The Spoon.

THE SPOON

This is my spoon.  There are many like it, but this one is mine.  

What's a spoon got to do with nobookswereharmed.co.uk?
E-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g

Let's go right back to the start. Somewhere around early summer 2014.
I'd seen a photo of an oriental lantern made from a book.  A lantern!  From a BOOK.  So, for reasons I still can't explain, this completely non arty, non crafty person went home from her very normal job (working in the family pet shop), and chose a crappy paperback, and set about working out how to create something resembling the lantern she'd seen.  I'd love to add a photo here, but I've poured through my laptop and can't find it - I know a couple exist, but maybe on a defunct phone. This is a more recent, and far neater version, than that, life changing, first attempt...

So I make a lantern.  And it blew. my. mind.  I then spent weeks playing with creating similar forms, and geometric type shapes.  Unbeknownst to me, this was the very inception of what was to become No Books Were Harmed. More on that another day.  Anyhoo.  Before very long, I realised I was burning my finger tips and deforming my nails, from creasing all the pages, and I thought how handy it would be to use something with a strong edge.  What does a tea addict always have to hand?  A teaspoon, of course!   So I started using the edge of The Teaspoon, and have never folded a page with my bare fingers ever since.  

A couple of funny moments were to follow, in my story of The Spoon. 

One day, Mr No Books was in the No Books HQ office (although it was still a spare room then.  It's not a spare room any more haha), and for some uncharacteristic reason, he 'tidied up', and took The Spoon away to wash.  I did not know this.  The next time I went in to play with my books, I couldn't find The Spoon anywhere, and he confessed what he'd done. I spent a good 15 minutes standing in the kitchen, picking up each tea spoon in turn, clutching them to my chest with eyes closed, and mentally asking 'is it you?'.  Not one of the little bastards answered me, so I selected one at random, and from that day to this, THAT became The Spoon.  

The Spoon actually lives in a wee slidey out bit of my desk, and that's the only thing that lives there, and the only place it EVER goes.  Never leaves my desk - not like pens that wander - The Spoon is either actively folding, or is tucked away safe.


So fast forward however long, and I'm delivering my first ever Introduction To The Art Of Book Folding Workshop, and I get to the point where I ask everyone to take a credit/Tesco/library card out of their purse, as that's what we're going to fold with, to save our fingers...and one lady asked "is there a reason you don't use a bone folder?"
I can't stress this enough.
There was a VERY good reason that I don't use a bone folder. 
I'd never heard of one hahahaha

Completely self taught, never had anything to do with any craft of any kind, until that fateful day I happened to see a lantern, it hadn't occurred to me there'd be actual tools for actually creasing paper hahahaha As with most things in life, before then, since then, and no doubt in years to come, I've winged everything, and just do my own thang! And you know what?  My own thang tends to work out just fine!

Yeah. So.  The Spoon.  
My literal right hand tool.

~ Jo

WATCH THE SPOON IN ACTION!