Magic Numbers

That is just too weird!!!!!!!!

Lots of witches and mages, including me, ascribe significance to different numbers. Times and dates are big of course, with 11:11 being among the most prominent. Just as we learn to keep eyes and senses out for other signs, we learn to spot numbers.

Tonight a number popped up in an odd way, during a rather dull (all right, say "meditative") activity. Among the many things I feel I need to do before a blank Century Tome is ready for my personal use, besides sticking in pretty cover flyleaves and making sure all the glue is sound, is pagination --- page numbers. As you can imagine, for a long book this can seem tedious. I feel it's necessary precisely because of this length, however, because riding on the back of page numbers, it's then possible to add an index. A book hundreds of pages long, full of random crap entered by date? Uh, yeah. Trust me, you want a friggin' index.

Anyway, I left one page in front for the title and its design, or simply as a grace page, then began putting tiny numbers on every page corner. Now, I don't plan these books' lengths in any way; along with stacks of sketch paper, I mixed in a random number of pieces of pretty colored scrapbook backing pages as I fancied, in no special order, sewn together in six equally random, estimated-by-eyeball signatures.

Yet my paginating efforts ended smack on Page 700. (The final page, like its cousins in the front, was a soft flyleaf of decorative herbal paper that doesn't count.)

Weird !!!!!!!!!!!!!

Is there any significance to such a wackily perfect number? Who knows. I do know that seven is a rather magically loaded number, and here we have a multiple, so perhaps this book is simply welcoming my magic and telling me to not hold back in embellishing its pages. Time will tell!

Above: A wonderful example of a designer Potions kit and book in one! My practical mind can't help but point out the awkward aspects of carrying and shelving a book like this, in light of how easily those little bottles might get caught on other books, bumped or broken; besides, I'd need a lot more bottles. But this thing certainly looks wicked, and the idea of a combined kit and book holds lots of potential for creativity!

Hekate New Moon

Inside a Brewery: Packaging

"And there she goes again, with one of her weird-ass mixed drinks."

Until I do a bit of travel, I've been stalling on getting another "real" job . . . especially in light of my poor job-luck in this city. At some point I want to make something more potion-related into my work, but at the moment, I'm sticking for safety with a gig I've had for several years at a company that makes one of today's most popular "potions" --- beer.

Not in the brewing department itself, sadly, my position is a humble packaging temp at Craft Brew Alliance (formerly Widmer-Redhook). I usually work the Depalletizer, an easy task supervising the machine that loads bottles by the thousands daily onto the very head of the conveyor assembly. Robot Supervisor sounds a bit more dramatic than a mere temp, does it not? Here's a peek inside my territory.

Above and below, the robotic Depalletizer machine.

The beginning of the whole bottling operation: Hundreds of brown vitreous vessels waiting on the accumulation belt after being swept from the pallet. Like marbles, they naturally form a honeycomb or "closest-packing" stacked matrix under pressure:

The Combiner is kind of beautiful, with its many little belts, each all set faster than its neighbor to create a speed gradient that funnels bottles into a single line (the Filler, after all, can only handle a single row of bottles at once):

Like a serpentine river of brown glass, the running belt to the Filler hauls ass along its track at 550 bottles per minute. The Filler is what counts number of bottles filled, and we have quotas to meet, so I had better keep that belt full or let them know otherwise why. A catcher trough and chute collect errant bottles for recycling, since downed or chipped bottles are a danger:

Meanwhile, upstairs on the bottling floor, bottles are being filled by the thousands every hour. If we ran continuously, it would only take about 1.3 days to fill one million bottles of beer. Of course, we're often "down" for repairs on a machine, cleaning, changing beer batches or bottle types, swearing loudly, etc. etc., so we don't actually run continuously. Still, the factory runs round the clock in three shifts, except on Sundays. Filled bottles on accumulation belt await case-packing:

At the farthest other end of the line right across from the Depal, the Palletizer machine is placing filled, sealed and stamped bottles of beer on pallets . . . one every few minutes! This is also a beautiful machine to see in operation, but really, the whole thing is cool to watch:

Whups! A mixed pallet! I believe this is the only time I've seen this, in all my years here. We might've run out of boxes, or it's headed for the same destination . . . For whatever reason, they decided it didn't matter. Green and yellow signifies special Timbers edition Hefe boxes, Widmer's Hefeweitzen being the Portland Timbers' official beer:

As of a year now, they've put in a new can line next to the Palletizer. A vast litter of cute pink cans funnels from a Depal similar to mine downstairs to a separate filling operation, in this case running an order of Virtue Rose:

Cider, anyone?

