Ice came and went; I had a fabulous time, especially with a bit of fun at the expense of my errant apprentice, Letia.

I created two scrolls and a vigil book for the event; progress posts were filtered. I did unlock one previous post that shows the finished vigil book and one of the finished scrolls, so I wouldn't have to repost them. The complete scroll for the laurelling, with all its painted signatures, is here:

I've had two other projects in addition to the megascroll of doom. Both: finished!

The first is the vigil book to go with the megascroll. Since the heart book I did for Livia went over so well, I did one in a fleur de lyse shape. (Historical precedent here.) This proved considerably more difficult than I first thought; the concave portions of the edge meant that the turn-in was splayed on the insides of the boards, necessitating a pastedown that went all the way to the edges of the boards. The first pages of the text block wouldn't work, because they were already cut to shape and not large enough. I ended up adding a larger pastedown of parchment. It looks a bit odd when the book is closed, but it'll do.



And then there is the inlay and gilding that I'm unhappy with (whine, whine, whine). I don't own gouges (yeah, yeah, gotta save pennies--lots and lots of pennies) so all the gilding is brush gilding with shell gold. Well and good. I did the inlay perfectly--the edges of the green inserts were flush with the blue leather. And then somehow I got the warped idea that there should be a groove between the inlay and the cover, so that the shell gold would sit below the flat surface. Danger, danger, Will Robinson! This was a big mistake. I'm also unhappy with the thickness of the cords. (Did I mention that it's obvious I did the pointelle work by eye and not using a template like I should have? Geesh.)



But enough about that. This last scroll is the project of the 3 that I am most happy with. It's for a baronial award called the Crystal Hourglass. If you look carefully inside the letters, you'll see gold dots for the sand trickling through the glass. (Dots inside traced calligraphy is, btw, documentably period, as is text done inside a silhouetted shape.) The traced callig, the dots, and the snails are all from Mira calligraphaie monumenta.



And now . . . now I'm going to go do anything that's not a project.

OK, parents of gifted kids, I am needing your advice.

At the beginning of the school year, we started the process to get Luke tested for dyslexia because spelling is not, ah, his strong point and he hated writing with a passion. He had also been a late reader: resisting reading independently until the beginning of 2nd grade. He started 2nd grade in the remedial reading group and, after I forced him to read to me for a few months, moved to the top reading group. At the end of last year he was reading at around a fifth grade level and I think it's higher now.

So, anyway, we thought: Maybe dyslexia? All results are now in: Nope. The school psychologist put him through a battery of tests and the special ed teacher did classroom observations and so forth. Results were stunning: Luke's got an overall IQ of 130, which is 98th percentile, and ranked in the 98th and 99th percentiles for 3 out of 5 measures (visual perception and something else I don't remember). In terms of spelling he's around the 42nd percentile; working memory is around 65th percentile, if I'm remembering right. He did better at harder tasks and blew off tasks that were too easy or boring.

So here is the dilemma: our school system has a separate gifted program for grades 3-5, housed in a separate building. Based on his standardized test scores from last year, he lacked "motivation" to succeed in a gifted program. That is, the difference between his ability and achievement scores were too great, so he didn't qualify for the program and stayed at his old school. The school psychologist who did this round of testing thinks we should appeal the decision and get him into the gifted program. Coincidentally, we saw the gifted teacher who does the student evaluations in the hallway last week before our meeting, and she inquired about how Luke was doing. We showed her these testing results, and she thinks that those scores would be sufficient evidence to get him into the program. However, she had some concerns: the gifted program is heavily weighted toward language arts and writing, and it's not very accommodating for students who are gifted in some areas but not others. She's not sure if it's a good fit for him right now. It might frustrate him or it might be the kick in the pants he needs.

"Right now" might be important. A couple folks involved in this process think that because Luke has a history of "uneven skill development"--e.g., his resistance to reading and then the zoom in skill level--that something similar could be going on with writing. He has improved in the first half of the year: he doesn't kick and scream about it as much now. His spelling is still awful, though: He consistently misspells words he has been exposed to for years: littil for little and so on.

Also a few concerns about attention and fidgeting. Luke doodles all throughout classes, although he is still attentive to the teacher and remembers everything she's said. The exception is math class, in which he is fully engaged and enthusiastically participates. He's sloppy and disorganized, misplacing his books, workbooks, coat, lunchbox, and hat on a daily basis. (I almost went through the roof when he lost his brand-new $40 coat, which was later found stuffed into a desk in the math classroom.) He fidgets destructively: shredding papers, chewing on pencils, etc. The gifted program apparently puts a lot of responsibility on the students in terms of organization.

So: do I push for the gifted program or not?

We had the first meeting with the intervention team at Luke's school today. I may not have mentioned this on LJ, but I have on FB: Matt and I think Luke's got some form of dyslexia or dysgraphia that has been masked so far by his general smarts. His spelling and handwriting are both horrible, and he resists writing with all his considerable stubbornness. When he does write at school, there are sentences that are completely illegible because the spelling is so far off that you can't decipher the words.

His classroom teacher also noticed there was a big gap between his verbal skills and his written ones. They test students for recognition of phonemes, letter combinations that correspond to sounds, and Luke can't recognize blends or most vowel combinations, although according to another standardized test he's reading at a fifth-grade level and can't be pried away from a book with a crowbar. (His teacher for 3rd grade is really supportive and on the ball, in stark contrast to his teacher last year.) The school psychologist present at the meeting said, in a bit of awe, that he must have an incredibly powerful memory to be able to compensate so much, and the classroom teacher said she's only seen this combination once or twice before in her career.

