I never did share my new boys. Halley and Herschel are still around, but say hello to Kuiper, Sagan, Fowler, and Fenrir!

I did not realize that this stupid little idea was beloved. Did I blink and it became A Thing while I wasn't looking?

Stream had to contend with 1MB/s up speed, but here's the spoils of today's slideshow. Leather is painted and waxed.

A slow day today. I have a couple of copies of Moby Dick that need to be covered, so I made a big roll of blue bookcloth. I prefer to fill cotton cloth with starch paste and blue acrylic

Okay, it's not perfect, but a dunk in the green bath fixes even the streakiest dye job.

Did an impromptu stream today on twitch.tv/badgertide and made a fresh hammock for Halley and Herschel. It's so soft and luxurious.

It's a time-consuming and labor-intensive process, but I do love sewing endbands. Once you get a rhythm going, there are basically no rules. Plan things out, make things perfectly symmetrical, or throw balance to the wind. It will look good in the end.

Cloth bookmarks. Ribbon ain't gonna cut it this time. Used heat'nbond to get double-sided soft cloth. Bookcloth is too crunchy for this kind of application.

#44 Yellow Playing around with a different binding style. I deeply dislike case binding and yet I've spent years doing it. So I'm trying something new to make sturdy, large-format books that open easily.

Accidentally cut the cloth turn-ins too aggressively, but it's no big deal. A quick patch and no one will ever know my secret...

#43 Pastoralia I think I love cork as a covering material. It's not as toolable as leather and it doesn't pare very well, but it's soft and warm and it just feels great to touch. What I DON'T like is case binding. I think I might never do a case binding ever again.

#42 Meditations Playing with hollow spines and glued-on boards. Not sure I love the techniques yet, but I think this one came out all right. Good enough to send out into the world.

Experimenting with graphite edges for a new project. I've tried this before, but it's never really worked out. This time I mixed the graphite with paste and it seems to be working out a lot better

#36-40 Wrap-up for this year's book spree. My theme this year is "Faux Leather". Didn't get as many books done as I wanted, but it was still educational. From left to right, we have cork fabric, stained cork, grape leather, cactus leather, and "premium" cactus leather. I'll put titles on 'em later.

It's cold today, so everyone is being snuggly.

Please, please archive your work. Please. I’ve recently been saving lots of my essays as pdfs just so the Internet doesn’t suddenly delete them all (this happened to a whole load of blogs I wrote for The Independent years ago). I don’t want you to wake up and suddenly find your work gone like I did.

LaGrange distracting me from my work by being uncharacteristically cuddly. Why's he being so affectionate today?

Jigs. For when you have 11 tiny books and they all need to be the exact same size. Just put tape on it, it'll be fine.

Paper sealing tests: Starch paste Can't believe I didn't try this last time. Conclusion: not sure that I like this method very much. It warps the paper as it dries. Though I use a very watery paste mixture, so maybe I'll try again with less water

Trying different methods of sealing this page. Can't have charcoal getting all over the other pages. This method uses a 50/50 mix of turpentine and beeswax to create a spreadable paste that you can use as a wax polish

Playing with fire for the Sacred and Terrible Air project. Going to try sealing the edges of this page and see how that plays out.

Spoils for the day. Five sewn and glued-up text blocks ready for trimming

Let's get down to business. Lots of work to do this month.

#35 Microscope RPG I've been interested in this game for a long time, so I needed a physical copy to share with my tabletop group. This is a 48-hour fast book with a waxed paper cover. The spine was added as an afterthought, but it serves its purpose pretty well. www.lamemage.com/microscope/

Writhing, king of wyrms (She/her)

#34 Apocalypse World This started as an offhand need for a rules reference that spiraled out of control. She's not the prettiest, but she works. Learned a bit about heat transfer vinyl and how to get a book put together in less than two days. The leafs are so small, it printed on 20 pages!

Said goodbye to my last boy recently. Tycho was a good boy and he kept me company for longer than he had any right to. I will get new boys, but there's no replacing you. Goodbye stinky man

#33 Stone Butch Round 3 Ooo boy, this was a fun one. I was a bit late for their birthday, but my sibling loved the book, and so do I. I have a couple of gripes with the final product, but it's still the closest I've ever gotten to a flawless book.

Just finished a commission for my local DSA chapter. 10 copies of On Practice and Contradiction for the book club meetings. I really like writing in books, but there's never enough space to get a thought in there. I learned a lot about managing large pipelines with this project.

Everyone remembers this guy as the "You can't cut back on funding" guy, but he's also the guy who tells you that no amount of extra roads will be able to reduce the amount of traffic without a (mostly train based) mass transit system. Truly a man ahead of his time.

So NotJustBikes got bullied off of bluesky. I am so fucking tired of people disowning and harassing valuable progressive speakers over the most insignificant shit. I disagree with his opinion, but floating the idea that US urbanism is beyond saving is NOT a big deal.

Book #21 - Stone Butch Blues #2 Made for a friend of mine. I tried to make it as lesbian as possible. Maybe I went overboard? In any case, my sister saw this one and now she wants a copy as well.

Book #20: Stone Butch Blues Finished a long-dormant project today. Experimented with half-leather binding and marbled leather. Very pleased with these results overall.

Working on getting a few projects wrapped up. This one is a copy of Stone Butch Blues. I think it needs a half-leather case