rent a car here and drive down through New York State, hang out in Brooklyn for a few days (the boy has grandparents and other relatives there), then proceed to Pennsylvania for a bit, where we'd meet up with Scott-the-friend-from-Japan and his wife and kids, and also with boy's dad and littlest sister. Then we'd load up the car with a nice rug and some old type (boy's dad deals in antiques) and head back in time for school. The fall break or the winter holidays, then, would be visiting BC time.

First, though, I have a digital camera to finish paying off.

Nap Time

Oh Yeah

Forgot to mention: If you don't have Facebook but still want to see the pics from Sunday's cycling, there's a slightly different selection of them on my Flickr stream (link to the right, under "Visit Me").

Today is a day to Not Do Very Much

It's one of those days where I either should have just gone to work (I had a choice between today and tomorrow and didn't sleep much last night so decided to work tomorrow when I might be better rested) or stayed in bed. I managed to pour my after-lunch cup of tea on the table, my feet, and six pages of comics artwork. Fortunately, the art isn't completely ruined, just a tad wrinkled and tea-stained on the edges. Still, it was just one more thing on a day when I was already feeling a bit down.

So I've decided I just won't do very much today. Fuck trying to get something done. I tried that, and ended up with soggy art. So I added some photos to Facebook, and I'll write some in this blog. Maybe later I'll do some work blogging and start organizing the content for a "video games based on movies" article. Or maybe I won't. Maybe I'll fire up the PS3 and lay some ghosts to rest, or shoot some bugs, or kill a few infidels, or tear up a racetrack. And maybe I'll go to the post office, which is sort of like getting something done, only it's to mail some BookMooch books, so not really. Or maybe I'll go buy a video game I can review for work, which is also sort of like getting something done, but also not really.

Anyway. On the Finishing Half-Read Books Project, I got to the end of Lost Discoveries a couple of days ago, and have been making good progress on Women and the Book. No more new finds of half-read things, though I think I might be partway through a book on Zen that's around somewhere.

And just so you don't think crappy days are the norm around here, Sunday was a very fine day. The boy and I cycled around Halifax, stopping at the Public Gardens, the waterfront, and Point Pleasant Park before retiring to the humble abode for giant hamburgers. I got a horrific sunburn which is just becoming bearable today, but it was a great day anyway. I put some photos up on Facebook, and here's one of me on the beach (after I put on a long-sleeved shirt even though it was too late for my shoulders):



Photo by the boy, of course (who I have decided should be called "Billy Z" (the "Z" being pronounced "Zee") (I haven't informed him of this yet). And speaking of the boy, here he is:



(I call it "Blue Boy.")

Icons!

Self-Portrait in Bill's Glasses

My favourite photograph so far this summer.

More and More

More finished, more half-finished.

I finished Tom Sawyer, which turned out to be much better in big chunks than in small doses, so two reading sessions later, it was over. I'm still not sure why I had trouble getting into it, but now I'm ready to tackle some more Twain. Well, once I've polished off some more of the half-read books on the list.

And speaking of half-read books, yes I found a couple more. One is The Great Airship by Lt. Col. Brereton, a truly abysmal boy's adventure novel from sometime between the wars (I suspect--there's no date on it). It cost me all of a dollar in a tiny "bookshop" located in a garden shed in New Brunswick. I actually have quite a fascination for boy's (and girl's) adventure novels from around the turn of the century and just after. I have a small collection of them that feature airships and am always looking for more--but I think I'll make this a post all on its own. The book has a certain appeal, despite the terrible writing.

The other book is one I picked up on sale at the book fair when the Congress of Learned Societies was in St John's in . . . 1997, I think. It's called Women and the Book: Assessing the Visual Evidence, edited by Jane H.M. Taylor and Lesley Smith. It's a proceedings from a 1993 conference, published with additional essays in 1996. Very scholarly, which explains why I didn't get very far before setting it aside--I was researching and writing my Master's thesis at the time. I picked it up again last night and decided to start over at the beginning since I didn't remember the two essays I had already read very well. Really interesting stuff, and so far quite readable.

It reminds me, for some reason, of an ex-boyfriend. I had seen a book on Celtic archaeology at the bookstore where he worked one day a week--it didn't have a price, so I asked him to check next time he worked. As I recall, my birthday was coming up, and I hinted that it might make a nice gift, if it wasn't too expensive (though I also suggested that it probably was too expensive). I have a small collection of Celtic archaeology books, and this one was a thick anthology of essays by different scholars. So he reports back a while later and it was pricey, as I had suspected. "You wouldn't want it anyway," he said. "It was really technical and full of charts and diagrams."

Erm. First clue this was not the man of my dreams? (Actually first clue was probably that he was a Christian Scientist, but I did try to be open-minded.) I guess he never noticed that I actually sometimes read scholarly books for fun. And maybe he forgot that my BA is in archaeology. One lesson I learned: it's a bad idea to go out with a man who feels threatened by your intelligence (assuming he finally figures out that you have it).

And Another

Yep, I'm on a roll. I finished Gothic Illuminated Manuscripts yesterday, but then found yet another half-read book on the shelves. This time it's Black Water 2, a short story anthology edited by Alberto Manguel. Really, really great stories, but the book is massively huge. I tend to read short stories in cycles: sometimes I'll burn through masses of them, and other times I don't read any. I've been on a non-short-story-reading phase for quite a while now, so this book has sat on the shelf, page marked about halfway through its 1000+ pages.

In non-book news, today I've rented a U-Haul cargo van so we can help move a corner-cutting machine from my boss/teacher Joe's basement to the Dawson Printshop and collect a couple of free chests of drawers and a massive worktable/corner desk. I'll have to post a few pictures--this apartment is starting to look like an actual home. You can see photos of what it looked like when the boy moved in on my Facebook page (they're in the album called"Cellphone Photoshoot 3 - Moving Day(s)"). Mind you, the furniture is still all second-hand--and a lot of it was free--but well-placed pieces of fabric can do a lot for crappy furniture.

One Down

So I finished Codex yesterday, but discovered several more partially-read books on the shelves, identified by the slips of paper sticking up from between the pages to keep my place.

• Gothic Illuminated Manuscripts by Emma Pirani: Lots of pictures and a fair amount of rather dry text. I'm going to tackle this one while I still have plenty of old-book enthusiasm from Codex (not that I ever really lack old-book enthusiasm).