Most people present--guidance counselor, special ed teacher, classroom teacher, principal, speech pathologist, and psychologist--agreed there were definitely signs of a problem. Intervention, in the form of a pullout for the reading specialist, has already started, and other interventions will be tried and tracked over the next several weeks. Simultaneously, we're moving ahead with the testing process and he'll be formally tested sometime within the next two months. (The guidance counselor wanted to try the interventions--she called them RTI--first and test only if he didn't show improvement, but we pushed for testing now, as did the special ed teacher. This issue is going to be around past 3rd grade, and I don't want him at the mercy of a 4th grade teacher who might write him off as dumb or lazy.)

Anyway, I'm happy that testing is happening, so we can get some idea of how to help him.

I am finally making myself some new garb, and I must say I'm quite proud of myself. I made fabric-covered buttons for the first time, I'm flat-felling the seams, and by golly it looks nice. It's an earlier style than I ususally wear (think Manesse Codex) with button sleeves from elbow to wrist.

I'm curious about outerwear, however. In this image from the Manesse codex, what is that lady's outer garment? It looks like some kind of tabard/surcoat-y thing: http://www.casabellini.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/manesse-codex-106.jpg Are there good instructions somewhere for this type of garment? there are other images in that source that show surcoats that look like they drape from the circular neck, without the cloak-like addition.

Pretty soon I'll be making my own shoes, you just wait.

I got home and unpacked from Atlantia's 30-Year celebration a few hours ago, and instead of feeling exhausted, I feel energized! I spent most of the weekend under my dayshade with my bindery equipment, working on books and talking with people. Mostly talking with people; I didn't get much work done. But that's fine! I am pleasantly surprised at the number of people who were really interested in the bindery, some of whom came back more than once, dragging other friends with them. Having the equipment with me made explanations much easier, and I was able to give folks an overview of the process that isn't possible any other way. It's far superior to simply taking a sewing frame with me to a demo, which is honestly a waste of effort.

There are a handful of folks in Atlantia who have started binding in the past year or so, which makes me overjoyed. There was a book entered in the Person Pentathalon, and I had a few nice talks with a gentle who had a book on display at Sapphire. There might even be enough interest in the subject to do another book track at an upcoming university--it's been several years since I organized the last one.

The rest of the event was also pleasant enough. Wistric got his White Scarf--YAY! And good conversations with friends and household. I regret not doing a household meal plan--it felt weird. We'll go back to one for WoW. And Cerball's household entranceway looked spectacular.

I did get it finished by Pennsic, but I'm only getting around to posting photos now. Better late than never.

This evening I spent a few hours making a tiny notebook for a friend--small enough that it could comfortably fit in his pouch. The final book is 2.5 x 4 inches and 0.25 inches thick. It's based on the third entry at http://www.lib.msu.edu/exhibits/bindings/pages/limpbindings.jsp with the addition of a leather toggle and loop closure. You don't see that many surviving stab stitch bindings, but they are around here and there across many centuries and would certainly be appropriate for a relatively disposable notebook designed for, err, taking notes and such.

( Onward to photos . . . )
The fancy pierced binding will be ready by Pennsic for sure--all I have left to do is paste down the endpapers. Photos will be forthcoming in a day or two.

I had given up on finishing this in time, but perhaps there is hope to have the new binding done by Pennsic after all. I had a massive spurt of productivity this afternoon and evening, but there are still many more hours to go on this. (Mostly many more hours of cutting itty bitty pieces out of the rawhide for the cover. Bookbinders call this kind of binding "pierced vellum," but "vellum" is being used fast and loose.

It's an interesting structure, one I've never done before. Basically, you sew the text block on thongs, and the thongs get laced through an inner cover made of several pasted thicknesses of paper. The fabric backer gets pasted onto the inner cover, and then the endbands only get laced through an outer rawhide/parchment cover that wraps around the inner cover with pasted turn-ins. It's "semi-limp," halfway between limp and in boards.

Here is my cut template for the cover design. It's reminiscent of a lot of things, but it not supposed to be a strict heraldic design. (So please don't tell me Atlantia's arms have only three waves per quadrant.) I've decided to ditch the diamond along the spine.



Here is the rawhide outer cover with some of the cutting done. The blue silk layer is underneath for optimum visual effect.



I will use blue silk ribbon for the laces (two on the fore edge, one each on the head and foot), so I decided to use the same ribbon as endband decoration, instead of the more common silk floss. I've got documentation for the ribbon, though, never fear. Here you can also get a good look at the sprinkling on the spine, which was done with woad and glair. Naastasia had brought me some woad in powdered form from Pennsic several years back, and I've finally gotten around to doing something with it.



The big question now is whether our intrepid heroine can wield her Xacto knife quickly enough to vanquish those itty bitty pieces from hell before her hand tendons rebel in the three weeks remaining.

So bad about posting lately! Too busy making books. :-) Here's the first book of the month, a simple long-stitch limp leather binding, somewhat similar to the one I made for Baroness Guenievre a few years back.

I'm actively looking for good online images of extent long-stitch bindings, btw, so if anyone has a few good links, please let me know. I've found two so far, in addition to the b/w images in Szirmai's book. anathelen , does the Folger have many long-stitch bindings?