Little things

Had a series of nice moments today. The leaves are beginning to turn, and this afternoon, there was a yellow-green tree canopy which, backlit by the very late afternoon sun, was a vibrant neon green, against which the twisting black trunks were silhouetted. 

I've been watching Michael Palin's Pole to Pole while I eat my dinners, and its a pretty entertaining and insightful take on the travel show. Instead of "A Thorough Guide to One Place", this rambling series goes through a direct sequence of countries, and you get the sense of travel like you're riding along with Palin. Simply having the context of coming to a country from the neighboring country gives a huge amount of depth in seeing how cultures and places relate to each other. Plus the former Monty Python member is a lot of fun. 

In bookmaking, we learned how to do the perfect bind, which is the most common, commercial type of binding used in most books. I was kind of surprised by how simple it was, actually. But in about an hour and a half we turned a ream of copy paper and some heavier cardstock into a bunch of 4x5 little notebooks. They're really cool, actually. The secret is the 'guillotine', a manual paper cutter than can slice through an entire ream of paper with the aid of a large counterweight and a very, very long level which rotates from the floor. 

I've never really shown the books I've been making in the practice sessions, so I thought I'd show a little here. Most crude to the most sophisticated, kind of.

First, there are the origami books, books which are made from a single sheet of 11x17 paper. These are kind of cool just from the simple construction factor. With one sheet of paper, you get a cover and seven spreads. I filled this one with seven terrible limericks about architecture.

Then we learned a binding technique which is basically putting 'folios' together, which is basically a sheet folded into half. You fold a sheet in half, and then tape it or glue it to the next one. They told us to scribble something on each sheet so we'd know the sequencing of the assembly, so the story ended up being what I could think of in three seconds.

 Lastly, came the perfect bind, which is basically a bunch of loose sheets of paper glued on one edge and wrapped in a cover. It makes a very nice looking book. I can imagine spending a few dollars on something like this in an art or book store.