letterpress and spinning make excellent bedfellows

In less than one week, I'll be finished with Lace Stories. I'm a little nervous because I do have some printing left to do, and although I've figured out how to make binding the edition a task that is not horrendous, I still have to figure out exactly how to easily attach my lace insets to the front covers. I was thinking about using 1" t-pins to hold everything in place. That, however, means for each book I'll need to insert four t-pins, clip some of the length, carve out notches in the board for each pin, hammer them into place, and sand to finish. And that's before I glue the accordion tabs in place and cover with a pastedown.

Maybe this is a case where the easy way would not be the best way anyhow; I'm just not looking forward to the 120 t-pins that I'll have to deal with.

Despite my reluctance to bind the edition, I'm excited about posting pictures of the finished work here. you can expect them sometime next Tuesday!

In the meantime, I've been relying on spinning for more immediate gratification. I've maybe focused a little too much on improving my skills this week, but the practice has yielded some yarn that I'm pretty proud of.

I'm still waiting for the gobs of fiber I ordered as soon as I got my wheel, so I've dipped into my felting stash. The yarn that's emerged from my bits of purple, pink, orange, and blue roving is much more lovely than I expected. I attribute much of this to plying. It's amazing how well colors offset one another when they're plied into a single strand of yarn. Here's what I mean ...





Too-bright orange merino and pink handpainted merino become a lovely variegated yarn that's the color of sunset. And underwhelming blueish-pink roving, when I plied it with handpainted purples, became a muted, lovely grey with touches of pink. I can't wait until this weekend when I plant-dye my own roving! I'm expecting the yarn I get from that will be beautiful.

Finally, if you're in the Tuscaloosa area, I and a few of my friends are offering a series of book arts workshops at the One Night Only Artique in a couple of weeks. All one-day classes cost only $25 and two-day classes are $50. Here's all the pertinent information (click on the image for a copy you can actually read without a magnifying lense!)



hopefully we'll see some of you there!