November is Wonderful

Truly. I love October, but I love October best in the Eastern Sierra. Down here in Simi Valley October isn't nearly as nice as November. The rains arrive in November. First it smells like rain, and the slate-colored clouds crowd the sky. Then suddenly it's pouring, the grasses bending low in relief, the streets flooding, water staining the trees and earth dark. And the next day everything is bright, even the sky is bluer with enormous white clouds rolling over the valley.

I open every window in the house to let in the crisp breeze.



In the oven are delicious Thanksgiving treats. Pumpkin pie sweetened with honey, NOT sugar. Delicious local honey, from bees who make it all by themselves from Buckwheat nectar. I like bees. I'm that girl that rescues an injured bee from the hot sidewalk and carefully puts him down in the shade.



Lover boy relaxes on the couch while I check on the pie.



On the windowsill, my vegetable/flower garden seedlings are enjoying the sun.






Lots to be thankful for today. I listed five (FIVE!) new journals in the shop - I had a very productive day off yesterday - the photo album I was working on went over extremely well, I have a brand new first cousin once removed, and I'm in love!

More details on the new journals and the photo album soon.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

New Rush Project

Yesterday my photo editor commissioned me to make a photo album to hold 50 photographs of A Midsummer Night's dream that she took a while back. It's rush becuase she needs it by the end of the week!

So considering the time crunch, I'm thinking about how to construct the book.

I would like to use a coptic stitch, exposed spine binding. I'll use cream, heavyweight drawing paper for the pages, medium purple cardstock for spine protectors, indigo linen for the covers, a pretty Florentine-style purple, yellow and white floral print for the endpages, probably light violet waxed thread for the binding... but what's tripping me up is how to attach the photos.

Her original idea was to put them in regular plastic page-protector style sleeves. I think that in a nice album like this, that would look exceedingly tacky.
So my idea was to slide the photos into translucent vellum windows - so just the very edges of the photos would be covered. Kind of like a translucent overmat window. That way I could glue the outside and bottom edges of the vellum windows to the pages so she could slip the photos into the windows from the top. My fiance thought that was much too complicated. He suggested cutting four slits in each page so she could just tuck in the corners of the photos and be done with it. I'm not sure that's a good idea.