December 31

... and much late night frustration, triggered by an uncooperative computer!  Thankfully, I finally figured out how to get my scanner to communicate with my upgraded, incompatible, Leopard OS (nice of Apple to sell these conflicting components) to get these pages uploaded, well into the new year - so Happy New Year!!

My brain is mostly pounding in a fog now, but before I go I've been asked to pass on a link to a blog that has taken time to write a bit about me, where I share some of my experience with pain and working with creativity. Jasmine Ann posted this on her blog Life with my pet back. She writes with grace and humor ("pet" back?!), sharing lots of valuable information for those that suffer, as one who has been through it and made great strides herself.  She begins her story here...

I want to thank you all, who have become my friends and supporters here through journaling and blogging my art over these past 5 months of 2008.  It's been a gratifying, challenging, surprising, and inspiring period of living.

May 2009 bring some of the same, and less of some other - health, well being, and much wonder to all.

~ Karin

December 30

December 29

December 28

December 27

December 24

December 22

December 21

December 19

Today we had a big wintery beautiful snow storm. I had to go out for an MRI, so while still bundled up I roamed around the yard and took a few pictures. Little did I know that when you take photos and the snow is falling, if the flash flashes, magic happens...

December 18

December 17

Book Repair, Part II

As you may have realized, 

I've been taking my time with careful repair,

removing the old glue and torn paper, 

prepping the surfaces of this old book 

for reattaching it's cover.

Adding extra reinforcement where the cover spine is splitting

and allowing for a little 'rest & recovery' to let the glue dry... 

and in the midst of the process 

I decided to leave my journal un-covered, for the time being, 

because there is no way that this book 

can fit within the confines of this cover any longer!

So once I am all done with the inside, I will make it a new outside, and incorporate the old cover into the new.

I absolutely love the symbolism in all that, and look forward to sharing it all with you once I get to that point in the process.

December 15-16: Book Repair

Well, it happened. I opened my journal and it split right in two! The covers held it together, but the signatures divided themselves and the pages split apart.  So I pulled off the cover and exposed the spine.... (hmmm, that's sounding a bit uncomfortably familiar!)
... and I decided it was time to perform a little surgery of my own.
I am not a professional book binder, in a traditional sense.  I hand bind books, doing some Japanese book binding techniques and other basics like coptic, and kettle binding but I'm no restoration expert, or professional binder.

So this is my make shift attempt at repair!  My home made press, squishing my book, with magazines stuck in hanging out the side on the right to level the squishing and bring the broken seams together.  

I've laid a sheet of "super", or binders cloth, over the spine and glued it down onto the spine to hold it all together - hopefully, securing all the sections.  The extra edges will get glued to the covers and will be covered by the end papers.  

Hopefully, it will all come together, stay together, and still open and close well.  I won't be posting pages for a couple of days though, as the book dries. (recuperates?!)

Other, better, book repair sources for directions:

Book Arts Web

How To

This also will give me the opportunity to finally use some of the beautiful handmade Japanese papers I bought years ago in Toronto.  I've used a few in some hard back books I've made, but as I've said - I don't really make traditional books, and these are just exquisite papers and will be perfect as end papers for my journal!  

The hard part will be choosing...