It also has five strings the same color as the binding hanging down from the edge of the triangle to near the bottom. This is ‘artsy’ with a capital F, verdad?

But it only took lots of sanding, two or three varnishings and more sanding to get it to look right. For some reason I couldn’t get a handle on it. The inlay on the back, for example, took a week to get right and it’s still not completely what I wanted.

Practice, I suppose, is next on my agenda. In fact, next week we will have three books from my Chinese - or is it Japanese - Stab Binding Series.

Now it’s August and I can’t get the inlay to lay right. What a life. I mean, straight line. We shall see what becomes of it. Meanwhile, I made a bookshelf to house my…. cooking utensils. Okay, it’s a counter more than a bookshelf. But it Looks like a bookshelf.

Photos of the July Book to come. (Before the August book is finished, one would hope, wouldn’t one?)

I liked them, although I ripped the snot out of a hole in one cover thereby botching in terribly, but the other four turned out well. I gave three away as gifts for favors done for me (two interviews). I gave a fourth one away because one endpaper wasn’t a photo of the cherry trees but of the person I gave it to.

She was quite surprised when she opened it and saw her face because a) she wasn’t expecting to see herself in a notebook and b) I took the photo on Thursday evening and gave her the notebook on Friday morning.

I don’t say, actually, that I ‘give’ my creations away; I say I ‘release’ them. Sounds more… catch-and-release dramatic in a macho kind of way.

Here are the covers of the Yellow Notebooks. The first one, with the busy work on it, is the one I gave to a friend - the one with her picture inside.

More photos of both the Yellow notebooks and the Green notebooks (described in the post below) can be found at Tedorigawa Bookmakers. Please enjoy.

Meanwhile, I’m coptic stitching a smaller notebook with end papers that are photos I took of a nearby city. Very local. Very nice.

I botched the threading, I botched the holes, I botched the pattern of threading. The end result was beautiful in the way a new born camel is beautiful to sub-Saharan camel traders. But not to me. So I ripped it apart and did it again. By this time the sake was working its magic, so I managed to make a fairly nice notebook - if opening is not a priority. (Japanese stab bindings are like that. Which is why I do so love coptic binding but when you’re working with folios (one page folded over once) what can you do? Run six and a half miles in the wrong direction, maybe?)

Another attribute of desk calendars is padding. How do the major desk calendar makers pad out the number of pages to make the diary seem thicker than it needs to be? By adding lined pages, calendars for future years, weekly schedules, “Resolution of the Month” pages, and in one case: a few pages of words in five different languages.

Why, you ask, am I looking at desk calendars and diaries now? Because now is the time I usually get started making my for next year. It takes me a looong time to design, photograph, print, and bind my desk calendars. Much too long.

And I’m Still working on Monk’s Scroll!

The question is asked: “When did you get started in bookmaking?” By which I assume they mean making books rather than taking bets for horse races.

Here is a 66-second drama about the above. Cool.

Hopefully this site will help everyone - especially me - improve my podcasting, filmmaking, and bookbinding skills in reverse order. The main theme of Tedorigawa Bookmakers (blog at http://www.tedorigawabookmakers.blogspot.com) is to Project and Display my Works! Of Bookbinding.

How’d I get started? I don’t know. I don’t remember but I wish I did. One minute I was minding my own business and the next thing I know I’m checking out curved needles at the sewing store. Why? Why?! (Well, naturally for certain styles of binding, like coptic, you really do need a good curved needle.) See? Is that anyway for a grown man to talk? Gawdamighty.

(I refuse to go into the discussion I had in a bar one night with this tattooed, liquored up, hairless guy and his Italian cigar-smoking girlfriend. I refuse to say how I steered the conversation into bookbinding and glue. But they were pretty excited to talk about leather, let me tell you. Pity, though, I don’t use dead animal skins on my books. Just wood and paper. And glue. And beeswax. Hmmmmmm.)

I hope to update or cross-post on a regular basis. Famous words.