Category: papermaking

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Starting October off right

I was  lax on posting last month – sorry!  So, to start October right, here we go:

Yesterday I took 8 women, mostly older than me, into the woods in Kentucky and we pulled grapevines for random weaving. Learned about other invasive plants and how/why they are good or not for basketry. We harvested some fairly large diameter grapevine – it took four or more of us to get some of it down out of the trees.  The women had a blast and felt so empowered by the group strength.  They also made some nice baskets! Sent them home early all tuckered out. I’ll post a picture of the large class basket made from the really heavy vines that we pulled – it was a community project and is already installed at the Kenton County Extension Office garden.

Today I taught four different simple bookbinding techniques to high schoolers at Oldenburg Academy – and for the most part they looked as though they felt accomplished, too.  Always a warm feeling when the ‘aha!’ moment happens and a face brightens.

Tomorrow a niece and her friend are coming to do some papermaking – I cooked up some asparagus stems and leek leaves this afternoon to be ready for them. Also pulled out a bunch of baggies from the freezer with bits of cooked pulp and some already beaten. My love may run away for the day so as to get out of our way!

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Recent paper activity

I recently spent a couple weekends in Cleveland taking workshops at The Morgan Conservatory – a hot papermaking spot in Ohio.

One weekend was dedicated to 3D (kozo) and high shrinkage (abaca) with Melissa J. Craig as instructor.  Very cool.  The abaca was so reminiscent of working with gut………

The second weekend was Hanji (Korean papermaking) with Aimee Lee. Aimee is intent on preserving and spreading the Korean method – she spent a month in Cleveland making the vat and screens needed to do it properly.  Also very cool!  And to add to the coolness, Aimee taught us how to felt paper (joomchi),  how to spin/ply paper strips, and how to twine with the spun cordage.  One of the other workshop attendees took some great pictures if you are interested.

There is something calming about the Hanji method – I wound up doing a modified approach with some hosta pulp that I had in the freezer.  Nice.

And in the process of cleaning out the garage for some necessary foundation work, I discovered a stack of cardboard rounds – ideal for a drying stack!

Life is good.

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Summertime…

Heat, mosquitoes, humidity, cicadas, sweat…. It’s a grand summer happening here!

Sitting in my skivvies as I type this – my office isn’t A/Ced. It’s sort of like a sauna without the cedar smell.

Must be rain somewhere, though. For about 5 minutes we had a luscious wind race through – lots of sound and fury and an accompanying coolness – and then it was gone and back to hot and humid. Some rumbles still in the distance, so maybe we will actually get some rain. Sure hope so!

I know it was crazy to do it in this heat, but yesterday I cooked up the banana trunks I brought home from the Branson Banana Bash last November. They had been retting all this time – the chunks that were still submerged looked great while the ones on top had a bit of mold and some larvae (fly, I think). Both bunches cooked up well and I bleached the top stuff to be sure I killed the mold.  Hope to make sheets next week.  I signed up to be part of the Papermaking group’s annual swatch swap – incentive to accomplish!

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Day lily leaves in the dark

Nothing like chopping up day lily leaves in the dark.

Tomorrow I do a paper making demo for the local Historical Society members. I plan on using day lily leaves from the flower beds at the historical house across the street from us. The members will then be able to pull sheets of paper made from their property.

All well and good.  I dug the pulp made last year out of the freezer so it could thaw overnight and be ready for pulling sheets.  And then I found the bag of dried leaves collected at the end of the season last year.  By the time I actually had time to work on them, it was after dinner and we were in the middle of a downpour. Fortunately the rain didn’t last very long.

So with drops dripping off the cherry tree, I weighed the bag of leaves, set up my guillotine paper cutter on the outside table and started chopping away. By the time I was finished it was DARK. The deck light helped some, but I’m sure I missed various other materials that are now part of the pot of day lily leaves soaking in the garage.  Will cook them up tomorrow early and be all set to run them through the Hollander beater.

I do want to remember to keep some of the stuff from each stage so the folks coming can see what happens at each step.

Should be a fun evening. It’ll be topped off with home made pies after everyone has pulled at least one sheet to take home with them.

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Unplanned time on my hands…

… due to a rejection of an installation proposal.  A bummer – I was really hoping I’d get the nod.

The Franklin Park Conservatory in Columbus, OH is planning an exhibit titled “Savage Gardens: The Real and Imaginary World of Carnivorous Plants”. I answered their call for proposals for both the site-specific commissioned installation and the juried exhibit piece.

I really had no idea what I would do, so started researching carnivorous plant images on the internet. Things like Venus fly traps and sundews (I think that is what they are called) showed some really nice structures that I thought I could emulate with basketry, paper and gut.  But then I got stuck on the “Imaginary” in the title of the show………

Thus was born, at least on paper, the Veganivorous Random Hogfly Catcher, complete with backstory and symbiotic bug. The plant was to be of large random woven ‘bowls’ lined with handmade corn husk and abaca paper pulp and having pointed stamens ready to pierce the bodies of the hogflies (little hot air balloon critters with wings and curly tails). It all sounded good on this end, including all the details on recycled materials and renewable resources. Thirteen flowers on stalks ranging 4′-10′ high. A number of Hogflies were  to be suspended from the rafters or on the ‘flowers’.

The veganivorous part comes from the fact that the plant, while in the carnivorous family, chose not to actually eat the bug, but to suck the air out of it, leaving the bug shell alone.  And of course, the bug was to be made of pork sausage casing. Lots of intended plant/animal connections and puns in the whole thing.

I had carefully thought about all the steps involved, what would have to be done first, etc. and how much time it all would entail. I factored in several teaching gigs already scheduled and two planned week-long trips and figured I had just enough time to construct all the pieces of the installation, including its base, before the first of July when it was due in Columbus.

BUT, the Hogfly Catcher is extinct before it even had a chance to live.  And I now have 6 weeks back in my life with which to do something else, or maybe a lot of something elses.