A light at the end of the tunnel

It's officially Indian Summer here -- can one still say that without being labelled Politically Incorrect? -- we set a new record temperature yesterday by making it up to 27.2° Celsius. That broke the old one, from 1913 no less, by half a degree Celsius (almost a full degree Fahrenheit).

Lots of things happening here on the bookbinding front: the two Canadian Bookbinder and Book Artists Guild (CBBAG) shows I'm in out in Central Canada -- one in Toronto, the other in Montreal -- opened last weekend. Details are in the right-hand column as to locations and dates.

What I Felt will appear at the CBBAG Book Fair, to be held in conjunction with the Guild of Bookworkers (GBW) Standards Conference in Toronto on Saturday, October 18, and, with luck, How to Make a Peacock Fly will travel down from Montréal to join it.

So for the first time in my artistic career, I've got three books out on display and that's a tribute to how I've managed to increase my output of finished works lately -- only The Zebra Book was around at this time last year. With luck, I'll have Spirit Level, My Past Life, and my entry for the GBW Marking Time exhibition done by the end of the year -- the latter two have March deadlines and I've got gelatine soaking away so I can glue up the former today.

(Plus I've got an entry to finish that will be going into Knitter's magazine's Think Outside The Sox and they are due January 1: it's a busy creative time here.)

The last thing I needed last Sunday was to go to see Martha Cole talk about her experiments with making paste cloth because I can now think of all sorts of projects I could do with that knowledge. While watching her talk about her process and see some of the wonderful work she's created, part of me kept wanting to clap my hands over my ears, go lalalalalalala and run out of the room.

Having signed up to Spoonflower, where they will print up fabric from your computer-generated files, and seeing Martha's work, I can see lots of ideas to work on in the future.

But for the next day or so, I'm going to enjoy the sun, the colours, and the smell of burgers on our barbeque.....