Category Archives: Crafting

Bookbinding, Crafting, My own damned opinion.

I never thought I’d be living in a real life American Horror Story.

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This will not end well. It’s been three weeks and the entire world is aflame, metaphorically speaking. Or maybe it’s hyperbole. At any rate, I have to stop doom-scrolling. I’m making myself sick.

So to change the subject…

I’ve done the final print of the book I’m working on. I have a cover design. The next step is to sew the signatures. After that, comes pressing the signatures and preparing the text block for casing in, trimming the edges, and creating the covers and spine. And then the final assembly. After all that, I will apply silver foil to the cover design. A final couple of hours in the press and the book will be done.

I’m also working on some simple notebooks in case the Maker Space decides to participate in any sort of artsy sale this year. Whenever we have have one of these events, I do well. Well in a relative sense. I sell handmade junk journals, blank books, zines, and book related items such as book cloth, bookmarks, and repurposed books.

I make way more money than I put into the items with regard to cost of materials. I really don’t factor in my time because I make things to use up the myriad supplies and equipment I have purchased over the years and to keep myself from just lying around on the couch scrolling through Pinterest and Youtube or re-watching Supernatural, Buffy, or Star Trek/Wars for the umpty-hundreth time.

Not that I actually watch any of those. Yes, one or another is playing in the background to provide voices so I don’t have to listen to the noise in my head. I discovered that there is an actual name for the music I hear in my head – Musical Ear Syndrome. So instead of just the incessant buzzes, mumbly sounds, and dings of tinnitus, hearing what sounds like the 1930’s and 1940’s style big band music and carnival calliopes is a real thing.

Chalk it up to my black and white youth. I watched old movies from that time period. And most of the television shows were black and white or if they weren’t, I watched them in black and white. My family didn’t get a color television until just after I started college in the late ‘60s. I watched the first season of original Star Trek in black and white. I didn’t know there were red shirts until I finally saw it in color. It was just that certain people seemed to be targets. I thought that maybe the aliens thought those guys were important and they were going for the leaders.

Silly me.

Bookbinding, Crafting

So what’s next?

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I’m ready to complete the book I’ve been working on. We met today and I turned over the final draft for a read-through before I print and bind it. As I’ve said before, this is a one-off commemorative volume. We’ve settled on the binding and the decoration for the cover. I have a nice batik print as the background for a silver foil starry sky and fireflies to be added.

I’ll do the final printing next week and finish the assembly and binding the week after. I’m not charging for this. If I am offered something, I might accept it, but I can’t price pain. Bookbinding and making are things I like to do. I charge a nominal sum for book repairs when I do those.

Most of the books I make are junk journals. That’s a fairly new type of book making – new as in the last ten years or so. It’s become a hobby or a business for lots of crafters. The difference between the forms of bookbinding is that junk journals are easier to make and the supplies for junk journals are found in your daily mail, your sewing box, your scrapbooking supplies, and around the house.

No special equipment is needed except a box cutter or scissors, a metal ruler, a cutting mat, assorted papers, and fabric scraps, glue, tape, a needle, and heavy thread or embroidery floss. For decorations, old greeting cards, magazine pages, and scraps of paper will suffice. Crayons, paints, colored pencils, ink pads and stamps are nice, but you don’t need to go overboard.

Most supplies can be gotten in the crafts section at the dollar store. For instance, Dollar Tree sells pokey tools, rulers, cutting mats, glue, inks, stencils, and other art supplies for $1.25 each. I was able to outfit my beginning bookbinding students with tools for a bit over $10 each. The costs came from their fees.

For junk journals, I use any old cardboard and the book cloth is made with iron-on interfacing. The stitching of the signatures is done directly on the spine and rarely covered up. Embellishments and pockets are added to hold snippets of papers and journaling cards. They are books to be written and drawn in. If something rips, a colorful tape will bind it together and become part of the decorations.

The type of binding I doing on this slim book involves more complicated assembly. I have the last of my archival quality book board to use. I will use the last of my acid-free tissue to line the fabric that will cover the boards. My industrial paper cutter will be used to assure clean edges. Acid free glue will hold cloth and boards together. Linen thread will bind the signatures. This will be a volume to be handed down to generations.

