Much of a muchness

A couple of years ago, I had a really strange experience. I was lying in bed trying to get to sleep. I thought I was still awake and I opened my eyes and was sure that there was someone in the room with me. I closed my eyes tight, absolutely terrified and felt someone sit on the bed and then I felt as if someone was sitting on me as I couldn’t breathe and I was completely unable to move or struggle. After what seemed like a couple of minutes, I eventually woke up and found that it had all been a rather hideous nightmare, and it took me a long while to recover.

This same dream has happened to me maybe half a dozen times since. Always the same feeling that someone is in the room, a feeling of terror and the same suffocating sensation and the worst is not being able to struggle. It happened again last night with one refinement, this time, I knew what was happening was a nightmare and I although I still tried to fight the person off, it was more a case of trying to wake myself up as this time, I knew subconsciously, what was happening to me.

I was listening to the radio a while ago, and they were talking about why people think they have been abducted by aliens. One of the doctor/scientists on the programme said that one explanation was ‘Sleep Paralysis’ and went on to describe exactly what I have described to you above. I have since read a lot about about it and it is a very well documented phenomenon - try googling it, there are lots of references to it. Not everyone experiences the hallucinations which accompany the paralysis but it is felt that it may be a possible explanation for people thinking they have been visited by witches, ghosts and aliens and such like.

One of the many web sites that explains this experience is run by the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada and it has links to lots of other ones. The painting at the top of the page is by the Swiss artist, Henry Fuseli and is called ‘The NIghtmare’. It has been suggested that he may be depicting a sleep paralysis episode. In mythology, the Hag is a well known figure of a wizened old crone who is supposed to visit during sleep, sit on your chest and send you nightmares. So if I look a little ‘hagridden’ today, you will excuse me I’m sure! And it is Friday the 13th today…

Anyway, back to business. A couple of weeks ago, I got chatting to an old lady at the market stall when I was buying those plasticized fabrics. She asked me if I would have a go at restoring her favourite poetry book which she loved and used a lot, but which had fallen to bits after her dog had a go at chewing it (obviously not a poetry fan then).

As you can see it was in a bit of a state, I was going to make a new case for it but she said she liked the original cover (teeth marks and all) so as I’m not really a book restorer I did the best I could with what I had, I hope she likes it. She won’t know of course that the first time I did it, I opened the book up and realized I had stuck the text block in UPSIDE DOWN. One of the advantages of making blank books is that this doesn’t normally matter. In this case, it mattered a lot, so I had to rip it apart and start again…

This has all been a bit serious hasn’t it? I’d better leave you with a bit of silliness to lighten the mood or you might not come back :-)

And to keep you up to date on the progress of my diet….

You may remember I was taking part in a Book Swap over at the Book Arts Forum. I made a book as a first effort, fully intending to have a second go at it but as is often the way with these things, time ran away with me and I had to use my original effort as I never got round to trying something different.

So far, so familiar. As the theme of the swap was ‘My Home Town’, I did hit on the idea of filling the pages with images of Dorset (as you can imagine I have rather a lot). This started out as a good idea until I realised that as I had used Bockingford watercolour paper for the pages, the printed photographs wouldn’t stick to the pages terribly well, but having started, I had to finish! I think they are secure but the other problem was that the pages curled slightly and even after a day or so in my book press, they wouldn’t straighten and as time had run out, I had to send it to Rhonda as it was (with a letter of apology!)

Here are photographs of some of the pages.

It’s very intimidating making a book for other bookbinders to see ‘in the flesh’ as it were and even though this is the second swap I have taken part in - I still feel as if I could have done better…. having said that, I’m really looking forward to receiving my book from Crazy Daisy Girl :-)

By the way, thanks very much indeed for the votes over at Kim’s competition. I didn’t win but happily I wasn’t vote-less which was very pleasing. You might like to check out the art work which won, a painting by Emmanuel Martinez called “Pain in the Eye’. Congratulations to the lucky winner!

