One evening, walking along the river near the city owned housing between the Manhattan and Williamsburg bridges, I found pages scattered on the sidewalk that showed diagrams of how to draw scenes and figures. I tracked them down and found a box full of odds and ends that included a full art and design course from 1960 under Norman Rockwell and other less famous but likely more involved names. They were all loose sheets, hole punched, and in some disarray, but everything was there.

I decided then and there it was time to learn bookbinding as a hobby, and I set the goal of binding all of these into four volumes. I didn't have a bag or anything on me, so I lugged what was probably 500 oversized pages with me for an hour to get home, and then started reading and making my first small journal.

Now, I'm happy to have finished my first text block of the four, and be making progress I can actually see. Since the pages were loose leaf, I've had to use document/similar tape to create pages for the signatures, as well as to fix some tears and cover the holes punched out, then cut away at the tape when it would.overlap with part of images. This has made for thicker spines than I hoped, but am still hopeful for the end project.

This week, after having done a few soft covers, I finally ordered two yards of a 75/25 leather blend, and already have found the right boards for the hard covers. I've also saved the original logo of the design course and am hoping to either inlay it into the board, or barring that I can emboss it with a homemade stamp.

Anyway, all of this is very simple compared to the projects I see on here, and I am not nearly as precise and pristine, but I wanted to share with someone/some folks who understood the commitment and joy I feel when I get to spend time on this. I cannot wait to stitch all of the rest.

And the mantra I tell myself, for what it's worth, is that no matter how things turn out, it's better than it having been thrown away and destroyed.