I know, I'm a million years behind my promised travel posts, but I'd rather tell those stories with pictures, which I haven't finished sorting yet.... So we'll take a detour down the book binding lane because it was AWESOME (and I have crappy phone pictures).

My professor has a studio we were required to visit this Saturday. There she had a guest show us the awesome art of hand-binding books in a workshop so that we may do so for a project we will have at the end of the semester. She had done the hard part and cut out all the papers and covers we would need to the right size. We just had to start by folding sets of three papers in half. Each set of three pages folded is called a signature, and we ended up with eight signatures.

We then took a sewing pattern and poked holes through the paper, one signature at time. Next, we took book-binding thread and sewed each signature one at a time (after getting a little wax in the picture on it), following the pattern, and tying special knots (paller and keller) at the end of each signature. Down the middle, we cut three 3 inch stripes of book tape (or ribbon with iron-on glue on the back) that we sewed around to attach them.

Another type of paper was used for the end pages that are glued on once the signatures are sewn. One end page is glued to the first page, and the other is glued to the last. If the end pages have a texture or patter, it
should be folded to the inside.

Pressure should be applied at this point while the glue dries. It also is important because the PVC glue should be brushed onto the spine and needs to dry under pressure.

Cover paper was also provided, and it was coated with PVC and glued to the cardboard for the front and back covers. A jig (double the width of the cover) was used to trim the corners in order to fold the edges of the cover paper over onto the inside of the cover. The other side of the end paper was coated with PVC and attached to the covers.

After that, all that was left was ironing on the book tapes and putting the book in a book clamp for about a day.

The result:

an awesome, tiny, one-of-a-kind, hand-made book full of empty pages. Now what to fill it with? And can I possibly repeat this process on my own without disaster striking?

It's nice being back in the land of the internet and cell phone service. I just wish I had both on my phone. But now there is a lot to catch up on!

Day three of the trip we hit two spots in Vancouver: Lynn Canyon first, followed by Grouse Mountain.

After a bus to Lynn Canyon, we hiked up the mountain a little ways, over the river and through the woods to Twin Falls.

The same path the Hobbits were taken on their way to Isengard.

 After another bus ride, we went up Grouse Mountain by cable car. The fast version is: We saw a bird show, a lumberjack show, a wild deer and her two babies, two grizzlies the park was built around, hiked some more, went up a ski lift to a lookout point, and took the cable car back down at sunset. There was a little snow on the ground, but the weather was pretty nice, except for the gnats in certain places. But I got a lot of cool bird and bear pictures!


Have a lot more for later, when I am not being rushed to leave for another mountain/glacier hike in Alaska!

The long version, but made more interesting with pictures, staring with the bird show:


The lumberjack show was way more entertaining than I was expecting, mainly because it was surprisingly funny. More of a you-had-to-be-there thing rather than me going on about the details, especially when there is so much more to write about!

For instance, Grouse Mountain park was built around a rehabilitation idea for two grizzly bears. One of the orphaned cubs was found in a coastal area and the other was found inland. Usually in these situations, the bears are eventually killed because they will just grow to be unmanageable. Someone came up with an alternate, and Grinder and Coola were brought to Grouse Mountain, where a 3 acre deer gate backed-up by an electric fence would keep them safe from predators, give them enough room to grow, and allow humans to put food in without too much interaction with the bears. The plan was to monitor the bears from a safe distance so their contact with humans would be limited. When they would become old enough to take care of themselves, the fences would come down and the bears could be wild once again. Obviously, that didn't happen now that Grouse Mountain is a park full of humans. My guess is that Grinder and Coola already had too much human interaction and the plan was not yet approved by whoever in Canada needs to approve it, so they were just a test run. But it seems to be working out pretty well and maybe future rescued cubs will make it back to the wild rather than become a tourist attraction.

We did some other exploring on the mountain and found a deer and her two fawns. We also went higher up the mountain on a ski lift to a lookout, but it was covered in a cloud... and even more gnats. We left that area pretty quickly and had dinner on the mountain with a view of the sunset. Full of food, it was hard to make it back down the cable car without falling asleep, even with the awesome view of Vancouver at night.

Still have to be brief, still don't have pictures, still don't have Verizon data plan, but DO have free (read: slow) hotel internet so here goes:

We started the day with a tour of the British Museum, which had a lot of interesting things, including a History of Man exhibit, and a LOT of dead things that were stuffed or in jars or mounted. Then we had another tea party at the White Heather tea room which was just as divine as tea at the Empress. It makes my brain explode trying to decide which was more heavenly. The scones were fresher at White Heather though, and we tried a bigger variety of teas. I love afternoon tea more every time, and got some more good ideas for my next  tea party I host... And I hope I can arrange it is on Labor day weekend or something. That way it will be a three day weekend and hopefully my best friend will visit and have tea with me! I want to make everything from scratch though, and that would take way too long... We walked around more before getting on a bus, which got on a ferry, and took us off the island of Victoria to Vancouver. We were too tired to explore tonight, but undoubtedly we will be up super early to do that tomorrow, and we have a few other days here as well. And my dad will finally join us!

Pictures!: