Photos from a Busy Week

Between work, work events, apartment hunting, visiting friends, and studying for a French final, this past week has been very busy for me. Unfortunately, there hasn't been much time for blogging but here are some photos from last week.

I love lavender and lemonade and the folks at The Grove have combined the two for the perfect drink. I'm never disappointed when I'm to busy to eat a meal at home and eat here instead.

After a late work day Wednesday, I needed to relax so Charlie and I headed to the Sundance Kabuki to catch Dark Shadows--with plenty of time to stop at the theatre's bar for some drinks first, of course.

Saturday brought me to the Maker Faire for work where I helped man the San Francisco Center for the Book's letterpress printing and simple bookbinding booth (we won the Maker Faire Editor's Choice blue ribbon for our awesome demos!).

Sunday evening, on a much needed study break, my friend hooked me up with tickets to see Endgame and Play at the A.C.T. Theatre. Intense English dialogue was just what I needed after a day of studying French.

House Sitting

This past weekend I had the pleasure of house sitting for some favorite people. House sitting is one of my most favorite things. I think what I love most about it is that, by being in someone else's home, you suddenly realizing how amazing and inspiring the ordinary, every day things are. 

 How could I resist photographing the mint in the backyard?

 Orchids in the shower--genius!

Technically I was cat sitting as well

Linoleum Preparation

Prepping my image on linoleum with pencil and Sharpie

After a week filled with bookmaking, last Saturday I took a break from books to prep a linoleum block for carving.

As usual, I started by tracing one of my photographs. The body of work that is currently in progress focuses on trees. This image in particular was taken in the forest in Ashland, Oregon.

After the tracing was complete, I used carbon paper to transfer the outlines of the tracing onto a blank linoleum block, in reverse.

To give myself a rough idea of what the image will look like once it's  carved, I fill in any sections not meant to be carved away with Sharpie.

My block is ready to go and I'll begin carving this weekend.

Class Photos

The messy pile of demo books I made while teaching

This past Tuesday I taught my third session of Introduction to Bookbinding. I love teaching this workshop; I get to go over all the basics of binding tools and simple structures and I get to make everyone excited about bookmaking, which isn't hard since it's one of my most favorite things to do. 

There's not much time for picture taking when you're teaching this class but below are a few images I was able to snap throughout the evening.

The bindery, all ready and awaiting the students

Some student books, on top of my hand illustrated hand-out

More student work. This gal was taking very nice photos of each book as she made them, hence the orderly line up.

Packed and ready to head home. You know it was a good class when you are leaving with less supplies that you arrived with--that means you made a lot of books!

Intermediate Bookbinding: Week 9

This is a bitter sweet post because this past week was the ninth, and final, week of my Intermediate Bookbinding course. Sigh. After nine weeks you can't help but become friends with your classmates and instructor and, while one never needs an excuse to make a book, it's always nice to have a designated time to get your binding action on. 
Here's the wrap up of the final week:

Ready, set, go!

Checking to make sure my boards fit my book--they did.

I was temporarily single (just kidding Charlie). Because any metal can potentially damage the leather when you're working it, I had to remove my rings.

Before gluing, I had to mark where the boards would go on the leather and where the corners would be.

Then I literally cut corners...hahaha

After gluing the leather and boards together there was weighting, and waiting.

While we were waiting for the paste and leather to dry, we got a very basic blind tooling intro and a little practice in. It's fun but I definitely need more classes to perfect this skill.

Before tooling the real cover, I marked and trimmed the turn-ins.

Leather books are cased in using wheat paste, which isn't as tacky as other adhesives, like PVA, so we used Ace bandages to hold the covers tight over the book while the paste dried.

Voila! A finished book! And...

My Bookbinding certificate, I'm so proud of myself!

Scrap Notebooks

Embossed camel notebook

After cutting down all the paper for the workshop I'm teaching this week, I was left with a lot of scraps that weren't good enough for class but were too good to throw away. 

So, I admit it, I skipped class on Saturday, pulled out my embossing gun, rubber stamps and embossing powder, and made little Japanese stab notebooks from the scraps.