I found it on Notes to the Milkman, and he found it on Mags Phelan's site, and she found it... and so on.  But what they found was the sketchbook project.  It's a project to send out sketchbooks (well duh!) to those who want to join in - for a fee, obv - and then collect them all in by a given date to form a giant travelling artists' book library.  You have to pick a theme - there's a good listful - but you don't have to stick to it too slavishly.  The deadline for ordering is this next week, the end of the month (I think), and then sketchbooks have to be sent back postmarked January 15th or earlier, so obviously we're at the fag-end of this year's project.  I can't decide whether to go for it - and then feel pressured to do it, maybe getting in the way of other nascent projects - or wait for next year's.  I'm going to have to make my mind up quickly though - or not, of course, and run out of time so that the decision's made for me.

Or maybe I'll do it, but unofficially.  Get or make my own sketchbook to the right proportions and with the right number of pages, pick a theme, fill the book.  Not to send in (I couldn't, it wouldn't be standard issue with a barcode an' all), but for the discipline of it.  Yes, but would I?  What are the chances? 

Glorious day in Ruthin, yesterday.  Well, when I say glorious I don't mean beaming sunshine, but in fact the journey there was pure delight (not for the first time).  Wales was all sullen, misty blues and greys and greens, soft as a blanket, with fiery trimmings of autumn trees.  Low cloud hid the hilltops, converting the odd few into obvious volcanoes, and even the nearest distances were blue and vague, detail impossible to pick out.  It was gorgeous!  I find such conditions wrap the world up in a cosy, comforting cocoon, shrink it to manageable proportions maybe.  And the dull, soft shades of the light are surely designed exactly for the bright autumn leaves - they were spectacularly bright against such a background.  Still, you had to be there to appreciate it so I'll stop going on.

I was there for a fun print course with Ruth Thomas - a bit of a distance, but I'm in awe of Ruth's own delicate work and anyway I like to go to the craft gallery at Ruthin occasionally.  They have a beautiful exhibition space and often excellent exhibitions.

The course went brilliantly in the morning (and poorly in the afternoon.  A different technique, still fun but entirely unproductive for my part and that's enough said about it).  It was, I'm sure, kids stuff - well, Ruth originally designed it with children in mind - but the results were just so enjoyable.  We simply inked up leaves and feathers and such, or used them as resists, then set them off against an inked background and put the whole thing through the press.  I shall be off as soon as possible to collect a small forest of greenery (before it all disappears to fast-approaching winter) to press and continue the experimenting.

 

Below are some of the others produced by the group.  I think most of us would have happily kept it up all day.

A flock of canada geese are camping out on the grassy patch near Hope Mill.  They've been there a couple of days now, and I love it.  I don't see them from my studio or anything like that - just the wall of the next building along, though it's across a yard and there's plenty of light - but as I go past them the world seems less gritty, somehow brighter and more hopeful.  I'm sure they won't stay long but meanwhile I'm enjoying them being there.

After the book fair, I followed up a few websites and so on, and am currently addicted to Sarah Bryant's site, or more particularly to her blog.  It's so practical and book artsy and fascinating, and besides, it alerted me to the fact that Shepherds Falkiners have japanese screw punches back in stock, and pointed me in the direction of a few other suppliers where I can waste my money.  Not waste, obviously not waste, but get through it nonetheless.

And re-alerted me to the new London Centre for Book Arts.  Tempted though I am to start a bit of a moaning rant about the London-centricity of just about everything in the WORLD, I shall resist that temptation and instead just copy in this:

These are, I discovered from Sarah's blog, jigs for setting letterpress on the curve.  If I could learn to print in curves, that would be something worth the inevitable frustration of it all.

Well, little and not so little really.  I just wanted to show to the world some of the amazing handmade books and other bookarts from the weekend.

First up, Elizabeth Willow's 'Waving at the queen' - a beautiful little letterpressed book on a soft grey paper, telling a tale that sounds very fairytale because of the way it's written, but is actually a little cameo of, I suspect, the sort of meetings that happen to Elizabeth a lot.  She met a man who asked her what she was carrying:

and he told her that he had waved to the queen, and she had waved back and:

Simple, but haunting in the strangeness that Elizabeth gives to it.

Gemma Lacey has collaborated with David Armes for their book Pi ta pi - she provides the etchings of rain from that first drop, then a little more, and a little more until there is a steady downpour, and David provides a letterpress version of the same process.