• Introduction to Bookbinding by Lionel S. Darley: Why, you might ask, am I reading an introduction to bookbinding when I've already read several and have progressed beyond the introductory stage in actual hands-on binding? Maybe because I'm a completist. Actually it's because everyone has their own way of doing things and I always like to see what other people recommend. I've learn a surprising amount by occasionally going back and looking at the basics from the point of view of someone I haven't read before.


• Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte: My mother loves the Brontes. I loved Jane Eyre (different Bronte, but they always seemed more like a collective than individuals). I made it through a pretty good chunk of this before it started to get pretty tiresome. Now I'm trying to read a chapter now and then, except I keep losing the thread of the story. I should probably start over at the beginning. Oh well.

Time to Read

So school is out for summer, and my one summer course is over (digital photo, which was excellent thanks to a really great teacher, even if he did only give me a B in lighting last year). Here's my favourite of the photos I did for my final project (an attempt to recreate the Happy Family photos I remember from growing up in the 70s):



I'm actually considering putting that one on the wall, even though I don't especially like having pictures of myself up. Here's another, that isn't as successful in terms of colour, but which works really well otherwise.



I love the one raised eyebrow thing.

But I began this post with a mention of school being done, and it is, until September. Which means I have a little more time. Time to play videogames, and time to read. Recently I've started to get that feeling I sometimes get, that I need to finish all the books I started before I start any more (except I just started a new one yesterday, completely violating my good intentions). So I'm going to concentrate on finishing unfinished books and see if I can't get them all out of the way by the time summer's over. Then I can start accumulating partly-finished books all over again. Whee!

There's never any one reason I don't make it all the way through a book. Sometimes it requires more brain power that I can give it at the time, so it gets put aside for when I have more leisure. Sometimes it's simply the wrong size to easily read on the bus or in bed or in the tub. Sometimes I lose interest, read something else in the meantime and then don't ever get back. Here are the things I've got in progress at the moment:

• Lost Discoveries by Dick Teresi: It's subtitled "The Ancient Roots of Modern Science--from the Babylonians to the Maya" and is essentially a history of non-western science. I've been reading this one on and off whenever I don't need too much brain for other things. It's a pretty good read and I'm well over halfway through. It's not going to be a problem to finish now that I have no school for a while.


• The Lungfish, the Dodo and the Unicorn by Willy Ley: Another subtitled book; this time "An Excursion into Romantic Zoology." It's a fun book about fantastic beasts that are either not real, real but extinct, or really really for real but seemingly improbable. It was published in 1948 and just seems to work better in small doses, which is why I haven't finished it yet. I guess I've been craving something I can consume in big chunks. Mmmmmm . . . books . . .


• Doubt: A History by Jennifer Michael Hecht: I'd only just begun this when I moved, so I never really had a chance to get into it before I had to set it aside. Looks like it'll be a good read, though.


• This Thing of Darkness by Harry Thompson: A novel about nautical exploration and discovery, in which Charles Darwin is a character. I'm enjoying it immensely, but it fits in the category of "too big to comfortably read anywhere but sitting upright in a chair," though I have made valiant attempts to read it in bed. It's going to require evenings of tea and sitting it the ugly salmon-coloured granny rocker to finish, but they'll be good evenings.


• Tom Sawyer by Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain: I love Twain, but I'm finding it hard to get into Tom. I don't remember Huckleberry Finn being this obviously written for children. I will forge on, though, because the writing is marvelous, and I have a copy of Tom Sawyer Abroad on the shelf that I want to get at soon.


• The Confusion by Neal Stephenson: This is the second book in the Baroque Cycle, and baroque it certainly is. Phew! Really great writing, but very very dense, and not as well-sprinkled with humorous bits as the first book. I'll take me a while to slog my way to the end, but I know it's going to have been worth it (how's that for a convoluted verb tense?).


• Codex: by Lev Grossman. Woo! I love books about books, and this novel is proving to be just the easy read I needed, without being too lightweight. I acquired it through BookMooch, which a recommend highly if you have books you don't need but don't really want to dispose of. BookMooch lets you send books off to appreciative other book folks and use the points you thereby accumulate to mooch new books off other people. It makes it so much easier for me to part with books (always a hard thing, even if I know I'll never read them again), knowing who they're going to, and being able to get books in the mail in return. I love mail. Especially when it has books in it.

Well, this post is getting long, so I'll leave it at that. I think there are a few more partly-finished books lurking on the shelves, but I'll deal with the ones listed first, then go in search of others.

Pen Lust

I have no idea how much it even costs (but no doubt way more than I can afford), but I really, really want this pen. Er, anyone wanna bargain for a firstborn child?

What Am I?

So I had this assignment for art history (Narrative and Craft) last week in which we had to describe a craft object without actually saying what the object was or being too obvious about its form. So here's what I wrote:

I am animal:
I have a head and a tail and a spine, twisted threads like sinews and springy muscles of raised bands to hold me together. I am calf brown.

I am vegetable:
I have leaves and boards and dye of vegetable. I am oak brown and pale brown blank-featured and creamy pale linen.

I am no mineral at all (though I might have been clasped in brass).

My rectangular form would have been familiar to monks, my size comfortable to hold and turn in the hands, my purpose to transmit learning.

I am not living, but my kind have long lives. We are stolen, defaced, traded for high prices and lost at the bottom of seas. We hold the world’s knowledge, but I am empty, waiting to be filled with your thoughts.

I won't say what it is just yet, because of this next part of the assignment, which was to take someone else's description, randomly chosen for us by the TA and do a sketch of what we think the object is. Here's the one I got:

The dance floor was enclosed by fourteen intricate darkened pillars. Halfway up, each pillar had been carved away to create a lattice like motif in which carnations intertwined creating their own dance. The sun was so bright that every metal surface shone gold, even the carnations appeared metallic.

The music started to play and a young dancer appeared. With quick taps of castanets her hands demanded attention. She looked as if she had been practicing outdoors her whole life. Her skin had started to crease ever so slightly from the sun and heat. The swirl of her skirt on her brightly coloured dress was mesmerizing. The pillars then appeared as many dancing legs which became one with the movement of the skirt. As it gracefully flared away from her slender body, only to be pulled in close as if it was an extension of herself. The pirouette movement created a path that brought the natural perfume of the carnations into the air and across the dance floor. The scalloped edge of her dress embellished with the carnations resembled the crochet doilies on the tables back at the hotel.

