And we're off

It was the first of September.. that day I'll always remember...

The day we start reading The Vivisector for the Patrick White Readers' Group!

Patrick was a rolling stone... wherever he laid his pen he would hone...

Sorry, I'm sure it will get much worse as we get going as everyone vies for the best White puns.

Go to your places, people, and get (re)reading!

As you were.

In which our heroine has worked herself to the bone and is in danger of expiring, until a mysterious package arrives and lifts her spirits greatly

By 11pm last night I knew I wasn't going to meet the deadline of handing over this catalogue to the printers at 9.30am today. There were at least 200 images to scale and crop, and somewhere in there I had to sleep.

I chose to sleep for 5 hours, going to bed at 1am and setting my alarm for 6am, but then my dratted bladder woke me up at 5am and it took me another 15 minutes to calm my brain down to sleep again, so I guess I had 4 3/4 hours. The last couple of nights I've been getting to bed after midnight too, so the lack of sleep is beginning to show in the doona-sized bags under my eyes.

So there I was this morning, flat out at the computer, dressed in fluffy dressing-gown*, sheepy slippers and pilled and laddered jersey-type things that roughly pass for pyjamas, with hair like a chook's dirty bum, sucking back a strong cup of tea and urging my son to get his school gear together in preparation for a quick dash to school, when the doorbell rang. I'd just got off the phone to the artist to push the meeting back to 12pm (yes, bought more time, but gosh I'd need it), when Bumblebee came in with a large postage box from the US.



After wondering what I'd put on my credit card in a sugar rush this time, I opened the box carefully to find...



IT'S MY BACKTACK BOX! Oh wow, oh wow, oh wow! What great timing!

To recap: ages ago I took part in the Back Tack 3 project, and managed to create an odd little bunny and sent it off to Floating World Views in Japan with a few other treats in the parcel.

All good and well, except... I didn't get anything myself. My backtack buddy in the chain sort of faded into the ether, and I'm not the sort of person to write nagging emails (I typed 'emauls', which works really well, don't you think) asking that classic Aussie question WHAT ABOUT ME?

So I waited, and watched said blogger move higher on the naughty list, until finally she was on the blacklist. Oh well, I thought, I had fun, anyway.

But! All hail the Backtack organizers! Such good women. They organized Backtack Angels to make contributions to those who missed out. I had the good luck to score Jennifer from the most excellent caffe crafty blog. I was expecting a simple consolation bunny when they told me it was happening... I didn't expect THIS!

What you can see above in the picture:

-- 3 rolls of very pretty paper, which shall probably be used as endpapers when I get a spare moment

-- a very potentially useful (and yummy) tin of lemonhead lollies (suitcase tin! Yay!)



-- cafe craft card sets! 2 of them! This one, and the one you can see in the box (and on Jennifer's blog banner).



-- art chocolate! I'm dying to see what the reproduction is (and eat the chocolate), but I don't want to wreck the packaging! Quandry!



-- fabric! orange! spotty! floral! perky! jaunty! Makes me want to revive my plans for making my own bookcloth. Watch this space.

And I haven't even got to the main event yet. Working down through the layers, exclaiming (and trying to stop Bumblebee from ripping open the sweeties), I discover:



THE BACKTACK BUNNY

Oh. oh. and again, oh. I can't begin to describe how lovely this softie is. Orange felt, removable dress, the most gorgous red shoes.



Oh. I'm so pathetically grateful. I've gone from mild disappointment to mild resignation to mild hope to wildly happy. Or is that the effect of chronic fatigue? NO, this is a thing of beauty, and will be treasured in this household. It's going in my Blogging Bounty Collection along with the knitted cats and the vintage posters.

Just to give you an idea of scale, here's the Bunny Beauty as modelled by my barely-awake, bed-headed son:



He looks better than I did behind the camera. We're both suffering from the lack of Best Beloved, who is in Launceston for the week, attending a conference on something to do with regional affairs. He gets back tomorrow night, and then it's back to normal, including getting the hairy eyeball and heavy sighs when I stay up later than 10.30pm. But maybe, she thinks, rubbing her eyes for the fiftieth time today, that's not a bad thing.

Thanks, Jennifer, you're an angel.

And yes, the catalogue design is now at the printers, and I can relax for a couple days until the next huge urgent batch of work arrives, which is a scholarly edition of Mary Gilmore's poetry (vol 2). Sigh.



* I finally gave up on my lovely old customized dressing gown; it now belongs to BB. I went to Target and bought myself the biggest softest wurtiest gown I could find in a nice pale browny-pink and it is now my bestest friend.

