A Thing Made

On Bookbinding and Book Filling these Green Summer Mornings

Someone recently asked, What is the biggest thing you’ve made?

I didn’t say, an accumulation. I didn’t say, Peg and Awl. I didn’t say Søren and Silas. I just lifted the book in my hands and said, “recently, this.”

I fidget at my smallness.

I’ve filled the pages of that journal and just made this new one. It opens and closes; I’ve already begun to fill it up, but I am not ready to call it finished. A book is a thing made and then a thing to be filled. I move through journals quickly: makingfillingmakinfilling. I could list the things not right and I can also not dwell on it and wait for the final piece to fall into place.

Mornings on Temperature Terrace

From here, I can see the threads of my life so wonderfully braided and knotted and tapestried; I couldn’t have planned this.

Books have been at the core of my making. The earliest book I still have, I made when I was six. As much as I feel I meander and long to meander, the thread is distinct. Everything spins out from the books and folds back in.

In the beginning, each book or journal was it’s own world, picking up where the last left off. Later, I began making multiples — once, for Anthropolgie, I made eighteen hundred little books!

A journal is like a poem or a song. A drawing, even. Something to get right by feel. There is a foundation — pages, cover, thread, glue, linen — and there is the magic. Sometimes they feel just right straight away — like my Yedda Journal — other times they feel needy — not quite right, but the filling improves all.

Journal Making

A Summer of Storms and Greens and Yellows and Pistachios, Cardamom, Mint, Blueberries, Kefir, Cottage Cheese, and Olive Oil.

It used to be the urgency that propelled me to make the next book — the need for blank pages. But next time, I shall take my time and start before I near the end. I wonder what time will bring…

I hope our tutorials — this one is in the works — will inspire you to make journals, explore the materials, and not be afraid to make marks in them!

Finishing and using my book, which from here looks pretty great. I love the spine!

ps: We’ve started our swimming pond project!

"It was so choked with green you could not tell where the weeds left off and water began. " Robin Wall Kimmerer from Braiding Sweetgrass ch. 9 A Mother's Work