My favorite tools

 

Dividers and a tiny rulers are two tools I use every day. They're basically my coworkers. I have feelings for them.

Thanks for nothing face-finder

I honest-to-goodness didn't realize that I had gotten this cover all gluey until I went to snap a shot of it and the face-finder in my camera zoomed on in. Good grief! I must be going blind.

I love this place

The only food in this fridge is a lonely orange, surrounded by ink pots, wheat paste powder, mysterious cans and pieces of equipment. The clinking of these little jars makes me smile every time I open the door.

Maybe gloves would have been better

 

Today I operated as chief ink wrangler and did my best to organize the various inks and paints and dyes into submission. The highlight was scrubbing out a cruddy bucket and the schmutz on the bottom happened to be a powdered amber-colored dye. My palms look like I had a tragic self-tanning accident, or like maybe I've been smoking two packs a day with my fists. Hideous! And totally amusing.

Awesome discovery part II

Well will you look at that! A free Hall & Oats cd with purchase of a billion garbage bags. This delights me to no end. I'm not ready to make studio music demands just yet, but you bet I'll put this on as soon as I get up the guts!

Shady lamp

It's obvious that my office lady clothes just won't cut it anymore. I must be suffering from some sort of mental deficiency, because it actually made sense to me to leave the house this morning in a pencil skirt. At least I have my apron! I'm going to have to go shopping for work clothes stat.

I'm kind of startled by how much my life overall has changed. I naively supposed that I'd just be spending my 9-6 hours doing different things, and that my "real life" hours would be basically the same, but I couldn't have been more wrong. Firstly, I am physically exhausted at the end of the day. All that standing! And general moving around! Also, I miss my stupid pop culture blogs, and socializing at work. I used to be able to sneak in little projects or article reading or family emailing in the midst of a day full of work projects, knit blog reading, emailing readers or yarn people. No way any of that would fly in the bindery - every task is immediate, and needs to be completed at that moment.  I'm not sure why this comes as such a surprise, but it is certainly taking some getting used to.

Awesome discovery of the day

I peeled off all the dried gloopy stuff from a busted-looking spoon I found under the skink, and - ta da! It's sterling silver. How fabulous.

Sparkle magic time

The task for today was organizing the rolls and rolls of stamping foils, and I'm now covered in tiny flakes of it. I basically look like a kindergarten art teacher.

My favorite part of these tasks is envisioning what I'd do with these materials when I'm finally ready to do so. There's something about it that makes me antsy though, like when you buy the 64 color pack of Crayolas and you're not allowed to use them and they're just BEGGING to be scribbled everywhere.

I may just end up being a hot-stamp madwoman. Gold everything!

Day Two: No Tears

 

Today was less alarming but no less exciting. I learned to do more things that I thought I've had a handle on for the past... Oh, maybe TWENTY YEARS? Because you learn to fold things and use scissors in kindergarten, right? I'm doing my best to fold fancy-style by lining lining up the corners of the paper with the opening towards me, then flattening it in one sweeping left-to-right motion with a bone folder, and it's astounding how difficult this proved to be at the very beginning of the day. I'm getting the hang of it though. I hope.

The cutting is another story. I'm learning to wield a paper knife, which looks to me like a butter knife with a bluntish slanted top edge, and I'm still waiting to slice myself open with it.  I keep expecting it to just keep going like when you're wrapping the hundredth holiday gift and the scissors just guide through the paper like nobody's business, but I keep managing to cut pieces that look like I've used my teeth. I'm not even posting pictures of it here, out of shame. 

The above picture of rolls of book cloth are a small snippet of the palette I get to work with, and it made me laugh when I asked the boss man which ones were ok for me to use. "Anything! Be creative!" he said. What potential! I feel lucky.

Here we go

Today was the BEST and also, the WORST.

Gavin and I talked about the most efficient way to divide up the day, and we decided to dedicate the first few hours to organizing and cleaning the bindery, and the second half to learning. The working half was awesome - we listened to some weird podcast, I got to know the place and the equipment, played around with paper. When my mom called in the middle of the day I told her "This is a dream come true! It's everything I wanted it to be!"

Except then we got started on something basic - a single signature hard backed book, and I alost cried. I thought I knew how to make books, honestly. My past classes had been thorough, and I've made some things I'm really happy with. But going from workshops with a dozen students to having all the attention focused on me... I had such performance anxiety, I could barely work scissors! Which are apparently called shears.

As stressful and shitty it felt, it made me think of every teacher in every class I've taught, and how they've had horror/boot-camp-esque stories: "We had to make gallons of pigeon glue! Ten vats each night!" or "You're bored with five accordian books? Imagine five HUNDRED accordion books!" and the occasional "Well this is fine, but it would never pass muster if you were doing this for real."

And with each botched attempt, or not-good-enough sample, I smiled a bit harder (with tiny tears, I must have looked totally insane), because I felt like I was watching my future story being written, right at this very instant. "Don't feel badly about those corners," I'd say. "I had to make twenty - TWENTY! before my teacher found one acceptable."

Growing pains, for sure.