More and more snow

I went over to Cheltenham General Hospital and spent Sunday night over there. It was the first time I had seen Michael for a week what with Worcester Royal infirmary (=WRI) closing to visitors and the snow on the Malvern Hills. The ward is not very fussy about visiting hours so I was able to spend a lot of time with him. He is still not able to walk but his mind is okay. He has been reading Karl Popper and J E Gordon's Structures and asking me to order up some more books. Which would be here if the post could only get to us.


I thought that I would dig the car out today and go over to see him but there has been another heavy fall of snow overnight and my major problem is getting out on the local road - which is a very steep hill and is treacherous at the moment. So I have abandoned the idea.  The patio furniture (left) looks cute. I love the squared off block on the table - 10 to 12 inches high. The fox tracks which were there yesterday are filled in this morning and so are my own boot marks. I was short on bread but knew we had some yeast in the fridge so made bread yesterday. That and the contents of the store cupboard and freezer will keep me going.

Yesterday I completed 5 metres of silk on the Megado and cut it off, mended it and washed it. It is now ready to be ironed and then I will see if it is okay. The temple marks on the selvedge seem to have disappeared. But a close examination on the ironing table will tell me.

Trials putting photos of Tampa Bay behind those of cut-out caladium leaves continue and I have done all that is needed for one side of the book's pages. More practise with PhotoShop CS! What you see on the left will be folded down the middle and is 2 pages. I have started on the front cover and processed lots of photos for the other side of the book's pages.  Not sure about text yet. I don't want just photos. Suppose I use the names of the caladiums and find a photo (not including a caladium) to match each?

Caladiums

I have sorted out my photos of caladiums and played around with them in Photoshop. They are printed out two to a page and stuck together with sellotape for this mockup. Then the upper part of the leaf is cut out.

Left is a view straight on of Page 1 which is not the cover. This was printed on ordinary 80gsm copier paper on the Colour Laserjet just to see if there was any mileage in the idea. The back of what you see is blank at the moment but would be paintings and text.

The covers would be board and the paper would be Bockingford printed on the Inkjet printer. The major artistic doubt is the background colour. I got rid of all distracting backgrounds and made them plain grey. I am not sure about this, neither the colour nor the plain-ness. I wonder if it needs a textured background. Experiments are called for. I wonder if photos of Florida are needed

Still on Rainbow

My method for printing Rainbow has been, put 4 sheets of Bockingford and one sheet of standard copier paper in the back tray of the Canon, set up the printer to print sheets 1,3,5,7 and 9. Page 9 is for the endpapers which can't be Bockingford 190gsm as it is too stiff. Go upstairs remove the endpapers, turn round the other four sheets and insert them upside-down, go downstairs and set up to print sheets 2,4,6,8. There are two book pages to a sheet. That has worked fine until this morning when the printer refused to print. Poking about and several trials proved that the problem was the Bockingford  which is from a newly opened pack. The Canon will print a page from that pack at a time but it won't contemplate printing if there is more than one sheet in the feed tray. Interesting. Gives me lots of exercise. I must have been up and down stairs 10 times in the last 30 minutes. I have now finished all the printing and page trimming and will have to wait for some hours to let the covers dry.

Panic set in last night when I realised I was about to run out of PVA and the prospect of walking 2 miles each way in the snow to the local Art Shop  was daunting. I did wonder if the deli was functioning as  they have nice coffee and cakes. But I found a new bottle of PVA so coffee will have to be here - and no cakes.

I decided I would have to find another piece of cloth for the last set of covers. Another hunt through the stash produced something acceptable and it is has been cut to size, ironed and PVA'd to a sheet of paper. It is now drying under pressure.

And here they all are. I like the top left best. The strange background around the middle left is because the photo is a composite. That one is with Michael in hospital. All the fabric is a close-woven cotton. The two very dark ones behaved well, came from a quilt shop in Worcester. The middle left is a piece of Swiss hand-dyed cotton.. The other two are American cottons bought from a quilt shop in Tampa Bay in 2008.

Tomorrow I will draw some caladiums.

Binding Rainbow

The snow has come in earnest. The road outside our door is a typical Malvern Hills road, Very long and very steep. The snow plough was round once but that does not do much good when the snow is still coming down. So every morning, the road is full of abandoned cars, some of them slewed across the road. By mid-day, they are all gone and then it starts again. I walked round the garden today in glorious sunshine and the snow is mostly eight inches deep. There are long icicles hanging from one of the gutters. One of the jobs on my job-list says ' Clean out gutters'. Clearly they need it.

Better to stay indoors and get on with weaving and binding Rainbow. I have finished two more copies and the last two will be finished tomorrow. I will put up a picture then.

