So much, yet no pictures

Last night when I got home from work I took a look at my bench and I couldn't see it. IN the holiday madness and family visiting I had let it get covered in culch. So I spent about an hour clearing it off and cleaning it. The great thing about the varnish is that a quick spray of windex and a wipe it's clean.

I have been on a roll today. I managed to get 3 6x9 covers cut from a new cow hide, 3,4.25x5.5 covers cut, folded paper for all of those and cut a few spines as well. I also made an emergency trip to AC Moore. I had called a couple of print shops in the area to find out about paper and printing. Since my printer only can handle 8.5x14 (legal) sized paper I needed to get someone to print on 11x17. I called around and no one carries nice paper in that size. Seems you can only get cheap 20lb bond paper. Not what this piece calls for. I was clearly ticked off about it and trying to figure out how to get the lines on the paper....

When the idea hit me to print out lines on a full sheet and get them to print it on my paper. I knew the person likes a particular paper and had used it with him before. So I made the trip to AC Moore and bought 2 large pads of the paper and cut the pages I needed down to 11x17. I gave the small local shop a call first and they refused to put my paper through their machine- fair enough, they don't want it gumming up the machine, so I called another place, same deal. SO I called Staples and sure enough, they decided they would do it. So I headed to Staples and they did the printing and the charged me the regular price.

humph

Anyway. have 12 signatures, enough to make 2 books at the proper size with lines on 90lb Strathmore 400 series paper.

I bought a strap cutter on ebay a few weeks ago, and thus far I'd had only frustrations with it the straps I cut with it came out uneven and looking like I used a razor and no ruler, like I tore them off the hide, a mess. Today i figured out how to use it, and now that I'm getting better with it, it may be faster than ruler and razor, but I'm not convinced.

I have a large stack of books waiting to be sewn over the next few days.

In addition to that I did the sewing on a stack of lined hedgehogs.

No wonder I can't sleep I'm on a roll!