Getting to know each other.
Welp, two books are IN THE PRESS and drying, so as of tomorrow, I will have two books FINISHED. I’m looking forward to casing in more and more books as the month progresses. Because I only have one nipping press, I can only do 2-3/day, so I’m glad to have some in already. Wooo!
The other book-related thing I did today was post a bunch of books over at my Etsy store. Just in time for y’all to start your holiday shopping early! Check it out!
Slow progress, but progress nontheless! I reached an exciting stage today:
What you see there are two text-blocks nearly ready for casing-in! Casing-in is the process of putting the cover on a book. Once the cover’s on, it dries overnight in the bookpress and then is basically complete unless I want to do something fancy like KwikPrint a title on the cover or something.
Woo hoo!
I also sewed up two more text blocks.
Progress:
Welp, I’ve now used up all my text paper. Sigh. Maybe I’ll get lucky and the shipment I ordered will arrive tomorrow instead of Tuesday! Gotta think positive.
Here’s the stack:
You can see some of the books I’ve done in past months below, there. Some of them are for sale in my Etsy shop, the rest will be up soonish, I hope.
Progress: Eight text blocks done (so, 8 books about 1/3 done), minor prep work for future books.
Chugging along! I figured out that my time estimate yesterday was off — the dingus I’m using to track things keeps returning the total time, not the time for the session. Phew!
So, I finished two more text blocks today, bringing the total to six, woooo:
I moved ’em over to a bookshelf so they’re out of the way and not on my workbench. Woot.
Progress: 6 books 1/3 done, minor prep for other books. Total time so far: 4:44.
Slower today than yesterday, not sure what’s up with that. 3:38 all to fold, punch, and sew two text blocks! Crazy. But then, it’s the end of the week, and I’m pretty beat. *yawn*
One looming issue: I have enough text paper left to do four more text blocks, and more paper won’t get here until Tuesday. Grr! I haven’t decided what to do about that yet. My preferred text paper is almost impossible to get at local stores. 🙁
Progress: Four books 1/3 done, minor prep work for other books done.
So! Today is the first day of my crazypants project, National Book Binding Month! Goal: Bind 30 books in 30 days.
Here’s what I started with today:
I have more supplies on their way (text paper and bookcloth, mostly), but this is most of it.
After 2:38 of work (yes, I clocked it), I have all the endpapers cut up (and the knowledge that I need to buy more endpaper paper, because boy howdy did I miscalculate how much I need!) and two text blocks sewn! Hot diggety!
Progress: 2 books 1/3 of the way done, minor prep work for other books.
While I’ve been running silent on the blog, I’ve been cooking up some seriously exciting stuff!
I’m gearing up to start selling my blank books wholesale — working with a designer (the fantabulous Richard Miller of Calyx Design, go hire that man and tell him I sent you, he’s amazing!), choosing a range of papers and cloths, the works.
And, most importantly: I’ve been planning how best to build up stock. I need a blitz of bookbinding, I realized — and what better time to have a blitz than November, the time of National Novel Writing Month?
I spent ten years doing NaNoWriMo every November, and while I’ve pretty much outgrown it, I miss the fall frenzy of activity. So this year, I’m binding books instead of writing words.
This November, I will bind 30 hardbound, medium-sized blank journals between 12:01am November 1st and 11:59 November 30th. I’ll chronicle my doings here, as well as possibly finishing off the half-dozen or so draft posts I have kicking around.
Tally ho!
So! I’ve been AWOL from the blog for a while. Why?
I moved.
Nothing like prepping to move when you not only have over 1,200 books but are also something of a packrat. Ouch.
So, I figured I’d do a series of posts about the realities of moving when you are a bibliophile!
Watch this space as I cover:
See you next Wednesday!
I just got back from a week in Portland. It was awesome. (You know you wanna see my vacation pix.)
As usual, it involved multiple trips to Powell’s. Also, my first ever purchases from the Rare Book Room and the locked case in the Gold Room (which is Fantasy/Horror/Sci-Fi/Mystery)! SO exciting.
I simply cannot articulate my adoration for Powell’s City of Books (there are several satellite stores, but the CoB is the main one, and the one most folks, including me, mean when they refer to Powell’s). It’s enormous. It has used and new books shelved together so you can see what your options are. It has all kinds of weird and rare books, and a really nifty cafe where you can take books you’re thinking about buying and look them over while you sip an Italian soda or nibble a pannini. Bliss.
Here’s my haul for this year:
And a shot of my lovely first editions’ covers:
This trip is why I saved my spare change (and a few bucks here and there) all year long. Getting $100 in a raffly thing at work didn’t hurt, either. 🙂
Now comes the fun part: reading them all.
I’m a big fan of the scientific method, so when I heard that one way to save a book that’s been dropped in water was to toss it in a self-defrosting freezer, I had to check it out for myself.
The idea is that the water will freeze and the sublime (like evaporating, but from solid to vapor instead of liquid to vapor) the same way your ice cubes do if you don’t use ’em. The book gets left behind in almost good-as-new condition. Apparently libraries use it after flooding and whatnot. Pretty cool, eh? Apparently it takes several months, is the only tricky part.
The tricky bit, of course, is that this involves risking the wellbeing of a book. Getting a book wet is anathema to me, but this is for a greater good, right? Fortunately, I just tossed aside a book I couldn’t stand and was going to sell it or something. I decided rather than inflict it on someone else, I would use it for this experiment.
Before anyone gets up in arms, yes, I know there are people who love this book. I hated it. It happens. Especially when a book is froofy philosophy without any real logic or decent reasoning underlying it. GRAH! I love philosophy but only when it actually makes sense. Since the vast majority of philosophy is of the sort that makes me bang my head against the wall, I wisely majored in English instead of paying attention to my philosophy prof’s urgings.
Here are the before and after photos of the book. I got it wet by dunking it in a full sink of water on 4/23.
I’ll let you all know what happens!