This is my caladium nursed through the winter and unfurling its first leaf. The pot is full of leaf spikes but they are very dark red so take a bit of seeing. 

At yesterday's bookbinding, I started on another Coptic binding. The paper is all folded , cut and trimmed and I spent a happy 30 minutes at home examining my paper stash. I have found some good paper (dark red with gold squiggles) for the cover and some nice handmade paper with flowers embedded in it for the inside of the cover. Angela, the tutor, brought in two American books by Keith Smith on binding without glue which includes a lot on Coptic binding. So I spent a good part of the afternoon reading these. Enough methods to keep me busy for some time. In the evening I started to re-read 500 Handmade books.

 Alice Schlein  has a lot to answer for. She is currently weaving pages of birds to bind! I  have her blog bookmarked and find myself quite disappointed when it is about weaving on her TC-1 rather than book binding!  As  a result of her blog, I have had a hunt through my plastic crate of samples for anything I have woven that I could use as a cover. The other blog I appreciate is that of Velma Bolyard who makes paper and binds books.