Bookbinding, week 7

Gluing the book cloth to the cover, staring at the spine and then smoothing it over the covers.

Resized zombie t-shirt

Advance warning: this is going to be an image-heavy post.

James was getting rid of the t-shirt below and when James gets rid of tops I get first dibs on them. It's a Threadless design, although it looks as though it's no longer available.

Red cardigan

I don't think I'm alone in trying on clothes and thinking, “well, it's nice, but it would be better if it was longer/shorter/a different colour/fit better around the shoulders/etc.” The greatest thing about learning to knit and sew has been the realisation that I can now make those changes myself.

This cardigan was knitted for me by my Mum. (The pattern is Vodka Lemonade by Thea Colman and it's available from Ravelry.) I love the colour and the design, but it was getting very little wear because it doesn't close.

So I put a zip in.

I didn't do anything fancy, just bought a 22” open-ended zip, pinned it to the cardigan and sewed it down. I'm really pleased with it and I can't believe it took me so long to get around to doing this. The hardest part was getting the zip!

Stack: February

James's first comment when I opened February's Stack was, “That's not a magazine; that's a book.”, which will tell you what a chunky beast VNA, this month's magazine, is. It's smaller than A4, but 162 lovely, heavy, matt pages. And what's it about? “Street art, graffiti, illustration and art culture”. I am delighted with this month's selection!
 

VNA profiles a series of artists – each article is obviously accompanied by extensive photographs of the artists' work – with a concluding section of photographic profiles of specific cities, (in this issue its London, Hong Kong and Łódź). It's beautiful, interesting and exactly up my street; I read it from cover to cover over the last week.

Would I buy it again? Absolutely. And I'll be checking out exhibitions by Chloe Early and Nick Sheehy later this year!

Bookbinding, week 6

If I had made it to the class last week I would have a finished book right now! The teacher's plan was that we would all make a book before the half-term break and then a box for the book after the break; alas, I will be one of the people finishing my book after half-term.

I took twice as many photographs as I've posted here, but basically this week was all about building up the spine with layers of paper. The first layers were folded to create a hollow that the book cloth will eventually be tucked into, but after that it was just cutting and gluing rectangles into place. Unsurprisingly, the side furthest from you is the side you mess up and don't cover properly!

To Leave a Light Impression at White Cube Bermondsey

Entry: Free

Having suggested that I might abandon the blog this year, I've since decided to try posting twice a week until the end of my bookbinding course. In a surprising turn of events I actually have posts lined up for about the next month.

It's been over six months since I last wrote an exhibition review, which seems ridiculous. 2013 was quite busy to say the least. However, on Friday I went to the White Cube in Bermondsey at lunchtime to see an exhibition of Darren Almond's work, To Leave A Light Impression. The show comprises work from two series of photographs by Almond – Fullmoon and Present Form – and some small bronze sculptures.

His photographs are beautiful. They're huge shots of breath-taking landscapes, backlit so they glow. The Fullmoon series were taken at night by the light of a full moon with a long exposure, although this is not at all apparent from looking at them, (there's one picture where you can see the progress of the stars across the night sky). The Present Form series captures the Callanish Stones on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. This stone circle was erected over 4,000 years ago and Almond's enormous photographs do a good job of showing just how strange and monumental they are.

While all the images are lovely I have to admit to being l a bit disappointed by this show. If you take photographs of stunning landscapes, then your photographs are obviously going to look stunning. Almond has travelled widely and used some unusual techniques to take these photographs, but I didn't feel blown away by them. I expected something dramatically different to the usual landscape photography I see and that just wasn't there.

The White Cube also has exhibitions by He Xiangyu and Franz Ackerman.

No bookbinding today

Sadly, London's current transport strike made getting to Morely College a bit tricky this evening.

Now if only we could combine the two...*

Looking back at some other posts it appears that I write a lot about gifts that I've been given. It's not that I'm continuously showered with presents, but that my friends and family are all very thoughtful people who give excellent gifts. For example, for my last birthday three of my friends, (women I've known for over a decade now), gave me the following:

• a personalised mug for tea
• fancy gin from a local distillery 
• this cross-stitch kit

What is best in life? Tea, gin and textile crafts about tea and gin.

I've used the mug every week since then and the gin is almost all gone, but I had a memory of trying cross-stitch in my early teens and not really enjoying it so I didn't break open the kit straight away. I finally opened it last weekend and it was really easy! Why did I think it was difficult? It took an afternoon to make these, (I opted to use them as magnets instead of coasters so I could put them on the huge, magnetic whiteboard in the kitchen):

You get a substantial amount of material with the kit – there are three skeins of embroidery floss and you use hardly any on the design – although the instructions aren't very detailed. They seem to be generic instructions for all of the kits in the range rather than specific to that kit. However, it was pretty easy to figure out what to do. I had fun with these and would definitely recommend them to anyone looking to get into, (or back into), cross-stitch.

*There are actually plenty of cocktail recipes combining tea and gin. This one looks particularly good, if labour-intensive.