#aizome

17441 words// 123 pages

Body text: Adobe Jensen Pro 10 point

Accents: Beon, EB Garamond

so my buddy @zhalfirin-binds is a professional who made us all real parchment leather books when we met in January last year. the parchment book is my precious and is hiding in my drybox as we speak. personal pride meant that i had to pull out all the stops because i was EXCEEDINGLY LATE to give her a book. i had intended to do 2, but as you can tell with my usual bookbinding habits, i usually only finish 1 by the skin of my teeth.

some time back, i had arranged to do a marbling class when @celestial-sphere-press visited me, so i decided i would get some marbled edges done.

well guess who's boo boo the fool huh - i DID NOT plan my colour combinations properly nor did i know exactly which text blocks got marbled because there was a massive time and drying crunch as IT TOOK SO DAMN LONG TO DRY and i only brought a limited number of dipping boards (basically 1 set in A5/legal quarto/A6 each). thankfully the two books meant for Zhal got dipped and looked pretty good.

The con was, i was left with the inexplicable horror of 'why the hell did i use so much yellow???'

it worked out in the end. in this fic, chihiro ends up working at a bar, and though it never explicitly mentions bar lights, i tend to associate bar lights as neon red, blue and yellow lighting, which fits?? is probably why i reached for the yellow in the first place.

the problem with using so much yellow was IT IS SO HARD TO MATCH MARBLED EDGES GUYS. i was crying the entire time. my whole collection of marbled paper? CLASHES. my collection of duo bookcloth? not going to work, especially with the two tones. chiyogami??? also a no go. you can guess why i sat on this textblock for so long.

then a stroke of luck - des and i wanted to go for an aizome (indigo dyeing) experience when i visited japan. des said, "let's go all out and buy some silk cloth to dye, like half a yard to share." Silk was bought. Silk was dipped. the actual technique is called shibori (i had a little giggle cause at the renegade retreat i got mildly confused as shibari also involves tying things). Silk is fantastic and has great texture, and wow did it turn out nice.

In this fic, Haku becomes an atmospheric river, and i thought that deep indigo blue was a perfect match for how their satellite images look, and did my best to create the streakiness you get from the clouds onto tie dye cloth.

Image from https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/Cat-1-Cat-5-Scale-Atmospheric-Rivers

Cloth is backed with heatnbond, and endbands were done in white, off white and pale gold. i didn't want to distract too much from all the other colours and patterns going on. endpapers were also a blue chiyogami, which didn't stand out much against all the blues - absolutely my fault because i stuck the endpapers on before i had actually made the bookcloth.

by the end i refused to title it, because why fuck it up at the last step (this happens to me a lot, as you can tell). otherwise, minimal hiccups and i was so happy to give this book to Zhal! it turned out so good!

we both had a good laugh at the end of the renegade retreat as i almost ended up kidnapping this book back home when we were packing up - Zhal had to remind me it was HER book now.

@zhalfirin-binds i hope you love this ridiculous book, which is half as ridiculous as ME :D