I have been re-reading 500 Handmade Books (chosen by Steve Miller, Lark Books, 2008, ISBN 978-1-57990-877-5). The photos are good. It is mostly one book to a page and they vary between very traditional leather binding and avant-garde bindings where you have to look carefully to see which bit is the book in amongst the piano hinges and the ammonites. The more I read it (I think this may be the fourth careful inspection in a month), the more I see the point of the less traditional bindings. I am beginning to feel/see a new binding project. I did a fold-out book for my last project when doing City and Guilds in Creative Sketch Books. It had Pop-up buildings which I love. This new one will be based on Caladiums - seen in Tampa Bay in June 2008 and loved. I managed to buy three corms in the UK last spring and they behaved well. The nursery is not selling them this year. 'Not enough interest'. I am trying to get mine through the winter. I have hunted through most UK seed catalogues and no-one offers caladiums. This topic needs research!

Snow! (and Binding 'Rainbow')

The Met Office has been threatening us with snow for at least two weeks. Well, it has arrived. This is one view of the garden. It is so quiet - no traffic - just thick snow coming down steadily. The garden is all white and the cordon apples and pears are standing out in black and white against the high dark green laurel hedge. I can't take a photo of them, the angle and distance from any window are all wrong.

The hills are invisible which is a daft comment as I can't see the trees on the Common across the road and they must be all of 50/60 yards away.

And here is a pot on the patio - the snow is already a higher rim. I won't be going out today - not even sick-visiting because the hospital has shut its doors on visitors. They have taken to doing this if they have  any outbreak of infection. Michael has collected himself a telephone so I had a long talk to him this morning and he says several hospitals in the district are closed to visitors. That makes me feel better in one way. I don't have to feel guilty about not having the courage to go out in this weather. But then I don't get to see him.

The first two covers have been glued, folded, trimmed and pressed - see photo on left.

I made a card  template for punching holes in the text pages and in the two covers and bound them together using the best length of kumihimo braid which was just long enough. The thick kumihimo is clearly far too thick. I will try plaiting some fine ribbon otherwise we are in a long wait while I make some more fine braid.

And here is a sample of the text. I did have fun with Inkscape and Photoshop.

Printing 'Rainbow'

I have printed out the first copy of 'Rainbow' on Bockingford.  It is certainly one way of getting exercise. There are seven double sided pages to print and the Inkjet is only single sided so one side gets printed, then the same sheet put back in and printed on the other side. The unfortunate part is that the Inkjet is installed upstairs and Framemaker which is controlling the printing, is installed downstairs so much running up and down stairs to reload the printer. It  was printed out completely on 80gsm paper first to check on the alignment. The quality is much better on the Inkjet and I used the highest possible output setting for the Bockingford.  Amazing how much brighter the colours are than on the Laserjet. The book is quite small with the actual pages 5 inches by 3. I tried the pictures 25% bigger and did not like it.

I hunted through my fabric stash and found some suitable cotton which was PVA'd onto paper for the cover of the first book. It is drying off now. The boards are cut and I have found two lengths of kumihimo braid which might do. One is very suitable but a bit short, the other is okay and plenty long enough but rather thick. I intend to make five copies and will have to make some more braid. I did search my two boxes of ribbon but there is nothing there unless I plait together three different colours of thin ribbon - might work. I might try that tomorrow.

I have done no weaving because I did not sleep well last night and don't want to make a mess of it. Printing and binding 'Rainbow' is  much less taxing.

Bah Humbug

New Year got off to a cracking and unwelcome start. We went out to lunch on New Year's Day and had a great time. Good food and good company. Michael was complaining of pains in his legs. By evening he had lost the ability to walk so I took him to the A&E in Worcester. Eight and a half hours but they kept him in hospital so life revolves around getting there for visiting hours. He will have an MRI scan tomorrow and, until then, we have to wait. Yesterday was spent sleeping and answering the phone, telling family and friends what was up. Today I have actually done the ironing, lots of washing and managed a bit of weaving.

Before this happened, I got out the paper I intend to print the Rainbow book on. It is Bockingford double sided Inkjet paper. I had to revise my plans immediately. The paper is 190 gsm and far too thick to fold so my plans to include two foldout pages had to be ditched. I also redid the layout after the first trial printing and created end papers.
The front endpaper says Rainbow and I found out how to get an image into the text in Photoshop.

The back endpaper is just a partial rainbow on a real sky - photographed at Bosham harbour. I do not need a double page spread for the endpapers because it is a Japanese stab binding.

I have found suitable dyed cotton in the stash which will be the cover material. I do need some suitable cord. I may have to make some using kumihimo but that is quite restful and will calm me down.
I have tried the Inkjet printer to make sure it still works as I have not used it for a month or so.  I must now go and look for a really nice picture and print it out on the Bockingford paper to test that.

A Happy New Year to you all with lots of textiley happenings and a calm and peaceful life.