golden aglets & cats

a good end to a day of beginnings,
I collated SOLVITUR AMBULANDO today, a perfectly metaphoric Easter Sunday project!

and was pleased to be able to pull together a 14th copy out of the pickin’s!

and even better the sweet sweet cats watched from the sidelines, oh big big sigh
of gratitude

pickin’s

and here is a peak at the golden aglet and the bootlike lacing I will use to bind the books, I finally decided on waxed crochet thread.

Time now for a jig to square up the holes which need to be drilled,
to score the front cover and finally
to sew, and then,

ultreia!

onward.

oh yes, and some more dingbats are on the way. yeha! many thanks to the plant manager…

fonts, no really & dingbats

goudy modern, upper&lower case; small caps. Iota Press

new dingbats here.say. press!

creating order where there is none

solvitur ambulando
walked drawn handset handcranked and foot treadled by author
printed at Iota Press, Sebastopol CA
&
here.say.press, Guerneville CA

in the end

in the beginning is one thing, finishing up quite another.

finishing, as I’m always reminded is a different set of risks, a different complexity of agreements, but I’m so already halfway on to the next project…so it’s time to move on and in fact, all the pages for the camino series, are printed!!!!

including cover and flyleaf which took a proper amount of dithering because it also meant having to choose and then cut the proper paper, and the back cover which meant having bought a 10 pt bembo from Pat Reigh and solidifying the colophon which for the first time will include a printing citation of here. say. press in Guerneveille CA, as well as at Iota Press in Sebastopol

and now it’s a matter of ordering the pages and punching holes, choosing and getting lacing and sewing the damn things. I say lacing rather than thread because I’ve decide I will bind it using a crisscross pattern along the spine, just as I might were I lacing my boots getting ready for the next walk…

one step at a time. gluing.

there’s a lot to say about gluing. but most importantly,    festina lente

sigh, big big sigh. not that the whole business of typesetting isn’t about patience, and like walking simply one step after another, it’s the unforgiving need for fastidious, the fussy, unrelenting, need for…sterility…a clean glue free other than where it’s supposed to be workspace, which is daunting. which takes practice

which takes an unending attention to the tiniest nuances

which means forethought and planning which relies on practice so you, I actually know what problems will need to be solved ahead of time,

which also means advice, and learning from glue masters, oh yes.

and they all say the same thing.

right tools for the job
right glue for the job

and many many many many many many pieces of paper so the surface you are working on is always clean,

and every time you apply some glue, before you do anything else shift to a clean working surface so you never get inadvertent glue where it is not meant to be,

and clean hands, which means wet paper towels so you can always wipe the glue off your fingers, and dry paper towels so you are not touching the paper with wet hands

and working slowly enough so the adjoining papers don’t accrue wrinkles or bubbles or aren’t crooked

it’s as bad as caulking.

the gluing project at hand is the backside of the photo printed on the sandpaper which needs to be rendered more suitable to the project at hand, and

as it turns out

I have another set of ohsospecial papers I’d been saving in case I used them for the wrong things which are in fact exactly the size I need, the pages of the book are 8.5 X 5 and the pages I’ve found are 8.5 by 15. ha!

so glue ho, but with gluing it is important to make haste slowly.

 

getting over myself. whew

So, I finally got to that sweet spot, that you know, shit or get off the pot spot!
I cut up all those papers that until now I couldn’t possibly have offered up to the project which of course is what they were for in the first damned place

and then I did some printing, oh if I do say so myself our sweet Lady Gray
of here. say. press is a fine mighty press, proud as an old tractor, sturdy and no nonsense, full of grace, anyway, printed two more pages, and speaking of presses, I suppose some kudos are in order for the canon inkjet which did a snazzy job of printing a photo of one of the cobblestone roads on sandpaper! It came out really really well after I coated the sandpaper with some liquitex gloss medium, and lowered the platen on the press.
The photo of the finished print doesn’t do it justice, so you’ll just have to buy the book…

anyway coming down the stretch,
still need a title
still need covers
still need more paper to finish printing the pilgrim page
still need to print the colophon and decide if I’m really going to use the sandpaper photo page in the book, if so, need to get more sandpaper and finish that printing as well. But it’s coming along, finally.

whew. oh and I’m feeling better too.

thoughts on walking a camino

been trying the last several months to wrap it up, which is harder than I thought;
it had been the course

we made no course correction to go
and so none was needed coming back

which is not to say I’m not changed or
I didn’t wear out a pair of boots getting ready

subject: re open slot tomorrow

Original Message
From : judi goldberg
Subject : open slot tomorrow

discretion being the better part of valor (damn) i will excuse myself. am coughing and sneezing and shivering and am pale (we used to write bad cold poems…have bad cold poem contests…) anyway. thing is there will be an open slot tomorrow and i will be at home coughing and sneezing watching movies and writing deranged poetry. maybe the solvents are eating my brain…

Subject: RE: open slot tomorrow
hope you are feeling better!

Subject: RE: open slot tomorrow
thanks. but  at this rate there will an open spot thursday too… or maybe a miracle will happen! but i guess my ass needed a rest.

Subject: RE: open slot tomorrow
Sometimes the universe has other plans for us…

◉ ✺ ✺ ✺ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ✺ ⦿

Indeed. It’s forcing me to get over myself and to gather my camino scratchings into shapes and booklike assemblies or…

I get the resistance and fear staging areas, but the ‘special’ thing where it all has to be so special–a whole sidetrip and distraction and tricky dog version of not living up to expectations and excellence, nevermind perfection–is a real sinkhole of its own, so today I’m cutting the pages with ‘walking WALKING’ printed all over them, and those printed with actual bootprints, and demanding of myself that I come up with ideas for bindings.

As would be my wont of course I have ended up with several ‘collections’, hence the need for more that one binding, and I am mostly over myself that even the most booklike of them (of which there will be 20 copies) will be identical, of course they won’t, that said, I’ve already worn out the heels of my boot scuffling and dawdling dithering and nickering and this knock me down flu or cold or some kidgerm is as close to a kick in the ass I’m going to get, and I sure as hell don’t want what might come next if I don’t take heed.

So, there  will be an(other) open slot tomorrow

typefaces

which ones would you choose
if you could only have let’s say, 6? and what sizes? Roman, or Italic?

so far I have, goudy old style 12 pt. and caslon old style 12 pt. and cases to put them in

my list is longer than 6

* nicolas cochin 18 pt, and the italic as well
~ alternate style gothic #2
* an 8 or 10 pt cloister old style, (or maybe deepdene)
! weiss 30 pt
* centaur 12 point and something like poliphilus 16 pt. (or garamond) with languishing ligatures and an associated italic, (garamond has its own, poliphilus does not)

oh dear, I need more cases.

and the dingbats, are another story, though I do have a case in mind for them.