And then there was a collagraph by Catherine Harnett, made into a book with the addition of some words from Marcus Aurelius' Meditations, and Susan Kruse's Fairy Tale written over original fairy tales (and given to me in a paper bag made from some accordion music, which I'm determined to try out on the piano some time), and Nancy Campbell's translation of Rimbaud's Le Bateau Ivre in a beautiful indigo paper cover and letterpressed on a buttery soft paper and oh! so many lovely things.

And not so little at all, but poster sized instead, Andrew Morrison's King of Birds:

And that was a good day!  We found out a couple of days ago that today was an MMU open day - good thing / bad thing?  Well bad for parking, as it turned out, inspite of assurances to the contrary, but good I think for visitor numbers.  After a slowish start, the place developed a real buzz over the rest of the day, and we had to start dismantling displays before many of the last visitors had truly finished.  It felt very upbeat, and most of the exhibitors to whom I talked seemed to have enjoyed themselves in one way or another, either making new contacts, getting positive feedback or selling enough to feel a warm fuzzy glow about it.  I can never quite get over that feeling of responsibility  for everyone, that I want them all to enjoy and sell and so on, but the best hope is numbers through the doors, and today I felt that we had those numbers.

I ended up buying more, of course (who'd have thought?), of which my favourite was a wooden letterpress poster from Andrew Morrison of Two Wood Press.  And that's the Manchester Artists' Book Fair over until the next one.

And then I listened to Sibelius Symphony no. 2 and Alt-J on the way home and that was pretty damn good too.  Yes, definitely a good day.

Well, I enjoyed it immensely.  I missed the Collaboration and the Democracy of Book Arts talk, as I was always going to (someone had to mind the shop) although I'm hoping to enjoy at least part of them later (yay for modern technology), but I think I got to chat to just about everyone there, and I really enjoyed that. 

Of course I came away with books!  In what alternative universe was that unlikely?  Thus far I have swelled my collection with works by Elizabeth Willow (a delightful letterpressed book called Waving at the Queen, which I shall showcase later), Gemma Lacey and David Armes (I don't know if it has a name but I'm going to call it pi ta pi (because that's what's on the cover) and I think that should feature later too) and from Andrew Morrison's stall (and I might not have finished there).  If I can just get to the bank tomorrow morning, there's sure to be more.  Oh yes of course I know I shouldn't, but it's all so tempting.

Another day to run - oh go on, don't miss it.

Ok, two days to go until the Manchester Artists' Book Fair, then two days of fair, then it's all over for another year.  Well, six months anyway.  Well, most of the six months, at least.  It shouldn't surprise me, how much lead time goes in to such a short event, but it does. 

I hope lots of people turn up - book fairs are very sociable events, even just among the exhibitors, but crowds of visitors gives them a different sort of buzz.  And sales, of course, which is at least part of what it's about.  And maybe connections, with buyers and sellers, collaborators and like-minded enthusiasts. 

I think the morning's talks on Collaboration and the Democracy of Book Arts will be great - a bigger potential audience would have been brilliant, but we've tried to reach the people that would love it, and if they don't want to come, that's their loss.  I'll be sitting in the Holden Gallery, keeping an eye on things there and wondering how it's going.  Which is a bit of a shame, but it can't be helped.

And after it's all over, I'll spend sunday doing nothing at all (except no doubt feeling rather flat), then unkink and do some work of my own.  BABE is only six months away now, and I really don't want to wait until next april before I do anything...  

It was great, of course.  I'm not sure why it made me so nervous - I like doing book fairs, and it's not so very different.  I met lots of lovely people (who said lovely things) and I even started some work.  The only problem arose when there were a number of unconnected people in the room at once.  One man, approximately the age of a new graduate's dad, turned up at the same time as another man, approximately the age of a new graduate.  The first man referred to his son, the second man joined in the general conversation, and I made what seemed like the obvious assumption until the first man made his goodbyes and left, having been nudged out of the conversation by the arrival of a total stranger (oh dear).  And I did once or twice find myself trying to talk to two people at once, and managing neither conversation very well (oh dear again).  Still, I could have sat listening to people walk straight past the room all evening, which would have been just a little bit miserable and very oh dear.  

I didn't take any photos, but lots of other people did, mostly having asked permission first.  What do they do with them?