The pleasure of finishing things

The notebook would not lie flat. I had folded the paper carefully, measured the holes twice and pulled the thread so tight that the cover buckled. On the table it looked as if it were trying to close itself before anyone could write in it.

This was my second attempt. The first consisted of loose pages and a piece of card in a drawer, where it had been waiting for better paper, better thread and a free afternoon since January.

In April I took a short bookbinding class. We worked around a long table with cutting mats and mugs pushed well away from the paper. The teacher showed us a simple pamphlet stitch. When I asked how to make the edges perfectly even, she handed me a bone folder and suggested I finish the sewing first.

I had been about to start again. She had noticed.

One cover, three holes

At home I set out enough material for a single notebook. Eight sheets, a cream cover, a length of rust-coloured thread. Choosing the cover had already taken longer than cutting it. I put the other papers away.

The practical work was fairly modest. Fold the sheets together. Mark three holes along the spine. Pierce through the folded stack. Sew out through the middle, in through one end, through the other and back to the middle. I checked my class notes at every step, turning the notebook over until I lost track of which side I was looking at.

When it was sewn, I could see that the top hole was slightly off centre. A page had a grubby corner. The cover stuck out farther at the bottom than at the top. None of this prevented me from opening it, but I felt an immediate urge to make a better one before using this one.

Instead I wrote the date on the first page. Then I wrote a shopping list. It was an inelegant beginning for an object I had spent so long imagining.

The tight spine eased after a few days. The notebook fitted into my coat pocket, and the cover picked up a coffee mark that made the grubby corner less conspicuous. I started using it for measurements, book titles and sentences I wanted to try in a letter. Half the pages are full now.

The next one

There is a second finished notebook on my desk. I left a little more room in the stitching and used a scrap of card to protect the paper while making the holes. The edges still aren't perfectly even. I can live with that, particularly as trimming them would require another tool and a steadier hand.

Finishing the first gave me quite specific information. I liked the size. I needed fewer pages. I preferred a cover that bent in my pocket. None of those decisions became clear while the materials sat in the drawer.

I still have unfinished work around the house. A hem, a half-written letter, a shelf that needs sanding. I don't feel obliged to turn all of it into a lesson in perseverance. Some of it will be abandoned. But I have stopped keeping the notebooks for an occasion important enough to deserve them.

This morning I used the newest one to work out how much compost would fit in three pots. The arithmetic was wrong. The paper was excellent.