tedorigawabookmakers

I will be working on my Crapsey Quintain Coptic Book of poetry tonight as I have delayed working on it for quite some time, and don’t you just love the name?

Adelaide Crapsey created a type of poem she called the quintain - a 5-line poem of 22 syllables total. Eacy line should get progressively longer but that doesn’t always hold water, not even for Ms Adelaide. I don’t know why I got interested in her, her quintains, or her biography. Could it have been because of her surname? Am I that shallow?

Here’s an example of one of her quintains called Night Winds

Night Winds

The old

Old winds that blew

When Chaos was, what do

They tell the clattered trees that I

Should weep?

On a business note, I am planning to sell my books and will be setting up an online shop for a variety of finished books shortly. As an added bonus to early visitors, I will be throwing in - free - other stationery items such as pens, notebooks, simple notepads, and a 1959 250 GT Berlinetta Ferrari. Oh, wait. I made a mistake. Sorry, no notepads. Or the Ferrari, gosh darn it!

Not open yet, watch this space for future developments and the opening day.

_______________________

music from Sonnyboo.com and composed by Peter John Ross. Check out his movies! Especially Relationship Card - it’s hilarious.

Listen Now:

 Standard Podcasts [00:01:45m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download | Embeddable Player | Hits (28)

Read Full Post »

I added three more notebooks to my Cereal Series (see the post right below this one) and Finally! Finally! I got a coptic binding I like! On the fifth of five blank notebooks, the binding came out very nice. That’s a 20% success rate or, in baseball terms, I’m batting 200. Not so good, eh? Well, I was excited that the fifth one came out good so I don’t care if I’m batting .200 or not; it’s the Success of the Week. Pictures of the cover look like the ones from below so you can just flip between this post and that one.

Thanks for reading. I hope to get some audio up soon. Enjoy your week, too!

Read Full Post »

Two more books from Tedorigawa Bookmakers‘ famous Cereal Series. These are blank notebooks with coptic binding and about 100 pages each.

Actually, one is 100 pages and the other is 120 pages but I don’t remember which is which. I suppose I could look it up….

The covers are from two cereal boxes. The book on the left says, “Genmai” (brown rice) “Flakes.” Like corn flakes except made out of genmai. The book on the right has, in small letters at the top, “Salad Cereal.” And then a series of pictures to show you how to make a salad on top of your cereal in three easy steps: put the cereal in a bowl, put salad fixings on the cereal, add dressing. Viola! Salad in a bowl!

On this pair of Cereal Series Blank Notebooks, I tried a different way to sewing the coptic binding: more precise and complex on the tail and head pieces (bottom and top). I liked the head and tail sewings but not the middle three. Usually I like the middle three sewings but not the end ones.

Things we learned on this project? Measuring and cutting straight are important. Also, just because I have black waxed thread, doesn’t mean I have to use it. i.e. Another color thread might have been better. Finally we learned that measuring, folding, and sewing is best done while not simultaneously watching a movie on cable.

Here you can see the basic size of the Cereal Series Blank Notebook. It fits quite nicely into an overcoat pocket and opens out flat for full use of the entire page. (200 grams of this cereal will get you 50% of your daily requirements of seven essential vitamins, iron, and calcium, according to the front.)

By the way, this cereal is made by Kellogg’s.

Thanks for reading and we hope to hear from you soon.

Read Full Post »

Just in the nick of time. Today, December 28, 2008, I managed to finish a 2009 calendar/diary. It has blue Japanese paper as a cover, with light blue paper as endpapers. Coptic binding with black waxed thread and white pages.

This was supposed to have been finished as a Christmas present but all sorts of delays ensued, not the least of which was me spending four hours handwriting the dates only to discover while writing November that I skipped a day back in March or April. Usually I don’t mind skipping days but when they are in a permanent document that will be used over and over again as the year progresses, well, I felt I had to do something. So I started over and my, wasn’t that fun.

Here, if you turn your computer sideways (here’s hoping you have a laptop), you can see the handy (pun alert!) size: fits well into a jacket pocket or the pocket on some briefcases. Also, in a purse, if you carry one.

What did I learn from this escapade?

Well, first, start your yearly diaries and calendars early. Well before December 24th, I’d say - just as a rule of thumb anyway. In fact, I just finished the weekly calendar for a calendar for 2010. Thinking ahead, I am. Also, be very, very careful of dates and days. For some reason these are important in calendary/diaries. I don’t know why.

I like the hand-written monthly calendar but I didn’t like the hand-written weekly calendar, so I xeroxed a page and used that. Not the best solution but workable. Overall, I’d say this rates 3.5 stars out of five.

Read Full Post »

Ought nine is just around the corner. (2009 for you youngsters under the age of about 90.) While I should have started my calendar making several months ago - and actually, I did start several months ago - last June as a matter of fact, but I didn’t finish the preliminaries.

Prliminaries: getting a 2009 calendar, making a rough draft of the year’s diary/calendar, folding the paper. I did the first one. This week, as part of my 14 in 14 fiasco, I did the second two parts. Last night I finished three 2009 calendar/diaries, one each in purple, white, and green. The green one was okay but not exceptional. It has a green cover made of a recycled folder, green waxed thread and is A5 size, slightly bigger than these two.

This purple one is my favorite. It has 84 pages in three signatures (8, 8, 5), B6 size, purple waxed thread, and yellow end papers. It’s small enough on the outside but the calendar is big enough on the inside to be useful. The cover is Japanese washi so it it has a nice feel to it and fun to hold. The purple washi covers book board and I didn’t do such a good job of the corners but it is still … charming.

What did I learn from this book: I need to practice folding over the corners of the cover.

This is, obviously, white with a yellow accent.

The shadow is from the sun, it is not on the book itself, although it looks nice. This calendar is made of recycled material - the cover is from a box which had the accent already cut into it. The calendar has black waxed thread, 84 pages in three signatures, yellow Japanese washi endpapers, and is B5 sized.

And the calendar itself is hand-drawn using a black calligraphy pen and eyeballing the size of the days and weeks. Not all days are the same size. In fact, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, being on the right page, are bigger than Monday through Thursday, being on the left page. This is for those of us who are busier on the weekends than the weekdays - or who at least have more to write down in our diaries from the weekends than the weekdays. All-in-all, not a bad night’s work (following several weeks of delay.)Thanks for reading and listening.

Listen Now:

 Standard Podcasts [00:01:16m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download | Embeddable Player | Hits (67)

Read Full Post »

Tactile. Touchy-touchy. Very light.

These are a few words that describe this book. As you can see, the cover threads are bare; you can see through them to the rough yellow paper I used as endpapers.

I bought the red cover paper a long time ago and have been trying to figure out what to do with it ever since. Then I bought the paper recently that has become the pages.

And here you can see the stems and leaves stuck in the pages themselves. The phrase “stems and leaves” might remind some of our older readers of the sixties when the exact phrase was “stems and seeds” but the idea is similar.

To continue, this paper is rough, has the stems and leaves in it and is one folio. One page folded over once. There are seven of these pages so the whole book is 28 pages.

Here is a closer look at how the pages are more torn than cut nicely. The look and feel of this book just screams out for someone to touch it.

Now I need a poet and a calligrapher to add some content. Or maybe an artist with a calligrapher’s pen that will draw some worthy portraits or pictures. Or some phone numbers and turn it into an address book.

Noooooo!

Listen Now:

 Standard Podcasts: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download | Embeddable Player | Hits (60)

Read Full Post »