It's a calendar, it's a zine, it's a diary — It's the Useful Calendar Almanac!

Yeah, I know. I'm writing about my 2019 almanac in March of 2019. What?

I actually finished the thing in January, and stitched together a prototype, which I marked up with corrections and notes, and then decided to use that one myself rather than discard it. Then I made a second one for my husband, who was missing his old-style printed calendar-planner. It's the size of a quarter of a letter-size sheet of paper, 4-1/4 by 5-1/2 inches, a nice handbook size that's also manageable for me to print and assemble at home.

Then I ran into a friend at the coffee shop, and when I showed him my copy he immediately said he would like one, so I made a few more to display during a neighborhood art event in February, the LoLa Winter Fine Art Exhibition, and he bought one, and the remaining 5 copies are now available in my Etsy shop. 

The truth is, this has been about four years in the making. Since 2015, I have made some version of an almanac-diary for my own use and as prototypes, always finishing them after the first of the year and telling myself I will make the next one in time to sell in the fall for the following year. These prototypes had limited text, since I didn't want to research and write articles, lists, and such for myself only.

But as I have modified the design of the Useful Calendar to allow more room for art, and to keep the font a readable size, and still keep it small and pocket-sized, I have left out more and more of the fascinating tidbits of information I gather along the way, and I really wanted to make them available in some complementary format, for which an almanac seems just the thing. And then it just made sense to have a few pages for a person to jot their own notes of whatever sort, whether using it as a planner or diary or phenology journal. So I added three lightly gridded pages per month.

This time I was determined to just get it out there, no matter the poor timing, and set the precedent that there will now be a Useful Calendar Almanac every year, alongside my usual compact-yet-informative calendar formats.

But I'm also equally determined to do all of it myself, from the research and writing, to illustrating, to printing and assembling and stitching. Because that's just how I do things, inefficient though it is. The following photos show the steps in the assembly process. Each one takes me about an hour to assemble, so I find something interesting to listen to and just immerse myself in the doing.

The cover, printed on card-stock, about to be cut and scored for folding

The flap to the left will form a pocket, because I gotta have a pocket.

Here are the pages, to be folded into signatures to form the text block.

Marking the signatures for where I will punch the sewing holes. The cover has the holes printed on it, so I punched those first and then use them as the guides for marking the holes in the signatures, because I will be sewing through the spine.

I chose some pretty-colored linen thread since the stitching will be both functional and decorative; the signatures will be sewn through the spine in a criss-cross pattern that forms X's on the outside. It means the center signature gets a bit more stitching than it would with a different style of stitch, because it is being sewn to the first and then again to the third signature in the process of stitching it all together. The result is a good securely bound book.

After all the sewing is done, I brush the spines with PVA glue, which remains flexible when set, so it will strengthen and protect the spine and the stitching. I brushed the glue over the edges, too, because I figure that's where the most wear will occur. They'll stay clamped like this overnight, after which the glued spine will still feel a bit tacky for a couple of days, but eventually it will just have a kind of rubbery feel.

I was going to offer these through my shop as a made-to-order item, but after I assembled a few and realized it takes about an hour just to do that, I thought I really can't ask what they're worth so late in the almanac season, so I am just offering the five that I've already made for $15 each, with a note in the description that the 2020 edition will cost $25 so as not to create the impression that $15 is a normal price for a hand-bound book like this. In truth, $25 isn't really a normal price either, but I do want to strike a balance between what I see as affordable and how much it's worth to me to make them. Because while I enjoy making them, I'd enjoy selling a few of them too.

Nostalgia and Other Uses for a Vintage Book of Recipes

An old book called Tea-Room Recipes caught my attention at an estate sale last winter, and when I looked inside and saw that it was published in 1925 and its authors were from Minnesota, I decided I had to have it.

