Solo Its Time To Protect Some Memories

[Nya Winters]

Timestamp: 85th of Fall, 517 AV

Mathias often entertained Nya in the evenings. The Kelvic would stretch out either in human form or in her Talderian Forest Cat guise and relax with him in the evenings. She would often bring food that he would cook. She wasn’t much of a cook, but indeed seemed to enjoy hunting, even if sometimes she killed far more than she actually needed. No one seemed to mind or call her wasteful because the Kelvic shared everything she caught with everyone, even if it was just a few mangos gathered up in a bag or some crabs chased from tidepools on sharktooth point. Mathias seemed to understand her inherent loneliness and often entertained her with a story or two from his life or the life of one of his relatives or one of the other Founders.

He often took to smoking a pipe (which Nya loved the smell of but didn’t care for the smoke) and quietly writing in his journal when he wasn’t in the mood to storytell. Nya loved watching him dip his glass pen into the ink and write a few lines before he had to redip the pen. The end of the glass pen was a bulb that was slightly twisted with multiple channels… so when he dipped his ink, those channels would fill, and he could write with it as the ink slowly drained down the grooves that were twisted around the tip. Nya loved the smell of the ink and the scratching of the glass against paper. She loved it so much in fact that Mathias had traded her some of her leatherwork for a blank journal, a glass pen, and a small bottle of black ink. Nya had been writing in her journal ever since.

However, it wasn’t the same. Mathias’ journal was just like hers except it was wrapped in a nice leather cover that slide on and off the journal. Nya coveted it. It smelled so good, like the old man himself, and was covered with a beautiful patina from ow many times he’d handled it. The cover was banged up and dented with scratches all over it. She wanted one for herself.

So she waited for Mathias to be done writing for the night and asked him for a favor. “Mathias, do you think I could borrow your leather journal cover over night? I want to use it as a pattern – which won’t hurt it at all – to make some new ones. If you let me take it home, I can regloss it too, which it needs, and I’ll let you pick from one of the journals I make so you can have your choice of a new one to go with your old one. And you can keep that new one or even gift it to someone you know might like one…. I won’t mind.” Nya wasn’t much of a negotiator, but in this case she thought she was giving him a pretty sweet deal. Mathias seemed to consider it sweet as well.

“Normally, Nya bright, I wouldn’t part with it. But I know you want one and you have the ability to make one if you had a pattern. I can’t get you one because I got this one in Zeltiva and I doubt I will be back there again. You don’t have to gloss it or anything. You don’t have to give me a new one unless you really want too. But because its you, yes, as long as you promise to have a care with it, I will let you borrow it for the night.” He said, carefully opening the journal, pulling for the book he’d slipped inside, and removing the glass pen from its attached holder. He handed the whole thing to Nya minus his journal he had just chimes before been writing in.

“Thank you!” Nya said, spontaneously hugging the man and trying to extract herself so she could go work on a pattern. “I’’ll be right back with it…. I mean right back in the morning!” She said, gently taking the cover from him and bounding off down the beach towards her own home.

Mathias laughed. It was the last thing Nya heard before the sea and the sounds of the waves on the sand drowned out any hope at communication. Hussling fast, Nya broke into a loose long-strided run. She kept in shape having a claim so far from The Mercantile and insisting on visiting it or Mathias and Randal so frequently. They all lived together and it was definitely all on the other side of Syka. Nya wondered if that meant that area of Syka, a hundred years from now, would be considered the wealthy suburbs.

Near a half hour later, sweating profusely from her run, Nya left the journal on her workbench and ran down to the surf to cool off and wash the sweat off her body, and came back up with her breathing back to normal and ready to work. She’d stripped off her clothing, belted on a loincloth, and looked over the journal.

There were a few things Nya was going to do first before she crafted herself a journal cover. One of those things included selecting leather to use to build her own, and carefully tracing out Mathias’ journal on parchment so she could start keeping some templates around for things she’d want to build again. Nya had very little parchment so she used it sparingly and added it to a list she kept above one of her workbenches of things she wanted to order from James when he made a run on The Veronica.