Once it is done, I will post a picture. Or maybe I should post pictures that show each step of the process.

Crafting, My own damned opinion.

All is not well

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Rumors abound about raids last evening. Homes and manufacturing places invaded; restaurants and bars visited. I haven’t found anything on the news, just purported eye-witness accounts. Is this the new reality? That we are not safe in our homes and no one reports that we are missing? Oh sure, most people don’t have to worry. Except law enforcement frequently makes mistakes.

Are we going back to children in cages who are never returned to their parents? Who die of callous neglect in flimsy shelters, cold and hungry, and forgotten? Cruelty and callousness are not a good look for “The Greatest Nation On Earth.” As it is, we as a country no longer have too many friends left and the new regime has been in charge less that a week.

I used to read a lot of classic dystopian fiction when I was younger. I never expected any of it to become reality. They were just exercises in what could be if certain theories were played out in real time. It seems like Animal Farm, Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World, and 1984 were not the images of the worst we could be. We will soon have the Hunger Games, The Handmaid’s Tale, and Lord of the Flies in real time.

We barely missed The Andromeda Strain and The Stand with the pandemic. But give us more time. There are too many undereducated people out there who will follow the latest tabloid exposé on health and well-being, and will continue to refuse inoculations for preventable diseases.

“My ignorance is just as valid as your knowledge,” seems to be the trend. And how did I wander away from what is supposed to be about making things to a political diatribe? Just fate I guess, and a lack of any crafting content. Which tells me I need to get off my hiney, take my meds, and get crafting.

Later, folks.

Crafting, Mostly me

I had an adventure

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I’ve had an adventure Monday. It was Craft night at the Maker space. No guests came but there were a few members in other areas working on projects. One other member was in the Craft area waiting for guests. He’s usual our door warden on nights when we do tours or orientations.

A third member, Linda, one of our resident artists, came in around 6:15.and we wound up watching A Muppet Christmas Carol. After the movie, I headed to Target to get an electronic pencil for one of the grandkids, Rowan. I wandered around a bit and got to the register – no wallet. I went out to the car, no wallet. Texted Linda to find out if she was at the shop. One of the members found my wallet in the parking lot. I was going to go get it. Ha! Ha! No keys. Locked them in the car when I looked for my wallet.

Called AAA, estimated time of arrival 11:35. Got a call from AAA. He’s on his way and will arrive in 15 minutes. Linda was on her way with my wallet. We got the door unlocked and the alarm turned off. Linda drove up with my wallet. I was able to pay for my stuff and finally got home. 

Tuesday, I spent the day wrapping presents and finishing the personalized tee shirts I started. I had to make a couple of name changes because for years I’ve thought one of the cousins was named Ben. He is not. And another is legally changing their name.

Tuesday evening, we had our annual family gathering at my youngest granddaughter’s Oma’s house. It’s been our tradition for the last 18 years. Other than my son and his daughter, I have no other family locally and my adopted family is no longer around. I received several hand-made pieces as well as another cat teapot to add to my collection.

It was a very nice evening. Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, or whatever holiday you celebrate at this season. Peace and Long life.

Crafting

Craft room planning

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Since I signed up for a studio at the maker space, I have projects to do as well as sorting out what I’m going to take to keep at the makerspace. I’m on the waiting list for the studio but it takes a while for one to open up. I think there are 6 people ahead of me on the list, so I probably won’t get one until late next year.

The studios are basically a 6 by 8 ft. space delineated by tape on the floor. Some people have actually installed walls and others just use furniture. I have a photo backdrop that I can use as a wall. I might have to buy a couple of longer PVC pipes for width, since it’s only four feet wide. But maybe not.

I’ll be moving the drafting table over and a bookcase to hold various drawing and painting supplies. I might move over some of the bookbinding supplies as well. I won’t have to move the paper cutter or the book press since there’s each of those in my area.

