bookbinding

The kids had a week of school vacation which would've been fun except that Eldest was sick with a nasty stomach bug for the first half. Fortunately she was better by Friday so we still took our planned trip to the science museum -- didn't see a lot of new exhibits but the kids had fun with their favorites and the electricity show was fun as always.

On Wednesday, when eldest was still under the weather, we had a movie day and watched Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind which is the kids' first Miyazaki movie! (they haven't actually watched a ton of movies in general). I picked that out for them because Middle has been VERY enthusiastic about "cute bugs" lately (mainly bees and caterpillars, but also the alien bug monsters from Factorio) and I thought he would enjoy the ohmu and seeing a story about a princess who loved bugs (I was right). Afterwards I found an articulated 3d print model of a ohmu and printed one for everyone.

Speaking of cute bugs, our caterpillar (which hitchhiked inside on Eldest's jacket, and which of course we could not put back outside into the snow) is a cocoon now! In theory it will become a moth.

And speaking of snow, we're supposed to get another ~18 inches tomorrow night. So the kids will almost certainly not be going back to school on Monday after all. This has been far too much snow.

I'm still watching Guardian with my husband; we're up to episode 23 now and still enjoying it a lot, although imo the parts set in Dixing have been some of the weakest. Husband has occasionally been asking me "so did this happen in the book?" and I'm usually like "no, not really" or sometimes "that character doesn't even exist in the book" but here I got to be like "actually, something almost like this scene did happen in the book, and you'll never guess why!" (he guessed). 

I watched the first episode of How Dare You and I really want to keep going, but that will probably have to wait till the kids are back in school. I hear it (...unlike Guardian) is very faithful to the novel, and there are some scenes & characters I'm really looking forward to seeing on screen. It's billed as a comedy and starts out as a comedy but uh. That is a clever ruse, to lure you to your doom (the author did this with You Yao, too). 

I haven't been reading much, except I read ahead in The Dragon With a Chocolate Heart which was fun. I probably would've reread that book so many times had it existed when I was in middle school. And now I'm better prepped for a dramatic read-aloud. I will probably get back to Record of the Missing Sect Master next. 

Today I poked around a bit and updated my fanbinding website, which I had hastily cloned from my fanbinding+fic website last summer, after realizing that there were several people who I would like to share my books with but not my fic. I ended up deciding that it made more sense to just work on the bookbinding part of the website so that's the version I've updated now. It now has pictures of nearly all my completed books, although most of them still click through to my writeups on tumblr, I'm working on making individual pages for them on neocities too (a few have them but they're not in order). And I started putting together a list of resources, didn't get super far there yet. Eventually I'm hoping to write up some tutorials of my own (for things like the bamboo strip spine binding).

I tried out the Villainous Imposer Program, which is a different imposer than I usually use, because it has a really neat feature that the other doesn't, which is using only a selection of pages from the original pdf. Today I wanted to print a single chapter of chess puzzles from an enormous book to make into a pamphlet (because my second grader is suddenly very into chess) and it worked perfectly!

February is Renegade Bindery's "encourage everyone to make a lot of books and learn new things" month and while I'm not going as all-out as some people, and haven't managed to watch any of the presentations yet, I am doing a bit more bookbinding work than I have in the past few months!

The main project I'm working on is for Fandom Trumps Hate from last year, and I will admit I procrastinated on it because I was honestly intimidated with how much my recipient donated. But I'm now at a point where I think I can safely say I'll finish in the next day or two!

I also finished up my own copy of <i>How Dare You?!</i> being prompted by the drama's release (I bound it for last year's Cnovel bookbinding exchange, and my own copy has been sitting half finished since the summer). I've typeset two small books since the start of the month--first, the script for the <i>War of the Worlds</i> audiodrama, and second, a short Guardian fic that I read and immediately went "this needs to be a tiny book!"  I have been neglecting working on my dad's late Christmas present, which honestly also doesn't need a lot more work, but what it does need is maps and I'm putting that off (it's a binding of my great great grandfather's civil war diary). Another project I'll probably finish up soon is Mo Du, which someone else typeset for last year's exchange, so I've printed and sewn their typeset but haven't made the covers yet. There are a lot of good typesets from past cnovel exchanges, some other I want to bind are Guardian, Lord Seventh, Kaleidoscope of Death, and Purely By Accident. 

(...yes. Bookbinding is very much an "eyes bigger than stomach" hobby. I have a few fanfics typeset and ready to print/bind, too). 

Recently read and would recommend: <i>I, Your Emperor, Have Been Wronged!</i> and I will put the same promo I wrote up on tumblr under the cut

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