Today has been a hard-working day so far. My fingers ache and my mind has gone all fuzzy. I never seem to know how to relax my shoulders while paring leather, so I'm a very stiff little thing at the moment. I'm sure a brownie or two will fix that too.

From here...

...to here, is a long way. I pared the leather with Schärf-Fix (the most amazing thing, I use it with real razorblades instead of those blades that come with the machine, though) and some self-made paring knives. The hinge area still needs to be pared before I can start working with my onlays.

Working with leather was pretty damn scary at first, but nowadays it's one of my favourite things. Once you accept that each leather is different and they all have a will of their own, it all gets easier. I knew from experience that this leather would be a PITA from the start (it has something to do with the colour, I think, all the light blue Harmatan leather hides I've worked with have been the same, also this is a grade 3 hide from the times I was still studying, so there are some cuts in the leather that needed to be filled and blahblah), so I had saved up some extra patience before I even began the paring process. Some leathers stretch and tear while paring, this one usually does both, no matter how sharp my knife is. Everything went really well this time, which is a bit worrying, now something must go wrong later on. My dear logic, must you be so pessimistic!

Preparing the onlays for cutting...

...cutting... and cutting... and a few more...

...no more. All cut. Now they're sorted and placed in various zip-lock bags to keep them safe from me.

If my fingers can take it, there will be some hinge paring and onlay glueing on my schedule later today. If not, I'm just going to take a long and well deserved nap. Tomorrow will be the day the moving boxes will evade this household, so we'll see how much bookbinding will happen later this week. I hope lots, but I can't promise anything.