New Journal!

I started a new journal today! Actually, I don't think any of y'all have seen my old journal, since I started it when I was at the cabin this summer, and I don't have any 'real' internet access there. OK, I do have dial up, but you just can't upload files of any size using dial up these days; it times out too quickly.

I made this book cloth by painting cotton fabric.

First off, here's a picture of my last journal, which ended up being titled Cap'n Midnight's Museum for Exceptionally Intelligent People. The title came from an essay in Joseph Mitchell's Up in the Old Hotel about Captain Charlie's Museum for Intelligent People. I don't remember which story it is; you should just read them all; they're wonderful. It had one less signature than I usually put in my journals: eight instead of nine. I'm trying to downsize and lighten my journals, once again, to lighten the load that I carry.

A few of my favorite things: Kenny inspecting my journal, and my cup of coffee.

Here's the new journal, titled Crazily Paisley. It's the brightest journal I've ever had, and possibly the brightest one ever made. It glows in the dark... Well, it glows in the dark if you have a black light, anyway. I was hoping to marble end sheets for it with day glo paint, but they were just too transparent to really see, except with the black light. I ended up painting stripes on paper instead.

Yipes, stripes!

This journal is even smaller than Cap'n Midnight whose pages were 7 1/8" wide by 8 1/2" high. Crazily's pages are 77% smaller: only 5 3/4" wide by 8 1/8" high. It's very hard to get two columns in unless I concentrate on writing really tiny.

To protect this journal - and the last - I'm carrying them in a plastic baggie in my purse. (Thanks, Roz, for that tip!) I feel somewhat odd about this, because the idea is to make semi-indestructible journals. There is some kind of a varnish you can put over day glo paint to protect it, but for now I'll use the plastic baggie. As you can see from looking at the top of the pages, there are two sheets of black cover stock in the journal for me to color on. I like coloring on them with my NeoColor watercolor crayons. Here's a paean to Pierce Bros Fogbuster coffee and non-electric coffee grinders.

The electricity went out at the cabin for over a week this summer after Hurricane Irene swept through the Catskills. I can live without lights - especially if I have one of those little headlamps - but I cannot live without coffee. So I had to beg and borrow a hand crank grinder. Then I found one at the flea market in Woodstock, a real beauty and capable of grinding for espresso makers, little Bialetti Mokas.