Retrieving her precious parchment, Nya spread it out and laid the journal, spread out, open across it. She carefully traced its edges which were only slightly bigger than the journal itself, and made a note of where it was stitched and where the pen loops rested. Then she got out her scissors, carefully cut out the template, and went to fetch her own journal. She wrapped it around her own journal, checking the fit, and finding it perfect. Nya smiled at that… carefully rested Mathias’ journal cover to the side, and started to sort leather after labeling the template for what it was… “Journal Covers”


1044=50,143/50,000 DONE!!!

[Nya Winters]

Nya selected a slab of her vegetable tanned leather and laid it out on her worktable. Sure the table was just a slab of stone she’d dragged in from the beach, but it was working perfectly fine for her needs. Worn smooth by the tide and relatively flat, it worked better perhaps than a planned wooden surface and it wasn’t going to scar like wood would being continually worked on with her sharp tools. The tanned leather was large enough to cut out several jouranls, perhaps a half dozen.

Nya laid the leather right side up so she could see the flaws and inverted the template so she was cutting it backwards. That way the side she saw was the side that would be facing out. And she could position the journals on the smoothest part of the leather. Taking her charcoal stick, she carefully traced around the template, repeating the process until she had six journals outlined on the exposed leather. Then she set the template aside.

Taking a sharp knife, Nya carefully began to cut out the patterns. She cut the rounded edges square, being careful to leave enough excess leather so she could go back with her leather sheers and carefully round the corners. Then, once these were cut out, she set them aside and pulled out her strap cutter. Using the scrap that was left from the leather piece, she set the strap cutter to cut three sets of 1/2x2 inch strips, one for each journal. These would become the pen loops that would fit on the outside of the leather.

Next, she got out her powdered dyes and mixed up a small jar of leather dye. Taking a dobber, she dipped it into the water dye and ran around the edges of each cut out journal, dying the edges so she could finish them leather. Then she laid each piece of leather flat and carefully began to dye each piece. She skipped dying the rough inside, but instead focused on the surfaces that would be facing outward. She wanted to keep the inside rough and undyed so it would grip the blank book journals and not slide around.

Nya laid out the pen loops and dyed them just as diligently. She wanted to make sure they were all evenly took color and looked matching. It was one of her first and hardest lessons, making the same things out of the same leather so the dye lots matched. That was why it was so important to line things up with the templates so there were scraps for things like the pen loops. If she didn’t plan ahead, the projects she made to earn a living would be awkward.

The next step was to gloss the surfaces. Nya got out a clean cloth from her Leatherworking Kit and then dug out a small jar of gloss. Setting the jar of dye aside, she tightened the lid on it and stashed it on the side of her workstation so she could use the remainder of the mixed up dye later. She wanted to get the gloss on first because it took time to dry. In Syka, rather than overnight, she only had to wait six bells or so. That was not actually very long, especially if she did the work in the morning so she could take advantage of the midday heat.

[Nya Winters]

Glossing was the easiest thing in the world. All she simply had to do was use the cloth to dip in the gloss and rub it lightly over the dyed surfaces. The surfaces took on a glaze that made it shiny and bright, bringing out not only the best of the color of the dye but highlighting all the imperfections in the leather that gave it character.

Nya hummed as she worked, an old tune to her lord Zulrav. The newly learned Leathercrafter was sad and soon the words to the old song were spilling forth. Nya didn’t have much of a singing voice, at least not one that was well practiced, but she did indeed love to sing, especially when she was alone.

“Who has seen the wind?
Neither I nor you.

But when the leaves hang trembling,
The wind is passing through.

Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I.

But when the trees bow down their heads,
The wind is passing by.”

Nya took over a bell to gloss all the journal covers and their pen holders. She was careful as she did so, rubbing in the gloss and making the job a good one. The Kelvic was a perfectionist and didn’t mind taking the time to do it right. If she put the covers for sale in the mercantile then she’d want them to sell as quality items, not as cheaply made hastily cobbled together items.

