I love non-adhesive long stitch bindings when I feel like making something but I don’t feel like dealing with all the mess and time involved in making hard cases. Look ma! No glue!

These are an old standby from Keith Smith’s Non-Adhesive Binding I: Books Without Paste or Glue. Each one has approximately 64 pages of Mohawk Superfine paper; the weights and sizes vary because I was experimenting with folding down large sheets and using up whatever was lying around the studio, but the largest are about 4″ by 6″. The covers are Lokta Bark paper purchased from Hollanders.

This is my second round with assemblage’s sev[en]circle cowl. I wear my first one a lot, but I thought it would be fun to have one in a color other than black, since everything I wear it with is also black. I fell in love with this lovely dark desaturated teal-gray silk/merino yarn at Habu Textiles when I was in New York last winter and decided it would be perfect. And so it is!

As much as I enjoy working with Japanese papers, when it comes to the books I use at work I like a workhorse — something I can toss in my backpack without worrying about it. I like a paper with a good tooth; a spine I can open wide (if not flat); and not too many pages, because I like to use one book per project.

For this set I used slate-colored Iris bookcloth I purchased ages ago from Talas, both for the covers and for the paste-down inside. The paper is Mohawk Superfine, and in a soft white eggshell finish around 118gsm. I only had 10 sheets so each book has 5 sections with 4 folios each, for 80 pages; each book is around 6-1/4″ wide by 9-3/4″ high.

I remember now that I had bought more than usual of the bookcloth with the idea of Gocco-ing or block printing something on the covers. For this batch I’m happy with the pristine gray, but I might experiment more with that idea later.

I love assemblage’s knit designs. And the things she sews, but especially her knits. This is the Hakusa scarf, knit from Habu A-21 (silk-wrapped stainless steel) and Habu N-75 (merino).

The pattern starts with a few rows of A-21 alone, and then the N-75 gets pulled in for the rest of the scarf. Because the stainless steel holds its shape a bit when crumpled, it’s possible to get a sculptural feeling out of it.

The full scarf is an irregular triangle, and the merino and silk make it softer than you would expect from something knit with stainless steel. We’re heading into scarf weather again in San Francisco, so I expect to be wearing this a lot very soon.