Mory, the notebooks you write in, do you bind them yourself? Or do you know of a good bookbinder who does? And which materials are your favorite? uwu
I do indeed bind my own journals, yes, when I've the time and materials available. It's a wonderfully meditative craft, one that was taught to me young; the Temple in Balmora never had any shortage of books needing rebinding or pilgrim's handbooks needing assembly. To this day the motions are all deep muscle-memory to me. I can't imagine how many thousands of pages my hands have laid and stitched and cut over the years...
On Vvardenfell, the tradition was to 'bind like with like'; a tome on Telvanni architecture might have its covers bound in preserved mycelium, for example. This tradition extended to the binding of holy scripture, though in a more metaphorical manner, spawning endless ecumenical debate...
Some argued that Truth was most often symbolized by water, and thus the skins and resins of dreugh ought to be used to honor the sacred truth within such writings. Others, more pedantic than I, pointed out that the sea's waters were under the purview of Sotha Sil, and that therefore fish glues like isinglass should only be used to bind books of Lord Seht's influence and studies, suggesting that the skins of cliffracers be used for the writings of Vivec so as to honor the Lord of the Middle Air. And then would come the bickering over whether utilizing such winged vermin would be a profaning insult, and perhaps some sniping over just what Mardyn suggested we glue these Homilies Of Blessed Almalexia together with if he was so smart, and some barbs about milking starlight into gluepots would get slung at Mardyn until he shut up and finished those binding boards...
The intellectual rigors of academic theology.
In Cyrodiil, when gold was plentiful, I would send for fine Nordic isinglass for my bookbinding, made from great sturgeons native to Skyrim's White River. Now, finding myself in Skyrim by the very banks of the White, I may buy the same isinglass for a pittance, but I dare not. You see, Nordic isinglass is the finest glue for bookbinding... Unless it freezes, whereupon it cracks and becomes hopelessly brittle. Look here, my journal is like a willow in Sun's Dusk: one hard frost, and the leaves start falling. I'll have to make another soon...
Hmm. Bookbinders, bookbinders... Now that's a difficult thing to answer. Here, I've only a few persons I would trust, none of them bookbinders. These are times of war, and it is child's play for any paid-off stationery clerk with an enchanter's kit to lace those cheap journals with hidden dictation enchantments for the purposes of spycraft. If you would keep your writings private, dear, it pays to remember this. All sides pay well for information.
(It's been years since I've seen any amulets or rings bearing useful enchantment-detecting properties, and even then they were perilously expensive. Don't despair, however, for a book may only be enchanted once, which can be turned to your advantage. For but a little gold (or a few rats, if you fill your own soul gems), you may have some small enchantment placed upon your new journal by any local artificer. Something cheap and inconsequential. Muffle, perhaps. It doesn't matter. If the enchantment takes, then no further enchantments may be placed upon it, and you can rest easy knowing that no spies have tainted it. If it doesn't, then you will know to burn that book immediately, or fill it with vulgar invective and waste some shadowy investigator's time.)
As for my favourite materials, oh... Fawn skin, I think, for the cover, tanned in alder-leaf and Pelletine sumach liquor in an iron pot for a year, and dressed with oil rendered from a young female badger (be wary not to get cheaper badger oil rendered from the old boars, the stench is terrible). The leather's color becomes like that of gathering storm clouds, quite beautiful. Brass for the cornerplates, engraved if I can get it. Linen laceweaver's line for the thread, of course, at least three-stranded but still quite fine, or else the spine will bulk out too far.
As for the paper, I've never had anything quite as pleasurable to write and sketch upon as this kind I found in a Khajiiti trader's stall; made from well-worn cotton rags, torn up by their children's little claws and beaten into fine little wisps, mixed in with flaxen scraps. You wouldn't imagine such fine and smooth paper could be moulded from old rags and thread-ends, but for my money there is no finer. I'd happily pass up nobleman's vellum for this, it cradles the ink so generously and never bleeds at all.
