I'm wacky, I know

I did something last night that I have never done before. I ironed the pages of a hymnal!

Let me explain. No, I’m not completely losing it, I had a purpose. :) The hymnal for the piano here at church is one of those 3-ring deals. I use the word “deal” loosely because sometimes they are more trouble than they are worth! That was getting to be the case with this one. All of the pages were bent and many have holes that are ripped out. It’s a bit disheartening to open the hymnal, trying to play for congregational singing, and have half the pages fall into your lap.

So I decided to try to fix some of them. Many had the corners folded over on the side that the holes for the rings are. This was making the book thicker than it should be, which in turn was making it hard to shut. If the book wasn’t shut carefully, things would get even worse. So I reasoned, if I can flatten out those corners, maybe the whole thing will lay flat again.

So I brought the book home and tried it out. I set the iron on the lowest setting and turned the steam off. I took out the first page and put a cloth over it to see how it would work. I did a couple pages that way, but found that the cloth wasn’t really letting the heat get through, and therefore wasn’t really doing much. So I licked my finger and felt the iron. I decided it was cool enough to just iron directly on the page. So that is what I did. I got over half the book done! It is kind of a slow process, but I think it is working. I’m excited to get them all done and see how it looks!

Some of the pages are in such bad disrepair that I am going to have to pick up some reinforcers for the holes. I don’t like to do that, because it makes the book thicker than it should be and can be even more trouble than its worth, but some are so bad that I will have to.

Hopefully I will finish ironing the pages tonight, and pick up the reinforcers tomorrow. I will let you know how it turns out!