As mentioned, I turned my stuff upside down last week to put it back together in a new and pleasing way–then I’ve spent the last week looking for stuff I cleverly put somewhere new and now can’t remember where it is.  I’m getting there though (the last ten percent of stuff is always the hardest!) and am very happy with the effort.

Of course I know I’ll do this all again next January, but that’s okay–it’s a valuable reset for me and an excellent opportunity to think about what I want to focus on for at least the next six months (or rather, until the school year ends for the kids) and arrange my stuff in order to best facilitate that.  I get a chance to be reminded of supplies/tools I acquired during the year and to remember things I got longer ago and had forgotten, plus I look at things in new ways every January since I am still learning and discovering so much each year.

I am nearly done with my journal that I keep talking about here but haven’t shown any pics of yet because it’s just not quite finished.  Yesterday during my kids’ taekwondo lesson I messed around with different ideas for the pockets, and I think I’ve come to some decisions.  Sometimes I feel so paralyzed with what is, I suppose, ultimately a lack of confidence.  I just want to be so sure before I cut anything, but I am learning that even the mistakes or things that just don’t work out can always be used in some other fashion, and reminding myself of that helps break through the weight of inertia.

One other thing I started working on this week is fulfillment of an obligation to my son’s school.  They contacted me back in October, saying that one of the Harry Potter books in their library had sections coming out of it, and did I think I could do anything about it?  I said I’d be happy to take a look at it but couldn’t get to it until after the holidays.  Well, that time is here, so I hauled it out and examined it.  At first I was hopeful as it looked like the pages were sewn signatures, but I soon realized that unfortunately, what I was looking at was a perfect binding.  I got on the internet and confirmed that the HP hardbacks are just that.  Bummer.

Spine after pages had been separated and most of the perfect binding glue removed

So I looked through all my books that I have on binding, and nearly all of them said to kiss it goodbye as there wasn’t anything to be done to rebind a book originally done with perfect binding.  However . . . Manly Banister did offer one method to try, so I am giving it a go.  Basically, you clean up the spine of the pages, glue them together lightly again, then separate into sections and whipstitch them together.  If there’s enough space left in the gutter then it might work.  I figure it’s worth a shot since the school has no other options, and it’s an interesting challenge.  So far I’ve cleaned up the spine and glued the pages back together in preparation for separating into sections.  Later this week I hope to separate into sections and punch holes for sewing, then on a long day, I’ll settle in and do the whipstitching.  I should know by about halfway through if it’s going to work–those Harry Potter books got big towards the end.

Spine after trimming off the ragged edges using my Purple Cows guillotine, four pages at a time

A four-signature book made with Strathmore 400 Series watercolor paper, 140 lb. (finished size 7.5×11″)

Middle section of spine sewing with beads

Top section of spine sewing with beads