I just finished my 100th hand-bound notebook this morning.

It hit me that a decade ago, I was just gluing pages into cereal boxes for practice. What's a project that made you feel like you'd finally 'arrived' in the craft?

3 comments

3 Comments

milawright12d ago

One hundred notebooks is a serious milestone, that's amazing. I remember the first time I sewed a dress that actually fit my shoulders right, after years of wonky armholes. It was a simple linen shift, but putting it on felt like magic. What was the first notebook you made where you thought, yeah, this is actually good now?

rowan66612d ago

Actually it was the hundredth one that felt right, not the first. The early ones had glue everywhere and the pages were all wavy. Number 100 was the first time the binding lay flat when you opened it, and the cover didn't feel like it would fall off. That's the one still on my desk, full of grocery lists and cleaning schedules.

amygonzalez2d ago

Oh wow, that reminds me of my friend who kept baking the same sourdough loaf every week for a year. She said the real win wasn't a perfect crust, but finally getting the inside texture just right, not gummy at all. It's cool how that kind of practice just clicks at some point.