Bookbinding
This week or last, can’t remember, I made a sunny yellow book called Solaris Libri. The original name was the Sun Book, to go along with the Snowbank Book and the Earth Book, but decided to jazz I it up a little bit by throwing in Google’s Latin translation for Sun Book. The idea was I would make the book and then put it in the sun. Originally, I would just drop it in the garden and let nature take its course. But that meant it wouldn’t be the Sun book ...
Bookbinding
This week or last, can’t remember, I made a sunny yellow book called Solaris Libri. The original name was the Sun Book, to go along with the Snowbank Book and the Earth Book, but decided to jazz I it up a little bit by throwing in Google’s Latin translation for Sun Book. The idea was I would make the book and then put it in the sun. Originally, I would just drop it in the garden and let nature take its course. But that meant it wouldn’t be the Sun book but the weather book.
So I taped Solaris Libri to a window. Also originally, Solaris Libri would spend, like the Earth Book, a month in the outdoors. Upon reflection, I decided six months would be better as one month is barely a blip in the life of the sun or the Earth’s rotation around it.
I put markers on the cover so if the sun causes the cover to fade, we can still see the original color when the markers are taken off. One marker is over the title on the front cover; another is horizontal over the top of the back cover; a third is perpendicular to the title. Hopefully, the non-faded parts will look stylish and artistic compared to the faded parts and will give it an added accent of unique-ness.
Solaris Libri is A6 in size (pocketbook size for you Americans), and 100 blank pages, like its partner, the Earth Book. It has a yellow cover (like the sun), and floral endpapers (unlike the sun). I printed the title on the front of the book and, miraculously, on the spine as well.
Also in Bookbinding, I have three projects in various stages of progress, mostly the first one.
The first project is Truckin’. I need to sew a coptic binding for Truckin’ which I wanted to send out this month but it will have to wait one more year (on my mother’s birthday. It’s been folded but no holes have been punched because I need to make a cover for it first as the cover is the first part of the sewing process in coptic binding. This project is in the preparation stage based primarily on my being busy do other things. Truckin’ is the book I will send to friends, artists, strangers to draw or write in, mail to a friend, until we have 100 pages filled.
The second project is the sewn board binding I learned about a month ago. I need to sew it, but life happened and time is being used up doing other things, like taking care of family members, paying taxes, and work. It sits on my desk next to my first project.
I plan (famous last words) to work on it during Golden Week, a series of holidays in Japan starting April 29 and going to May 6 when most companies close up shop; many smaller stores and restaurants are also closed.
My third project is probably dead on the ground. Pun intended. I wanted to make a book with coffee-ground colored paper, but I soaked the paper too long and they all fell apart. Is it salvageable? We shall see.
Fiction
In writing, I have discovered, along with millions of other writers, that research can bog you down. It can especially inhibit your writing if you have access to this new-fangled doohickey called The Internet. Several rabbit holes can be fallen into if you’re not careful. What I do, when writing The Posthumous Autobiography of the Widow Agnes Grout, Death Weaver, is using the x key on my keyboard. If I’m in the groove and pounding out a chapter or two but get stuck on a particular fact that needs to be checked, I type a few capital xs to remind myself to check it out later, after I find myself greeting writer’s block with open arms.
This week I needed two things: A name of a lawyer-type Quaker person in New York in 1840 and the kind of jails they had at the same time. Rather than look up names or types of jails while writing about Polly’s story, I exed it and kept going. Later, I looked up Quaker names and holding cells. Pretty bleak, the cells. Especially since many were privately owned. Glad we got away from that situation, aren’t you? But what happened with the name is, I found one I liked and realized the character was good enough to have a recurring role, if minor.
Video
TDGB 47: Solaris Libri, the Making of the Sun Book, may well be up on YouTube for your viewing pleasure. This 2.22-minute video shows how most of the book was made. What isn’t shown is the casing in: putting the cover on. Time dictated that I didn’t have enough to make the book and film me making the book. A sacrifice was made and the filming to a deep back seat to the making portion of your show. Sorry, but please enjoy.
Subscribe! if you feel so inclined.
