Wednesday!

Here is my new and improved History of the Scandanavian Mission, with his brand new leather title label.  Woo! 

Here is what I did basically all day, and what I will certainly be doing all day tomorrow.  All morning was spent making that pattern on the left--I am rather notorious (in my own mind at least) for being an anti-planner where any kind of craft or Craft is involved, but Don was insistent on having an accurate pattern for your alum-tawed book tooling.  So, I did it, and I actually had a really fun time.  I've never paid all that much attention to the design aspects of fine binding so it was cool to approach the book this way.  Anyway, I spent all afternoon marking the lines and then tooling them.  Tooling on alum-tawed is a bit different form goat or calf--it is tough stuff so you have to go over it again and again to make any sort of impression.  What I found out after several hours is that .  it also helps if you get it a bit wet.  So, my day tomorrow is going to be entirely composed of damping a bit of leather, and then tooling it.  And then damping.  And then tooling.  And...and so on.  Pretty much, I think it;s probably a good thing i have 2 days left of class cuz it might take me that long to finish this beast.  And the thing is that those dark strips on the pattern?  Those are places where I am tooling with this one tiny little tool. . .I tried to get a picture of the detail but it wouldn't come out.  Anyway, this is just really slow, perhaps tedious work.  So, tomorrow would be an ok time for you to send me lots of funny texts.  I will not be disturbed.

 And HERE are some of the doodles that Gabby drew today and left around the table.  Gabby, the lucky dog, has already finished basically all of her work, so we are devising things for her to do tomorrow.  One current scheme is to improvise a creepy story and have her do illustrations and make a little book.  As you might notice, she has a terrifying aesthetic.  I need to take some pictures of her books for you guys....seriously, she is going places, and those places will be creepy and awesome.