What I've Been Up To

Greetings, readers! Lately I feel like I am always starting my blog entries with "gee, it's been awhile, huh?" Things have been pretty busy recently, though! First I stood up in my brother's wedding, which was a ton of fun. Here is a picture of the shoes I got to wear to the reception, and the shoes my new sister (!) wore :)



Fun, huh? :) I wish I could wear sneakers to every wedding! Later that weekend my friend/future/current roommate (it's a long story, I semi-live there already but not, lol) and I painted my future/current room!! Take a look:




It was a ton of fun, and I LOVE the color! It's a very pretty blue, similar to the blue that I had in my room at our old house.

Finally, classes have started, and since I got rid of the internet at my house I have been spending more time reading and watching tv, and crafting! I got together a few "care packages" to send to some of my friends, and also made some birthday/other presents. Since I took that bookbinding class I bought some pretty paper to use to make books, and I am really happy with the results! Take a look below at the paper, as well as the finished products. The blue book was the first one I made, and so that's why the inside is different than the inside of the green book, because I wasn't exactly sure how I wanted to cut the paper, etc. But I'm pretty happy with the result, and I hope that once the recipients get them that they like them too! :) (side note: as usual, these pictures were taken using the camera on my phone, so they're obviously not so great...lol)

Painting Water

You must watch this:

http://www.wimp.com/paintingwater/

I'm sorry it's just a link, I tried to embed the video (I even searched on how to do it!) but the code isn't working for some reason. At any rate, this is a guy doing an awesome job marbling paper, something that I learned about in my Paper in the Scholarly World class. You need (as you can see) a tray for the water which has been treated with (usually) something called carrigeenan, which comes from a plant. Then you can drip pigments/paints which have been treated with oxgall (literally stuff that comes from the gall bladder of an ox....appetizing, no? lol) onto the water, where they will float. You can then use various tools, combs, etc. to manipulate the pigments to make cool designs, then gently place a piece of paper that has been treated with allum (another chemical) onto the top of the water. Ta-da, marbled paper! It's often used to cover the boards of books, and/or as endsheets on books.

In somewhat related news, I just started my bookbinding class today and I. Love. It. so much! :) There will be many pictures and a big post to come at the end of the week. I know, you're all really excited to hear more dorky book stuff, don't all tell me at once. hehehe :)

Vegan powers---activate!!

Hello, fellow internet dwellers! Life has been rather interesting lately. I've been hopping back and forth between school and my hometown, visiting friends and also volunteering at school since I am between summer class sessions right now. I also just finished reading the Scott Pilgrim graphic novels because a) they sounded awesome and b) I wanted to read them before the movie comes out. They were hilariously awesome and I 150% recommend them!

If you are not familiar with the Scott Pilgrim story, let me give you the basics which will lead me to the main point of this blog entry. Scott Pilgrim is a 23 year old Canadian slacker dude who plays in a band and falls in love with this girl Ramona. Ramona has 7 evil exes, as in ex-boyfriends (mostly), who Scott has to fight and defeat in order to keep dating Ramona. One of the evil exes is named Todd Ingram, and his superpowers come from the fact that he is....wait for it.....a vegan!!

BAHAHAHA!!! The reason I found this so funny is because about a month ago I read this book:



It is called "The Kind Life" and was written by the actress Alicia Silverstone, notably of "Clueless" fame. Half the book consists of literature/her personal story chronicling the health benefits of becoming a vegan or even of becoming a "superhero" (that's right, get it now? lol) by following a macrobiotic diet. The other half is recipes, which are (obviously?) all vegan.

One of the reasons that I read the book is that my awesome friend Holly (find her blog at http://meatlesswithmia.blogspot.com) recommended it to me. About a year ago (can't believe it's been that long!) we made the cupcake recipe from this book and it was SO good!! Completely vegan, i.e. no animal products involved, and they were SUPER delicious!! Most of you know that I am a (mostly) vegetarian who occasionally eats a hamburger or a steak (maybe once a month at most), but you may not know that I am super seriously considering becoming vegan for the following reasons...

Now, this next part might get a little personal and health-related, so if you're not one to be into topics that might be considered "too much information" you may want to skip the next paragraph...lol

Reason 1: personal health

I have never been a huge fan of eating meat. Like I said above, I'll have a burger or even a steak every now and then, but texture in food really affects me and I very much dislike the texture of meat. Despite this I do eat lots of food made with animal products, such as cookies, bread, cakes, muffins, ice cream, and most notably, cheese, usually accompanied by macaroni (lol). Unfortunately over the past 3-4 years I have noticed that animal foods, mostly dairy, have been giving me extreme stomach cramps and unusual....bathroom events, we'll leave it at that. These cramps and other symptoms have been getting worse and worse and worse, and I have also gained some weight which is bad for my back (a whole different story, but suffice it to say I have a herniated disc and being even a little bit overweight is not good). So, as a personal experiment, I followed Alicia Silverstone's suggestions and noticed an IMMEDIATE improvement to these symptoms. Because of this, I have decided (even though it may be hard for me!) to try to go vegan!

