How hoarding feeds what I make, though there are more hoards to be revealed

I got some questions about a book I showed on Instagram and here a few posts ago.  I made it ages ago and found it intimidating and so have only recently begun to work on the pages.

I painted paint sample brochures, the kind you get from hardware stores.  They are a variety of sizes and formats, but range from 8 inches by 8 inches to 9 inches by 12 inches or even bigger.  They are all either three or four folds, so open they are really large.  I painted them all with acrylics, with no real plan as to color or theme. I did it over about 3 or 4 days, so continuity was never a consideration.
I bound them into a book with a really simple coptic stitch binding and used some cloth tape that was used to tie up a delivery to help hold them together. I just covered bookboard with some nice paper that I had saved (two hoarder savings in the cover alone!) for the cover, it has a snakeskin texture that you can feel.

Some pics might help here... to show that the trifold and quadrofold pages can be seen in several ways, depending on how they are folded. The interactions between pages is VERY interesting to consider in creating pages.

The right side page here is the same in each of the next two pics.  The left page is folded differently.

Here the furthest left side is folded behind the center page.

Here the page is folded over the center part of the page.

As you can see from the next picture, the pages are different sizes, so the edges do not line up, but I really like being able to see other pages behind the one I am working on at the time.

This is the only "page" I feel is sort of finished,

 and in the following closeups you can see the other interesting part about making pages from paint sample books.  Although I did lightly sand the pages if they were shiny, the grid from the sample chips is still visible.  In some places I covered it with collage or something else, in others I used it.  I am still playing with how this works overall.

Left side:

Center:

Right side:

Finally... man this post got long.... I have the "red page" I am working on, and it is in pause mode while I think about it some more. I often work on more than one page at a time, so I thought I would show you my next "start" ...

 I have had this picture since the 1980's. Not sure exactly when I shot it.  It is of one of my friend who is also a photography nut.   I cropped it, played with the contrast, and printed it on my laser printer.  Then I did an image transfer using matte gel medium to a page in the journal.  It is on the "first side"  of a trifold page. so there is a totally different page on the left and the page could open further on the right. This page also has lots of semi hidden paint samples on it.  We shall see what happens next..

And to record the moments....

When I was thinking that I would not finish the blanket and needed something to serve as a placeholder, I made this little book.  It is intended that people who are at the shower will share things the baby should know about her mother and father... so I am including some pens in the envelope and it will go off in the box with the blanket now.

The baby is my own when he was about 4 months old but I decided that baby faces at that age are sort of unisex and I am not fond of using other people's art in my art so he is standing in for the baby girl.  When she comes along I can always change the picture for one of her...

The pages are lotus folded origami pages, all glued together and then tied up in red ribbons... no pink!

The Cover of the GWB Book

It is a transfer using clear contact paper, so it is a little more "atmospheric" than the other transfer which used packing tape.  The packing tape holds the ink more firmly, but after I stared at it a while I decided that the more vague image was perfect for a book of bridge impressions.  Now I have to think about the next spread.  In my usual fashion, there are a couple of blank pages before the first spread I showed yesterday, so I have pages to fill... and one more cover to think about... what fun!

My latest book making project

I found this little landscape format board book the other day and thought it would be good for something.  I gessoed the pages with buff colored gesso after sanding them and then sanded them again.  It is about 4 inches high and 7 inches long and was originally something about Hot Wheels... not any more!


I love it that the book stands on its own because I had decided that I wanted it to be able to display that way.  Once I realized what I was going to use it for I added some rough swipes of gold acrylic to some of the pages to see how it would work.

Because.... it is going to be a George Washington Bridge Book!
This is the first spread I completed, it is a collage that I made from some river photos with the bridge on the far left.  I made it last year, and I don't think I ever posted the collage, but if I find it I will link to it later. 

You can see the gold acrylic swipe better here...

And this is the closeup of one page

The other side...

I made this page using a laser copy of the collage which I transferred using clear packing tape.  This is going to be fun!

Beryl Bainbridge

Beryl Bainbridge died today, and it made me remember Master Georgie .  I loved that book and had not read anything else by her, though when I finished it, I intended to go out and read more.  Something must have intervened, so now I am going to add her to the list of things to download to my new Kindle.

