The Box Factory Continued

More steps in the production of little boxes were completed this week. I glued the uprights of the interior spacers that will separate the bottles,

then assembled the pull tabs.

After trimming the ribbons at an angle, I inserted and glued the pull tabs,

and glued the side flaps.

All that is left to do is to glue the box ends and insert the spacers so that all 25 will look like this one.

I also spent a significant part of one day trimming labels. I bought the labels in Toronto two years ago. (It’s alright: I bought 2 packages, so I have spares!)

When I taped one of the labels onto a bottle to check the fit in the box I discovered that they are a teeny bit too tall, extending past the curve of the glass at shoulder and foot.

Now they will fit!

I did some more work on my list of 100 moments —including checking the dates of things like The Great Ice Storm of 1961— and it is almost complete. At the moment it seems the list will end when I graduate from Grade 8. It is not even remotely close to being a complete list of everything I remember from my childhood, but it provides a collection of highlights.

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In other book news:

There seem to be a lot of book fairs going on at this time of year.

If you are in the Ottawa, Ontario area on June 10, you might want to check out the schedule for Prose in the Park here.

The Rose City Book and Paper Fair will be held in Portland, Oregon June 16 and 17. Find out more here.

There are book fairs all over England next week. There’s a comprehensive schedule here.

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In knitting news:

I finished the sea green shawl.

I have almost finished another asymmetrical scarf/shawl. (Knitting these is sufficiently mindless  that I knitted my way through a live guitar concert last night.) Here’s a close-up of a section that includes some variegated sock yarn.

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Phobia alert: If you get creeped out by caterpillars, please do not look beyond this point.

We are in one (I hope the last for now) of the peak years in the forest tent caterpillar cycle. Although they mostly eat the leaves of trembling aspen, they will also eat the leaves (and flowers) of other species.

David spent a few days trying to save some Saskatoon bushes, regularly removing the caterpillars by hand.

He has since given up on those, but seems to be keeping the level of damage down applying the same procedure to our Nanking cherries.

In a cluster like the one in David’s photo below they can be quite attractive.

It’s just that there are so very many of them and they are everywhere! When the caterpillars have eaten their way to the top of a tree, they drop off or lower themselves on a silken thread, walk until they come to another vertical surface, then walk up until they find food. Here’s David’s picture (taken this morning) of the north side of our house.

I try not to think about the possible number of caterpillars dying of starvation in our attic. We are hoping for an irruption of black-billed cuckoos.

Apparently they are the only bird that will eat forest tent caterpillars.