I got an e-mail from my web hosts, asking me to complete a survey on my experience with their tech support. What tech support?!
Day: November 22, 2007
Oops!
A few words of advice:
If you’ve only gotten three hours of sleep the night before, and it’s creeping up on 1am, you probably shouldn’t try fixing a couple of broken links on your website. Because, if you do, you may find that you’ve accidentally saved one file on top of another, obliterating it completely. No biggie, you can just grab a fresh copy of the code from your website, right? Well, no, not if you didn’t notice until after you’d uploaded the file and overwritten the good copy.
Thankfully, it was only my links page, which I don’t care (too much) about. The bare bones of it exist in a text file somewhere, if I ever feel like reconstructing it. It’s not a priority, though. If it had been anything else, I’ve got back-ups, but they aren’t properly coded, so losing the current copies might have made me weepy.
November Clouds
It’s been varying degrees of overcast for the past few days, which is typical for November in this area. At 7:30pm, it’s 63F. That is not so typical. It’s supposed to cool off, though, and maybe even snow.
Duck
Duck is swimming in a drift of fallen leaves
Tacket Binding
I did my first tacket binding today. I was inspired to give it a try by Dennis at Cai Lun. He gives a simple, straightforward explanation of how to do the basic stitch and cord packing. It was more time consuming than the Coptic binding I usually do, because I couldn’t just slap together bare board covers. The cord packing takes more time than a simple chain stitch, too, but it’s not at all difficult.
This is a super sturdy binding. It’s stiffer than a Coptic bound book, because there is almost no wiggle room. It opens flat, though, which is an absolute must for me. I really like the end product.
Since this was my first go at this type of binding, I made a few mistakes. Next time, I’ll mark the stitch lines on the outside of the spine with masking tape, to keep them even. I marked the inside, and tried my best to keep the stitches straight, but they’re a little ragged. I’ll also start further in from the cover. My outer two signatures are sewn too close to the edge, so the book wants to fan open. That will change, I think, as it settles and the denim spine relaxes a bit.
I think it would also be best sewn with thread, not twine. Hemp is super strong, and I love it, but I think the unevenness of it makes it a poor choice for packed cords.
Denim Book
tacket bound with hemp cords, denim cover, and star map end papers
8 x 5 3/4 inches
7 signatures of two sheets (28 pages) of 140lb Cartiera Magnani hot press watercolor paper
red paper boat 