Cooking The Books

Or at least one book, my journal. It looks a wee bit different on the outside now because I learned how to do a Coptic headband:


The instructions are in Suzanne Tourtillott’s “Making & Keeping Creative Journals” (Lark, 2002, still in print) and it seems to be the only reference available. This book has some good information on the different Coptic stitches to join book sections together: one needle (the way I did it), two needles and 4 needle versions. The illustrations and written instructions are a little dicey, occasionally a bit vague or confusing, but believe me there aren’t many other better options in print to learn the techniques. Except maybe the more “professional” books by Keith Smith which I don’t have (though I think the public library does). I should borrow a copy sometime.

You might ask why I used Coptic binding anyway. For starters, I love the look of the exposed binding stitches! It’s fairly easy to accomplish without specialized tools and equipment and has a textile-y quality that appeals to me. Plus the pages can be flexed far open without damaging the spine and they will stay open fairly well, even with heavy paper like I used in my journal. Now why did I add a headband on the top and bottom of my finished book? Besides the fact that it looks even more cool, it strengthens the ends and holds them together a bit better. I can’t say I did the world’s best stitching job though so don’t pay any attention to the unevenness. With the dark days we’ve been having and black waxed linen thread, it was really hard to see where my needle had to go next even with my magnifier light on the subject. So it’s not perfect – much like the rest of the book itself.

I’ve also been playing with some of the inside pages. I got a few more art supplies when we went out on Saturday (in the pouring rain wearing full-length rain gear and carrying umbrellas). So I was able to spray workable fixative on my “frottage” experiments, aka rubbings made with soft pencil on surfaces all over my house:


You sometimes can’t even imagine how a texture is going to turn out. The fridge and the wall in my stairway were particularly interesting. Then there’s the experimenting with watercolour paint and covering the wet paint with plastic wrap (left) and salt crystals (right):


These weren’t totally successful (because some of the paint dried too soon) but informative. I also tested out all the colours I have so far of the fluid acrylics:


Notice I left a space or two for future purchases. I tried to create an idea of what the colours look like as a shaded wash. It was harder to do than I thought! The Quinacridone/Nickel Azo Gold (top row, right) is a particularly interesting colour. When it’s thick it looks rusty orange like the Transparent Red Iron Oxide (second row, centre) but when washed down it looks like the Yellow Ochre (top row, centre) but more luminous. Also the Quinacridone Burnt Orange (second row, left) is much more red than you might suspect from its name. Which is why it’s a bit out of sequence. Payne’s Gray (fourth row, right) is more blue than I would have expected. The metallics (bottom row) still have a bit of sparkle even when washed out, but I don’t think you can see it in the photo. That was a fun exercise. How come I want even more jars of this stuff now? At least two more to fill in the gaps on the page, right?

Other art supplies I got included more colours of the PITT brush pens, protective spray for inkjet prints, soft gel medium and absorbent ground. The latter is useful to turn a surface into one that will allow watercolour painting. It was originally designed to help a watercolourist who wanted to paint on gessoed canvas. The watercolours only slide off the acrylic gesso ground but the absorbent ground works more like paper. That’s the theory anyway but I haven’t tried it yet. More playtime coming up.

So what’s the point of all this arty stuff? No point at all! I’m just experimenting with some of my toys. Anyway, while playing with some other toys (those pointy sticks) – I’ve got one finger on each of the gloves done and promptly ran out of enough yarn to do even one more finger. However I did locate some more yarn that I dyed myself that might do ok for the rest of the fingers. There will be more Frankensteining going on! Many joins will ensue. Also I’m up to the heel flaps on my bro-in-law’s socks. They’re coming along just fine so I work on them when I get frustrated with the gloves. Which seems to be happening often or I’d be done with them by now.

Speaking of cooking – well it was in the title, remember? While we were out wading around in the rain we got some local sidestripe shrimp at the Granville Island Market. They went down very well with garlic butter and I saved the cooking broth for today’s seafood soup. Unfortunately I didn’t save any shrimp because they were much too good! Slurp. I’ll have to put some barbequed salmon in the soup instead. And some twice-smoked bacon, also from the Market. I’m going out right now to see if my leeks are still edible since I can finally see where they are in the snow. Doncha wish you were having supper with us tonight?

