monoceros blogsYesterday, Lin Kiat and I spent an afternoon folding and trimming the inside pages of our church program booklet. We made 180 copies so that amounts to 900 sheets of paper. We were so pooped we ordered pizza and watched Ocean's 11 to unwind.
Today, my mom, two good friends from my choir days - June and Xinyi - and I set out to bind the booklets. I'd already had the covers printed together with the church invitation cards so we just had to put the covers with the inner sheets, tie them up and voila! Okay, not so easy. I knew from the start that it would take a lot of labor, so I roped in my two friends.
A lot of thought went into how to bind them in a practical but tasteful way. After deliberating for a few weeks, I finally settled on silver thread on the spine. Then I proceeded to the next stage which involves selecting the right type of silver thread (Lin Kiat and I did this last weekend). There are two ways to use thread on the spine. One is just tying the thread in a knot and bow along the spine and the other is piercing two holes in the spine and threading the silver twine through the holes and then tying a knot. I selected the two-holes-in-the-spine way because I felt the other method would have the pages slipping and sliding despite the thread along the spine.
Naturally this better method would involve more work - making the holes in the spine. My dad came to the rescue with a little hand-gadget that is impossible to find these days. On occasions like these, my dad's penchant for unusual gadgets really saved the day. This one doesn't even have a name. I punctured the holes by squeezing the handles (like pliers) to lift the needle, placing the papers beneath the sharp needle, letting go - in went the needle, out it went as I squeezed the handles again - and then, there was a perfectly rounded hole. My palm was also aching because of the spring in the gadget. I had to squeeze the gadget four times for each booklet. So I had to do this 720 times! My palm is still sore as I'm typing this.
Well, Xinyi and June helped with the hole-puncturing after seeing my red and bruised palm. They had been tying the threads while my mom put the finishing touch on each knot - tying more knots on the basic one to form a tiny rosette.
We finished just in time for dinner, and after a hearty meal, I sent my friends home (they live really close by, and I knew they would be tired after this afternoon so I wanted to get them home fast to recover!) and then arranged all the booklets in a box. Ready and waiting for July 19th!
Posted by Monoceros at July 6, 2003 11:38 PM