On the other hand, I could move my big loom and the hundred pounds of various warp and weft materials. That would take the looms out of my living room. In fact I could bring the 4-shaft table loom from the basement. There are a lot more tools and things at the maker space that I can use to restore it. I would be able to take it apart and use the assembly area to repair and stain the wooden parts, as well as tools to use to clean the reed which has some sort of deposit from being stored in a damp place – not my basement – but its former home. I keep a dehumidifier running to keep my basement dry. I might be able to find a newer reed. The old one almost looks galvanized, but I’m not certain what it’s made from.

My craft room is looking much better. The huge pile of unsorted projects and supplies has mostly been sorted. I bought some bins from Dollar Tree to sort various brushes and pens into some semblance of order in their drawers. The brushes and pens are properly sorted by type and things like erasers and daubers are separated.

My biggest mess is always papers and scraps of papers. I need to keep fewer of the smaller scraps and maybe sort them by color. And I need to stop buying paper pads and only buy a sheet when I need one.

Crafting

So here we are.

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My taxes for this year are going to be fun. The year is not over yet but I’ve supplemented my income with an assortment of classes at the maker space which means an extra 1099 tax form this year and a bit of additional tax. I haven’t participated in any sales or sold anything this year so I don’t have sales tax to pay. I will probably still have to file a form.

But the teaching is fun. I mostly teach members at the maker-space and charge a sum that covers my gas and extra supplies. I say “extra” because I have a lot of supplies and equipment for many different crafts, but occasionally need to buy extra tools.

This year, I have put together bins of supplies for teaching four to six people. For soap making, I have gathered my molds, bases, additives, and tools into a bin that I can just bring up from the basement and take to class. I did the same with the paper-making and book binding supplies.

I’m planning on teaching other book binding classes featuring different types of bindings such as binding single pages and making decorative covers for paperbacks that need repair, and making junk journals, and pop-up books.

Future soap classes will include making hot or cold process soaps, and making utility bars out of the grated and melted bits and scraps of used soap that can be used for cleaning such as the bars I use in the basement and garage for cleaning messy hands and paint brushes. In a pinch, the grated soap can be mixed with borax and washing soda to create laundry detergent.

One of my summer classes will be making paper from plants. It will be a multi-day class with the first day dedicated to making pulp by cooking the plant matter. Maybe I can find a way to get some use out of the unkillable mulberry tree. It’s basically a weed.

It can’t get properly removed because it’s in the narrow wilderness zone between my fence and the neighbor’s fence. Both fences were there when I moved in. They are both are properly within our lot lines which leaves a space between them that is not even large enough for a weed whacker.

I call the mulberry unkillable because the utility company contacts me every other year to say they’re coming over to trim the tree because it’s in the utility lines again, and they come and trim it down and it just grows back. One year, they tried to burn it. I came home from work, and the mulberry was cut back and the stump was black with char. The next spring, new branches and leaves grew. Next spring, I’m going to drill some holes with my larger spade bits and fill them with stump killer. Maybe that will work.

My side of the street has weird fencing. The property directly behind me has a six foot chainlink fence that extends across three back yards to the east. My yard is the only yard with double fencing. My fence is three feet tall and as I mentioned above, the space between the fences if so narrow that I can’t just hang over the fence to try cut the mulberry shorter.

The fence next door on the north starts a foot from the end of my fence because during installation, they discovered a buried stump of an old utility pole which probably extended too far down in the ground to be easily removed. So I attached a 12” piece of chicken wire to prevent my dog from escaping. The neighbors installed a gate at the back fence so the kids could retrieve their balls when they went over the fence. Without the fence, the kids would have had to walk past four houses to the corner and go around the corner and between two houses, and then trudge all the way up to the ball and go back around the way they came.

The four houses around the corner have very long, narrow yards. I figured that the kids’ round trip to get a ball that went over the fence would mean walking a bit under 800 feet so the gate was a good thing. Those kids are all grown up now and there is a new family next door. Periodically, I find a basketball in my yard, but the kids don’t come over to retrieve it. They wait until I notice and toss it back over the fence even though they have my permission to come into the yard to get it.

