A Bone Folder Is a Real Object That Exists

October eighteenth. The class was two hours on a Wednesday, which means I shifted yoga to next week and told myself I would not feel guilty about that, and I mostly didn't. Bookbinding. I don't know why I signed up except that the flyer was on the community center corkboard and the word 'signatures' was used in the description to mean something other than what I normally mean by it, and I wanted to know what that was.

Turns out a signature is a folded section of paper. You stack several of them together, punch holes with an awl, and sew them to each other with linen thread using a blunt needle and a specific sequence of in-and-out that the instructor described twice and I understood on the third demonstration by watching someone else's hands. There is also a tool called a bone folder, which is exactly what it sounds like, a flat, smooth implement for creasing paper cleanly, and I now own one, because the supply kit was included in the registration cost.

What I made is a small notebook, roughly four inches by six, with a cover that does not lie entirely flat and a spine that is stitched in linen thread with two knots I tied myself. The stitching is uneven in a way the instructor called 'characteristic,' which I appreciated. I set it on the worktable at the end and looked at it for a moment before I took a photograph.

mid-stitch, concentrating hard, probably holding my breath

It is not a beautiful object, exactly. But it is an object, which two hours ago it wasn't.

I walked home thinking about the linen thread, how close it sits to the macramé cord on the windowsill, which is a coincidence I wasn't looking for. The cord has been there long enough now that I forget to see it most mornings. Tonight I noticed it again. That's something.