Simply Sithel

Saturday night at the book conference!!! -- at the bar reading someone's hand bound copy of Lolly Willowes to the tunes of Renegadian karaoke, awwwww yeah

Owl v.2 was entered in the 2026 FOBA Challenge Book Exhibit .... and won the best "re:imagining" award (that year's theme). My ego has not quite yet recovered.

The default was "no touching" for books, with an optional placard of "Handle with Care" which I do not regret modifying with a strike-out, even if Owl's toe fell off sometime during day 3 and I had to use a real bandaid to repair him -- those yarn-wrapped-clay toes were not what I used for the nibblet's version! (and thus... not quite as robust as I was expecting - happy to learn tho! conferences = free stress testing!)

The FocusOnBookArts conference was a blast - I'm lucky enough to have been able to attend all 6 days of it and am still reeling from it. So many cool books and people and learning opportunities and craft supplies. Thankfully it runs every other year as it makes a beautiful interlacing with the Renegade Retreat.... different vibes but a lot of overlap. (the company of several Renegadians of course made it ever more delightful)

Am already eyeing the next one Wednesday, June 21, through Sunday, June 25, 2028 (Oregon) and hoping to make it (yearly-occurring event conflicts tho, so TBD)

Juggling getting-it-done with good-enough and doing-things-other-than-crafting. Am grateful for help of @runawaymarbles in fucking up my text block - appreciated the weighing of despair from destruction via chisel or plough vs destruction via guillotine.

Worst trim job I've done in ages - there's just a lot of steps and the thing I'm chasing (excess of spine) behaves awkwardly/in new ways with my setup... Used a sander for real on a book for the first time- thought of Cactus and how I wasn't wearing a mask (foolish!) The last two book-related deadlines were hit within about an hour of due date -- I'm really hoping to do better this time, but also travel has spun me around again...

why certainly!

The typeset was optimized for Legal Tiny (pictured below), but works for Letter Sextodecimal as well (pictured above)

The inner margins are a bit tight, which means I highly recommend the approach of folding the folio centers first and then nesting them/putting the fore-edge creases in last. It's 1,000 pages (63 signatures) that are very small and should not be prematurely seperated - I trimmed every Tigger v1 signature by hand right before I'd sew it in. Owl & Rabbit were trimmed on a pro bindery guillotine and Tigger v2 is about to be chisel trimmed in my Tony Firman press via multiple passes/sections -- wish me luck 😅

There's something so very pleasing about holding the form. Just finished sewing Tigger v2 and was playing with it this morning- A joked I was an Ant Queen and it was my larva. So cute and bug like!

a year ago the Renegade Retreat was starting it was a good time with people but a dark & stressful time in life still hard to fully look back on highlights remain tablet weaving and seeing books in real life (and walking away with a few of them!)

As part of this year's Binderary I lead an absolutely un-recorded "Altered Art Mini Bind-Along" - was it fun? For me, yes? For others, maybe?

nothing like a travel deadline to motivate some over-ambitious work...

Am thrilled to once again co-cheerlead with Lark [Frog Eye Press] @renegadeguild's annual curation of bad ideas edible "Books"! The only rules are (1) it has to vaaaaguely be "book"ish in nature and (2) you have to take a bite out of it

And my entry, for which I conveniently timed a delightful Renegade meetup in order to inflict it upon others. I remain impressed with how fun hanging out with these folks proves to be.

Shout out to Lark who continues to provide our super-rad prizes. I remain a corrupting influence on the server as this is the one "competition"/"competitive" event amongst the selection of other collaborative, gifting, educational, and/or generous activities put on year round.

{ you can find the slide deck of entries w/ link to vote here }

Happy π day!!

Passed the 1 year mark a couple days ago for the Villainous Imposer Program -- my bookbinding imposition tool. Gave a talk on it for Binderary over on the @renegadeguild Discord but realized I never posted about it here...? It's not exactly beginner friendly, but I find it damn useful. Took what I learned contributing to bookbinder-js and re-wrote things from scratch to support all the power features and impositions I could possibly want. (it's basically a free fancy web page)

The goal this year is to dial in addressing printer skew -- I don't know how to do it yet, but that's the fun of a challenging goal, no? I just really want at home text block printing to look as polished as possible. Am also thrilled that my cry for help during the talk actually rallied aid (bless Lele of @gildingthelelepress!! 🙏) and there will be folding animations 'soon' for the various configs.