Monday 15th July

 At last! I've been waiting for the promised rain all day, and it has arrived. I expect a lot of people are glad the weather stayed dry, sunny, even, all afternoon but I was beginning to wonder about watering.

Meanwhile, I've being Doing Lots of Stuff. A slew of emails and letters which were overdue, a project completed, a catch-up zoom with friends, and organising rescheduling the last couple of piano lessons. 

Oh, the joy of clearing the to-do list!

This to-do is another of the lovely surprises from the Surprise Canadian Parcel. 

I've used the bookmark from World of Books to cover the actual details of names.

 One of the things I wanted to do after the social zoom was get hold of a book by Anne Lamott that was mentioned., 'Help, Thanks, Wow'. It is a book on prayer, and I remembered reading the first section somewhere. The whole book cost £££££££ on Amazon, but I've been able to order it for much, much less second hand from Wob. Result! 

The Project;

I'm still struggling to find The Perfect Diary. This year I'm using one I constructed from A4 watercolour paper, the 'One Book To Rule Them All'. It's a double spread for each week, with the diary part cut and stuck from a commercial A6 diary. 

It's nearly good, but the diary part irritates me because the days aren't clearly defined,  and I've discovered that decorative washi tape doesn't always stick too well. The main drawback is that it is SO heavy!

So I have sourced a different A5 notebook for next year, still with a double spread for each week, but plenty of pages left over for using as a Commonplace Book and for drawing. I've spent some time ruling up all the days. Yup. 365 days, 52 weeks, plus an extra week at each end of the year.

However, the paper isn't thick enough for the slushy watercolours I enjoy, so I have created a sketchbook with 56 pages, and learned how to sew a coptic lay-flat binding, which is much easier than it looks. I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out.

Now both books have been secured inside a green leather portfolio cover to become the 2025 version of 'The One Book To Rule Them All.' It will have space for piano teaching records, Commonplace entries, and anything else. 

The only problem is I'm going to have to persist with the giant heavy one for the rest of this year...