Yes, I succumbed to the reduced price.  I had credits, so it was about half the reduced price and I bought it a cute little red jacket  while I was spending money.  I think everything should be clothed whenever possible, right?

I am trying to be careful in what I rush out and download.  I am still considering Byatt's Children's Book,   and I guess I will now take a tour through Bainbridge's oeuvre to see what else appeals.  Oh dear, am I going to turn this summer into an homage to UK writing?  The local book club is reading Colm Toibin's The Master, and I am more than halfway through.  I like it, don't LURVE it yet. Remains to be seen, I guess.  

But NOTHING is going to beat out Wolf Hall  for me .... at least not for a loooonnngggng time.  Anyone who knows Hilary Mantel please tell her to get going and finish the sequel because I am going thru withdrawal symptoms. I know that ALL of my reader(s) have a direct link to her, right?

Geek Love

Katherine Dunn wrote -- 21 years ago it turns out -- one of my favorite books: Geek Love.  Whenever my long time Book Club starts reminiscing about what books we have loved, this one pops up.  She promised another book when Geek Love came out but nothing ever materialized.  Now, it appears, from a NY Times Blog she has a story in the new Paris Review called Rhonda Discovers Art.  I am not a big reader of the Paris Review, but this one has my name on it.

I am thinking that I am also reading a lot more lately, being in 2 book clubs is part of the cause but also there does seem to be a lot that I want to read.  My long time Book Club read Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall and when it came to an end I actually flipped right back to the beginning and started it again .  I felt like I needed to figure out ALL the connections.

It is a strange and wonderful book, and in my mind, worthy of every single prize it has won.  I found that if I put it down and wandered away for a day or so I found myself wondering "what is going on with Thomas Cromwell?"  Almost as if it were reality TV from the 1500's.  Pretty amazing, I thought.

I was also delighted to hear that she is at work on a sequel but distressed to find that Wolf Hall took her 15 years to write.  Really?  I have to wait 15 YEARS?????  Sigh.

Books

Did I ever mention that I am in a book club? It has been going on for many years now,  since 1995 to be exact.  I haven't been in it the whole time, but I was responsible for at least one book in 1996, so I have been in the club for over 10 years.  The last book we read was Lark and Termite which I thoroughly enjoyed, though there were some bits I thought could have been edited a little tighter. I don't want to turn this into a books blog, I guess I want it to remain whatever it is...dog, cats, books, knitting, redecorating ad nauseum, painting etc etc etc.  However, there is a story to be told and I want to tell it.  

I have met a woman up here above the GWB who has become a friend as we walk our dogs and do other things together.  She wanted to start a book club.  Now I am GENERALLY an optimist, but it seemed like this was an endeavor doomed to failure.  We put a note up on the door of the local cafe

and that, aside from picking the book, was all we did.  Well, tonight was the night and 6 other quite interesting people showed up having read the book and ready to talk about it!  What a surprise, so now I have 2 book clubs and 2 books to read for next month.  My "real" book club is reading "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" and my "Up here" book club is reading "Lush Life".  Will do a brief report sometime in May if I think of it, but I am amazed that something as simple as a note on a cafe door could produce an introduction to 6 new people and provide an entertaining evening!!

I can't believe it has been that long!!

Thought about posting, somehow it got lost in the shuffle off to Buffalo.. not that I WENT to Buffalo, mind you. Having grown up not that far from Buffalo I can think of no reason under the sun to go there. Oh well...

I took a long look at the list of books from the last post, and decided to add Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. I have had it for ages and then it got into a box when I moved and came out in a different place so I lost track of it. I have actually lost track of a lot of my books.

In the old place, the books were in the living room and I looked at them and interacted with them all the time. Here, they are in the bedroom and I am not one of those people who does things in their bedroom besides sleep. I go to bed when I just HAVE to and generally for me that is 1 AM or later, and once I am up I am UP. So the books are left unvisited and are a mess, as this gives good evidence.

SO, part of the "new, more focused me" is that I am going to clear one section of books by reading them or passing them on or doing something creative with them... not clear entirely, mind you, I have not LOST my mind, just refocused it.

I want one layer of books per section, not two. So I am starting with Jonathan Strange etc. because it was the biggest book in the section I started with. We shall see how long this takes.. I am taking bets.. perhaps by 2011?

