The day the earth stood still...

...because it was in shock because I COVERED TWO BOOKS TODAY.  Do...do you even know what that means?  I don't think I even know what that means!  You guys, covering books is a big deal.  In the other classes I've taken, the teacher only allowed two people to do it at a time, and they were stationed up at his table with him looking over your shoulder the whole time and helping so that you wouldn't screw it up irrevocably.  It's like a big, get your stuff set up, gird up your loins, tell my kids I love them, "I'll see you after" kind of thing.  Leather covering is a freaking battlefield.  -->an attitude that Mr Conservation USA does not seem to share!  Instead it was like, yeah, here's what to do...okay...GO.
So.  That was interesting.  I covered Pelham first--hooray for Pelham Vol 2 finally being covered!  The end for him is near!!  I covered him in goat skin leather--something fun about this class is that it is teaching me about different types of leather.    Til now I'd only ever worked with goat, which makes sense because as far as I can tell it is the easiest to work with.  It's a lot more pliable and ...just nice.  So, we did the goat skin cover first, to kind of ease into things. The second book we covered in calf skin.  I pared the calf skin on Friday, so I already knew that it was kind of a jerk to work with, but little did I know that, seriously, it is kind of a jerk to work with.  It's a lot tougher than goat and less willing to stick where you want it to stick and stretch where you want it to stretch.  Also it shows creases and nicks a lot more, so like you can tell the places where I messed up setting the bands in the spine.  OH, cuz that's the other new thing--I've never covered a raised-cord book before!  It's not all that much different, but in the beginning instead of smoothing the leather over the spine you are easing it around these cords sticking up and then using this thing called a 'band nipper' to, as they say, 'set the cord'--which just means it sort of defines where the cords are and makes a hard line around them.  I realize this might not make any sense, but I haven't taken pictures of the finished books yet so try to use your imagination.  Or just ignore it all.  Whatever. Oh but yeah, so calf is a jerk because I used the band nippers to mark out the cords and then went on to other parts of the covering process, and when I went back to the spine the leather had shifted so when I marked the cords again there are now like 3 different band nipper-marks all over the place.  Anyway.  Calf just handles differently, which I guess is good to know and have experienced.
The next book we're doing is the alum-tawed binding.  Alum-tawed is just leather that has been treated a certain way.  Do not ask me for details.  Although actually after all of this parts of me wonders if it wouldn't be cooler to just go be a leather tanner.  Seriously wouldn't that be hardcore?  Anyway. You can have Alum-tawed goat or calf or whatever--so I am using the kind that they have at school, which is PIG skin.  So, Katy's Wacky Leather Adventure is ONLY BEGINNING. wish me luck.