The Big Red Book is done! This project has been a pain in my neck for a couple of months, and it’s just a catalogue of mistakes – instead of discarding it, as I have with similarly problematic projects earlier in my bookbinding journey, I corrected and kept going, fell back and considered, did more research, corrected again. Finally I have a completed, functional object.
And it is big – 8×11, almost 2 inches thick, 80 pages of luxuriously heavy Fabriano watercolor paper. It started out period techniques and materials – the boards are hand-cut, the interior glues are hide and wheat starch – but I started having problems with structure, so the endpapers are set in with PVA and there’s some PVA reinforcement in the spine for flexibility, and the hardware is obviously manufactured with some hand-worked (and Dremel-worked) modifications. This is the most complex book project I’ve completed – the first with any period glues, the first with corners and hinge, the first with a rounded spine. All things I’ve done once, now! I have a much clearer understanding of how to handle each of those individual components on their own and in combination.
It has too many problems to gift or sell and it’s too beautiful not to use. Conveniently, I’ve just signed up for the Atlantian Persona Development Challenge in order to get some focus and structure in the Taller Osorio project, so I’ll be using this book as a persona development diary.
The first deadline is Atlantian Coronation on April 1. I’ve been working on a blackworked camisa through the fall and winter that I think is a good fit for that challenge, and I’m also going to challenge myself during this first phase to do some actual (i.e. goal-oriented, not “pie in the sky writing lists of things that interest me with no followthrough”) planning, and turning some of that planning into posts here. I hope to come out of this challenge with some writing and reflection about persona development that can be useful to others, because one of the areas where I’ve definitely fallen down as a Laurel has been in teaching and sharing my work.
Accountability to others, a historical record of the things I’ve accomplished, and things to look forward to! All important, valuable motivators. I’m hoping this is the beginning of a shift for me.
The camisa in progress; the sampler from which the embroidery is copied (Cooper Hewitt Museum)
Liepa Jonaite's SCA pages 