When I got it home and perused the recipes, I decided that the content wasn't for me and proceeded to take it apart to make it into a hand-bound journal with a coptic stitch binding. I added a few embellishments from a tea packet to give it some color, plus my linocut of a teapot, and a snippet from the book's index.

Then I came across a little column in our local paper in which restaurant critic Rick Nelson was asked, "If you could pick one Minneapolis restaurant from the past that you would like to revisit, what would it be?"

And he replied, "It might be Richards Treat. It closed three years before I was born, so I have no firsthand knowledge of the restaurant. ... It was owned by two remarkable women, Lenore Richards and Nola Treat."

I thought those names sounded familiar, so I looked at the book again and realized that they were its authors.

The Minnesota Historical Society published an article about the women and their eponymous restaurant in the fall of 2007, and a page of comments offers many fond memories of the once-iconic establishment.

Another website, called Restaurant-ing Through History, shows what a charming place it once was (the building was torn down in the 1950s).

And my mother, a dietitian who studied at the University of Minnesota, remembered the restaurant because it was run by two professors of dietetics from the U of M. But she had never actually eaten there.

Now I wondered if I had been too hasty in taking the book apart.

So I looked at some of the recipes again.

Nope.

People often wax nostalgic about the way something was in the past, like Grandma's cooking or a long-closed restaurant that had been much loved in its day, and it's easy to forget that the generations preceding us were a little too enamored of what was thought at the time to be the modern thing, like using canned vegetables and puréeing everything to mush. And flour. Lots of flour, whether it makes sense to use it or not.

For example, as you can see in the above spread from the soup chapter of the book (click to get a larger view)—split pea soup that uses only 2 cups of peas for 18 servings and then calls for flour to thicken it, and a cream of spinach soup that starts with a purée of canned spinach.

So, what to do with those pages whose recipes I don't care to use?

I'm sure I'll think of something.

How wildlife rehab, craft beers, and a hand-bound journal are all connected

A few weeks ago I was contacted by a representative of Duluth-based Wildwoods Wildlife Rehabilitation center to see if I would consider donating an item for their silent auction fundraiser, which is happening this Saturday evening, June 7.

After a quick check to assure myself that it was all legit, I said I'd be happy to send along one of my respite boxes (aka meditation kits/mindfulness boxes, or cool stuff in a box for grown-ups), as requested.

But then I said I thought it would make sense to include some boxed sets of my animal notecards, which have animal facts on the backs. So I offered to include a few of those, too.

And then when she said the event included tastings of craft beers, I said, oh, well, then I should send you a journal made from a craft beer box. I didn't have one from the specific brands she knew they were featuring (mostly because many of our terrific craft beers don't yet have bottling operations, so, no six-packs). But I rummaged through my collection and found a box from Lift Bridge Farm Girl, a Belgian-style pilsner from Lift Bridge Brewing of Stillwater.

I thought it would be appropriate because Duluth has a lift bridge too. Funny thing is, I don't think we've actually tried this beer yet ourselves; I must have pilfered the box from one of our local sources  of beer, wine and other libations—they make the empty six-pack boxes available for people to buy an assortment of single bottles from a variety of craft beers, and sometimes I rummage through the boxes and ask if I can take a few home.

I used the secret Belgian binding, which allowed me to incorporate more of the design by using the black-and-white strip on one side for the spine. (And it is a Belgian-style brew, after all.) I used the other strip and a piece from the bottom, which credits the sources of the photographs, to make tags.  

All the cover pieces are glued to thick fiber board for sturdiness. I cut pieces from a vintage map of Minnesota for the end papers (featuring Duluth, of course).

And I put my trademark library pocket inside the back cover, with a knock-off of a library card inside, providing the details of this journal (how many pages, the materials used, etc.)

As I was packing everything up in a medium Priority Mail box, I decided to toss in a few packs (sets of 18) of my bookplates, which also feature some of my animal drawings.

And all of that is now on its way to Duluth for the event this Saturday. 

Best wishes!