At any rate, if I can harvest enough bark from the tree, I will attempt mulberry paper. It will probably be a lot of work for a tiny number of sheets. I’ll let you know.

Crafting

Friday Tours and Making

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It’s Tour Night at the maker-space. We get most of our members from tours. The problem is not a lot of members want to do tours, not even most of the 33 persons on our Tour Volunteers Slack channel. There are a couple that I understand have occasional Friday night conflicts, but we hold tours every month on a regular schedule. From my point of view, some of the others could step up once in a while.

I get excuses like “I don’t know what to say.” “What if I forget something?” I know they went on an orientation tour which means they walked through the entire space at least once. We have a script that gives the high points and membership information such as how to sign up and what membership costs – stuff they should know from joining.

I mean, not everyone can talk off the top of their head, and I get that. I never had a tour when I first started. I never even got an orientation. That was due to the fact that I showed up every open shop night for two years before I joined. They accepted me as one of them before I paid for membership. The guy who issued my key-fob just typed the number into the database and said, “here you go.” But I can talk up the space without a script and so long as I remember the fees and contact information, I don’t worry about it. I’ve walked through and pointed out equipment saying, “I don’t what it does because I don’t use it, but we have it for those who need to use it.”

We were a lot smaller in numbers then, and our space was a quarter of the size of the space we occupy now. We moved into our new space in 2019. When I joined we had about 75 members in 3400 square feet. By the end of 2019, we had 300 members in 13800 sq. ft.

Covid cost us some members and even though the space was technically closed for part of the pandemic and we lost a few paying members, we managed to pay the rent. Now we have well over 600 members and add a few more every other week. Since we don’t have to sign membership contracts, many of our members join to work on a specific project for a month or more and then drop out.

In 2021, we added an additional 7,800 sq ft. to add some craft areas we hadn’t had room for, such as Ceramics, a CNC router capable of handling full sheets of plywood, screen printing, and a bike repair area. We were able to triple the number of studio spaces we offer, plus maintain a large open area for events such as member art shows, large scale assembly projects, and the occasional Craft sale. We also added a woodworking classroom and project assembly areas.

We’re currently in the planning stages for buying our own space. We have regular planning meetings and have looked at a number of places that are vacant or soon to be vacant. We’re also looking at funding opportunities. We have a bit less than two years left on our lease. The building is for sale, but the upkeep and maintenance of the entire building might be more that we want to pay, plus we would be responsible for finding renters for the vacant half of the building and the problems that would bring.

We’re are volunteer-run and classed as a non-profit education facility since we do teach the use of our equipment and provide opportunities for the members of the community come in to use the facility and take classes. We also have partnerships with a couple of schools to teach students how to make things. We also started a summer makers camp for 6th through 8th grade students who live in the area.

If you’re interested in joining a space like this, search makerspace, maker-space, or even cooperative workshop. You may find one in your area that you can join. There are at least 4 in my area, some of which are specialized for one thing like photography or a group of related interests such as an art workshop for various art forms, or an incubator for the technical minded.

Crafting

Introduction to Melt & Pour Soap Making 

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That was the title of a class I gave at the maker space on November 2nd. I had three students attend. Two others had to cancel due to work schedule changes. I plan to offer another introductory class sometime after the holidays. I also had requests for showing how to make soaps with layers, swirls, and embeds.

Finished soaps.
Top to bottom: chocolate mint, oatmeal lavender, cedar & saffron, and lavender dreams

I brought several items for melting the soap base – a crockpot with high-low and warm settings, a single heat setting crockpot, and a wax melter with a digital temperature control. I’ve also used an electric water-filled kettle with a can as an insert to melt soap, but the easiest and fastest to use is the microwave. 30 seconds, stir, another 30 seconds, stir, and repeat until the soap base is melted.

I made a single sample bar of each to show the finished products so my students would know what the bars would look and smell like. I’ve decided that 4 to 6 students make an easy group to teach.

By now, everyone knows the outcome of the election. I’m not going to say anything more than I did my civic duty and voted. Take care, now.