Whine. Whinge.

I’m feeling kind of grumpy today even though it’s lovely and sunny outside. My mouth still hurts more than I thought it would though I think some of the swelling has gone down. Maybe I’m just feeling smacked upside the head when I didn’t deserve it. Not that my dental hygienist injured me on purpose or anything. But getting my teeth cleaned is uncomfortable enough without extra pain being inflicted. Her training says not to make any big deal out of it but I feel like more of an apology might have helped my bad feelings. OK, I’ll quit feeling sorry for myself now. Moving right along.

I was playing with some more of the paper yarn that I started swatching a few weeks ago. I knit a separate leaf on a stem that coordinates with the last leaf edging swatch. Then I washed it and painted it with dilute fabric paints just to see what happens. As usual the colour migrated to the top surface so the back is still very pale but it was a fun experiment. Next I need to try dyeing with Procion MX dyes to see what happens and how hard it is to rinse the paper yarn clear. My two full cones of this yarn are ordered and will be here eventually. I’m going to share half a cone with a friend because I don’t really need that much. I just took my chance when it came by! I used my Working Journal and stuck in my swatches and pattern notes. I’m trying to be good and use the book the way it’s supposed to be used. Even if I haven’t really done much with the exercises we’ve been given in the class. I skipped ahead to find a place where there was black paper, white paper and a spacer so I could make the quirks of my handmade book work for me. What do you think?

In other news, finished my guild’s membership booklet finally. It wasn’t all that much work really but a lot of copy/paste/delete stuff. Tired mouse hand! Now I have to take it to the printer and get 160 copies made. Fun stuff. I’m looking forward to crossing this one off my list.

I also turned both heels on the Purple Ruffles Socks and they should go faster now that only half of each round is in the pattern stitch. I also got a few rows done on the Seaweed Shawl. It’s still a pretty teensy piece o' knitting but I’m hoping to get past the central star stitch area very soon and on to the next chart. I’ve also tied about half of the shibori ties on the Shibori Scarf. Getting there slowly. Don’t want to hurt my hands.

And now that the table loom is nekkid, absolutely nothing has happened with the beaded weaving project that I’m supposed to do and then write up for the Complex Weavers Journal. The article is due by December 15. And I have no idea what I’m going to do yet. Urp.

My Journal Begins

I got my book assembled today. Apart from trying to remember how to stitch the signatures together, it went fine. There’s a tutorial here and another one here if you want to see how to do it. As far as I can tell everyone stitches just a little bit differently. The Coptic binding is exposed showing off the interesting stitching and it opens flat. It’s also a little bit loose no matter how hard you try to get an even tension. That really helps when you are adding collage elements inside. To make even more room, I added some spacers cut from some of the paper. These can come in handy to attach items to or punch holes and thread in yarn or whatever.

The journal cost me around $12 for the two pads of 9” x 12” paper. One was 140lb. watercolour paper (on sale!) and the other was a grayscale selection for dry media in a similar weight. I folded the pages in half to make a 6” x 9” book with 8 signatures. I used the pads’ backing boards for the covers (cut to size slightly larger than the paper) and the front pages with printing on them for the inside covers and a pocket in the back. The front and back boards were covered with pieces of my paste paper and glued with PVA glue then weighted down overnight between waxed paper. My thread was black waxed linen and for the first time I tried stitching with a curved needle which was much easier to use than a straight one.


I’m quite happy with the results. Now I need to use it! That’s much harder for me than making the journal itself. I’m always afraid to “mess it up” but I’m determined to get over that “precious” thing and just have fun.

What else? I finally started another pair of socks. I swear that was the longest time for years not having socks on my needles! A whole week. Whew. These ones are for granddaughter Princess Pink and I’m using up the hand-dyed leftovers from the Purple Passion socks that I made in August for my sister-in-law. Since PP’s mom liked the ruffles I made on a past pair of girly-socks, I’m including them and then going into the double lace rib that I used on the Purple Passions. So far, so cute! Not enough knit yet though to show off. And I’ve been too busy to touch my Seaweed Shawl or the Bronze Ribbon Scarf or even to carry on with the weaving on my loom.