Anything worth doing was worth doing well. Noon broke and it was time for hunting, a swim to cool off, and a long nap in the sun. Nya’s routine rarely changed. She’d formed habits in Syka that lead to good things, productive things, that kept her mind busy and untroubled by memories of the past.

And so it was that she woke up refreshed, relaxed, and ready to tackle more of the journal work. There were two pieces that needed to be glued together then stitched. Nya took her charcoal, sharpened it to a fine point, and used her ruler to mark the 1/8th of an inch wide glue lines for the sleeve on the rough side of the project. Then she uncapped her quickly dwindling glue jar and taking a small hand-made paintbrush (that she had to throw away after each use) she carefully applied a thin coat of the glue within the glue lines. She blew on them carefully before she folded the left cover sleeve to the left cover, rough sides together. She paid special attention to making sure the edges aligned flush with each other. And she sat quietly, holding them together, for a few chimes before laying them out on her workstation and placing heavy rocks on each one. She gave the glue twenty chimes to dry before she glued the right sides and the right flaps together carefully. Then she repeated, weighing the covers down with heavy stones and waiting for the glue to dry.

Nya would have to make new glue soon. The Veronica simply couldn’t be depended upon to make that many trips and bring her jars of such things over and over again. She needed to improvise and make do with what the jungle could provide.

She sang as she waited, once more caught up in songs from her childhood, the same ones her mother used to sing to her after she’d identified what the Gnosis Mark on Nya’s shoulder was at birth.

“The fire of love was burning, yet so low
That in the dark we scarce could see its rays,
And in the light of perfect-placid days

Nothing but smouldering embers dull and slow.
Vainly, for love's delight, we sought to throw

New pleasures on the pyre to make it blaze:
In life's calm air and tranquil-prosperous ways
We missed the radiant heat of long ago.

Then in the night, a night of sad alarms,
Bitter with pain and black with fog of fears,
That drove us trembling to each other's arms --
Across the gulf of darkness and salt tears,

Into life's calm the wind of sorrow came,
And fanned the fire of love to clearest flame.”

By the time she was done with her song, the journal covers were ready for the next step.

[Nya Winters]

Now she basically had a single piece of leather with two sleeves on each side that a journal could be slipped into. However, the glue wouldn’t hold forever. The glue sealed the two pieces of leather together but the finished product – as Nya studied Mathias’ journal cover and learned – actually consisted of someone grooving the inside edges of both sleeves and stitching them. It made the cover look finer and made the sleeves themselves impossible to come off if the leather were to get wet or dunked in either the ocean or any number of bodies of water surrounding them.

Nya knew how to proceed next. She pulled out her adjustable stitching groover and cut a 1/8th inch stitching groove along the inside edge of both sides of her covers. She had to repeat this process over and over again for all six covers, so her arm ached after she did it. The groover was a precision tool that cut a small groove along the edge that made it impossible to not make neat stitches since the stitches rested in the groove as she made them.

Once the grooves were cut, Nya got out the prickling iron – using the one with ten punches – and used her mallet to hammer the holes into the groove, pre-cutting where her stitches would go. Since she’d rounded the corners, Nya got as close as she could with the long ten-tined prickling iron, and then switched to the singular tined prickling iron to go gently around the curves where the straight length of the ten-tined prickling iron couldn’t go. Her arm ached as she pounded holes, over and over. But it got some of Nya’s frustration out. And in the end, finishing with stitches was so much easier when the holes were precut.

Next Nya turned her attention to the pen loops. She punched two stitch holes in one both ends of each of them. This took a lot less time than pre-punching all the stitch holes in the actual journals did. Once those were done, Nya set the pen loops aside and retrieved her stitch horse.

