And just over a week later….

We’re having another snow day! With MLK day this past Monday, this week was only 3 days long. It feels wrong to be so excited about this, since I do go to the most fun school ever. But it’s a snow day!!!

I have about a million photos to share with you. Are you ready? Okay.

This was my street after the snow last week. I love it when it's the sticky kind of snow that stays on trees and buildings. That's really the only time I like snow (except, of course, when it's giving me a snow day).

I finally saw James this weekend so I can now show you his Christmas present. I thought it could be a cooking journal or something, and I thought it was really funny. That's the biggest font we have in the bindery. Oh, the hot stamping machine.

Also this weekend we went out to dinner and we managed to pay with three generations of $5 bills. Amazing!!

I'm almost done repairing this nursery rhyme book, and some of the poems in it are really funny. Like this one.

P.S. If you don't get it, you're supposed to replace the pictures with words. Don't worry, you're not the only one who needed directions on how this weird thing worked.

I just put this photo album up on Etsy. I freaking love this paper - from Anthropologie!

Fishy photo album!

I'm also crocheting little hexagons. I have a whole bunch at this point, and hopefully I'll have enough to make a blanket soon because I'm almost out of yarn and I'm tired of it. This is a picture of the blocked version.

And this is a picture of the unblocked version. Now I could use some advice on this from people who crochet: Do I really need to be blocking these? Pinning and measuring these little things out takes forever, and once I'm done crocheting all these together I'm just going to end up blocking it again. I'm sure that blocking it before attaching will help the process, but if I don't do it will it end up all wonky since they're sooo scrunched up right now? I probably should have put this up top, I have little faith that I kept anyone's interest for this long. If you're still with me though, 10 points for you!

And finally I'm obsessed with crocheting this rag rug. I should have done something to show perspective but it's maybe 2 feet across at this point. I'm making it out of old cut up sheets, and you know what? Cutting up sheets is incredibly annoying and time consuming. But I just can't stop.... Must keep crocheting.... I would like this to go in my living room, but I have a feeling that really soon it's just going to become absurd to keep going. It's getting big enough that one sheet is only giving me two or three rounds, and then I need to cut up another one. I just don't have that many sheets!!

Snowday!

I don’t know what I’ll do when I get a real job someday and they’ll be no more snow days.

This was the view of Boston from my apartment window at 8 this morning

And here it is now. Why is the snow sticking to my screen? I can't see outside any more, it's upsetting.

I’ve been spending my day off writing and preparing things to put up on Etsy. My newest addition is this Quote book. In class we had to do a series of case bindings that included titles. I decided my theme would be punctuation marks, and for all of them all I used paste papers that I made earlier in the year. I hope people like these, I have quite a few very similar to this....

I also hung some pictures on my walls, which is one of my favorite things to do. And I didn’t clean a damn thing. So far, a good day.

The Christmas Post

This Christmas was the year of the book. Last year everyone got knitwear, this year it was books. Since I spend all day in the bindery anyway, this seemed like this best use of my time…. And seeing how stressed out the second years were around Christmas, I doubt I’ll have the time to make so many gifts next year. So books for everyone!!

I made a lot of photo albums. I figured they're more functional than a blank book, at least for most people. I did them all as coptics because I thought that would let them all open nice and flat, which it did.

I put spacers around each of the signatures (which were just one folio of 20 pt paper) to make room for the photos.

Do you see this paper? It came from Anthropologie - they were selling it as wrapping paper. It's actually really nice and handmade and beautiful, and I may have bought an unnecessary amount....

I also made about a million little pamphlets. I have some left over that I'm putting up in the shop.

German paper star ornaments!! Which don't have much to do with bookbinding, but....

A week before break we learned how to make boxes, so I went on a box-making kick. For really, I made eight of them!

I made a few more fun things that I haven't had the chance to give away yet, so I'll share them later (I'm talking about you, James).

I'm going to start keeping up the shop more, and hopefully posting here more. I spend all day practicing making books, and my bench is being over taken with models - it finally dawned on me that I could actually, you know, sell them. What a crazy idea!