#8 Thanks for trying to incorporate the leather stitching but I would really like something that has a lot more texture, and looks like it is made from actual limestone or bronze or wood, rather than digital stitching on a digital image...
#9 I like the deviation with the phi symbol. I'm not sure that I like it better than the first but am glad to see more variation from a standard character. The intersection still doesn't look quite right. In other words if it was an actual object then the ridge line would intersect, or one of the portions would be clearly on top of the other.
I really like the additional elements behind the phi symbol. If you could experiment a little with maybe da Vinci's Vitruvian man on half and your spiral pattern to break it up a little...