If you live in…

If you live in Chicago and have met me OR if you work in the sf field and read this journal, you should've gotten an e-mail invitation to potluck brunch this coming Saturday. If you didn't, please drop me a line and remind me!

As you can see, a few more books. I'm particularly pleased with the little silver leaf book; not only does it have some nice colors and such, but it's a new size for me, an octavo book. That means that the sheets inside it were folded into eighths (most of my books are quartos, folded into quarters). It took a little extra thinking to figure out how I was supposed to do the folds, so that I still had the fold at the spine that didn't get cut. It's a charming little book, though -- just tiny. You could slip it into a pants pocket.

I also experimented with something totally different -- making a photo album out of a premade interior. On this one, I just made the casing and inserted a ready-made book block, all out of archival-quality materials. This one is 8x10, and I rather like it, though I mismeasured a bit, and so the last page doesn't lie as flat as it ought to. There's a lot of measuring in bookbinding! I'm making one more photo album -- it should be done tomorrow (much gluing in small steps and then waiting 24 hours for the glue to dry properly). It'll be even larger, more of a wedding album. Here's hoping I measured right this time! Still, despite the error, I rather like my red butterfly book; I think it'd make a really nice album for someone. And hey -- errors just prove that it's handmade, right? :-)

Today, more art stuff, alternated with reading Malory's Morte d'Arthur (for my exam list). Sometimes grad school just ain't so bad, y'know?

I spent an hour or so yesterday talking to Ben Rosenbaum (SH writer) about whether or not he should go to an MFA program. By the end of it, I think I'd convinced him that if he does anything, he might be happier in a Ph.D. What have I done? I swear, schools should hire me to talk about grad school. There was a time when Sherman was nicknamed The Happiest Goth. I could be The Happiest Grad Student. :-)