Crafting

Book binding class – a late report

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The class went well. Seven students of the eight who paid showed up and were able to go home with 4-signature hard-bound books. The books were small, but they should last for a while.

Finished books.

I provided pre-cut mat board to use as the covers. The boards were covered in scrapbook paper and the spines were book cloth. Sketch paper was used for the signatures and everyone was checked off on the industrial paper cutter in order to trim the signatures to a uniform size to fit in the binding.

The group went home with a kit containing a large-eye needle, a cutting mat, a knife, and a couple of paper piercers. Most of the kit was bought a Dollar Tree so not a lot of money was spent. I spent around $6 per student. I charged them $35 for the class.

Crafting

Mind your own business

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What makes a good neighbor?

When I first moved into my current house there was an elderly woman who lived next door. She asked if she could put her trash in my bin because she was waiting for the city to issue her a smaller one as she lived alone. That started a big mess. Every trash day, even after she got her new bin, her trash wound up in mine.

She didn’t like the bins at the street all day so she would bring mine up. She would have a fit because my bin would stink – I was disposing of dog waste as instructed by the city – so I should hose it out after every pickup. Mostly I ignored her.

Then she tried to have a lawn care company spray my yard for weeds. They refused because it wasn’t her property. So this crazy woman would sit in my yard that bordered hers across the driveway when I was at work and pull “weeds” some of which were wildflowers I had planted to discourage her from wandering over.

She reported me to the city because I didn’t mow my lawn often enough for her. It was mostly white clover which doesn’t grow that tall. It was lush and green and not over the height the city cares about. The side across the driveway was literally scalped by her. She would pluck out the plants and either toss them on the driveway or pile them on top of the trash bin.

I had some workers come by to fill in an old well. We found that what I thought was a patio was the roof of a room built out from the basement that used to house the well. Prior owners/tenants had used the room to dump all kinds of trash and paint cans in there. The doorway at some point had been bricked up. I’m not certain how the home inspector missed that.

Before we discovered this, I used to wonder about the horrible stench in my basement when the sun heated up what was the concrete roof. My basement also flooded six inches deep before we found the source of the leak. The contractor had to make the opening larger where an outside pump had been in order to access that room. The guys very nicely filled at least 10 large trash bags with the junk they pulled out of there.

Mrs. Nosy Neighbor called the city because I had too many trash bags at the side of my garage. They must have told her that it wasn’t a problem if I was regularly putting them in the trash bin. She told me she got a quote for me from Waste Management for a dumpster so I could get rid of the bags. By this time, most of the bags were gone because the city had given me one of the larger sized bins.

I came home from work one day and there were 4 vinyl fence panels in her yard. She was having them installed because I spoiled her view, which by the way, was the side of my garage and part of the driveway. By the time the fence was installed, all of the extra bags were gone.

She had complained that the sight of my trash cans had also spoiled her view. At that time, the cans were at the side of my garage. I moved them past the edge of the fence. Two weeks later, there were new fence panels installed which gave me more privacy from her snooping. A little devil whispered in my ear that I should keep moving the cans down the side of my driveway to see how many fence panels I could get her to install. Alas, she had a horrible fall and her son packed her off to assisted living.

The house was sold and I now have much nicer neighbors who don’t need a perfect lawn and who cut their grass whenever. We all mind our own business except the few times in the summer when we used to watch for strangers just sitting in idling cars. Because of our location and the fact that most of us at the time worked, drug dealers would do business on our block.

When I retired, I made a point of being out in the yard and weeding or just sitting on the porch. If the cars parked and no one got out, I would hold up my phone. They would usually take off. Funny story – my neighbor across the street was home one day and saw a black suv with tinted windows sitting in front of my house and came over and banged on the window. It was an undercover officer waiting to see if any dealers were going to cruise over.

There hasn’t been too much of that sort of traffic in the past couple of years. I guess the word got out that there’s a lot more people who are home now. Several of my neighbors work from home and some of us are retired. I have the dubious honor of now being the oldest person on the block. I was one of the younger ones when I moved in.