bookmaking corona diary day/part 2; sewing up...

Sewing up is usually therapeutic but for the newspaper pages for cartoneras it is fraught with danger and you have to be constantly alert.....the paper is so fragile, now more a palimpsest of layers of ink rather than paper. The pages are thin enough to do a pamphlet sewing stitch really but then it doesn't work for the pagination because I have printed across a whole newspaper page image which is then folded to a more manageable size.
I usually want to work like a maniac and and get one job finished at a time but with 22 of these I think it needs to be staggered, alternated with some thing more creative, but I am finding it hard and the constant interruptions trying to co-ordinate new deliveries of food and milk with my immediate neighbours isn't conducive to long trains of thought so repetitive work to drop in and out of is useful  - tho I notice how it takes a few minutes to get back into the rhythm as I was describing yesterday...
The overwhelming smell of printing ink on these particular pages is mitigated by the glorious smell of Spring flowers sent by my daughter.....

The new etiquette of deliveries and social distancing. plus the accompanying hand-washing is playing havoc with my disappearing nails and rough skin is just not good for book-binding dexterity....

Getting our newspaper is now difficult under this new regime of isolation so we may have to abandon it - I am suddenly assailed by the alarming thought that newspapers may all go online instead - and never return, then what will I do for future projects....the end of my cartoneras maybe; I was just starting to think about the sequel to Ship of Fools - which came after Map of Lost Cuckoos about species extinction , the next one was possibly going to be Fool Gets Sick...
good job I have boxes of papers still, my hoarding justified but the current topical ones could be  important.....I hope someone I know is saving them.....fortunately I did a big trawl for cardboard packaging round town before lockdown....
dealing with current events in this way is my way of communicating I suppose, first with myself, interrogating the world, and then by the showing to other people - which I hope will happen eventually...

Once sewn and bound the format - tall and narrow - makes the books surprisingly robust; I hope they look like little dossiers with their manilla coloured cardboard covers. They are supposed to look raw and immediate so I hope all this relaxed extra time hasn't made me fidget with them too much; maybe there are genuine improvements but opinion will probably vary South American cartoneras are now sometimes accused accused of looking too aesthetic....

I am usually a person who just likes to get things done but maybe now is the time for more reflection - in the daytime while sewing rather than in the middle of the night maybe...
a subject for tomorrow maybe .....