And I’m Off!

Today is the first day of my 63rd year on this earth. I’m starting my year off with a couple new projects.

First I am knitting a rug for my room. Just a small one, certainly no carpet, just enough rug to put me feet on next to the bed. I figure it will be about 24″ x 36 inches. I am using a cotton rayon yarn that has been in my stash for a couple years, waiting for me to figure out what to do with it. I am using a moss stitch for texture. It won’t be a squishy rug, but a nobby one. I am hoping it will lie flat.

The second project of the first day of my 63rd year is to make a new journal. I have been using moleskine journals for my daily journal for many years. I like the size (10 x 7.5) and I like the feel of the paper. However, the journals, even the soft cover ones are expensive ($20 for three). So I am going to make my own.

I found some Hammermill paper with the right hand and the right weight for the pages. I had to get 11 x 17, aka tabloid (!?), in order to have the right size pages. I had to cut the paper 10 x 15 and now I am printing the sheets with lines, using a word doc as my template.

I’ll use 30 sheets of paper for each journal. Folded in half, that will give me 120 pages of writing surface. I will use a variation of a pamphlet stitch to sew it all together. I was going to use the sewing machine (Moleskines have machine sewn bindings) but I have decided that I can achieve the same look without the potential ruin of the machine.

I’ll use a thick card stock for the cover. I have lots of the black and blue card stock given to me in the past year. I will start with a black cover, as I think the blue card stock is not long enough. The black card stock is 21″ long and that should be perfect for the cover and the back pocket.