The Last Book

I have completed the fourth and last book for this term. This is very large, slightly bigger than A4  which I have not bound before. I think it is a mistake. The endpapers do not line up right and it is difficult to deal with because of the size. It probably was not thick enough.  The fabric is white and yellow striped silk this time; the other three were various weights of cotton. The silk was stamped with a sort of seaweed pattern in groups of three in blue, then overstamped occasionally in gold paint. In two places, one on each face of the book, I laid on a rectangle of copper foil and stamped on top of that. The greyish colour is just that, a light coating of silver paint.

The end papers were cut from a sheet of dark blue paper decorated with gold which I bought from Fibrecrafts. They have a large collection of different papers and, last time I was there, I was allowed into the stock room. This was one of the finds. There is not have much left but it would do nicely as a paper on the outside of a book. I will try to get some more.

I still have one piece of fabric big enough for an A4 book but am not happy about this. The reason why No 4 book was bigger than A4 is that I folded several different types of handmade and fancy paper together and these turned out to be bigger than A4. I did not trim or cut the edges as I like the deckle effect and, in any case, some of the sheets would tear rather than cut tidily.

The dark blue jacket is coming along, the body is complete and the roll collar is attached and completed. The sleeves are cut out and had lining fused to them. I remembered at 5 o'clock this morning that I had forgotten about the shoulder pads and fell out of bed to order some from Jaycotts as well as some other haberdashery I need. We had a great shop on the main street which sold everything you could possible think of in that line but they closed up and became a webmail shop for fabrics only. The nearest one now is in the middle of Worcester  which has discouraging car parking facilities.

On Saturday at the Guild meeting, I collected my 12/2 cotton yarn for weaving up Michael's enamels. It is going to resemble a Biblical breastplate when it is finished!

Which brings on to my philosophical musings. Some weavers I know have one draft which they happily weave for ever. Others put on a different draft/yarn every time. I am not quite in the second class but approaching it.  I do wonder if it would be better to stick to one yarn/draft for a bit, say, 3 years. One might get very good at it and yet, I am sure I would  be bored.  I really must stick longer to one thing. Which reminds me that we have three acrylic boxes in the sitting room and looking at them, I realise that the 'seedheads' one in Annuals VI would make a lovely book cover. I wish now I had not been so hasty in taking off the remnants of the warp.