Episode 130: Jealousy and the San Francisco Center for the Book

The San Francisco Center for the Book has a workshop called the Bookbinding Core 1 ~ 4. In this workshop people can make all sorts of books, learn all sorts of new skills, get all sorts of advice from great teachers, and generally ratchet up their bookbinding skills to a new, higher level. I wanted to go. I checked the dates of the workshops. I checked around for cheap hotels. I checked for cheap flights. I was psyched to go! I checked my work schedule. Boom. A meeting. Right in the middle of the workshop week. Impossible for me to go. Then, on my Facebook page, I get photos by Facebook friends who Are in San Francisco and the San Francisco Center for the Book and Are taking this Bookbinding Core 1 ~ 4 workshop. And Are getting great instruction. Drats! Am I jealous or what? Yes! I'm definitely not What?

Regardless of my jealousy and frustration, I am making a book about soup. It is not merely a history of soup but includes characters such as Bishop Ussher, Hunt & Tony Sales (musical sons of Soupy), the last soups of famous people before they died (Julia Child had French onion), Duck Soup by the Marx Brothers, and soups in movies (Tom Jones comes to mind), and, of course, the Soup Nazi and his first appearance (Sleepless in Seattle.) It will be Japanese stab bound as is the red book in the photo at left.

The pages for the Soup book, titled: Soup: A Seasoned History, have been aged in tea & coffee and burnt around the edges. It is B6 in size and has 55 pages. Profusely illustrated, of course. I'm waiting to find a coffee bag to finish of the covers before I can sew it together. Maybe next year I can learn Japanese stab binding better at SFCB.