手取川製本 ~ Tedorigawa Bookmakers

Episode 129: Kikkado Notebook

An A6 size notebook that fits nicely in one's pocket is pictured here. It was made of upcycled material. Specifically it was made from a box that a delicious New Year's Stollen came in. Unfortunately, I ate the cake so I can't send you any. The notebook is six signatures of four sheets resulting in about 84 pages. A handy size all around, I think.

I sewed, glues, mulled, and put on those glue-on headbands much, much earlier last year and, when I saw the box the stollen came in I thought, wow, here's the cheap (i.e. free) book board I've been looking for. I spent a wonderful afternoon measuring, cutting, gluing, and finding endpapers.


The endpapers are also upcycled.... I really don't like that word. It sounds too cutesy. The endpapers are also made from recycled material. I believe they are from a wrapping that another purchase was wrapped up in.

All in all, a fairly successful adventure, considering these are among the first books I've cased in in a long time. I cased in the yearly planner shortly after New Year's but these are in the top three, for sure.

Episode 128: Planning! Or Failing to do so...

This is a  planner that was supposed to be presented as a Saturnalia present back on December 25th but I got a bit  backed up. Well, with running around shopping at least.

It is A5, 12 signatures of four folios each for about 192 pages. I used a link stitch and cased it in with 2 mm book boards. Plus it was only about two weeks late. Hey, it's the thought that counts? Next year... Earlier? (That's what I said this year....)

As you can see, it has purple endpapers that are intended to match a pair of chairs that will be delivered at the end of January, another Saturnalia present arriving fashionably late.

It comes with a weekly calendar, a monthly calendar, and two yearly calendars. It also has lots of space for note-taking; for example, the weekly calendar is on the left side while the right side is blank. A request from the recipient.

This is the fourth book I've made so far this year and it's only the fifth of January. I will definitely not say I will be making a book-a-day for 2015 but I'm off to a good start. The other three books were kind of a fluky thing.
 
I had this badly printed novel on my desk for a while (like a year or more ~  the novel is Tristram's Printer). It was printed on only one side of the paper and I contemplated occasionally, what to do with it. One option, which came up frequently, was to trash it. Another was to Perfect bind it. The last option was to use a Japanese stab binding which is the one I went with. However, a 200 page novel is hard to stab. So I divided it up into five mini-novels which are pretty much divided along chapter lines. On the second day of the first month of the year, I stabbed section one.

This stabbing was followed on the third and fourth. When I finish all five sections I hope to make a small clamshell box for them and title it Tristram's Printer's Skeleton as the pages have been edited in red and black pen. Lots of corrections.

On the last two pictures you can see a monthly calendar followed by a weekly calendar. On the weekly calendar you can also see how much space is available for writing: the entire right-hand page. The previous planner had a weekly calendar on both pages but the recipient requested more writing acreage which I happily provided.

Speaking of casing in books, I believe I have about 14 uncased books lining my desk. Does that mean I will case in 14 books in the next two weeks? One can only hope. Especially considering that two of them were intended as year-end presents.