'ello, 'ello... wot's all this then?

Still struggling under the weight of catalogue deadline, but I just thought I'd quickly share some booky stuff that I've been up to during my daytime working hours (as opposed to my night-time working hours, separated only by a slight car trip).



Ta daaa!

I know, it's a plain blue book standing on its tail. But no! It is more than that. It is a collaborative venture between the Australian Federal Police, Old Parliament House, the ANU Inkjet Research Facility and me (the bookbinder (or more formally, the BookStud)(but really, just me, 'cause there's no one else)). Yairs.



Can you read that? This book was created in a mad flappy rush over the last week because it has to be put on display on Wednesday as part of a big exhibition at Old Parliament House, and then will tour Australia for ever and a day and then finish up as part of the OPH and AFP archives. le puff! Oh, and did I mention a very small budget? Sigh, as always.

So J of the Inkjet RF came to me and asked me if I'd bind this book. The people requesting it wanted 3 copies, digitally printed double sided, with hard covers, gold blocking, the lot. We did a quote, gave it to them, watched them freak, and then offered to give them a 45% discount. And then they told us the deadline, and watched us freak.

The thing is, with these sorts of projects, if you aren't just a little bit generous, they just don't get off the ground. Luckily for them I've just learned how to bind hardback books Teh Right Way, and am keen to practice. Luckily for them J is experimenting with printing double-sided sheets and is keen to practice. So we merged our empires and made a police book baby.



The pages are printed on double-sided cotton inkjet paper, and we printed them 4-up, so I also had to be the consultant as to book imposition. It was a steep learning curve for J, but now he's got the hang of it, he's keen to do more.

There have been a few hiccups along the way, and the first copy is always the bodgy one (and will hopefully be the only one without a gold-blocked title), but we were so proud of ourselves when I brought the volume in to be admired. I managed (a miracle!) to find the right blue bookcloth in our meagre stash, and I used a good serviceable brown for the endpapers, and my little touch of charm is the black&white striped headbands.



Check out the perky headband goodness. It's the little details like that that no-one else will notice, but I'll know are there. And now you know too, so pass the word on. Don't look at the bodgy bits, because no one else will, apparently, as I was told by all and sundry. There are some bits of it I'm ashamed to let out in the big wide world, but I'll learn to live with that pain.

Sigh. Only two more books to make, and I'm hoping to learn how to use the gold blocking thingy at my bookbinding class to make them look even more special.



All the documents in the book relate to the police involvement in the opening of Old Parliament House. Most of them are carbon copies, and today we were talking about the irony of such humble copies being elevated to acid-free paper and public exhibition.

Apparently you'll be able to see this book as you walk into the OPH exhibition. It will have a hole drilled into its newborn back so that it can be chained to the podium like a medieval bible. All my care to keep it pristine and clean will be undone as the white gloves provided are smeared with sweat and icecream stickiness. But at least it will be seen, which is more than I can say for a lot of the books I make, doomed to a gallery archive and pulled out twice a century for survey shows.

One more headband shot, and it's time for bed:



Aww. So cute.

Somebody stop me

This is ridiculous. I am supposed to be working on a survey catalogue for a textiles artist and I have suddenly been sucked into LibraryThing. An idle click of someone's library tagcloud on their sidebar led me down the rabbithole and I thought maybe I could just enter a few of the books sitting around me while I resize these images.

40-odd books later and very late into the night, I have to force myself to go to bed. Granted, I did resize those 120 images, but then I woke up extra early and just had to run to the computer to enter some more books. Then I rode to the BookStud and looked up at my shelves here as I opened the door, and... fired up the computer to get into LibraryThing.

I'M ADDICTED! Help! I just can't stop. I'm so curious: how many books do I own? And the big one: will there be more fiction or non-fiction? I resisted getting into LibraryThing last year or earlier this year (goodness time flies) when Laura did her library, and obviously for a good reason! But now that I've started,

I. Just. Can't. Stop!

[LATER]

I'm discovering all sorts of new things about books I've owned for quite a while. Like this author. Is there really somewhere out there called ROBIN BAGILHOLE? Published by Brian Trodd??!! Hmmm.

[LATER STILL]

I got home and got Bumblebee into a hot bath (we rode home in heavy rain, both sopping), switched on the computer and... LibraryThing is offline for an hour or so, doing some roadwork. Wow. I never thought about that possibility. I guess I'll HAVE to do some work. Phew.

Gotta love a parade

The Australian Colonies Bill granting independent colonial status to Port Phillip passed through the British House of Commons on 1 August 1850. When word reached the District some ten weeks later there was great public rejoicing--even more than when [it became the] colony of Victoria ... on 1 July the following year.

