It has arrived. On, of course, one of my busy must-be-out-of-the-house-by-10 days. So it languished on the front porch for 6 hours…

bedside reading

I’ll save you the unboxing post. You can have a look here at Engadget’s unboxing. I must say that Amazon has taken a lot of care with the packaging. A very nice experience. (I do have to admit that I am impressed with how well the e-ink photgraphs.)

As I expected there is little or no WhisperNet service here at the house. T-Mobile is the only reliable cell service out here in the dingleweeds. Sprint is one of the worst. I can get a slow signal on the front porch if I face the barn (and juggle blue squirrels, etc.)

I don’t find it that much of an inconvenience. I go to town most days and can stop for a few minutes to download something if I’m feeling too lazy to download via the computer.

Reading on it is a fine experience. The brief reverse image flash as I “turn” pages is a little disconcerting. I expect that after a couple of days I won’t notice it anymore. The adjustable font size id great for accommodating fatigued eyes.

…coming soon… it’ sitting in the press getting flat.

Meanwhile here are the graphics for the covers of  “(K) Kicks”

(K) Kicks 1

(K) Kicks 2

The book pretty much sucks — it’s a one day after all. But I like the graphics.

I seem to be on a roll here with the purple stuff.

This is a quick book binding project. The text block was purchased from Paper Source. It comes with cover boards but without a spine board. Japanese paper and book cloth.

long format book

I like this long format for guest books or albums.

opened

Each time I am in Oaxaca I stop into the Casa De La Ciudad. There is always something interesting in the little sala to the right of the entrance.

When I was last there (September 2008) it was the exhibition –Los Libres, Los Viajes, y El Tiempo (Books, Travels, and Time — roughly)

los libros, los viajes, y el tiempo

The problem of how to let people look at/through older books is not often solved at all let alone nicely.

display column

Here they have scanned/photographed the covers and portions of the text from several books that tie in with the exhibit. Then bound them together and left them out for people to look at.

not something you would find on display in the USA

These aren’t sophisticated facsimilies. They’re just-good-enough reproductions that aren’t expected to last beyond the current exhibit.

reproduction of the text pages

They are scanned and then printed single sided on matte photo paper and “bound” by being stapled at the left margin. The staples are covered by cloth tape.

There was this one that fascinated Jim — the excerpt was from the antennas chapter.

an early radio manual from Mexico.

This one is fine just for the cover illustration.

that

This is a great solution to the problem of how to let people get hands on with books that can’t take the handling.

Cheap, tidy, and certainly the only way I’ll ever get my hands on Dueno del Mundo by Julio Verne.

dueno del mundo por julio verne

There’s an magazine called Antenna, that showcases “street wear” Something that, as a middle aged white lady, I know little or nothing about. However, the magazine is a treasure trove of images of things (shoes, sweatshirts, toothbrushes(?)) laid out against a white background.

Each issue has several pages of — shoes.

Some of which were cut out and attached to a model of an accordion fold booklet with a pocket turn-up on the bottom that had then had a bunch of triangle pop-up supports folded in.

If manipulated carefully the shoes kick in and out. I feel another book coming into focus. Though perhaps without the hot pink background. Or maybe…

The final images for the House of Mythical Creatures are up in the collage gallery.

Playing catch-up while away from home. First up, a book that is slowly taking shape.

It combines a format (flag book), a material (watercolor washes) and a bit of doggerel that wriggled into my head (and sketchbook) a couple of years ago.

The format is the flag book binding. I made a goofy test version using a tacky postcard from Iowa. As you can see here.

If you want a much better look at the construction I suggest looking over the Bonefolder issue . A large collection of examples can be found in the gallery of work submitted to the 2006 bind-o-rama.

The material is Arches 300# watercolor paper with washes of several greens and blues and a bit of something dark. I’ve done two large double sided sheets so there should be plenty to work with.

The doggerel goes like this:

Fishy-fishy in the sea.

Fishy-fishy bring it to me.

Damned if I know what it means.

At the moment I’m imagining 8 folds in the accordion and five flags per “page.” With the flags being irregularly shaped — perhaps as waves or perhaps as fish. Or maybe wave shapes with fish images that cross waves — or — or…

And that’s how it goes — three ideas thrown together on a working tray and just hanging out together until something starts to happen.

edited 25.june.2008 to correct image links

The painters arrive tomorrow to finish the great house painting project. They will be painting my office, the DH’s office, and my studio. I am working out of a little rolling cart on the kitchen counter. Severely limited in terms of materials and tools.

The House of Mythical Creatures is on hold for the week. It’s ready for each of the images to be mounted. I have to figure out how I’m going to attach the images one to another. I’m thinking about some sort of bookbinding. Hence my project for the next week is to experiment with some ways of binding books.

Today I made (my first) two books.

A strange little folded book whose pages open up further than you think they ought to. I think it’s boring. But the technique of simply attaching the pages to a continuous backing has merit. It would have to be more than just a line of black mat boards taped together, that’s boring too.

The second book looks like a checkerboard with overlapping pages with cutouts. I can’t really see how it fits with THMC. This one has possibilities for some other projects rattling around in the back of my head though. Especially once I get over the idea that the cutaways have to be square. I’ll make some more of these in the next couple of days.

I have discovered that I still get annoyed when cut lines and parts don’t line up exactly. I’ve always been particular about those sorts of things. Luckily I have learned a number of tricks over the years. Story sticks and cutting multiples in one go are the first two I used.

The instructions for the checkerboard book called for cutting out six templates (from a xerox) and then tracing the templates onto the page paper and then cutting those out. A recipe for disaster. Much better to figure out the dimensions of the full page (3–3/4″ high x 5″ wide plus a 7/8″ gutter) and cut a bunch of page blanks. Then I could figure out the dimensions of the cutaways (1–1/4″ square) and take them out of the full size pages. Except the little tiny one at the front. I just cut that one on it’s own.

PS Yes, I realize that there are no decent pictures of recent work on THMC. I’ll fix that soon.

edited 25.june.2008 to correct image links