Diane Again: Another Chapter

"True love stories never have endings." -Richard Bach

^ This is our latest chapter. But let me tell you the whole story.

Well, we've been at it again.

In the chilly days of January, a certain birthday elf left a surprise at my door.

Inside this darling little package was a gift from my friend, Heidi, and wouldn't you know, the latest chapter in the long, sweet story of our collaborative game.

^ Don't let the bare feet fool you. It was not warm.

As you may know, Heidi and I went to lunch in 2011 and since I arrived first, I texted Heidi a pic of our table top, set and ready for our meal together. That image (which is of shockingly poor quality) has been bouncing back and forth ever since, telling a story between us for all these many years. With each new version of the image, one of us adjusts it in some way and sends it off for the other to make her own change.

The chapters unfold and our story keeps growing.

^ So here's where we were: last spring, I'd sent Heidi this Easter banner. Now it was her turn to make something new for me from these cutout letters and gold cord.

She dismantled the banner, stacked the letters, coiled the gold cord on top, and took photos. From enlarged copies of those photos, she made an origami box.

^ The top and the bottom of the box are made from different images, as you'll see more clearly further down. And the cord she used to tie the box shut? I do believe it's the same cord I used to string the banner.

^ Heidi also took one of the photos she'd taken of the banner letters and coiled gold cord and created a pixelated version for a card. Super cute.

^ And the gift inside the box? A set of three magnets, each sharing a circle of our deeply layered pattern. How fun!

Now it was my turn to write the next chapter, and this time I faced an extra challenge. Heidi's gift to me actually included three different threads of our story. How was I to choose which version - the top of the box, the bottom of the box, or the card - to move ahead?

As usual, the ideal solution popped into my head just as I was falling asleep.

A book.

I decided to make a little handmade book - Heidi is a devoted keeper of journals - and use strips of all three patterns to decorate the cover.

Here, let me show you.

^From left to right, these are my photocopies of the bottom of the box, the card, and the top of the box.

First, I unfolded the top and bottom of Heidi's box, grabbed the card, and assigned my husband the task of making copies. Our printer is sublimely temperamental and he is better suited to fuss with it. Even so, he came to me with his head hung low, presenting me with the copies he'd made and confessing that the colors of these new copies were not true to the originals.

But I assured him that the name of this game is transformation and it was perfectly fine to introduce some change in my new telling of the story.

^ Next I ripped the photos into strips, an inch to two and a half inches wide, and glued them front and back, inside and out, to a folded bit of white cardstock.

^ Once the glue dried, I trimmed the edges and had myself a little book cover.

I cut a dozen pages of white printer paper to fit inside the cover, folded them in half, and used our brand new sewing machine to stitch the book together.