Back to the Books

November has settled back into it's normal cold and blustery self, dressed in plump raindrops the color of steel and a cape of misty silver fog. Time to settle in for the long winter days ahead. I've stocked up on cider to warm in the microwave with cloves and cinnamon and dark chocolate to savor while wrapped up in blankets with a good book. Time to say thank you for all we have received over this last year and to look forward to the new beginnings each year allows.

You can feel the holiday stir in the air. The anticipation of the solstice and all that it brings: Christmas, Hanukkah, Quanza, Solstice and New Year's. But for now I am looking at Thanksgiving and celebrating all that is good in life and the ability to pass on that good to others. And of course there is the food...

But for now I am bedbound with a horrid cold and trying to find things to do that I can do between bouts of coughing and fever and chills. Because I have two shows coming up and I am woefully unprepared, so sick or not, the show must go on.

I've managed to harvest my lavender and pull it from the stalk to combine with my hops and mint and thyme to make sleep pillows. I've carved a few new stamps to decorate small pamphlet books. I've got lots of bottle snowmen started much like those created by Sue Pelletier in Cloth Paper Scissors a couple of years ago. But I thought I would put a book together for a class proposal and this is what I came up with.

It's a one needle coptic stitch book with 12 signatures and a cover inset with pewter repousse and a scarab beetle. It's a two layer cover allowing the inset of objects with collage covering the layers. It kept my mind off the sniffles and I like it so much, I think I'll make another. If you want a chance at winning this original, please visit the Portland Art Collective blog at http://portlandartcollective.blogspot.com/2010/11/november-giveaway-from-jan-harris.html. I'll be giving away the journal there!!