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As mentioned recently I have been exploring the notion of home and my place in the world a bit more with my art.  I have also been playing with different forms of accordion books and the two have come together somewhat serendipitously in this piece.

It started out as a trial/practice book - I wanted to do this double-fold accordion book and I planned to simply use interesting heavily textured paper as the insert - nothing on it, it was going to be all about the process. I prepared the concertina bit and played with the insert until I thought I had the engineering right.

In the end I felt the insert needed a bit more interest, so I began to just stitch travel lines onto it, in different directions and with ambiguous starting and finishing points. After a day of that we went away.

I returned to it after we got back, with some new ideas -  I wrote on it in my own handwriting; then hand-stitched over the handwriting. Next I added the crosses and a few more travel lines of stitching. Oh, and I also burnt incense holes - again!

All good - but when I went to put it into the concertina bit - it just didn't work. I pulled it out, tried it this way and that, checked the instructions, looked at the pictures again and then figured - actually the design is simply fundamentally flawed. Begin again.

I played with a couple of options and chose this slotted accordion option and really like it.