Hit the ground …

… running as soon as I got to NZ. Mark L showed me around downtown Christchurch which is still feeling the effects of the earthquake from several years ago. It really destroyed a lot of the area and much of it is still being cleared and rebuilt. Hard decisions about what historical pieces to keep or take down. Still a long way to go for full recovery. Reminds me of New Orleans …

Mark is a patient teacher and is schooling me in his methods of papermaking. Everything from cutting up cotton towels and sheets for their color and making flowers from the resulting pulp, to harvesting NZ flax properly including the prayer to the plant first, to breaking/cutting the flax leaves, to cooking flax in bathtubs, to hydropulping, rinsing and spinning pulp. We will be puling sheets soon, weather permitting.

The weather started out beautifully sunny (very chilly nights) and has morphed into cloudy and damp with rain predicted for the next week. More bothersome is the wind that typically comes with the rains as they will pick up any drying papers and toss them around.

Starting to put up some pics on my Flickr site, so you can see a bit of what we have been doing.