Catching Up

2015.  I try to take at least one workshop every year in order to improve my bookmaking skills and add to the features I can use in a book.  This year I returned to Long Ridge Farm near Keene, New Hampshire, for a session titled "Tactile Notebooks and the Written Word" with Sandra Brownlee.  We made books for our journal entries but the workshop focused more on a thoughtful approach than on specific skills.  I really enjoyed the week.  Encouraged to think more about content and reflection, I was especially pleased with my final product, a book cover made from silk fabric that my mother-in-law had dyed and painted years ago.  I quilted around the abstract shapes, ending with a cover that is a pleasure to hold and that brings back memories both of Mummer and of the summer workshop.  The main purpose for the covered journal was for travel notes from the season's trips to Iceland, then England/Scotland and finally Colorado/Utah.

Hornvik, Iceland, near the Arctic Circle

Nancy with a fish caught in the fjord near Patriksfjiordur.

The medieval wall next to our hotel in York.

Tactile Notebooks workshop at Long Ridge Farm.

Sketchbook I covered with my own marbled paper.

Mesa Arch in Utah at sunrise.