A Dickensian Moment

I've been very busy the last few weeks, sorting through my treasures and getting them ready to make into books. Ah, Gentle Readers, the hours and hours I have spent bent over a vintage leather glove or handbag, unpicking a million tiny stitches, feeling somewhat like a character from a Dickens novel: "Please, sir, I want some more" and so forth. But at last I have a nice pile of leather:

I've also finished making a travel journal out of a piece of  upcycled leather with wonderfully worn edges. This one is lined with a piece of a cozy Pendleton wool blanket. 

The Traveler (sold)

A Poem to Read Out Loud: The Red Wheelbarrow

The Red Wheelbarrow

BY WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS

so much depends

upon

a red wheel

barrow

glazed with rain

water

beside the white

chickens

Baseball Glove Journal

Whilst trolling through one of my favorite junktique stores, I found the remains of a vintage Carlton Fisk catcher's mitt in a dusty corner and knew it had to come home with me. After hours of unpicking stitches, I had the elements for the covers of this journal. I named it "Home Base":

Home Base
(sold)

I really love this little creature (I know, I say that about all my journals, but it's true!). Here is the back cover, and the inside -- it has a photo of early baseball player Jim Conway printed on the first page:

A Musical Interlude

Franco Corelli singing Nessun Dorma in Puccini's Turandot.

Now,Voyager, sail thou forth

 After much thinking and pondering and a bit of mumbling, the vintage passport wallet I showed you in my last post has been transformed into a journal that I am really quite in love with. I added a bit of a wonderfully worn reclaimed leather to create the spine, and some hand-marbled end papers I discovered a while back in the smallest imaginable book shop on the Rialto bridge in Venice, Italy. Here is the finished book:

Now, Voyager, sail thou forth

(sold)

I named this journal "Now, Voyager, sail thou forth"

The title comes from a Walt Whitman poem:

"The untold want, by life and land ne'er granted,

Now, Voyager, sail thou forth to seek and find."

On one of my recent foraging expeditions, I found this wonderful little creature. It's a vintage (early- to-mid 20th century, I'm thinking ) Moroccan leather wallet, very unassuming on the outside, but on the inside...

...turns out it's a place to keep neat your rail tickets, ship landing card, baggage checks, foreign money, etc.

 The kind of thing you would clutch in one hand as you stand on the deck of Mauritania, waving your hankie to friends on the dock. The air is full of excitement and the scent of hair pomade -- can't you just smell it? From there, on to Europe, and the Orient Express and further adventures. So thrilling!

Anyway, for the last few days, I've been working my magic on this little guy, giving it a new life and hopefully further exotic escapades by transforming it into a travel journal. Stay tuned for pictures...