Packing Part 1

Well packing is certainly quite a task.  I luckily am able to take over my brother's room to lay out all of my stuff which really helps.  So far I have backed one of my two roller duffle bags which is actually pretty good progress.
I'm going to keep this post short and just post pictures of things I have made for the trip.


The first thing is the journal I made.  I was originally just going to make a cover for an already made journal, but I decided to hand-bind it instead.  The journal is based on the one in Doctor Who and I'm really excited to use it!  I cut out paper using larger sketch paper and sewed pages together with a cheesecloth binding.  I used two small pieces of canvas for the hard cover.  Finding the leather for the cover was a bit difficult, but I was lucky to find a perfectly colored leather jacked at a thrift shop.  For the design, I glued cardboard squares to the cover and burned the design into the leather.  I attached the leather with a combination of sewing with upholstery thread and fabric glue.  It's pretty sturdy so I am hoping that it will hold together as I travel. 

I also spent a ridiculous amount of time searching the internet for coloring pages that I printed out.  I'll probably use some myself and give some to kids I meet in port.  It's kind of a silly thing, but I had fun making it.  

The last thing I've made for the trip if to measure the tilt of the rocking of the boat.  I noticed that in alumni videos, it was difficult to tell the magnitude of the rocking in bad weather.  Being a science nerd, I came up with an easily made device to measure this.  It's just a string tied to a protractor with a weight (a screw) at the end.  To use it, hold it level and then look at the string to see how many the degrees the boat is rocking to each side.  That way I will know for my own interest, and I can also incorporate it into a video to better illustrate how much we are moving.  Like I said, science nerd.  :0)  

Part 2 coming soon!