snek-panini

[snek-panini]

No "other" option. If you don't like multi POV books, please keep scrolling!

#to some extent this depends on the length of the story #longer books tend to have more povs in them #but this is not a deciding factor in what i read

[snek-panini]

Got a bit of a different bookbinding post today. @renegadeguild got an ask from a new binder saying they were intimidated by everyone's gorgeous binds (me too, actually, some of you guys are scary good), and so they've asked people to share their first binds. And I realized I'd never even taken photos of my first one, so here it is, warts and all:

This is E.M. Forster's The Machine Stops, a public domain scifi short story that you can read for free at the link. The first reason I chose it was that it's an interesting story, and I'd bought a print-on-demand copy a few years previously that was just terrible. Baffling cover choices, basic errors in the typeset (like quotes that face the wrong way), weird size that didn't fit on my shelf; just not a good product. I couldn't do it with more indifference than the PoD people. The second reason was that I was too intimidated by the thought of asking a fic writer if I could bind their story and then producing something with a thousand sloppy beginner mistakes, and then they'd want to see photos and I'd have to show them this and it would have been mortifying, but Forster has been dead since 1970 so I could not disappoint him. It was very freeing. I bound it in 2021 as an experiment, to see if I liked this hobby enough to stick to it. The cover is green cardstock and faux leather scrapbook paper that I bought at... probably Hobby Lobby. I added the title later, as a practice project when I first got my Cricut; for the first two years of its existence it had a blank cover.

There are more photos under the cut!

In this photo we can see:

--Too much glue when attaching the leather-print paper, so it oozed out onto the cover.

--Cricut font too thin and too much heat/too long of a press, so the letters have gaps and the glue also oozed out here. It's a continuing theme with this bind.

--I tried to use a bone folder to give it a sharper hinge crease and accidentally pressed too hard and tore a hole in the paper; you can see this in the little white vertical line near the top of the hinge

The fore edge is not square. I actually don't remember why this happened. I may have eyeballed the board position when I made the case, or the paper may have slipped while the glue was wet, or I cut it crooked and didn't notice till later. Either way it's bad enough that the book doesn't stand on its own. There was a crooked man/who walked a crooked mile/and found a crooked sixpence/against a crooked stile./He bought a crooked cat/which caught a crooked mouse/and they all loved together in a little crooked house, and I bet they read this little crooked book from their little crooked library.

Top view, you can see that the case is too big and the text block doesn't sit straight in it. It has no endbands or bookmark, and it's hard to see in this photo but there's glue on the top of it, at the spine. This still happens to me but I know how to trim books now so this bit gets cut off. You can also see that the scrapbook paper has some cracks where its white core is visible. This is why I do cloth or actual faux leather on the spines now. Endpaper shows uneven trim (did I not use a ruler for this??), too much glue causing major seepage, and it doesn't sit evenly in the case. I'm not sure if this is because of the case itself being crooked, a badly-trimmed endpaper, or if the text block is also crooked. Or it may be a combination of all these factors. Unclear.

Typeset photos! Here we see:

--Title page has a page number on it. This is a pet peeve of mine and I fixed it after this book.

--There is no half title, summary, or metadata. All my later binds have these things.

--It's typeset in Times New Roman. Unlike many I don't actually hate this font but reading it reminds me of being in high school so this is the only book I used it for. Baskerville is my beloved now. The font is also much bigger than it should be. It's not huge but it's like a large print book so it feels weird for me to read it.

--Lol what are margins

--Lol what are page headers

--Actually I think I left the headers out so it wouldn't have a header on the first page of each chapter, because I knew about page breaks but not section breaks at this time.

--It's on regular-ass lightweight printer paper. There's nothing wrong with this but I switched to heavier weight paper shortly after to help with bleed-through and the light stuff feels so flimsy now.

--I didn't understand how Word's book fold worked at this time, so when I had to set the sheets per booklet and it had an option for 4, I chose that thinking it would give me 4 sheets of paper (16 numbered pages) per sig. It did not do this. It gave me 4 numbered pages per sig. So every signature is 1 sheet of paper. Every page is its own signature. I am still mad about this but it sure drove home how the setting works and also how to make kettle stitches since you make one after every sig. A book of 48 pages has 12 signatures which is just ludicrous.

--There's no photo of this but it has a piece of printer paper on the spine because I didn't have mull. I did use PVA though. Lots and lots of PVA.

--It's stitched with regular sewing thread, which means it doesn't have much swell for a book with that many sigs, but it's less sturdy and more likely to tear the paper.

And that's that! It probably sounds a bit like I was tearing it to shreds but I actually love this book quite a lot. I learned so many things that I applied to my next binds, it was an invaluable experience. It let me fall in love with the hobby so I could make the awesome things I make now. I've got those all posted on my main blog under the tag #snek makes books, or you can see them all on my side blog @papersnakepress. For a first book it's functional and readable, and still better than the PoD copy I had before. I've been thinking of doing a rebind as a sort of progress gauge, actually. Maybe next year.

#bookbinding #snek makes books #the machine stops #it's not winning any beauty contests #or technical skill contests either #but it's mine and i love it #first bind

[snek-panini]

☀️Eclipse🌙

[snek-panini]

being obsessed with a character is so fucking embarrassing like I'll be getting dressed in the morning like "I bet the 12th doctor would wear these socks" bitch shut the fuck up

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#if we aren't counting pokemon #it was cardcaptor sakura #except it was the terrible english dub called cardcaptors #it's still my favorite anime #i have merch #it's a whole thing

[snek-panini]

... the Lord is testing me.

(Specifically, the Getty Museum shop is testing me)

#for reference

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[snek-panini]

I’m bored and nosy. Please reblog this with the book you’re currently reading.

#sunshine by robin mckinley #sadly not loving it like i hoped i would #and On A Sunbeam by tillie walden #a comic that i am also not loving

[snek-panini]

shows should have 22 episodes a season again where half of them are low stakes silly fun shit happening. this i believe with my whole heart

[snek-panini]

they used to make smackable technology. you used to be able to hit your tv when it didn't work good.

[snek-panini]

Haven't glued it together yet BUTTTT here's my art / bind for the fic 'You'll be the death of me'

Photos inside I took from Google images/ edited myself,

the cover is inspired by something I found on Pinterest (linked here https://pin.it/1HcDGULfM) done in ink pens/ markers,, I tried to change it to look like will a bit.

Link to the fic here, it's amazing and I super suggest you read it! Will Graham is a Grimm reaper that Hannibal tries to court (in increasingly messed up ways) and it's beautiful 🥹💕

#whoa that is gorgeous #bookbinding #not my bookbinding

[snek-panini]

jewelry by yuri tozuka

#eyes

[snek-panini]

If you had to pick, what's the ONE trait in a fictional character that makes you immediately go "oh this one's mine"

#tendency to pine

[snek-panini]

tell me about the real historical figure Marco polo

Marco Polo is famous for finding his way around the world by shouting out his own name and following when distant people from unfamiliar lands called it back to him. He did so even from across land masses as he rode on horseback, hitting a ball with a hammer, and over bodies of water like oceans and pools, hence his nickname, "Water Polo." He also invented a new type shirt that could establish at a quick glance that its wearer was a rich pretentious jerk.

#unreality

[snek-panini]

"I can fix him" "I can make him worse" OK well I can sit behind him and wrap my arms around his middle and comfortingly rock him side to side

[snek-panini]

no "other/see results" we die like men

note that I'm not talking about the best SERIES just your favorite CHARACTER

#this was not an easy choice #but daine was incredibly important to me as a teenager #so she gets my vote