High up on the hill the scenery expanded like that of the fabric in the dancers skirt. Overlooking the coast, coliseum and the city, the colours blue, green, red, gold and brilliant white created a rich portrait of the land.

A place embellished in its own textures, aromas, music, language and beautiful landscapes. For a lifetime traveller all that remains are interrupted memories of a day enjoying the entertainment of Costa del Sol, Malaga.

Anyone have any ideas? All I can see is a scene, with hints here and there of object-ness. Not enough that I can figure it out, though. I'm feeling pretty stupid, I must say. Someone please tell me it's obvious, and then tell me what it is . . .

Oh yeah, it's due Friday. Blurgh.

Yes We Can

If I was American, and at all inclined to vote, this might have a significant impact on how I voted. It might even get me to vote at all. See, there's some hope for those people to the south.

How Horrible and How Beautiful

I just read this on Neil Gaiman's blog, and thought it was too elegantly stated not to pass on:

"While it is important to learn about the Holocaust," she says, "it is even more important that we learn from the Holocaust."

The most chilling of those lessons, to her, is that extermination, civilization's ultimate betrayal of its own humanity, was the work of highly civilized people.

"These were educated, erudite individuals, thinkers, who came to the conclusion that the final solution was perfectly plausible.

"And then they were able to enlist the help of chemists to devise an efficient gas for extermination, and architects to design an efficient death house, and industrialists to create the machinery of annihilation."

The lesson of the Holocaust is not that human beings are "somehow capable of resigning from their human obligations to one another," she says, but that "they do so out of conscious moral choice."

This is why I think everyone needs to see Night and Fog, even though it is truly scarring.

Bird's-Eye View

Some of you may have seen this already, if you check out my Facebook profile:


It's the big room shared by the Dawson Printshop, where I work, and the NSCAD Design Printshop. Taken with my cellphone camera. From the top of a very tall ladder. That white wall you can see just to the right is no longer white, it's grey. I painted it.

You can just see our replica common press at the top of the photo. It was used to print the replica of the first newspaper ever printed in Canada. It's not that different from what Gutenberg would have used.

What's Nikoniconiknevernikki Been Up To?

School: I've really only had three days of school so far, since I only have classes twice a week (not counting my internship), but it already seems like ages. Intaglio is already intense and exciting and I have too many projects in mind to get them all done. But that's good. I'm starting with a multiplate bookwork with sea creatures and steam. I'll also have to get started on a singleplate/multicolour print. Possibly with a Jules Verne submarine. Sometime before Friday, which means tomorrow after work, I have to photocopy the readings for art history and then read some of them. Or at least go to the library and read them. The class is Narrative and Craft and the teacher is really good (I had her for Craft and Design History).

Internship: Technically, I suppose this could fall under "School," but whatever. I'm working with Joe Landry, who teaches bookarts at NSCAD, has his own bookbinding and conservation business, and currently co-manages the Dawson Printshop. I'll be doing some gold tooling (and also blind tooling) and at some point making a Byzantine binding (complete with brass clasps), but for now I'm building boxes for Joe to have as models for clients and lectures. Lots and lots of different styles of boxes in which one can put books and other delicate things to protect them. I'll probably also be working on some product samples for the printshop at some point.

Work: psp.about.com continues as usual with me not having as much time as I'd like to play/review games. Sigh. Work at the Dawson Printshop so far has been a lot of tidying and organizing while we wait for the fittings and furnishings to be done and installed, at which point we can actually get some things printed. Tomorrow I'll be climbing a ladder to paint a giant wall grey and a tall pillar red. You should see the height of the ceilings in this place!

Social life: What? Nik has a social life? Well, sort of. See I met someone, and he's rather kept me occupied on weekends:



(Incidentally, I'm trying to teach myself to colour balance in Photoshop using curves instead of levels, as they are supposed to be much more powerful. You can judge my success, or lack thereof, from the previous photo. Yeah, I need to work on it more. Probably could also tweak the contrast a bit more.). Movies, wine, talking, etc. Lots of talking, actually, which will probably surprise some of you. Really, I do talk when I've got something to say and someone interesting to say them to. If you really want to, you can see more photos of what I've been doing on Facebook (link in left column), but I currently have my photos viewable only by friends, so you'd have to join and then add me as a friend. Alternatively, I might consider making my photos public. Maybe.

Worst Grade Ever

Last week when I started school I also picked up my grades from last semester and got, as I rather expected I might, my worst grade so far at NSCAD (though not quite my worst grade ever in university, I think). So anyway, here are my grades from Fall 07:

• AHIS 3200 History of Photography: A+
  
• PHOT2500 Lighting Workshop: B
  
• PRTM2100 Relief Printmaking: A
  
• PRTM3106 Intermediate Lithography: A
  

That gives me a GPA of 3.86 for the semester, and 3.95 so far for this degree. Not too bad, I guess.

Random Pic

Xmas trees and way too many presents (some of them contain chocolate . . .). Also, a few boxes not yet unpacked from the move.

Winter 08 Schedule

Unless, things change, which they very well might, my schedule for this semester will look something like this:

Monday

• day off for doing homework

Tuesday

• 9am - 12:30pm (ish) work at Dawson Printshop
• 1pm - 5:30pm Intermediate Intaglio

Wednesday

• internship at Leaf by Leaf

Thursday

• 9am - ? work at Dawson Printshop
• ? - 5pm (ish) internship at Dawson Printshop

Friday

• 9am - 11am Narrative and Craft (art history)
• 1pm - 5:30pm Intermediate Intaglio

Saturday

• more or less free for homework and social life (hey, I sort of have one now)
• possibly some more internship hours at Leaf by Leaf in the afternoon

Sunday

• homework, social life, sleep, etc

So, busy, but not unmanageable. There may also be more work hours at the Dawson Printshop if I seem to be keeping up with coursework and internship hours all right.

