Treading the Primrose Path of Dalliance.

Well, it is Valentine's Day. Although this primrose path is completely indoors, given that we have 50 kph winds blowing outside and it's raining heavily. Again.

I've been dallying with book making again. The book of the week was going to be an experiment, to see if I could make this technology work with my own covers. Just quick paper-covered card covers, a hole punch, some of the 'rings', which are actually discs, and a few pages.

Then I remembered that, ages ago, I bought  'Artists' Books Ideation Cards', from Julie Chen, but had done nothing with them. You select cards at random and then make a book that fits.  Category cards outline the methodology to use, adjective cards describe the mood of the book.

It seemed like a good idea to try them out.

My Category cards were 'multiple openings' (i.e. not just a straightforward start at the beginning and keep on to the end book), 'multiple colours', 'based on a grid', 'no images', 'favourite colour', 'found text', and 'hand drawn or painted'.

Mmm - immediately I could see some potential problems - er, challenges. 

Multiple openings?  The cards suggested, amongst other things, split pages, which seemed like a good idea. I didn't want to make a dos-a-dos ring binder!

Favourite colour and multiple colours? Purple is my favourite colour, but I was definitely not in the mood for a purple book. I often work in black and white plus one colour -but what colour? Amd are three colours 'multiple'?

Based on a grid? I'm not sure what this means, but I found some pre-painted papers with sort-of-grids on them, which covered 'hand drawn or painted' as well.

No images? This seemed to conflict with the above, but I decided it meant representational images, which I was very happy to omit.

Found text? No problem, though I haven't decided what I'm going to find, yet.

I wasn't going to bother with adjective cards but then I thought 'Why not?' That's where my quick and dirty experiment began to go off the rails.

My five adjective cards were 'formal', 'sequential', 'loud', 'historical' and 'sculptural'. 

Formal? The sort-of-ring-binder I'd been planning was definitely not formal. It would have to be a proper book.  

Sequential? I'm still working on this one. In a sense all books are sequential, but I think it implies a narrative structure to the contents, of some sort, which seems to conflict with using found text.

Loud? And formal? Can something be both? My first thought was to use some red cheong-sam type fabric which is bright, if not loud, but quite formal. However I know from bitter experience that it does not like being ironed, and I Bondaweb fabric to my book covers. (I have a hate-hate relationship with glue.) Plus it was too thick to work with what I had planned for 'sculptural'.

Historical? I'd decided to use a simplified case binding, which is quite traditional, so that would do for hysterical historical.

Sculptural? I really didn't want to get into complex book forms. So I decided to try a little embossing on the cover (perhaps a grid?) which is something I hadn't done before. But it would need a fairly flexible covering material, which is why the cheong-sam fabric (no idea what it is really called, but I suspect it's rayon) was too thick. It seemed like a job for handmade paper, so I found my stock and selected a nice bright, middle of a primrose yellow-orange. (That's where the primroses come in!) It was pretty loud, but I hoped the book structure itself would provide the formality.

The book is still awaiting its found text sequence, and I may cut some holes in the pages, but the bulk of it is finished, and I'm pleased with it. Perhaps I'll get round to the experimental sort-of-ring-binder next week. Just so long as I keep away from the cards...

When I wasn't doing that, I did another bit of mad weaving with one of my Gelli printed stitch explorations. That lumpy white stuff is some knitting cotton I've had for years, which seems to have found its role in life at last. This will not be becoming a mad book, however.

Sock knitting has continued, although the last couple of pairs didn't get photographed.

And here's something I made earlier, but which was delivered today, photographed at an odd angle so you can see there are hearts in there.

Hope you've had a good Valentine's Day, without too much wind and water spoiling the party!