Is this Day 36 or 37??? Yesterday, actual Day 36, I posted photos of my other Altered Books. (You can see those if you click on the tab above.) I’m going to go ahead and keep this as Day 36.

Joe continues to explain his childhood to Pip. He had an abusive, alcoholic father. Joe and his mother would occasionally escape from him and settle down elsewhere. She’d find work and put Joe in school. But, the dad would find them, drag them back home and “hammer them” some more. This is why Joe never received an education or learned to read and write. Instead, he took up blacksmithing, his father’s trade. Joe “kep” (cared for?) his father until he died of a “purple leptic fit”. There was no money to engrave a poem Joe had written for his father’s gravestone. His mother died soon after. Joe becomes teary-eyed as he tells his story to Pip.

Here is another panel of my triptych altered book. I glued down a portion of page 39 out of the book. (I scanned it in and made a print out. This is not the actual page!) Then I painted purple circles all over. This reminds me of the “purple leptic fit” Joe’s dad had. It’s interesting how Dickens describes the fit with a color. I took some of the rest of the page paper and made loops to glue down. (I used Surebonder 9001 glue but could have used a regular white glue.) I had first thought of making a paper chain to glue on, but decided that was too obvious. (The chains that bind us all:  the prisoner’s actual leg irons, Joe’s dad, Pip’s sister.) I like these 3D loops where you can read some of the text of the story. Lastly, I painted on a gray acrylic hammer and two white figures at the bottom.