Absolutely delighted!

This is going to be a short one today. I’m so excited I wanted to make a note of it. Last weekend my friend Craig and I led a workshop on binding journals. It was fun and the preparation and the workshop itself inspired me to get back to book binding.

Two of my attempts at Coptic binding

I’ve never understood how to properly do a Coptic stitch binding, one where there is no hard spine and the stitching that holds the book together is both functional and decorative. The advantage of this type of binding is that the book lies completely flat. Jake recently gave me a piece of cloth that he wants me to use as the cover for a journal for him. I thought Coptic binding would be the way to go because of the lie-flat feature and it will also show off the linen thread he sourced for me.

I watched a couple of YouTube videos, including one by my current favourite book binder, Ido Agassi from Israel. His videos are usually really clear but I found myself struggling with how to attach the cover to the first signature.* I made a practice book and used way more thread than I thought I needed so I went searching again.

I came across a video I hadn’t watched before. Sometimes I feel that I get the same set of results when I google a topic repeatedly. I hit absolute gold with this one from Natasa at Treasure Books in Australia. She goes through the process step by step with good close-ups, clear explanations and, bonus, she has a downloadable PDF with a set of instructions which she leaves up on the screen and refers to as she demonstrates what to do. I SO love good teaching! I hardly ever comment on videos but all the other comments are over two years old and I thought it might be nice for her to know that her video is still helping people, so I left a comment.

Natasa and her video really did make my day. Time to go practice.

Coptic binding opens flat

*A signature is a collection of folded pages that is sewn to the cover. There are often several signatures to a book. Take a look at any hard cover book that is sewn rather than glued and you’ll be able to see the separate signatures.


“A bookbinding signature is called that because, historically, printers signed or marked each folded section with a letter or number (A, B, C...) to guide the binder in assembling the pages in the correct order. These markings ensured that the folded sheets, often 16 pages, were gathered sequentially before being bound together into a complete book block.” Google AI

Spring Snow

As a kid I always thought the song “April Showers” was kind of dumb. Having lived near, or in, the mountains all of my life, I rarely experienced rain showers in April. Our April precipitation came in the form of snow showers or full-on winter storms. This spring has run true to type.

Much of the talk about the weather these days is along the lines of, “Enough of this already! It’s time for spring.” I can understand the desire to be done with winter but, for me, a snowy spring is a kind of pause without the nose-biting cold of winter. It can get pretty cold but it never lasts long at this time of year. In a few days the sun comes out and the weather warms up. There’s that lovely feeling when I stand with the sun on my back, my shoulders relax with the heat and I find myself smiling. With summer come bugs, weeds, and hotter temperatures than I like. If I could choose, I’d spend my year in spring and fall.

These snowy days in spring also hold good memories for me. It’s funny how sometimes an ordinary day will stick in the mind and become one that you return to again and again. Almost every time we have a spring snow I remember a day when I was studying in Banff. We had an assignment to go draw something outside.

It wasn’t snowing when we left the school of fine arts but by the time we got down the hill and into town the snow was drifting down in wet flakes. No matter. We were supposed to draw and that’s what we were going to do. We decided to walk down an alley and there we found an interesting composition of garage doors and garbage cans. We pulled our toques down farther and tried to shield our drawing pads with our bodies as best we could. I think we persisted for about half an hour. Then we decided we’d had enough and headed to Banff Ave for hot drinks.

The others ordered coffee and I ordered tea with milk. We picked a table near the window where we could watch the snow and hung our wet jackets over the backs of our chairs. When the drinks came I let my tea steep for a few minutes, poured it into my cup and added the milk. Immediately the milk curdled. I called the server over and asked for another cup of tea. She apologized profusely and brought it to me along with fresh milk. This time the tea didn’t curdle.

I don’t remember what we talked about that day, what my drawing looked like, or even who the others were. It seems a very ordinary day, yet despite being damp and a bit chilled, despite the curdled milk, I remember being perfectly, quietly, content.