I've lost track of how many different varieties of alcoholic drink we run through this place. Some of them really do have the quirkiest names, to the sardonic amusement of us workers. Perhaps this one would not be amiss in an attempt to make butterbeer?

Aaaaand regardless, Yours Truly ends up with greasy Snape hardhat hair (after pretty much every shift). Sheesh, I look like I'm a scruff in my early 20s here, not a spinster pushing 40. . . .

You know it.

Still . . . there are compensations.

The breakroom always features several beers or ciders on tap. Alcohol is strictly forbidden on shift for obvious reasons --- broken glass in all directions, forklifts, finger-eating conveyor belts and suchlike --- but a drink is permitted once a shift is over. Typical of a potions lover, many times I've mixed tap selections with each other or with whichever Gatorade concentrate is available at the pump to create some truly odd concoctions of occasionally unpleasant hue, if refreshing:

"Just call it grog!!!"  For some reason, there's a big glass vase in the cabinet along with the cups. Post-shift, my coworker buddy just goes straight for this flower growler:

Beer: the potion of the masses! Makes the world go round, and stupid people act even stupider, but keeps smart people from getting too uptight. Try our new flavor, yet another fruity IPA, and be sure to drive safe!

Winter Walk, Sublime State of Mind

Winter Project: Century Tomes

It seems in any story involving witches, magical formulae, ancient legend, mystical spells or all the above, there's alllways a special book. In real life, sadly, these don't often turn up. Which is why I make mine!

Since before moving in September, I've been working on completing a couple of new leatherbound books for recipes and log entries on Potistry, herbs, medicine and magic. I wanted these designed to withstand decades if not centuries of use, which means solid construction, not merely the fanciful trinkets of so many neo-Wiccans, dabblers or teen fans! While still nifty-looking, these books are built like bricks and mean business. Both their high page count and intended longevity (barring mildew or some fanatic who burns books) have led me to call them "Century Tomes".

Right now I'm just making two more, almost finished with what will be Potus II, or my logbook's 2nd volume, and a handwrit version of the Compendium of Traditional Potions (seriously. Because what happens if the Internet goes down?! I mean). Potus II will be the one with the brown cover, the Compendium bound in black. I was aiming for Christmas as a by-date, but am still pleased with progress.

Potus II, freshly tie-bound but still naked! I used my quirky thick-signature method of drilling, gluing and binding the pages. Spine glue is archival PVA, the twine is kite string where I can't find linen; the one pink cover link is because I ran out of the other color cord! I can't emboss, but I can create a raised design using wood, hide glue and filler compound.

Close-up, Potus II's tie-offs

Fixing the cover "strut" cords in place with modern hide glue

Trying cloth strips this time for extra strength. The flowers just happened to be what I had, but I'll take the cheerful colors (a shame, they'll be hidden!). Cloth wraps around under the covers and grips the end pages

Close-up of happy flower strips; the loose tie-off ends are tucked in as much as possible

Time for the leather! Binding this one took a lot of teeth-gritting and tugging and swearing, but I eventually got the multiple bits of binding string tight enough. First, though, I pushed leather into the recesses of the front cover design. The gluing and binding happen in stages.

Close-up of leather-binding stage. Anyone who thinks crafts are for sissies ought to try binding a book of this size. This also was not the thinnest leather for the job, and thus not the easiest to work with.

Spine of Potus II in binding, waiting a couple days to make sure glue is fully dried

Bondage straps off! What a nice looking book!

A bit hard to get leather to stick in those cracks.

Out of folds of leather and chaos, a book materializes.

I painted a green wash in the cover recesses for extra finesse, and the covers have been finished, the panels and ends of the spine wrapped and glued. Second unfinished tome at lower right

Potus II's inflaps and cover pages are made of pretty plant-fiber papers and an Italian wildflower poster.

The Compendium and its Gothic recessed cover after tie-off, but before leather is added

Leather-binding time for the Compenium's spine! As before, I pressed leather into its front cover design first, and separately. This book-gluing business is tedious, done in multiple stages.

Gluing leather across the spine, waiting until it dries

Compendium, back cover. Using several directions of tied string, I made sure the leather was neatly pressed around all sides of the strut-cords' anchor points where they pass through the cover boards, for both a neat appearance and solid construction.

Strings come off! Seriously tight.

A successful binding job, I'd say. The texture of this black leather, slightly thinner than the brown, is marvelously soft.