beautiful book

the cover of this beautiful old book will be the container for my new journal... it truly is a gem. the title is 'wild flowers of california', written by mary elizabeth parsons and illustrated by margaret warriner buck. women writing and illustrating a book in the early 1900s... yes, i love that.





(maybe) my favorite thing about it is that its previous owner was an artist. there are images drawn and painted throughout...



and copious notes... it's filled with notes about the medicinal properties of the flowers.



i carefully removed the pages-- with a few snips all of the pages came out, still more or less bound together. the thread in the binding is the most fragile part, the pages are not brittle-- you can bend them and they don't break or crack.

after a couple of tries making a pocket to hold my old daily book (below), i decided that i needed to somehow 'attach' it to the inside of the front cover. here's the progress that i've made toward that so far. well actually, as i sit here typing i've made further progress. the buttons have been sewn on the muslin and most of the velcro has been glued down. once that's finished i'll put the book in a safe place to live until the rest of the contents are ready to move in.



tiny creek pebbles... this is the first summer i've really studied them. my plan is to make a vellum envelope for them so they can live in the new journal.



we're having a heat wave so i'm spending a lot of time in the creek with pebbles and rocks!

and finally, i talked to a friend yesterday who's had to evacuate her home near paradise, CA because of the fires. i'm sending All The Big Love out to everyone everywhere who's had to leave their home because of floods or fires or tornadoes or...