Cider with Rosie

The Society of Bookbinders is having its biennial bookbinding do. In this a text is selected and members bind it any way they want and they all go on show on the annual meeting in June. Two years ago I had a go but it was not good and I did not enter it. This year, it is Cider with Rosie and I am determined to enter this year. So I bought two secondhand copies of the book, one with drawings and one without. After re-reading it, I mulled it over and decided that I would create a cover which I could print on the inkjet on some bookcloth bought for this purpose. I bought 20 sheets of this two years and have never even tried it out. I shall do the binding as a double cover which means that I can make the illustrated part separately for the front and  back  which avoids alignment problems over the spine (2014's problem).

By this time I had decided what image I wanted on the cover and I spent an evening looking for an image of a cider flagon on the web - and failing. So on Thursday we set out for the wilds and hunted down a junk shop where I bought a cider flagon for a fiver. And retired to do battle with Photoshop CS5. Firstly I had two suitable pictures of ears of cereal in a field and then I took photos of the flagon against a piece of red cloth so the basics were

I then created a blank frame and copied the cereal photos into a patchwork on the blank. Then I got rid of the red background and copied the flagon on the cereal, twisting the flagon to a suitable (attractive) angle. I then applied one of Photoshop`s artistic filters to make it look painted and wrote the title and author on the flagon.

 This was all done late at night but I went to bed happy. Woke in the morning and instantly adjusted a few things and then created the back cover. And dealt with Dorothy who thinks I should still be in bed.

So now I have to dig out the bookcover fabric but I shall leave that till midweek as Dorothy is running a class here on Procion dyeing on Sunday.

I have been looking out yarn for another Pueblo weaving and intend to tie it on to the current tail of warp on the Megado. At first I was going to use Tencel but I only had enough for 4 yards of fabric, then I thought I would buy more tencel or cotton. But at this point I was looking through the stash for something else when I realised just how many cones of white wool (quite fine) I owned and thought why not do it in fine wool. I hauled all suitable cones out and did little windings to check on epi and have ended up with three cones of 100% merino. Also some dark brown to use in place of the dark brown cottolin. I reckon I can make a jacket out of the finished fabric. And teh stash has reduced by three cones. Mind you, that does not make much of a dent.

And I have decided that I will have to change my method of designing projects. At present, I think of what I want to do, decided what yarn I need and hunt for it. If I have not got it, I buy what I need. From now on, I shall look for some nice  yarn in the stash and decide what to do with it!! I wonder if that will really work.