And, in other news, if you don't have a Facebook page and want to see various odds and ends of photos I've been posting (summer road trips, pets, cute boys, odds and ends), um . . . you'll just have to get Facebook. I might post a few things here, and art stuff will eventually end up on deviantART (I've started bringing prints home, and hope to get around to photographing them soon), but most of the odd stuff will end up on Facebook, visible only to my Facebook friends. If you don't know how to get on Facebook, I suggest asking the nearest 12-or-13-year-old girl.

And So it Begins

The new semester, that is. Today school started at NSCAD. I don't actually have any classes on Monday, but I went in this afternoon to see about updating my student card (we have to get a new sticker every semester) and find out if last semester's grades were available yet. I also thought I might stop and talk to a few people. Alas, it was crowded as hell in there, the line for student services was crazy long, and none of the people I was going to talk to were around. I said "hi" to a couple of former classmates and the printmaking tech, Murf, and then made my way back home (all three blocks).

I had better luck this morning picking up a parcel and changing my address on my driver's license. I also got another earring in one ear (left one, at the top, cost $3 extra for cartilage, which I determined is because they have to give you two bottles of the cleaning stuff instead of one because it takes twice as long to heal) (gone are the days of being sent home with nothing but instructions to put polysporin on it once in a while). And I bought some new jewelry for my existing piercings--I lost one of my talons not long ago and just had safety pins in, so I needed at least one set. I decided to get new rings for the other holes too. I've got them all in now and they look pretty spiffy. Except I couldn't get my current nose ring out to put the new one in. I'll have another go at it later.

Hang on, I'll get a pic.



It's hard to tell, but the one farthest back is a peacock/multicolour metal with slightly iridescent beads.

Let's see. Other news. The coffee date I mentioned a few posts back went swimmingly, as have various and sundry movies, video nights, breakfasts and used bookstore forays since then. Sometimes I accidentally catch a glimpse of my expression as I walk by a mirror. Usually it's a silly secret smile.

Xmas was nice and quiet, with way too many presents to open (I'm still working my way through all the chocolate). And there are presents still to come, apparently. Thanks to everyone. It was fabulous. Dinner was turkey and a huge assortment of veggies, many of them mashed. Deva's Mum and Randy were over all day, from breakfast of bacon, toast and hashbrowns (Ryan's favourite thing to cook) to the aforementioned dinner.

New Year's Eve involved staying up until New Year's Day drinking wine and talking. Oh, and there was some very silly dancing to the Chemical Brothers sometime around four in the morning (maybe, I really have no idea what time it was). New Year's day involved a lot of sleeping and a late breakfast, followed by, well, other things I won't talk about here.

Everything is bright and well in my world.

Don't Follow Me!

Yeah, so if I message you on Messenger with nothing but a url in the message, don't follow it. Apparently, someone's been using my account to send suspicious links. Like I said, don't follow them, it's not me. I've changed my password, which I hope will solve the problem, but if anyone notices it continuing, let me know. And 'Lena, you might want to change your passwords, too--I think it was a following a weird link from you (or that I thought was from you) that started this.

Update: Everyone's changed their passwords, and all seems to be fine once again.

Exterminate!

I got a cell phone recently. It's very shiny. Also, it has bluetooth. My Macbook also has bluetooth. Hmm . . . I thought, I bet I could make them talk to each other. Last night I managed to figure out how, though I couldn't think of anything useful to do with the ability. I've also been trying to figure out how to make my own ringtones. This phone can use mp3 ringtones, but you can't just transfer from a computer. Well, you can, and you can then listen to them, but you can't set them as ringtones. Some investigation online revealed sites that will convert mp3s to ringtone files and send them to you on your phone. But the file I wanted to use was already an mp3. Hey, I thought, what if I use bluetooth to send the file? Alas, it just saved it on the phone's memory card (sold separately ;) ). So I took the memory card out and re-sent the file. This time when I selected "store" it gave me the option to set the file as a ringtone. Yay! Now whenever someone phones me there will be Daleks exclaiming, "Exterminate! Exterminate!" Now I just need some people to phone me . . .

And here's a blurry cellphone photo of a weird thing I saw on the way home from my coffee date (drank a London Fog, had good conversation, saw cool photos):



Hmm . . . I don't know why that's sideways. It's not sideways on the phone and it's not sideways in Photoshop. Oh well, you'll just have to tilt your head. It's a snowbank on the side of the road with a big pile of shiny icecubes on top. It was very surreal in the weird night light.

Crap

Had my last day of work at the VRC (aka slide library) today. Had my last day of printing the lithographic photoplate experiment today. Got some information today that made me cancel a date. I don't know if the information was good or not, but I thought it best to err on the side of caution and only have dates in public places for a while. Feelings ended up hurt on both sides. Oh well, I thought. I will drink tea and eat xmas chocolate and watch anime and things won't seem so bad. Maybe I will stop feeling guilty (I am very good at feeling guilty). Apologies didn't help. Apologies didn't seem to do anything except make me feel like I was apologising too much. And Naruto seems to have vanished off YTV's schedule, so I have to wait for anime. So tired. Shower now, then Bleach and Deathnote, and maybe it will help, but probably I'll go on feeling guilty for a while. Probably quite a while. I love words, but sometimes they don't communicate. Crap.

Random Photo

Deva and Ryan in New Brunswick this past summer. I can't remember the name of the town, but they had sea caves and a really nice park with hiking trails.

Slippery Dog

I just got a spam mail with the subject "Dalmation lubrication." It had an attachment. I did not open it.

Random Picture

Too many words, so here's a picture from the field trip we took to Gaspereau Press with my wood type class this summer. Old machinery is fascinating.

Free Paper!

(Yes, another update. You'd almost think I had some free time. Don't get too comfortable--my free time is still pretty minuscule until after Friday.)

So what I did today. I got up groggy and even more zombie-like than yesterday. With the weather having warmed up and the heat in the apartment not seeming to have adjusted, I was too hot to sleep, and the wind was whistling in the window and earplugs just got annoying. But then I drank tea and things weren't so bad.

I went in to school and just had time to make one lithographic photo plate (no pics, sorry, the plates are light sensitive; if I remember I'll take some when I start printing tomorrow). Then I dashed to work (approximately a minute and a half dash to the library from the printmaking studios, luckily). There was a lot of going through slides to get them back in their proper order after a semester of use. I'm working my way through Asia, and so did a lot of wrestling with the dynasties of China and trying to figure out exactly what principle was behind the cataloging of the art and architecture of India. Alas, no one who actually worked on setting it up is at the library any longer. The rare times when someone came in to return or sign out a video seemed like special treats. And when Joe phoned to let me know that they did indeed want to hire me at the Dawson Printshop it was better than xmas. So then I had to tell Victoria that I'm going to take the printshop job and not return to the VRC (aka slide library) next semester. And Friday will be my last day.

