Northland Chapter monthly meeting

Piano hinge binding was our challenge for October.  Anne found the instructions on this lovely blog http://bumblingacrossletterboxes.blogspot.co.nz/2012/08/how-to-make-piano-hinge-book.html  practiced a few samples in advance, and undertook to guide us through the day. Precise measuring and cutting were required in order to produce even hinges and a book which opens easily.  This style of binding results in a journal which would lend itself to holding photos or other such ephemera, such as small sketches or paintings.

Ngaire's book top view

Ngaire's book showing weaving on hinge posts

Inside Kaye's book with rods still to be woven and cut to length

The day's work including Anne's 2

Kaye's outside with weaving on bottom posts
 

 

Whatever the weather...

Today outside my shop....the sign says it all

Springtime in the shop

My friend Carol has an awesome garden and every year she brings me waratah flowers from her trees.

Woven Album

Exploring with new binding techniques.  This one uses strips of strong paper, woven through specially cut slots, to create a checkerboard effect on the pages and cover boards. Because of the extra thickness the weaving provides at the spine the finished journal is perfect for holding ephemera or photos. An awesome place in which to record your travels.

Fathers in fiction

http://www.bookish.com/articles/father-knows-best-know-it-all-dads-in-fiction

Hemingway's metafiction

Photo by Robert Capa / Magnum

How often do we spare any thought to the many rewritings an author may execute before he or she is satisfied enough for the work to finally be published. In this recent article from the New Yorker,   Ian Crouch examines the outside influences and the changes made by Hemingway as he worked and reworked The Sun Also Rises http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/hemingways-hidden-metafictions

Sunday binding

Commission to bind a small log book for my husband's boat motor. This is the work in progress.  Final compilation is now in the  press to set and dry overnight. Today has been a damp one so drying will be longer than usual. I'm not a patient person but have learned that if I want it to succeed I have to wait!

Marketing, marketing, marketing...Winter

With Winter now upon us, I'm hoping you'll all be stocking up on books to help pass those long dark cold nights tucked up in front of the fire.

Check me out in the Window on Waipapa feature in the Northern News and Bay Chronicle this week, in print and online - it could be worth your while.

Meanwhile, I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about running a small business and how much marketing is necessary. As I understand it a business markets itself to maintain its current audience, and to attract new customers, with the aim of building and growing. But do I want to build and grow and if I do, how big is big enough? Do I want to turn this business into a behemoth like Borders, which then runs the risk of crashing and burning (figuratively speaking, you understand) or do I just want to provide a business which enables me to enjoy my passion and, at the same time, grow in line with any increase in demand from my community?

I've just read an interesting article this morning in the New York Review of Books regarding a new book about Jeff Bezos and Amazon. It explores the growth of Amazon and the history of similar enterprises over the years - e.g.supermarkets  - whereby the initial goal is to reduce costs to the consumer by bulk purchasing etc, but the eventual outcome is a monopoly of sorts which, while achieving that  goal, creates other problems such as pressuring suppliers to reduce prices. (think: Shane Jones and Countdown).

So where does it stop? or, does it stop at all? There is no single answer, but my logic says that while we continue to want increased income but cheaper goods the cycle will continue.

My latest great read

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

Donna Tartt is not a prolific writer but I believe her work is always worth waiting for. This time the  wait has been 11 years and no matter what Vanity Fair says, I thoroughly enjoyed this Pulitzer prize winning new story. I say enjoyed, but that is probably not quite the right expression. I was engrossed from the very beginning and, even though I often intensely disliked, or disapproved of, Theo Decker and his behaviour  this was also equally often tempered by a feeling of sympathy for him and the situations he finds himself in.

Theo is a 13-year-old New Yorker whose life is completely torn apart when he loses his mother in a terrorist attack on the Art museum he randomly happens to be in with her. Amongst the chaos and upheaval after the bomb he is asked, by a dying bystander, to take a painting - the 1654 Fabritius masterpiece, The Goldfinch - and a ring to an unknown person at an unknown location.

Over the next 14 years this painting accompanies him as he tries to cope with loss and change, moving between strangers and family and between New York, Las Vegas and Amsterdam. This is not an easy read, with some graphic descriptions of violence and drug-taking.

(Published by Little Brown & Company)

Exposed tape binding

Using project examples from Shereen LaPlantz's book 'Cover to Cover' I created these delightful journals at our Northland ABC meeting this week.

Book or movie?

Tom Gauld's cartoon from the usvsth3m.com website is spot on.

This has to be the most disturbing book trailer I have ever seen..."Guide to Troubled Birds" book trailer

A wild wintry day

Now that I have got into the regular habit of posting items of interest on my Facebook page I have decided it's time to resurrect my blog. From now on I hope to put those items here so that anyone can comment, instead of only Facebook users.

Today has been a pretty rough one weather-wise here in the Far North, but I have been safely tucked up most of the day at home, playing in my bookbinding room (aka The Office/Spare bedroom) putting the final touches to the embossed star book I began a couple of ABC (Association of Book Crafts) meetings ago and thinking about what we can work on next week when we meet again.

Embossing a book cover creates texture and visual interest. For this one I used stars cut slightly larger than the ones on the tissue covering, using a double layer of light card so that they popped! The spine is made from a piece of lovely soft black leather and the pages are black photo paper. Perfect for holding photos or writing special quotes.