Notebooks with hardly any cutting or gluing!
There’s something magical about paper, the way it bends to your will, stays folded or springs back into shape. Some people have an aversion to it – a phobia of little pieces of paper, but I love them and always have. I’m thinking about good friend, John Goss, who made paper out of nettles and other plants. I wonder why he stopped.
Paper, presses, pulp. All that paraphernalia of drying and pressing so paper can be cut or marked up. It feels ancient, tactile.
Our writers’ group made these lovely notebooks as a Christmas treat, guided by Cathy who provided the paper of the right quality and loads of patience with our varied clumsiness. They’re made without any binding, with hardly any cutting and with only the smallest amount of adhesive for the covers.
Thank you, Cathy.
There was a sigh of satisfaction as the pages interleaved with a miraculous twist – a move that paper hardly seemed capable of – to turn them into notebooks. Now all we need to decide is what to use them for. They seem too nice for day-to-day scribblings. Perhaps a scrap book of sorts? Someone was heard to mutter: ‘That’s the Christmas present for the wife sorted!’
