My Most Recent Books...

Another post in less than two weeks. Imagine that! So, here are some pictures of the books I made most recently. Enjoy!

This flowered one is teeny, but still big enough to write in, only 3 x 4 inches. I used the scraps from the other books I made while at Jordan's house. My favorite detail is the way I placed the holes for stitching. It's a bit difficult to see in this picture, but I made reverse Vs, in opposite directions on each side.

This one is 4 x 6 inches. As far as I'm concerned, it's the perfect size to carry everywhere you go to be used as a journal, a sketchbook, a dayplanner of your own design. And, like the flowered book above, it's reversible, you can choose which side is the front and which side is the back.

Here we have one that's a little less traditional. It's 4 x 7 inches, which isn't unmanageable or weird looking, but it is a little thinner than a book would normally be. The thread I used is a vibrant blue. If you look closely, you can see that I pasted an extra dot on the front. That's because I made a mistake. Glue is sometimes not my friend.

You might not think about it much, but square books are a lot of fun. I love the proportions of them. The pattern on the front is beautiful and I used a complementary red metallic paper for the back. It wrinkled a little from the glue but, as far as mistakes go, it was a fortuitous one.

Now we have a smallish one, 4 x 5 1/2 inches, covered in blue, white and purple flowers on one side and blue, brown, purple, and green stripes on the other. I originally picked the paper for myself, but now realize it would probably be more appropriate as a gift for a little girl.

I've used the paper covering the book to the right before. I love how there is just one heart in the middle of all those dots. This one is the same size as the red dotted one above, just a few pages thicker. I love the back cover, too, but I didn't want to include to pictures.

And, finally, there's this lovely 5 x 7 job that is covered on the front with an abstract floral print and on the back in creamy paper with darker flecks throughout. The grass green thread may not seem to coordinate in this picture, but it looks great in real life.

I've listed a few of these over at Etsy and should have the rest up in the next few days. I've been getting a lot of hits, but no purchases on books so far. Maybe when Valentine's Day gets a little closer some folks will be poking around for a great gift and will decide one of my books would be perfect. Here's hoping.

If you would like to see some more shots of these books, you can hop over to my flickr page and check out my set called Bound and Determined.

A New Semester Is Underway

It's been a long time since I actually wrote a post on here that wasn't short and completely lacking in news, so I thought I'd take the time for a real update.

Last semester was hard, not academically, but emotionally. It's over now and I'm glad of that. My classes weren't so bad, but they weren't spectacular either. Of course, that probably had to do with my inability to concentrate on much of anything, so I won't blame my instructors.

Just a quick rundown:
Preaching - I like preaching, surprisingly enough, probably because I love spending the time in preparation and feeling inspired with something to say.
Hebrews - The class was structured in such a way that we barely used our Greek, which was a tad frustrating considering that's why I took the class in the first place.
Systematic Theology - Dr. McCormack is my new theology hero and Barth's doctrine of election has made the Reformed tradition a bit easier for me to swallow.
Women in OT Narrative - Hebrew is the bomb and we used it a lot in this class, so I was pleased with it from start to finish. Some people complained about having a paper and a final exam, but I liked having the grade spread out a bit more.
American Church History - Dr. Moorhead is a fun little man who knows more stuff than any one person should know. I loved trying to scribble down every important thing he said and thought the tests were completely fair.

My grades haven't come in yet, so maybe I'll feel differently in a few days...

I'm still having some difficulty finding a field education placement, but at least I've gotten the process underway by contacting a few sites. There's a church in the West End of New York City that I'll be visiting this Sunday. Commuting to NYC every Sunday is not my idea of a good time, but being in an urban, ethnically diverse setting would probably be a good stretch for me. We'll see how that goes.

Break last week was fun and relaxing. Emily's generosity allowed me to spend a long weekend in DC and Northern Virginia, an area I haven't visited since I moved to school in 2006. We did a lot of laying around her lovely apartment watching Melrose Place and football and some haunting of familiar places, like Chipotle and Bangkok 54 and the Falls Church. Mostly, it was wonderful to see Emily and Mary Katharine and enjoy time with friends knowing that there was no schoolwork to be done.

The rest of my week was spent at Jordan's house in Pennsburg making books. Over Christmas I used a gift card from his mom to purchase enough supplies to make a bunch. So, while I was there, with no schoolwork, I managed to make nine, of which I will be posting photos in the next few days. My goal is to get them listed on Etsy by Wednesday afternoon. My other goal is to actually sell one. The problem is, now that Christmas is over, Etsy sales are moving rather slowly. Worst case scenario, I have a huge stock for next Christmas season. One of the books I made was a photo album Sarah, Jordan's mom, commissioned as a gift for her younger sister's wedding gift. It's one of the best and prettiest books I've ever made, but I forgot to take pictures. DOH! This semester, I plan to make one book a week for fun and, hopefully, for just a little profit since I can't keep them all and not everyone I know wants a book for his or her birthday.

If there's something I left out and you'd like to know, just leave a comment and maybe I'll answer with a blog post dedicated to you!

Maryland Lighthouses

Someone at UNC used one of my early digital pictures in a project. If you go here and scroll about three quarters of the way down, to Western Shore Lighthouses...there it is. It's like the one to the left, only bigger.

They listed it as an anonymous Creative Commons photo, even though they were able to link back to the source. I think I'm going to email whoever wrote that.

EDIT: I emailed Russ Rowlett, the creator of the website and a professor of Math at UNC-Chapel Hill, and he kindly credited my photo. Awesome!

Finals

This place has a way of making me anxious like no other place in my life ever has before. Two days ago, Jordan and I were in Pennsburg, enjoying some down time, doing at a little studying at the same time, then we came back here. We came back here and, immediately, I felt overwhelmed by everything. It was almost as if there was a basket full of stuff that I was able to leave here at school, but as soon as I got back it was sitting here waiting for me.

It's nothing I can't handle, but it's a bunch of stuff that I don't want to handle. Stuff like field ed and finals and papers and all that jazz... The problem is that the stuff I don't want to handle is the stuff that should be done immediately. Whenever this time in the semester comes along, I have to continually remind myself that the work always gets done and I'm not going to fail.

Need an Opinion...

What do y'all think...

Is this one better...


...or this one?


It's the new year and I just don't have the energy or desire to write a long post about it. Give me a few weeks; then finals will be over and I might feel like writing for fun again.