Reason 2: animals' health

I'm not going to get all preachy, but we all know that there are some less than ideal conditions in many factory farms and it pains me to know that any animal is being mistreated. I DO NOT, repeat, DO NOT condemn anyone for eating meat, I don't necessarily even think that it's wrong, but I would be lying if I didn't acknowledge that this is another part of the reason why I have decided to give up meat and other animal foods for good.

So there you have it! I will probably blog some more about recipes I try, any health benefits I enjoy, etc. etc. I highly recommend "The Kind Life" if you want to learn more about the benefits of a vegan and/or macrobiotic diet, as Alicia Silverstone does a great job of presenting her case without seeming like one of those crazy paint-throwing PETA activists, lol. Maybe I'll even get some crazy vegan telekinetic powers, just like Todd Ingram!!! hahaha :)

Totally Adorable and Hilarious

As you may be able to tell from the timestamp on this entry, I am up rather late tonight :) But I was perusing some backlogged/bookmarked blogs and came across this one, called Letters With Character, that invites people to write letters to fictional characters. I thought this one was particularly amusing:

http://letterswithcharacter.blogspot.com/2010/05/aa-milne-winnie-pooh-1926.html

It is to Winnie the Pooh, and I think you should read it because it was super duper cute. There's also a great one to Werther from The Sorrows of Young Werther, a book I had to read for a German history class and really enjoyed. So check it out! :)

Preservation & Conservation

I had a really good time volunteering at the Preservation and Conservation lab today! Since we do (what I think is) some pretty neat stuff, I thought that I would take some pictures and give a play-by-play of what I do there :) Get ready for a journey of AWESOMENESS!! lol :)

1. I walk to the lab, and put on my apron! I used to use the aprons they had there, but I got one for my birthday from World Market (pictures below). I think it is so pretty! My favorite part is the pink rickrack on the pockets and bottom hem. It's almost too pretty to get dirty with leather red rot, glue, and various other hazards of book repair. ALMOST. lol.





2. Once I put on my apron I set up my workstation. I usually lay down a piece of heavy brown craft paper to cover my desk so that I don't get the desk dirty, it makes cleaning up all the little pieces of paper, book, and dust much easier! I also take out my toolkit (pictures below). It contains many things with which I was totally unfamiliar, some that I was like "oh yeah I know what a paintbrush is" (lol), and some that I was surprised to find (like a scalpel!). I have various paintbrushes, a ruler, scissors, a scalpel, a bone folder, a teflon folder, sandpaper, a needle, waxed thread, a book knife, 2 spatulas (one small one large) and some other things I'm sure I am forgetting! I also make sure my station has a cutting mat, a container of PVA (aka white glue), and a small cup of water for dirty brushes. Sometimes I change the blade on my scalpel. That part is scary. lol




3. I go back to my shelf (which is where I keep my toolkit and any works in progress) and take out the books I am working on. When I got to the lab today I was in the middle of working on 3 books, and am now in the middle of working on 5! Because I am still learning I still need my supervisor to walk me through pretty much every step, and when she goes on lunch/while various glued things are drying I sometimes run out of things to do, hence starting 2 more books today. So, in the next steps we will go through the repair I am learning how to do!


4. The repair I am learning is called a Princeton 305. This is what the books generally look like when I start working on them:




As you can see, the spines are usually falling off, and the boards are either completely detached or falling off. I begin by taking off the spine, and removing the boards (careful not to cut too short some strings that sometimes attach the textblock/pages to the boards).

5. Then, for the leather-bound books, I detach the leather from the ends of the boards. Depending on how badly damaged the leather is, sometimes you have to remove the leather entirely to replace it, but in the picture below the leather has remained intact.



6. I then use something called methyl cellulose to scrape down the spine of the book. I put the book in a press (I think they're called presses....lol) so that I have both my hands free, then I use a paintbrush to brush the methyl cellulose on. I let it sit for a few minutes to soften the paper and glue that are on the spine, and then use my spatula to scrape it down! Depending on the book this can either take me a few minutes or close to an hour...lol I had some difficult ones, like the original 3 I was working on, but the one I started today was not too bad.





7. After I scrape down the spine, I make sure I have sanded down the inside of the boards so the old endsheets (paper attaching the boards to the inside of the book, usually blank pages at the beginning and end of books) are not too bulky. Then I glue new endsheets onto the textblock. This got tricky on one of my original 3 books, because one of the signatures, or group of pages, fell off! I then got to sew it back on, which is actually what I did when I first got to the lab today. It was really hard. And totally awesome!



8. After the endsheets are glued onto the textblock, I glue down new supercloth, which reinforces the shape of the book's spine. I then glue a piece of paper on top of the supercloth (which, as far as I can tell, is for more reinforcement? And also, eventually, to glue the spine back on).

9. There are more steps, but maybe I will wait until next week to post them, because this entry is really long and I also don't completely remember them all, as I have not totally completed a repair of this kind before! The books I did before these 5 were just spine repairs. Thanks for reading if you got this far!! lol :)