Butterfly Gets a New Notebook

There are a lot of different mes involved in writing patterns. This Saturday my boys wanted to hear the end of David Tennant reading How to Speak Dragonesse, so my husband and I left them home to listen as we took our little girl errand shopping. I thought it would only take a moment to pick up a new notebook, but Dan and K wound up petting puppies and looking at tropical fish at Petco as I finally made up my mind. When I found them at last, Dan said, “It’s Butterfly, pure Butterfly, that’s why it took so long.” So here she is, explaining our latest purchase.

I was running out of room in the old design notebook – and anyway, with all those Christmas stamps my family gave me to add graphs anywhere, I really wanted a new blank notebook to put graphs in.

Staples was full of calenders, and really cute journals – but they all had lined pages. Honestly, I’m all for paisley covers, but where were the sketches and graphs supposed to go? It was much easier when Borders books was still open and I could pick up a Paperchase notebook with pockets and photosleeves. But Michaels did have sketchbooks (on sale) this Saturday. But this pretty green one wasn’t one of the ones on sale.

I didn’t realize how hard I was to please until I saw the dull read and blue notebook colors of the ones that were on sale – so off putting. Who can sketch in something the color of power suit ties?

What do tie colors have to do with friendliness?

I have no idea.

If Editor, or Patternist were writing this, they might know.

This green one looked friendlier, and the paper was thick – but not too thick. Dark green is like the color all coffee shops were in 1995 when I started drinking fancy coffee once in a while – I’m not sure why that makes it a friendly notebook – except that fancy coffee comes with caramels and biscotti.

Heather at Craftlit has been mentioning zentangles(tm) and zendoodles, and I’ve been intrigued. So I picked out a smaller notebook (I didn’t think I should buy the kit with tiles unless I was sure I was actually going to do it for sure. Maybe that was Mammabear being sensible about money.)

The black notebook needed some elastic loops and decorations. When we got home from the store, I pulled out my crop-a-dile-big-bite and chomped holes in the front cover, glued in elastic loops with tackyglue, and covered that mess with diecuts.

My daughter asked me to draw the pattern from a cereal box and help me shade it. (I looked up how to shade here and here. Oh my. I wound my own tortilon with a quilling tool. It’s actually easy to shade! I actually like doing it! Maybe I will be able to draw better submission sketches after all.)