After work (which ended at four) I went back to printmaking, cut (or rather ripped) some paper, set up the middle press, and pre-stretched the paper (well, half of it--part of the experiment will be to see just how much not pre-stretching cocks up the registration on different papers). While I was setting up, the technician Murf (without whom the printshop would probably not run half so well) asked me what I was getting out of being the guinea pig who gets to try the new photo-transparencies. Well, I explained, I get to keep the plates after, and I get however many copies of the prints I make on my own paper. Bob keeps the prints on the paper he bought for me to print on. Murf seemed to think I ought to get more out of it, so he went to wherever it is he stashes things and came back with some paper he put away eons ago when the Printmaking Workshop part of NSCAD printmaking shut down (they used to make prints with big-name artists). I was expecting a few sheets; printmaking paper is expensive (which is probably why I am so poor this semester). Instead, he brought me a pile of perhaps 20 sheets of gorgeous thick greenish-tinged paper. It's a teensie bit yellowed around the edges, and curled from being so aged, but it's really , really nice. I can't wait to try some intaglio prints on it. Woo hoo! Free paper. Really nice paper.

Then I made three more photoplates (for the c, m, and k--made the y this morning), cleaned up and came home. I am thinking I should probably eat something, as my lunch was really more of an afternoon snack. I don't really feel that hungry, though. If I find some energy somewhere, maybe I'll make a little pizza. I have a couple of gf crusts in the freezer, and some sauce already made. Or maybe I'll just melt some cheese over a plate of blue tortillas and eat them with salsa.

So much wrongness

Add "guys who list anal sex in their interests wrong" to the list in the previous post. Shudder.

It's alive!

Yeah, so, not dead. At least not literally. I look a bit like a zombie:


But anyway. I seem to have survived the semester. I also seem to have grown a few muscles and lost some fat. Printmaking is hard work.

Speaking of which, here are some more work-in-progress photos of printing, this time relief printmaking.

Here is a reductive linocut all ready to print the final colour. There isn't much left of it now. Behind the block is a newsprint proof of the one colour all by itself.


If I back up a bit, you can see more of the area where I'm working.


And here's the block on the press, waiting for me to add paper:


And backing up a bit from the press . . .


The print, covered with a tympan and blanket, as it comes out the other side of the press. Unlike lithography or intaglio printing, relief printing requires very little pressure so it's really easy to crank the bed through the press.


Here's the print from the back. I've used a thin Japanese paper, so all the colours show through.


The finished print alongside the block I just printed from. This was the final run, of dark blue over the other colours.


And finally, the print itself. I've titled it Kitsune Kaze, which means "fox shadow" in Japanese (which I do not speak, but I know a few words).



---

So, what else have I been doing . . .

I signed up for some stuff, like Facebook, which I tend to ignore until someone posts something on my page or sends me a message.

On a whim, when I was supposed to be writing a paper, I signed up on Plenty of Fish, which I am not going to link to here. Much to my surprise, I met a few interesting people (in real life, even!). One signed up on a dare, and another in a fit of madness. Or something. Even so, I have come to the conclusion that dating sites are strange and disturbing places. And while I am, at times, all for strange and disturbing, dating sites are really the wrong sort of strange and disturbing. Very, very wrong. Like old men with big mustaches and no beards who like country music wrong. Like men from Europe who proclaim you drive them crazy in obviously not first-language English wrong (not that not having English as a first language is itself wrong, that's silly). Even guys who, when you tell them that colour, size and shape are not important, tell you to spare them your liberal nonsense and inform you that skin colour is how we know our own kind wrong. But I'm sure these things are great for some people. For me, I'll be giving my real email to a select few people (well, one of my real emails, anyway) and getting the hell out of there.

I suppose there is more, but I should sleep before I have to get up for work and I still have a few people (non dating site people) to email before that. Probably, due to the hols, it'll be less than a month before I update again. Until then, here is an amusing picture of Poe:

Milk Chocolate is . . . Meh

Yeah, so, yesterday I bought a bar of Swiss milk chocolate with hazelnuts in. It was the third time in as many weeks that I have eaten milk chocolate and thought I shouldn't have bothered. I mean it was all right, but it just wasn't as fantastic as chocolate is supposed to be. Maybe I just bought cheap, crappy chocolate. Or maybe I need to just get dark chocolate, which has never disappointed me. Now if only I could find some dark chocolate with hazelnuts in. It's easy to find dark chocolate with almonds. Even Hershey's makes reasonable dark chocolate with almonds (and Hershey's dark chocolate used to be grainy and horrible). But no one seems to make dark chocolate with hazelnuts. Or hedgehogs. Has anyone ever seen dark chocolate hedgehogs? Mmm . . .

Airship Coat

Oh, won't someone get this for me for xmas . . . Warm wool coat (did I mention the weather has turned very chilly here), airship insignia. Airship insignia!! Anyway. I could use a coat. (I should probably measure myself and see if it would fit. I think it will. But I should measure.)

Relief!

Relief printmaking, that is. I'd set aside the entire day of today to work on nothing but relief printmaking. I wanted to get a big linocut either done or well on its way. Alas, it's not even begun.

My idea was to do a sort of scroll-shaped (that is, long and narrow) image from Aesop's The Fox and the Grapes. But I just can't get the fox right in my sketches. So I've set that aside for now, to work on drawings for a woodcut (on plywood!). Here's a sketch I did sometime last year when my design class started to get really boring:



I rather like this character. I'm not entirely sure who she is or where she fits into my various stories, but I do know she's a test pilot and a courier for Frisland Airships. Anyway, I thought it would be kind of fun to try to do a black and white woodcut of her, so I did this sketch of her face, thinking I could surround it with a black oval, a la Victorian portraits:



Then I traced the image onto another sheet of paper, so I could fix a few things, like the goggles and gloved hand. I traced over the main lines with a sharpie so I could get a clearer idea of what I was doing. For some reason I decided to try to make it into a greyscale marker drawing, with rather dubious results:



Heh. Now try to picture what this will look like in high contrast black and white, without a whole lot (or any) fine detail, as a woodcut. Anyway, we'll see how it turns out . . .