She took the first journal out and slid it into the stitch horse so that only the edge where the right side sleeve was sticking out. Then she threaded double needles and started a saddle stitch after cutting an eight times length of waxed thread to use. Beginning at the bottom, Nya stitched upwards and around the corners slowly, weaving the saddle stitch in and out of itself like she learned to do. When she got to where the pen loops went, she simply fitted the double holes against the holes on the journal and sewed them in as if they were normal parts of the journal. That left the stitch unbroken for the loop and perfect for the person that would eventually own the journal to fit a stick of charcoal or even a glass writing pen into the loop to keep it safe next to the journal.

When she was done with the right side, she loosened the stitching horse, flipped the journal in it, and began to stitch the left side exactly like she had the right side. The only thing different was that there was no pen loop sewn in.

Nya took bells to sew all of them. Carefully, methodically, she practiced her stitches and practiced her perfectionism, only having to redo one of them when she sewed up on right side without the pen loop. That mistake cost her another bell of carefully pulling stitches and redoing them with the loop in place.

When she was done, she examined her journals and compared them with Mathias’ journal. There was a notable difference.

[Nya Winters]

Nya ran a careful thumb around Mathias’ journal and then ran a thumb around her own. Mathias’ journal cover was smoother, more professionally finished. The Kelvic studied it intently trying to decide what was done. She realized, upon closer examination, that his edges were beveled, re-dyed, and then burnished. Nya sighed with disappointment. They looked far neater than hers and she knew she needed to finish hers properly. But after assembling and sewing the seven journals, she was really really tired of working on them and wanted them finished.

Mass production, Nya decided, was not really for her. She needed to perhaps work on one project at a time to hold her interest and keep her impatience in check.

But regardless for now she had to get things done… and that meant beveling the stitch edges. She took out her edge beveler and gently dragged it around the edge. The beveler effectively cut through the two layers and glued and stitched leather and gently rounded them so they had a neat finished look. Unfortunately, that turned them pale again, trimming off where she’d carefully died before. That meant Nya had to fetch out her jar of mixed dye – thankfully she had overage – and a tiny dobber that she dipped into the dye (after she remixed it) and carefully ran the fresh dye around the edge of the journals, turning the fresh pale cut back into the dark layer the rest of the journal had.

Nya had to set them aside then, letting the dye dry for part of the day, while she took time to clean her workshop area and clear the scraps off the ground from where she’d basically shaved the leather with the beveler. She broke her fast with fruit she had on hand, then bathed quickly in the sea to cool down. When she was done with this noon-time routine, the journals were dry.

The next step was taking her wax bar and waxing each of the edges of the journals where she’d beveled. That was prep work for taking her wooden burnisher and dragging it along the edges. The burnisher smoothed the wax down into the freshly rounded edge and neatly finished the edges so there was a smooth transition from edge to stitched seam to actual cover. She also burnshed the edges of the pen loops, though that was harder and frustrating due to the tiny size of the loop and the large size of her wooden burnishing tool.

When she was done Nya had a pile of seven journals. She took the top one off the pile and carefully examined it. The Kelvic loved the feel and smell of the leather. She rose with it to go fetch her journal. She re-settled into her chair and gently opened the journal cover up. Then she slipped one edge of her journal into the sleeves, then the other edge, closing the leather cover around the journal. Nya inhaled deeply, slipped her glass pen into the pen loop, and set her journal alongside Mathias’ empty cover.

It was a decent copy. She was proud. And now she didn’t have to send money with James, pay his shipping, and wait for her own cover. She’d made one herself. A slow smile spread across her face as she quickly pocketed a jar of ink, snatched up her journal along with Mathias’ empty cover, and headed to Mathias’ bungalow. She’d return his cover, show him hers, and ask if the man wanted to write with her as the sun set. Nya was fairly sure she could talk him into it. After all, the man loved words, loved quiet company, and loved contemplating sunsets.

[Nya Winters]

Grading

Experience: Leatherworking +5, Singing +1, Planning +2

Lore: Leatherworking: How To Make A Pattern, Leatherworking: How To Copy A Finished Piece, Leatherworking: Making And Using Pen Loops

Notes: 6 Journal Covers To Sell, One For Yourself.