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On Saturday I attended a fabulous bookbinding event put on by the Canberra Craft Bookbinders' Guild. Vicki and Nicky guided us lucky participants through the techniques of making a case bound book that opens flat with decorative stitching on the spine. The decorative stitching is from one of Keith Smith's bookbinding manuals.   
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Lately I have been experimenting with teeny tiny writing. It is good fun but can be hard on the eyes!   The Canberra Bookbinders' Guild have a challenge every year. The last challenge was to make a dos a dos book. I had a lot of fun with Alice in Wonderland and Alice through the Looking Glass. The photos didn't come out so well. The theme for this year's Canberra Calligraphy Society exhibition was reflections. I had a little bit of fun with that.  As part of the 2018 Canberra Calligraphy Society exhibition two friends and myself collaborated on a piece called Weathergrams. Llyod Reynolds, a renowned American calligrapher and professor developed the idea of Weathergrams as a fun way for his students to practice calligraphy. He was inspired by the Japanese tradition of attaching paper prayer slips to branches of trees and then leaving them to weather in the elements. He said that Weathergrams should be hung outside where the touch of wind, rain, sun or ice leaves the graphic qualities of a faded leaf and starts the Weathergrams journey back to nature. Reynolds had specific instructions for constructing his Weathergrams. In this collaboration with Carol and Sue we have adapted Reynolds idea of Weathergrams trying to keep to the spirit of his original idea while writing quotes and words that appealed to us personally on recycled tea bags. We made over 100 Weathergrams altogether! After a very slow start I have finally managed to design and finish a number of Christmas Cards. This is better than previous years when I haven't done any at all. I am using my favourite Neuland script.  I spent a lovely day a couple of weekends ago at a workshop run by the Canberra Bookbinders' Guild. The workshop was Gelli Printing and concertina bindings. Gelli printing is essentially mono-printing without a press. It can give some very exciting results.   After much doing and undoing, I have finally finished binding the conference notes from the Australian National Conference of Bookbinders. I chose to use the binding invented by Anne Goy. She apparently called it Criss Cross binding but it is universally known as Secret Belgian Binding. I chose it because the pages lay out flat when the book is opened. This is useful as there are many pages with instructions and this binding allows easy access to the information. We followed many different instructions and after many wrong turns have a finished bound book. I learnt a lot in the process. Like most things, I should immediately produce another to consolidate my learning but I will probably flit onto something different.
I am back blogging after a lovely vacation and then a not so lovely bout of sickness that kept me in bed for quite some time. It is nice to be functioning almost properly again. I attended a workshop run by the Canberra Calligraphy Society last weekend (or maybe the weekend before.) The workshop was based on a SSIW workshop run by Marina Soria. Marina is a very talented Argentinian calligrapher and textile designer. Marina called her workshop "Empty Space: Womb of Shape". She included a quote from Lao Tzu to underline her meaning of how to treat empty space. "We mould clay to make pottery, but it is in the empty space where the utility of the jug resides, therefore we should take equal advantage of what it is, just as we recognise the usefulness of what it is not." Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, XI. I made my finished piece into an accordion book structure.             Nothing I like more than messing around with paper and the Witches Broom. Many thanks to Carol for having me over for the day and to Olive for teaching Carol the Witches Broom 'technique'. These pages (I think) will be turned into a book. Look for them later in the year.
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