Time, I Need Time

Actually, I'm pretty sure Imperius said "Thyme. I need thyme," but anyway . . .

I think I may have taken on too much this semester. Scroll down to that post where I detailed my schedule. See anything wrong with it? Add in Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday working 9-12:30 in the slide library. Now do you see? How about there's hardy any smegging time to do the bazillion assignments that come with fifteen credits of art school, twelve credits of which are studio courses? Oh yeah, and then there's my writing job, the one that actually pays the bills (which, alas, pays in US dollars which were worth less than Canadian dollars when I put my cheque in the bank earlier today!) But anyway. Somehow I thought I could do all this.

Sigh. I have asked to cut back on my slide library hours, so as of this past week, remove the Wednesday morning shift from the schedule. It's more manageable. Especially since my photo teacher said that any assignments except the final project can be resubmitted at any time up to the penultimate class. That's a huge relief, because my first two assignments were utter crap. And no, that's not just my perfectionist self speaking. Anyway. I feel I can breathe a little now, though I am still thinking of asking for another free morning. Especially since I looked at my courses to date and realized that if I do an Interdisciplinary degree (which fits better with my current plans of action A, B and C--which is to say, all of them) I can graduate a bit sooner. Even if I take on a much lighter course load next semester.

So immediate plans are to make it through this semester working as hard as I can (and nine of my fifteen credits are litho and relief printing, which are more fun), then relax a bit school-wise. But first, survive the semester. And I thought last winter was hellish!

What I Did Today (or, Manual Labour)

I actually hauled myself out of bed at 6:15 this morning, a non-school morning, to go print stuff in the lithography studios at school. I had a couple of assignments to work on for tomorrow's class and I wanted to get going before the hordes arrived. It's really nice to work in there first thing in the morning, even though I am not remotely a morning person. Here's one of the presses (not the one I was using today, but pretty much the same except a little smaller):


My first task was to print my aluminum plate, which I've had ready to go for about a week. Because it's just a thin sheet of aluminum, it has to sit on a plate support to go through the press. Here's the plate all inked up and ready to run a proof:


It came out really well, although there was one spelling error and one backwards "s" (it comes from writing backwards, which I'm actually pretty good at, but it's easier to make mistakes). I'll be able to correct the errors later, fortunately.


Once that was done, it was on to working on a colour reductive print, this time on a stone instead of a plate. The idea is to make an image and print it in one colour, then remove parts of the image, print in another colour, and so on. The assignment is to use at least three colours. My idea is to do the three colours, and then use my aluminum plate to print black over top (or maybe a very dark brown). Here's the stone inked up in the first colour, a mustardy yellow (it looks green because it's rather on the transparent side, and there's still black ink in the stone that refused to wash out, even with the stronger solvent):


It started out well, but then . . .

That black ink that was still in there? It stayed put all though the newsprint proofs. Then as soon as I started cover stock proofs, the black started to come out. Not a lot, just enough to make the yellow look a bit dirty, which doesn't really matter with the image in question, so I kept going. Then I noticed some weird embossing on the rag paper prints. I checked the stone. There had started to appear little areas where the surface of the stone seemed to be caving in slightly. Oh, that can't be good.

So I kept going through 5 rag paper copies. Then I was afraid to go any farther in case the stone broke or something. I had intended to do 6 and then if there was time move on to the next colour. Instead I rolled up the stone in black ink and gummed it down to save for later--after I show the weirdness to my teacher and find out if it's still okay to use.

Busy Busy

Yes, I am alive. I did manage to get into Relief Printmaking, Tuesdays from 6-10 pm. So I am so very busy and kind of sleepy most of the time, but having a blast. I'm a bit behind where I need to be for Litho (and so will probably be spending most of tomorrow working in the litho studios), but am so far up to date on everything else.

And here's a glare-y snap of my lino block from my first relief assignment. It's darkened with Sharpie so I could see what I was doing. I'll post a pic of the final print once I actually finish it.

Gothic Medieval Bookbinding Project

I was rummaging around in my files, looking for pictures I can post on my deviantART page (go, look, I added more stuff today). Anyway, I found the essay I wrote for Intermediate Book Arts last fall, and though it would be fun to post it here, diagrams and all. I'll forgive you non book-geeks if you don't want to read it all . . .



Gothic Medieval Bookbinding Project

The prospect of choosing a book arts final project was at first daunting. With so many possibilities, all of which I want to learn about, how could I choose just one? In the end, I decided on a time period that we hadn’t learned much about in class, but which was an important one for the development of book structure: the medieval period.

Even that decision didn’t narrow the possibilities that much, but realizing that I would not be able to acquire any parchment for an accurate reproduction of an early medieval book, I settled on Gothic bookbinding, when paper would have been more and more common in book production.

Paper

Paper was eventually the dominant material for textblocks in Gothic bindings, but was originally thought to be weaker than parchment. Paper was therefore often combined with parchment in a variety of ways, such as the addition of an inner or outer parchment bifolium to each paper section or to the end sections, or a narrow parchment guard to the inner fold of each section (Szirmai 176, Shailor 11-12).

Because of the expense of parchment (and also because I would have had to order it well ahead of time), I chose to use paper for this project. I found a very nice Italian mould-made paper made of cotton with wool fibres. It is quite a thick paper, and thus perhaps not ideal for a tight-backed Gothic binding, but I liked the feel of it.

There are a wide variety of possible endleaves for a Gothic binding – Szirmai provides diagrams of 19 – most of which combine paper and parchment. As mentioned, I did not have access to parchment, and so I stuck with the same paper as the bookblock. The style of endpaper I used is one not illustrated in the Gothic bindings chapter of Szirmai's book (it is, however, shown in the Romanesque chapter, page 147), but which J. Landry mentioned as fairly common in English medieval bindings (pers comm.). It consists of a single bifolium with the outermost leaf cut of short to serve as a waste leaf. Both the stub of the waste leaf and the second leaf would be pasted to the board.

Sewing

The holes for sewing a Gothic book could be either pierced or cut (Szirmai 176) – I chose to pierce them using a template to make sure I had them spaced and lined up properly.

