Twelve month names in blackletter lettering

The last of the twelve sheets dried on the trestle this morning, and Mr Harcourt has finally stopped pacing the scriptorium long enough to look at them. The rector wants a calendar for the vestry door, one name to a sheet, all in black letter because he says the parish has had enough of round hands from London. I have spent eleven weeks cutting nibs and shading edges with a sable brush no thicker than a hair from Ruth's cat, and my wrists have opinions.

Harcourt would not let me touch the swashes until January was perfect. He held the sheet to the window and said a month should look carved, not painted, so every stroke must lean the same way, like barley in a wind. February nearly beat me. The F kept growing a second loop until it looked like a gate left open. I scraped it three times and the paper furred under the knife.

November and December were the hardest, because their tails run below the baseline and I had to stop them before they reached the next row. Harcourt said a flourish should know where to end. So I let December's trail run off the bottom edge of its sheet, one thin hairline, and when he saw it he laughed and said the year would need somewhere to go.

I am sending you the sheet for your birthday, though it is not the month you were born in. Hang it where the afternoon light falls. You will see the swash still moving, even when the ink is dry.

Love, Tom