Today has been a hot, sunny day, possibly the last of the season, so I took the opportunity to wash my summer duvet, hang it outside to dry, and then put it away to swap it for the winter duvet, which I washed in spring before putting away. (it's a bit soon to swap it out, but I don't mind.) I also washed the mattress protector and the pillowcase (my pillow has a protective case that can be washed) and put on fresh sheets, so my bed is now all fresh.

I've had a very fun discussion about Star Trek TOS and mid-century pulp sci-fi vs modern sci-fi over in scanfic (in Danish/Swedish), which led me to revisit a binding I did last year for a bookbinding competition with climate change as theme. I didn't win anything in the competition, but I had a lot of fun putting the book together. As part of it, I also read a lot of different texts to curate a selection for the book (I believe most traditional binders just choose one existing text and bind it), and wrote forewords. So the binding is unique in many ways. Anyway, the point is to say, I wrote the forewords in a kind of frenzy as I was working to a deadline, but revisiting the binding and the texts I'd curated and the forewords themselves, I thought, hey actually this is pretty good? So under the cut is the foreword for the fiction half plus the links to the (publicly accessible) texts if anybody wants to read along. (the foreword for the non-fic half is very 'I have no brain left and I just need to fill this page', ha.)

( Earth is Missing! and other stories [foreword] )

Reveals went up last night! So I can share the books I made!

Something Dumb to Do by poisonivory (which I also recced in the Matt/Foggy fake dating post I made a few weeks back). Post on AO3 | post on tumblr


Inside The River by yeaka (this is also the first time I’ve read a Star Trek fic and it’s got me hooked)
post on AO3 | post on tumblr


Sha Ka Ree by ThereBeWhalesHere
post on AO3 | post on tumblr


I’m very happy with how all three books came out. I had to remake the case for the red book (I got th spine measurements wrong - it was a perfect fit for Inside The River but the wrong colour scheme for what I had in mind for that one, so now I’m saving the case to reuse for something else down the line...) and I’m really glad I did because both of those then came out perfectly squared. It is actually the main thing the other binders in the renegade discord have complimented me on, which yes is very satisfying. Getting a perfect squareback spine and squared edges is very difficult and it was the first time I got it perfect, doing these two books. The casing in went perfect as well, which is half the battle.

The case for Sha Ka Ree was another matter entirely but as you know I was putting it together last minute and that’s kind of haste is just no good. Some of the measurements are slightly off which means it has no foreedge to speak of and the casing in didn’t go as well as I hoped for either (thank god for paste though, I had to lift and reposition the cover so many times before I gave up and called it a day. The titling though! Is damn near perfect. I have a cheapass foil quill which can do things like the titling on the red book fairly well but can’t handle anything with a larger surface area and definitely not on a textured buckram surface...so I knew if I tried it would come out with only partial covering. So instead of looking for alternatives (like painting it on in hand with silver metallic paint) I used this charcoal bookcloth and leaned into the inevitable outcome of the foiling to get a tarnished silver look to the titling, and honestly I am SO happy with it! I have a plan to bind this one necromancy AU SPN fic (the reason why I bought this bookcloth to begin with, I much prefer colourful bindings) and now I know I’ll be able to silver foil it in a really cool way.

Anyway! I’m so happy I finally bit the bullet last year and started teaching myself bookbinding instead of continuing in the same old groove of looking up bookbinding courses near me and dejectedly clicking away not being able to make them work for me for scheduling and/or money reasons. I’m having a lot of fun making books and developing my skills. :D