According the J.A. Szirmai, Gothic books could have anywhere from two to nine sewing supports, with three to six being the most common (180). Because my book is small, I decided on three supports plus a kettlestitch at each end. The three supports are evenly spaced, as the optical illusion that necessitates a larger space between the bottom two supports on a raised-cord binding was either unknown, ignored, or of no concern at the time. Even as late as the 16th century it was common for books to be placed flat on a horizontal shelf, and when they were shelved vertically, it was as often as not with the fore-edge out (Petroski, 118-9).

The most common sewing supports on Gothic bindings were double cords and split thongs (Szirmai 183, Shailor 56), and since I wanted raised cords showing on the spine, I went with double cords and chose linen over hemp for strength. I sewed with a straight stitch rather than herringbone, because I wanted to pack the sewing which would help stabilize the rounded shape of the spine and create wider opening arch when the book is opened (Szirmai 272). I did the packing of the sewing after the bookblock was sewn and chose to pack each cord separately rather than doing each pair of cords together. It is possible to create a decorative effect by emphasizing the separate cords in this way (Landry, pers comm.).

The thread I used was 12/3, fairly thick to compensate for the relative softness of the paper and the thick sections.

Endbands

I had originally approached this project wanting to investigate endbands that were sewn at the same time as the sections were sewn. I had read about this in a number of bookbinding books (for examples see Burdett 143 and Johnson 85) but had been unable to find out how they were done or to find any examples. As I researched endbands, I did eventually find diagrams of integral endbands (Cockerell 110, Young 112). Szirmai describes a number of examples of this type of endband, but mentions that it was almost unknown on earlier medieval bindings (203). Integral endbands became more common on Gothic bindings (but still only account for 4.3% of the Gothic endbands Szirmai studied), indicating that they are a later innovation and not the original method of making endbands, as many writers would have it. Landry's experience with English bindings also indicated that integral endbands are the exception, and may have come from very few (or even just one) workshops (Email).

Although I am still curious about integral endbands and the origin of the misconception about their antiquity, I finally chose to use primary wound endbands with a back bead – Szirmai's Type II (206) – sewn with the same thread as the rest of the book. The endbands were tied down through the centre of each section.


Boards

The most common woods for the boards of medieval books are oak and beech, with oak being almost the only wood used in England (Szirmai 217). The boards were usually quartersawn, partly because that was the usual way of making planks for a long time, and also because quartersawn wood is less likely to warp, which is an important consideration for book covers (Landry, pers comm.).

To make the book boards, I used oak and cut it with a Japanese saw to almost the final size, then planed down the edges. Szirmai illustrates sixteen different ways to shape the outer edges of Gothic book boards (219). I chose to gradually round, or cushion, the outer edges – the rounding at the spine provides for a smooth path for the cords to travel, and the gradual rounding feels nice in the hand on the other three edges. The inner spine edge of the board is more strongly rounded to help force the spine of the book into a rounded and somewhat backed shape (Landry, pers comm.), and the other three edges are beveled.



There are a number of ways of lacing the cords into the boards (Szirmai shows several on page 223). I used one of the more common ones, with the double cords of the sewing supports laced in from the outside and back out from the inside, and the single cords of the endbands simply laced in from the outside. A channel for the cords is cut from the spine edge to the first hole on the outside, and between the two holes on the inside of the boards.



Once the cords are pasted and laced into the boards, they are pegged in with dowelling (Shailor 57) while the cover is at a 45º angle to the bookblock. Then the dowels and cords are cut off flush with the boards and the covers are forced closed which creates the rounded and backed shape of the spine (Landry, pers comm.). Szirmai has presented evidence that at least some workshops used a hammer to round and back books (194), but I decided to follow the my teacher's experience and besides, I had backed with a hammer before, but had not yet tried backing by forcing the spine into shape with the boards.



Once the boards were on and closed, the book was measured for making a template from which to cut the leather, and then put in a finishing press to keep it closed while the leather was prepared.

Covering

Leather was the most common covering material in medieval bindings, with vegetable-tanned calf and alum-tawed pigskin becoming more prevalent on Gothic books (Szirmai 225). Since I hadn't had a chance to work with it before, except as sewing supports on a sewing sample book, I originally chose to use alum-tawed pigskin. It became apparent, however, that the leather I had chosen was not going to work.

Because the book has laced-in endbands, the leather needed to be cut to have more-or-less V-shaped cutouts on the top and bottom edges. The resulting central tab would fold over to create the headcaps and the area at the point of the V would be molded around the endband cords and board edges. I wanted to leave most of the wood exposed.

This kind of leather was stiffer than the vegetable-tanned leathers I had used before, and has a tendency to chip. Even with very sharp knives, I found paring the alum-tawed pigskin very difficult. In fact, after pasting and applying the leather to the spine, it was still quite stiff. Even after removing the leather, paring it some more and re-pasting, it was still quite difficult to get it to adhere to the spine and boards. PVA on the turn-ins helped it stay, but after a night in the press the covering was still too stiff to open the book properly.



It was apparent that the alum-tawed pigskin would have to be removed and another leather chosen. I moistened the leather and carefully peeled it off, then scraped off some PVA that had remained stuck to the boards. For my second try, I used calfskin, which we dyed brown. It was much easier to pare and mould around the endbands than the alum-tawed leather.

Once the leather covering was on, the book was placed back in the finishing press and tied up with string on each side of the raised bands as well as on each side of the kettlestitches. This was to help shape the bands as band nippers were unknown in medieval times (Landry, pers comm.). Tying up would also help adhere the leather to the spine.

The final step in making this Gothic medieval style book was to paste down the endpapers.

References

Burdett, Eric. The Craft of Bookbinding: A Practical Handbook. 1975. London: David & Charles, 1978.

Cockerell, Douglas. Bookbinding, and The Care of Books: A Text-Book for Book-Binders and Librarians. (1953). Revised edition. London: Sir Isaac Pitman, 1962.

Johnson, Arthur W. The Practical Guide to Craft Bookbinding. 1985. London: Thames and Hudson, 1990.

Landry, J. Personal communication, November and December, 2006.

-----. Email. November 30, 2006.

Petroski, Henry. The Book on the Book Shelf. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999.