Now I’m off to continue with my latest project, a huge photograph album for a friend. She has two enormous beautifully made, very expensive albums which she has filled with photographs and I am going to try to make a third which matches the others. No pressure then……. :-)

I was visiting AmyH’s lovely blog to drool over her lovely new studio and I saw that she had made a book using a binding I hadn’t tried before and even better, she had included a tutorial showing how to do it. It’s called a Secret Belgian Binding. (I’m not sure if the binding or the Belgian is secret). However, never one to resist a challenge, I had a go and actually found it quite easy to follow BUT my book (unlike Amy’s) does have a couple of big errors. It looks fine on the outside.

Inside is where it all starts to go pear-shaped. I followed the instructions to the letter but two things went wrong. I ended up having to join two lengths of thread and didn’t realise the knot would show if I joined them where I did - I’ll know better next time. And the three sections - front cover, spine and back cover, have to be held in place using masking tape AFTER you have covered them with the decorative paper and unfortunately, it stuck to the inside paper when I peeled it off. Next time I will not use such a rough finished paper as the masking tape didn’t stick to the outside paper which is much smoother.

Anyway, I loved this binding and it is actually, quite easy to do, so I shall definitely try it again. It requires lots of very precise measuring and cutting which I love so you will be seeing more of these!

Now, are you sitting comfortably? Got a few minutes to spare? Well, following on from yesterday’s post, here is my favourite penguin, Pingu. My boys and I used to LOVE watching this on TV when they were very small.

But not all penguins are cute….

as Wallace and Gromit found….

I have Clara over at Fibrasdepapel to thank for the inspiration for this one. She made a beautiful book like this for Valentine’s Day, a gorgeous idea - two books in one - and as soon as I saw it, I had to try and work out how she had done it. This is my version, again using one of my photographs - in this case Arum lilies, printed on to linen bookcloth.

It reminded me of an earlier project last year to construct a book using two kinds of paper. It was for my ex’s son, a talented illustrator and digital artist and he wanted to have a choice of paper in one book for different occasions. My first attempt at this led me to make an album containing watercolour and cartridge paper. This has the advantage that it can be loaded with whatever paper you like and refilled as necessary.

The new twin book, (not sure what it is called - a ‘dos à dos’ binding perhaps), has smooth cartridge paper in one side and rough cartridge paper on the other side and I chose to use the different coloured but toning, end papers and bookcloths for each spine to distinguish the two. The book can be opened from right to left on both sides by turning it upside down. It ties closed with a thin satin ribbon.

I am so pleased with how it turned out and want to thank Clara for the inspiration!

Today, I was up early and saw a beautiful pink, frosty sunrise - and we have just had a glorious deep red sunset. Difficult to photograph but here are my attempts, both taken outside my kitchen window.

And finally…. I found this, an amusing comment on the male/female divide and with St.V’s day fast approaching what could be better…

from video.stumbleupon.com posted with vodpod

Another of my photographs. This one is a sunset I took when out for a walk in Marina del Rey, California last year. It was gobsmackingly beautiful and my photograph could barely do it justice - but it does make a nice book! It’s actually a mirror image of the original photograph as I wanted the interesting part of the image to be on the front cover of the book so I flipped it in Photoshop. This is the original image.

I was woken by a noise early this morning, just as it was getting light. I thought it was my son whose bedroom is above mine but then I remembered he isn’t here at the moment, so I lay there, listening and a little apprehensive to say the least. I kept hearing scurrying noises and I eventually realized that the noises were coming from my roof space. I live in a 3 storey house and my bedroom is on the middle floor so the roof space is a long way from my room. When I went upstairs to my workroom I could hear scuttling footsteps and a tearing noise. (I think something is eating my loft insulation). I opened the hatch to the roof space and climbed on a chair and shone a torch in there and banged about a bit but I’m not tall enough to get in there or even see in there (and to be honest, I wasn’t sure I wanted to anyway!). It has been quiet ever since. Rats? Birds? A burglar? Aliens?

from video.stumbleupon.com posted with vodpod

Eeeeek! Where are all the men when you need one? Or perhaps I should just get a pet?