One of my Christmas gifts was a resupply of the bookbinding tool-box, with additional glue, a new bone folder, cord for binding, and other new equipment. Very useful, and right on time. I set to work today making a pair of ship’s logs/boat journals for my mother, whose Christmas present to herself was a new boat. She’s wanted a book for a while now, but I haven’t provided for her because I’ve been busy with making quilts and fabric things like bags and costumes, quilts and Christmas stockings. And it was a low priority because the boat wasn’t in the water yet.
And then it was. Ooops. Need journals post-haste, except I haven’t got the right materials lying around and easy to grab. Time to get creative… except I didn’t. I made the pages for the book, got them printed at a local copy shop, and then put them under weights to flatten the creases, and forgot about them.
Ooops.
But now I’ve come back to them. And as is frequently the case, the covers came together quite easily. I’ve made two sets of covers: one with coral covers and Caribbean endpapers; and one with Caribbean covers and coral endpapers. So there’s a volume one, and a volume two.
The real challenge, of course, is water-solubility. A good ship’s log should be mostly made of better quality paper and waterproof glue and wooden boards (maybe with a floater so if it drops overboard, it’s found easily and recovered). These books are not going to be that well made.
Still, I’d rather give homemade presents during the twelve days of Christmas than not, and I think these books will be well-received and happily accepted.
