Demented

I have had a bad week. The plumber has mended the taps and gone. We found a large wasps nest under the eaves. That has been dealt with. My sister, Dorothy, told me on Tuesday that the reason why half my TV channels were missing was that I should have retuned. Two hours later with the TV frozen on a menu, I gave up and went to bed. A friend turned up on  Wednesday, spent two hours on it and things were worse at the end. I found the insurance papers and rang the company, only to discover that that piece of equipment was not on the named list. (That's one company I will not be renewing next year). I called a local man who got exactly the result I got, tucked it under his arm and removed it to his workshop. So I ended up watching the Great British Bake-Off on my iPad. And why is Mary Berry wearing my M&S jacket? How dare she?

 

Oh and we have a wasps nest. We sprayed it with stuff last evening and they died on the spot but there are a lot about this morning. It needs another go. And now the man is here who cleans my ovens. The builder is still here.

 

Have I done much textile work? No. I have got up to 11 sections on the double weave book, only two to go. I have completed the Blurb book about Michael's paintings. Ruth is reading it at the moment and I hope to get it off to be printed next week. I did find a batch of paintings I did not know about including

me threading up the Megado. I was obviously too absorbed. I have no recollection of this being done. It is a pastel.

 

I have been bookbinding. Replacing the covers on a 1850s book and starting on the two volumes of Malory. The 1850s book has had the heavy paper on the spine removed and I have sewn in four tapes. I am not surprised the cover fell off. The text block is a hefty three inches thick and it was held to the cover by the endpaper only so over 150 years, the cover has been ripped off. Now the tapes are on, I will sew on the end-papers, not glue them. The cover had a leather spine and corners with what had been some nice Victorian marbled paper on the cover. The endpapers were plain dusky blue-grey which I have to replace. I am just about to send a photo of the covers to Payhembury and get them to make me some replacement Victorian marbled paper. They offer several Victorian designs, one of which looks just like mine but the colours are slightly different.  

 

I have decided to do similar style covers for the Malory and have found some nice blue leather. I also investigated the whole of my paper stash and found some blue marbled paper which I have started to make into sewn endpapers. It is not the correct period (1900) but it is my book and I never saw the original covers and, in any case, I can do what I want with it, designwise.