WE'D
HEARD ABOUT harlequin ladybirds reaching York on the local
news on Friday and the next morning Barbara called me when she spotted one
walking across our patio. We're not 100% sure on its identity, as we've never
seen one before, but we felt that its blocky pattern was unlike our regular
ladybirds, although it
wasn't
dramatically
bigger.
It's
been described
as 'the
most invasive ladybird on Earth' and, after spreading rapidly across North
America, it is now making progress across the UK. It reached Yorkshire last
year.
Link: Harlequin Ladybird Survey
Wasps are
looking for a place to spend the winter - we let a large wasp out of the back
bedroom this weekend. This morning a wasp flew into a web in the corner of
the lounge window - outside I mean, not in the room - and the spider came out
of its lair in the corner to investigate. It stopped six inches away from the
struggling wasp to assess the situation probably by the vibrations on the silk
strands of the web but perhaps it could also see the yellow and black warning
stripes. Like the red and black of the ladybird, this is a warning to predators.
The spider scuttled back to its lair and the wasp soon escaped.
The rabbit in our garden isn't doing well. Despite suffering
from myxomatosis, it wanders around eating whatever takes its fancy as it always
has but it seems to be
losing
weight and those
swollen eyes aren't showing any sign of clearing up.
A
Book and its Cover
My
old copy of Village Walks in West Yorkshire got
some rough treatment when, a few years ago, Barbara and I re-checked all
20 walks for the new edition. The rain-soaked pages have curled up
at the edges but the binding has held them firmly in place. This kind of
binding, shown in close-up on a newer copy of the book (right) is
known as notch
binding. The notching of the sections of the book allows glue to
penetrate when the cover is attached.
Perfect Binding
Notch
binding is inherently stronger than perfect
binding, which is a process where pages are trimmed along the spine
before they're glued into the cover. I’ve
just taken a perfect bound book off the shelf and attempted to open it flat (left).
It
snapped along the spine. Most perfect binding is tougher than this example,
but I'm still not keen on it.
My Sushi Sketchbooks and local interest guides have
all been stapled, or saddle stitched as its called in the
trade. This is fine up to about 48 pages, especially if you're using thinner
paper, but my next booklet will be 64 pages
and, as you can see from the 72 page booklet (above), when you get
to that
sort of thickness, the pages start to splay out from the staples.
I will try notch bound for my next booklet, the one about drawing
from nature.
Link: 9/3/2011, The booklet, Drawing on Reserves worked well with its notch binding, I'd certainly use it again, but if you're interested in perfect binding, I've heard from a Leeds firm Newbind who specialise in 'short to medium run, high strength/quality perfect binding,our books are virtually indestructable under normal use'. They tell me that they use special equipment to test the books and often shows double the required strength of British standard; so that would definitely stand up to the worst that a walks booklet would have to go through - even in rain-lashed West Yorkshire!