We have spent some of the Christmas period reviewing our course offer for next year and have finally got the first half of the year onto the website, although we hope there will be more courses to come.

We have decided to run the same, popular bookbinding and crochet courses as last year but have added three new courses for the 2022 season.

Slipcases are designed to protect a book leaving only the spine exposed. They can also be used to keep a set of books together such as the trilogy of The Lord of The Rings or the five books in The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Universe trilogy! (Only Douglas Adams would describe his series of five as a trilogy!)

A slipcase made for a lovely copy of Barnaby Rudge

They need to be made to the exact dimensions of the book and ideally should have 1mm clearance all around the book and it is this element which makes them such a joy to make. We have put on a course to make a slip case for a book of the person's choosing where they bring their own book to create the case for.

Portfolios are used to keep loose sheets together. I made a set of matching portfolios for a musical quartet last year which was a lovely project and so we have decided to put on a course to make an A4 portfolio.

Finally we wanted something which was a little more advanced than our introduction to bookbinding course. We realised that in our introduction to book binding we had already gone in quite high regarding the level of skills required but this new course looks at a half cloth covered book where the book is covered in paper with a cloth spine and cloth corners for protection. It allows a more colourful paper to be put on the front of the book and making the case is a little more complicated as you don't have a whole roll of book cloth to pull over the book when gauging the size required.

A half cloth covered book

A quarter cloth book would just have the spine as cloth with the rest covered in paper. This course is suitable for somebody who has done the introduction course but somebody new to bookbinding would be fine too.