My "Gloopy" Alef

The 7th yeria was just going swimmingly – no quill issues, good clean klaf, and then:

Blorp!

-  the quill just belched forth this massive amount of ink and my beautiful Alef  turned into, well, what you see above.

Usually, after dipping the quill in the ink, one can drain off the excess by touching the underside of the quill gently to the side of the inkwell and holding it there for a moment.

However, one in a rare while a tiny bubble forms inside the quill that, upon popping, results what you see above.   Sigh.

Time to shave, scrape, sand, erase, score and rewrite.

At least it’s only 1 letter!

[Due to a dead digital camera, I haven't been posting over the past week. But, we're all repaired and back online now, so ENJOY!]

Finished the 6th yeria (columns 20 to 23) this evening.   All in all, everything went swimmingly except for one oddity.  I had to do some scraping and correcting in the first and fourth columns of the sheet.  For some reason, after scraping and sanding the in the first column, an odd, very dark splotches appeared…

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This week I got a very large shipment of new klaf, parchment.

The quality of the klaf, ultimately, contributes most to the longevity of a Sefer Torah.   For that reason, I am exceptionally finicky when it comes to vetting my parchment.  I first grade the parchment by color as either…

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The Fifth Yeria & Columns 16 to 19

The fifth yeria is done and the the sixth is well under way as I type – There was a few days down-time this week as I awaited a new shipment of klaf (parchment).   I mostly used the time to proofread what had been written so far and to clean up a few passages.   Enjoy these pics, and check back soon!

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Yeria #5 - Almost complete...

Today I wrapped up column 19 and made some edits to the earlier columns.

Tomorrow I will have to check the whole yeria against the tikkun (copyists manual), make any corrections or edits, and then complete adding taggim and dots….
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