...

Four days of festivities in the city followed, culminating in a huge street procession ... in which the printers and newspaper men of Melbourne played a prominent part. They were jubilant at the outcome, which the press had been urging for a decade.

Led by John Fawkner and displaying a silk banner with a portrait of the founder of printing, Johann Gutenberg, the group accompanied a horse-drawn wagon bearing a printing press that was being put to work producing a celebratory leaflet ('sheets worked off and sent flying').

[Elizabeth Morrison: Engines of Influence: Newspapers of Country Victoria, 1840-1890 (Melbourne: MUP, 2005), p.68]

Found this this morning and it just sparked my imagination. I tried to find a more suitable image of a moving press, but I don't think people did this sort of stunt very often. I have no idea what kind of printing press they were using, but the thought of printing leaflets whilst on the back of a horse-drawn wagon without losing your fingertips makes my spine tingle! Australians sure know how to party.

Cross-posted at Sarsaparilla

Postscript: thanks to the marvellous work of Russ at Sarsaparilla, for the above image of the marvellous occasion!

Post-postscript 2026 -- yes, I've time travelled to this post! Here's another link to a source about this event (last para of p.105 and onto p.106)

Oops, my bad

I've been working very hard lately. Everything seems to have come up at once: design deadlines, printing commitments, and of course, to top it all off, the annual rush to get things together for the art school's Open Day. This last bit is totally voluntary, but always fun, because it gives me a chance to play.

I've been printing serviettes for the print workshop's traditional sausage sizzle. You know: $2 for a sausage in bread, $5 with an original printed napkin (cut with pinking shears from good serviceable white cotton drill).



All going well, lots of different designs, then I get the bright idea of printing on t-shirts. Downstairs the first years are screenprinting a whole stack of them, so a colleague and I set a couple of designs and print some t-shirts and singlets, successfully. Hooray! Then I'm passed a pair of undies, and I think, why not?

Well, I found out why not. Here is the word MESSY, before. It's a nice little bit of concrete poetry, taking advantage of the nicks and dents in the old type:



and here it is, after:





Ahem. Cotton undies are flat in the middle, sure. But the elastic is rather raised, and the pressure of the press rolling over the wood type caused the poor letters to compress, leaving a beautiful clear elastic print on the wood:





OOPS. My bad. All I can think is that it looks like someone with a lovely curvy size 12 arse who weighs a ton sat on the type. And it will never recover.

The result? A pair of printed undies. The only such pair in the world. And not even that well printed, although I guess it was the right word to mess up.



I hope whoever buys the undies will appreciate their provenance. But I doubt it.

Mind you, the marks will only show this clearly if you put the word MESSY together. At other times, the grooves will become part of the general history of marks on the letters, albeit a bit obvious. Sigh. Even if I could fit into the undies (which I couldn't, not since I was about 13) I don't think I could bear to own them. It's going to be bad enough looking at the letters periodically.

Anyhoo, get thee down to the Art School on Saturday between 9 and 4, if you're in the general vicinity (Canberra). Open Day is a hoot. And again, I'll be there, playing with my press. Come up and say hello.

Time Out

Sorry. I went away for three days. We threw the cats into their catbox and took off to my parental prickle farm on thursday straight after my bookbinding class. Bumblebee had been sick all week, so we thought he might as well be sick at the farm in the sun, and gave ourselves a day off too.

It was warm, relaxed and quiet. My parents are in New Zealand for two weeks, frittering my inheritance away in a cottage by the Bay of Islands, so we'd agreed to keep their two hounds company on the weekend in between. Bliss! No computers; no need to get out of bed until the bedsores made me move; no need to drive anywhere so cocktail hour started when the shadows started to look vaguely long.

We did get to the seaside, to catch up with a friend and her lovely daughter, but it was a bit too chill and cool there to really relax. Much better lying in the sun inland a bit.

Pooter and Padge found a few lizards, which kept them amused during the afternoons. At one point BB came out and sat beside Pooter in the grass, then realised that P was eyeballing quite a large lizard. Pooter, thinking he had it in the bag, rolled over to show off to his human, and the feisty lizard ran off, but not before leaping forward and biting P on the head for good measure! Oh, how we roared.

My old nana had left me a pile of Woman's Days, so I've really had my brain switched off. Now I'm struggling to come back to earth. Best Beloved's still struggling to come to terms with my hair, but he'll get there. So thanks to all of you who have left comments over the last few days! I'm very grateful, and will respond accordingly as soon as I've made a homecoming cup of tea and got my brain back into gear.