As the end of 2025 approached, I looked back on my year with a sense of disappointment in myself. I felt that I had achieved much, but that I had stalled in my growth as a person. My gains had all been in service of, or to function for, others, and those parts of myself that made up my life — my garden, my desire to provide for my family through growing our food, my need to learn and teach and to pass on skills, my creative drive to make our small life beautiful — had all been pushed to the side.

I made a very small amount of money for the amount of mental labour and effort I had put into trying to improve things for others, but the toll it had taken on other parts of my life, and on my relationships, was immense.

So, I needed something to put the year to rest with the feeling that I had achieved something small for myself. As my birthday was coming up, and Russell was casting around for something he could get me to celebrate, I knew that what I wanted was to learn a new skill.

For a few years now I have had the idea in the back of my head that I would like to learn bookbinding. Specifically how to sew and case a hardback book. There is a special book that I would like to work on in the future, and I would love to be comfortable in the skills it would take to preserve this piece of text forever.

I directed Russell to where he could get me a starter kit of materials, and for my birthday, with paid work behind me for the year and a little more peace and space for contentment in my head, I dove in to learning the new skill, and over the winter solstice through to Christmas Day I made a few minutes here and there between stages or drying glue and measuring to make myself my first ever hardbound notebook.

This is a plain paper notebook with a book cloth spine and hinge, with a ¾ paper design cover.

I swapped out the provided cream endpapers for solid red endpapers to match the bookmark ribbon and the book cloth on the spine. I also gave myself one extra little step: to centre the paper design to the visible part of the cover design.

The 96 page, plain paper notebook turned out perfect. I, a guilty perfectionist, am even amazed at how perfectly it turned out. It is balanced, clean, neat. It is actually perfect, a fact I wholly attribute to the good materials and instructions found at Learn Bookbinding.

Onwards

Because I don’t think you should ever sit still on a new skill, I moved straight onto creating a second book.

For this one I swapped out the ¾ paper and cloth spine book case cover for a fully fabric cover. For the endpapers I chose to use some of my Hintze Hall double-sided black and white wrapping paper, which I have been saving like a dragon over her gold horde, knowing that it was always going to be for something more than wrapping gifts and being chucked away.

I should love this book more, but actually I cannot stand the book cloth that I bought online. It does not feel nice in the hands, but I also cannot at this point invest in a longer sheet amount of nice book cloth.

Side Quest: I have ordered the materials to make my own book cloth from my own cotton and linen fabrics.

To help improve the bookcloth a little I cut a design from heat transfer vinyl to decorate the cover. If I had a nicer book cloth I would have drawn and cut a design that took architectural elements of the endpaper design to decorate the cover, but instead I found a simple ogee design reminiscent of plump onions and used that for simplicity.

The notebook is well made, and like the first notebook, it lies beautifully flat with ease, and the sewn signatures sit beautifully in their case. As a notebook it is perfect.

I am glad to have finished the year with a new skill in hand, and am looking forward to further experimenting and embracing this new skill.

I don’t make New Year’s resolutions — I don’t believe they work and I don’t believe that the pressure and possible disappointment are worth it — but I do want to make sure that I do not lose myself this year. I won’t say that I will always put myself first, but I don’t want to serve everybody else at the detriment to being me anymore, and if something has got to give, I don’t want that to continue being at the cost of those things that make my life worth living.