Mistakes Were Made . . .

As I sat down on Tuesday to write this blog post, my internet went down and stayed down until this morning. Thus the lateness of this post; always amazes me how it throws me off whenever I can't keep to my normal internet routine. I did find ways to fill the time, of course, including more tidying of the studio and some housework I've been avoiding. You'd think I might have spent some time knitting on my sock but I was giving it a rest after working last week getting the heel turned on sock two. I'd struggled on sock one with the method used in my pattern directions and struggled again even though I had a better understanding of what I was doing. Mistakes were made that left a couple of holes in the knitting, but rather than unraveling what I'd done to the bad spot, I just fixed it with a bit of "darning" from the inside. After all, these socks are not gifts so I can live with the imperfections and my fixes. But onward to finishing up the Celtic Weave journal, where I discovered another mistake made. I didn't notice it until I'd sewn almost half the signatures together with the outside link stitches. Look closely at the above photo (or click for a larger view) and you will see in the center 3 sets of holes in the middle of each signature. There should only be two. I know not how I managed to mark my template with the two holes for the weaving offset from center by so much. I simply could not live with it so I added a hole that made the weaving space longer but at least centered. Yes, you CAN punch additional holes in a signature after it is sewn into the spine.

I was hoping that the threads crossing over would hide the extra holes but they did not. My signatures are a bit thicker I think than the ones on the first journal so the weaving isn't as compressed. I like that it shows up better even if it doesn't cover the extra holes. And I'm not unhappy with the extra width; I think the stitching looks very balanced. I worked a bit at encouraging the holes to close with some success, but like the socks, I'm glad this is not a gift; I can live with this imperfection, as well as the fact that the lines printed on the pages do not line up along the spine. I seldom remember to think about how the signatures will look on these open spine bindings. In this case, I really struggled with trimming the pages to size, my paper cutter forcing me to reduce the number of pages cut at a time (which accounts for lines not lining up) and still not giving me clean cuts many times. I trimmed the fore edges with a rotary cutter and struggled with that too, the pages within the folded signatures shifting inside leaving me with uneven cuts. Seriously, the signatures turned out a mess which I could mostly but not entirely clean up. Sigh. I blame it all on the paper, although I've used it before and don't remember having these issues.

But it is done, or almost, a chunky 5 x 6-3/4 book for quotations. I did fold the covers to leave a rather large flap on front and back which I will glue at top and bottom so it functions like a pocket.

But before doing that, I'm considering adding an elastic closure like what is on my current quotation book, running vertically along the fore edge rather than horizontally around the middle (and in doing so, covering up the weaving stitch). The chunkiness of the signatures coupled with the soft cover seem to demand that and the flap can hide where it comes through the back cover. But what should I use? I could use this bright green narrow elastic.

Or I could use this wider decorative flat elastic which has a bit of glitz to it but goes well with the handmade paper of the cover. What do you think?