Today my leather and drawing paper arrived dry and quite safely. I’m completely overjoyed at the quality of the leather. It’s simply fantastic. Super smooth heavier than normal and just great. It’s damn near flawless. Brad came through again. Even the distressed leather is pretty darn great. I had bought a ream of Strathmore drawing paper from Utrecht and I’m pretty happy at their speed of shipping and the condition it arrived in- in this weather – it was dry and not one damaged corner. Not quite what I can say for the significantly more expensive fabriano I bought a week ago from Jerry’s. Super cheap prices, not so safe shipping. Though shipping was more expensive from Jerry’s. Go figure.

Today was quiet and not as hot as it h as been, I drove home in thunder and some small amounts of pouring rain, my tomatoes are happy! I had to rip into that leather tonight. I cut all the remaining covers for the Pastor’s order and got them glued up. Tomorrow I’ll finish trimming the glued portions and hopefully get them backed for the most part. I also cut 2 large sized journal covers for the eBay line and 11 covers for the small eBay line. 7 black and 4 distressed. The next group to get sewn will be the Pastor’s order.

I’m going to wait until Friday to see if the HP paper arrives after that I’m asking for a refund. I have 3 other orders to work on and I’m pretty excited about all of them. One is for a small HP watercolor journal, another midsize journal filled with kraft paper and another larger sized journal filled with drawing paper. I was able to get the kraft paper all hand torn tonight. 12 signatures of hand torn kraft paper, it’s rough and very earthy. The hand torn edges look the most like a deckled edge than any other paper I’ve torn. (Insert happy dance here!) Tomorrow I hope to get some of the drawing paper cut to size too.

I’m having some issues with the map I purchased for the inner cover. The map shack owner was or is a heavy smoker and the map stinks. Really stinks. I’ve had it in baking soda since I bought it and still when I crack open that bag it smells. I may be heading out for another map. I’m going to try kitty litter next- anyone else out there know anything to remove smell from paper? It’s just too cool a map to give up on.

My vacation from the DayJob- and several days from Bookbinding are coming up soon- July 19th through the 25th. I’ll spend some time binding, I expect that I have all special orders done before I leave and I will take orders during that time but I’ won’t be starting them until after I’m back. I will be listing items before I leave on Tuesday and I’ll check email periodically while in Maine, but not as often as I do here. I’ll be in a place with no electric and no internet for much of my time. I’ll be spending a significant portion of my time in a lake.