All that studying of the bookcase did not produce a copy of "The Things They Carried" so I have to go buy that, though I would have sworn I had a copy. I didn't find "Going after Cacciatto" either, and I know I had that because I loved it and wouldn't have willingly given it up.

"We shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it. The missing plays of Sophocles will turn up piece by piece, or be written again in another language. Ancient cures for diseases will reveal themselves once more. Mathematical discoveries glimpsed and lost to view will have their time again. You do not suppose, my lady, that if all of Archimedes had been hiding in the great library of Alexandria, we would be at a loss for a corkscrew?"- Tom Stoppard, Arcadia

the Reading List Post

I was seeing what was going on around the internest and I found that Loretta is starting up List Friday again. The list for this Friday is what you are reading this summer. I am compelled to do this because I need a summer reading list like I need a hole in my head, seeing as I have 6 bazillion books sitting around all demanding to be read at the same time. But because I like order and discipline.......not...... I do have some things I want to read so here goes:

The Things They Carried - Tim O'Brien - this is our book club book for September so it is first on the list.

Travels with Herodotus - Ryszard Kapuscinski -- one of my hero writers, I think I could read the phone book if he wrote it, but I haven't read this one. If you have never read him, read The Emperor or Shah of Shahs after reading either of those you will be joining me in the phone book.

Omnivore's Dilemma -- Michael Pollan -- I've read the corn section.. the first meal... and then got distracted, but I had my mouth hanging open in awe all through that chapter so back I will go.

The Yiddish Policemen's Union -- Michael Chabon -- Because I read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and didn't want it to end, and I hope this has the same effect.

And, what I would like to THINK I will read:

The Matisse Biography -- Hilary Spurling -- BOTH books. I am delusional here, but I would love to read them, so there they are.

That's the list for now. It certainly can become more fluid by August.

This, by the way, is my 101st post on this blog. It is the 191st day of the year, so that is almost a post every other day. I started on January 22nd this year, so not bad!

book club tonight...

We read 3 Junes by Julia Glass and everyone there really liked the book. It was a National Book award winner in 2002 and I remember wanting to read it back then, but I never did. I am glad I finally got around to it. The characters are complex and interesting and I found myself stealing time to read it when I should have been doing other things. That doesn't always happen to me with National Book Award winners, so this was a real treat.

I also finally finished the blasted heel on Jacobean sock number 1. I think I may do a different heel on sock number 2. I have always felt that matching was overrated. It looks good after 3 tries but it just doesn't interest me as much as a shortrow heel sock without the wrapping and I also enjoy the eye of partridge heel for its extra protection where socks can wear. The current heel looks like this.

Looks good, and I am loving this yarn, it is Sheepaints and though it is a little splitty, it is a great colorway. I am really liking that it is not highly disparate, more subdued.

Cute sock (singular)...Huh??

socks vs books

All my sock knitting books.....Or at least most of my sock knitting books. It is funny to me that I have all these books and all the great patterns and I keep going back to a simple sock. Toe up, eye of partridge toe and heel, not much pattern on the foot, sometimes pattern on the leg, twisted rib top. The goal for this year is something different in the way of socks. They sure are fun, and since whenever I go downtown I am looking at a 30 minute subway ride in the best of circumstances, this has to be a fancy sock year.

2008 the year of the fancy sock.

The other thing is that I have to work out a way to read and knit at the same time. The problem is holding the book and having it readable. I am not the sort who can sit and read off a table while I knit. It needs to be a way to hold the book so that it can sit on my lap... sigh.

ideas? I think there are people out there reading this.. opinions?

This children's book was written about the Little Red Lighthouse under the GW Bridge. When the bridge went up, they left the Lighthouse where it was and it is really surprising to see it nestled right up against the pylons of the bridge.



It is a 5 minute walk from my apartment. You have to go over the WestSide Highway on a pedestrian walkway and then down a pretty steep hill for a tiny bit, over railroad tracks and down another small hill and then all of a sudden you are in a park alongside the river. You are close enough to the river to stick your toes in it if you want to and there are tennis courts, picnic tables and benches and it is wide open to the broad expanse of the river.


At night sometimes you get the train whistles as the Amtrak trains go by and when it is really foggy you get fog horns...