Shailor, Barbara A. The Medieval Book, Illustrated from the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Toronto, Buffalo and London: University of Toronto Press, 1991. Rpt of The Medieval Book: Catalogue of an Exhibition at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University. New Haven: The Library, 1988.

Szirmai, J.A. The Archaeology of Medieval Bookbinding. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1999.

Young, Laura S. Bookbinding & Conservation by Hand: A Working Guide. New York and London: R.R. Bowker Company, 1981.

deviantART

I added a link to my deviantART page in the sidebar. If you read this blog regularly, you'll have seen most of the things there (though I can think of at least one thing I put there that hasn't appeared here, plus I'll be adding more both old and new). It's all part of my plan to finally start getting some of my work out where people can see it, even if I'm not as good an artist yet as I'd like to be.

Little Journals

Rowena commented in an earlier post that I have a lot of energy. I don't really, except for bookbinding. Making books seems to energize me, so I'm trying to keep making lots of quick little projects so I can use some of that energy for other things, like work and school.

Anyway, on the previously-mentioned bookbinding blog My Handbound Books, I found a link to Carmencho Arregui's website, where there are instuctions for the Arregui-invented Crossed-Structure Binding (CSB) (of which there are multiple verisons). Of course, I had to try these. I did three sewing variations of the CSB Basic, using some book pages I had cut and folded eons ago (several years, believe it or not). I'd folded the pages way back before I knew anything about paper grain direction, so the grain actually runs the wrong way on the pages. Since you don't need much, if any, adhesive for this binding structure, I figured it wouldn't matter too much, especially since it's just an experiment. Anyway, I'm not unhappy with the results.


Even though it was my favourite colour, I think the dark green one is the least successful. I didn't have anything on hand that I wanted to use as a fancy closure, but I might add something later on (I'm wondering what I did with those sea-creature shaped charms I bought a couple of years ago).


Even from the back, the blue one's my favourite. I remembered, when stitching the brown one, how much of a pain in the butt sewing leather is. Especially when you don't have the right needle. Also, next time I think I'll glue the straps in place first, then sew, to make sure they stay where they're supposed to be.


So I think it was a reasonably successful experiment--and a good way to use up the various leathers and suedes I've collected that can't be used in "proper" leather bookbindings. I'll definitely be revisiting this structure again, though first I think I'll try some of the small projects in the two bookbinding books I was given for christmas. Or was it my birthday? At some point, I'm going to work on some more elaborate medieval books, but I'll need to buy more supplies first.

Mail Day

Well, yesterday was a good mail day (except for the credit card bill). Today is still too new to tell.

There were two packages from the US via FedEx and one from the UK via regular slow mail. They contained:

• Preview material for Jackass: The Game. I am to write a preview. I strongly suspect I am really, really not the target audience for this game, but I shall do my best to write a fair preview.
  
• Review material for Dead Head Fred. This is the retail version of the game, which I will review in-depth. I already did a preview and enjoyed it very much. I think it appealed to the mad scientist side of me.
  
• All four volumes of the 1975 run of The Book Collector, which I bought primarily for the Spring issue, as it has a fabulous article by Graham Pollard on Anglo-Saxon bookbinding structures. Plus they were listed on ABE at around the same price as some sellers listed single issues.
  

So, all-in-all, a very good mail day (except that bill).

Cats!

Wait, three posts in one day?! Indeed. I found these photos on my digital camera when I was loading the little book ones for the last post, and I had to share them. You'd think the cats were content or something.


Bast really likes warm, fresh laundry.


Poe's not really that fat, but he's big and tends to spread out sideways when he lays down.

T-Shirt

I really, really want a t-shirt that says "Will Work for Books." I might just have to find some way to make one.

Back to School

Yes, back to school week is here again. So, am I spending my Labour Day running around finding pens and pencils and paper and the appropriate art supplies? Of course not.

Today, I'm blogging. I did a couple of short news posts for work. I blogged a game review (Pirates: Legend of the Black Buccaneer, the game so obviously not a rip-off that they had to put a disclaimer on the box.) (But I liked it, actually.) for my Gamer Advisory Panel blog, which is so neglected that they don't send me demo disks anymore. Pout. And I am blogging here.

Later, I'll work on finishing a couple of small book projects. And I'll get in some video gaming. I'm working on the first Untold Legends for PSP right now. It's an RPG, and my character is an alchemist. Oh, and perhaps later I and the roommates will watch Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, since Doctor Who appears to have been booted off today's schedule in favour of a football game. (Really, a football game!) (Football!)

The other day I found a bookbinding blog done by someone in Nova Scotia: My Handbound Books. I should probably drop her a line. Anyway, on said blog I found some interesting projects. One was a simple little book using origami waterlilies as the book block (aka pages). So of course, I made one.



I had to add some text, though--old haikus about water written in pencil crayon on the inside of each lily.



Yes, it's pink. I wanted to use colours I don't like for the first try, in case something went wrong. I might make some more of these. They could be nice stocking stuffers, or even holiday tree decorations. Hmmm . . .

As for the rest of the week, I don't actually have class until Friday. Class officially starts Thursday, but that's my off day. I work 9-12 Tues, Weds and Fri (usually Mon, also, but today's a holiday). I'm hoping to switch this to 9:30 to 12:30, since I don't need a whole hour for lunch, and that extra half hour in the morning makes a big difference. Tuesday after work I'll take in my student loan papers (I meant to do that Friday, but I forgot to take a voided cheque) and get my U-pass (yay, we have U-pass this year; no need to buy bus passes every month).

So yeah. Work three days, a few errands, and then Intermediate Lithography on Friday. Bob will no doubt leap right into the lectures and demos. Printmaking classes seem to be much more intense than just about anything else I've taken.

In between classes and work, I'll be making books. I'm waiting for some paper to come in now for one of the big book projects I'm working on. Then it'll be ready to actually bind. At some point I'll need leather for the cover. The other big project still needs some intaglio printing done, but now that they have the paper in at the student store, I can do that any time. I plan on finishing it in the second week of class, before the printmaking studios get too busy. Then I can start binding that one. But I need to find some wood, and someone who can take one 1/2 inch board and make it into two 1/4 inch (approximately) boards. I'm hoping to find someone in one of my classes who took Wood and Metal and is thus allowed to use the wood shop, which I am not. I will bribe them with candy. Or a handbound blank journal.