Tag Archives: book

four things | sixteen

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Well, it’s been that kind of a week. The spring on my garage door broke. The garage door repair man didn’t have the right size spring and had to order it. We’re still waiting to hear back from him.

I have gout and it really acted up this week. It was so bad, I went to the doctor and got a shot in my knee. It’s much better now.

The clasp that holds the strap on my Fitbit broke. I tried to fix it but nothing seemed to work. I ordered a different brand which has more bells and whistles and I’m trying to figure it out..

What a week. At least it’s not snowing.

what I’m reading

Our Book Club chose The Secret Life of Sunflowers by Marta Molnar. It is based on the true story of Johanna Bonger, Vincent van Gogh’s sister-in-law. “Johanna inherited Vincent’s paintings. She was a 28 year old widow with a baby in the 1800s, without any means of supporting herself, living in Paris where she barely spoke the language. Yet she managed to introduce Vincent’s legacy to the world.”

I’m only half way through and I have a hard time putting it down.

what I’m watching

It was the end of a dynasty. Sparky, his harem, and all of his offspring are swimming in the warm tropical waters wherever guppies go when they pass on. Mr. Aitch bought Sparky, a male fancy-tail guppy, and two female consorts back in 2004. They did what guppies do and soon we had more guppies.

The life span of a guppy is about 2-3 years. Our three original guppies and offspring produced hundreds more in the following 21 years. The last of Sparky’s progeny passed on earlier this year.

Our aquarium was looking rather bleak until Mr. Aitch picked up six Rainbow Boesemani fish on Thursday! They’re only about 2-2 1/2 inches now and will get about 3-3/12 inches long. The males are brightly colored and the females have a faint yellow stripe. We have three males and three females and with any luck, we might get more!

what I discovered

The old seeds were too old. It was a long shot that they would sprout. They just smelled bad.

what I saw on my walk

This beautiful deep purple iris said, “Look at me!” So I did.

Enjoy your week.

I ruined it

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I was so confident with my little binding machine that I decided to turn my knitting book into a wire bound book.

This book is where I keep all the information about my knitting projects. It’s the record of the pattern, yarn, needle size, date, stitch and row counts, and anything else that relates to the project.

It will be perfect when I want to keep the page open to a certain spot.

In my most cocky voice inside my head I said to myself, ” You’re a genius, Patti. An absolute genius! You can do this!”

I grabbed my knitting book and started right in.

I clamped the book to the worktable.

I “should” have noticed that I wrote close to the inside edge of the book before I started with the saw to cut off the spine. In fact I should have just cut the book apart with a craft knife and not the saw.

Realizing my mistake, I kept right on going. The book was already cut and there was nothing I could do about that.

I covered the front and back covers and punched away to get the holes for the wire comb…forgetting to readjust the machine for the back cover. The holes didn’t line up.

I looked around for an old book that I could take apart to redo the covers. No luck.

So I did the next best (that’s debatable) and flipped the covers around and punch the other edge.

That didn’t work out so well but the at least one side of the punched front cover matched one side of the back cover. I finished binding the book and decided to rethink my choices when trying this genius (NOT) idea again. The cover is bigger than the pages but the pages are too low and almost stick out at the bottom.

The book is ruined and a major mess but I can still make out most of my notes.

The one bright spot is that the rest of the book will be great!

Patti nona

Another book binding project

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I love this little Zutter Bind It All O-wire binding machine (No affiliate). It’s small but powerful. It punched through a heavy book cover, a flexible plastic ruler, and one to several sheets of paper perfectly. How-to video here.

As long as I had it out, I decided to bind my sewing machine manual and add an index to it. I don’t know why some manuals include an index and why some think you can find what you’re looking for in the table of contents. Sure it took me awhile to find everything with the appropriate page numbers and organize it but now it’s done and easy to find exactly what I need.

I used a heavy card stock for the front and back covers and cut out the “title” in the front. I didn’t quite get the hole in the right spot but it’s good enough for me. (Unless my perfectionist self decides otherwise.)

The original manual is larger than letter sized paper so scanned it into my computer so I could resize it.

I included some Notes pages to the back in case I need to add anything..

Now when I need to find out how to make a buttonhole, I don’t have to scan the TOC. It’s right there in the index.

Patti nona

Book Club Journal

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I have friends that keep a notebook of all the books they’ve read. I kind of wish I had started that years ago. I get most of my books online through the library. Fortunately I can look through my history there and see what I’ve read but those are only the ones I read in the last 12-13 years.

Since joining the Book Club I fee/think/need to keep a record of the books and a brief description of the books we’ve read along with some discussion questions or points that meant something to me.

I like writing on lined paper, specifically graph paper. (That’s the architect wanna-be in me.) I bought ten of these notebooks before I retired and only have two or three left. I use one for my knitting projects. The only thing I don’t like is that they are bound in a way that they don’t lay flat when opened.

Solution: Clamp the book shut. Take a hack saw to the spine and cut it off. Trim the cover and cut pages with a paper cutter or craft knife. Use a special comb-binding machine to make a wire-bound book. Recover the cover (optional). Assemble the book.

Voila!!

I should add some pockets to the inside covers to stash notes. An elastic band to hold it together would be a good idea, too.

I had some plastic rulers from a now renamed bank that I cut down and made into a moveable bookmark.