The Glue Situation

February third. The brochure said 'bookbinding' and my brain said 'quiet, handmade, satisfying' and both of those things were true. What the brochure did not say, because brochures never say this, is that PVA glue has opinions about where it wants to be and most of those opinions are: on you.

The community center classroom smells like paper and something faintly like a school art room, which is not unpleasant. There are six of us at the long worktable. The instructor, a compact, precise woman who has clearly watched many people make the same mistakes in the same order, sets out the bone folders and the needles and the small pots of adhesive and explains that the goal for the first session is a pamphlet stitch. Five signatures, folded and nested. Three holes, one thread. She says it twice, slowly, and I write it down as if writing it down will make my hands do it correctly.

Another moment

The thing I did not expect: the folding. Not the stitching, not the gluing. The folding is where everything either works or it doesn't, and you know immediately, the way you know immediately when you've mismeasured something in the kitchen and the whole dish is going to be slightly off. I had to unfold mine twice. The woman next to me did not have to unfold hers at all and I am choosing to find that inspiring rather than annoying.

Another moment

I left with one small finished book, covers slightly uneven, spine stitching visible in a way that looks intentional if you squint, and glue on three fingers that I didn't fully get off until the next morning. The windowsill at home looked the same when I got back. The collapsed bowl on the kitchen shelf caught the last of the afternoon light. I put the little book on the table and looked at it for a while. It holds nothing yet. That feels right for a February.