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journal |
March 2002 |
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3-4-2002 I’ve done little papermaking over the winter, partly because of the cold, partly because of the difficulty locating new plant materials. Frances Groves (Florida) and Betty Pulver (Arizona) did send green plants over the past few months, and I’ll try somewhere along the way in the journal to play catch up with the paper I made from those. **Had a few warm days this week, surveyed the flowerbeds and the daylily stalks that have over wintered in the beds caught my eye. I’ve done paper from the leaves, but never the stalks. I remember looking at the stalks back summer when I cut them off just below plant height. I rejected them at the time because they didn’t appear to have enough fiber, but it has been a long winter and this morning I was desperate. Gathered enough to make a cooking, but found that they’re far harder to break down, even having spent the winter out, than the leaves. Didn’t have enough for a beater load, so I did them in the blender. The pulp turned out to be a rather yucky dead gray/brown. (Don’t know what I expected. The stalks were a rather yucky dead gray/brown to begin with.) I didn’t even bother to pull sheets from the pulp in that condition. Instead, I bleached it, and the stalk paper is lovely. It’s heavy and a bit coarse, but the fibers shine beautifully. I don’t doubt that the cooked stalks would have benefited from being run through the beater instead of the blender, and possibly the addition of about 10% abaca, but it’s still a quite usable paper as is. 3-12-02 Yesterday while I was cleaning out the flowerbeds, I gathered the gray, weathered iris leaves. I’ve made paper from those that die back during the summer, but never from weathered leaves. I cooked part of them up, but the pulp was a rather yucky gray/brown. I pulled a couple of test sheets to have for a record, then bleached the remaining pulp into a lovely creamy white, since the unbleached showed so little promise. As it turns out, that was am error in judgment. Oh, the paper from the bleached iris pulp is lovely, but the unbleached, weathered iris paper is a soft smooth gray that is outstanding. Lesson — Thou shalt not bleach pulp until the unbleached test sheets are dry! I still have uncooked iris leaves, so it wasn’t an irreversible error **While my husband and I were visiting the Hidden Hill, a nursery and garden center in Utica, IN, I had gathered some fallen pampas grass leaves. This grass was far larger than the pampas I’ve done before. This stuff was a good 12-15’ tall. Cooked it up and pulled a few sheets unbleached, then bleached and pulled some from that. It’s not at all like the first pampas grass I did. It’s not an especially interesting paper and is quite a bit softer, as well. I don’t know whether this was because the leaves had over wintered or whether it is just the nature of this particular type of pampas. Pulled six envelopes and cards from the pampas grass leaves to give to the owner of the nursery in return the favor. 3-13-02 When I was cleaning one of the flowerbeds this morning, I noticed that the clumps of blue fescue looked wretched and winter bit. I don’t really know what happens if you cut them to the ground, but I will be finding out, because that’s what I did. Saved the clippings, cut them to 1” lengths and cooked them for an hour. The pulp was very fine, almost slick. The blue fescue paper wasn’t especially interesting, though the quality was good, so I bleached the remaining pulp. Paper pulled from that is interesting! It’s cream colored and the quality is somewhat better, but the most striking thing is the black dust sized specks throughout the sheet. I haven’t any idea what causes them, but they lend the paper unique and interesting aspect. 3-15-02 Found some Siberian iris leaves still in the garden, gathered and cooked those up into pulp. While I was wandering this morning, I found bracket mushrooms growing on a neighbor’s tree stump. I’ve read posts in the papermaking archives about using mushrooms as an inclusion in paper, so I gathered a few, ran them through the blender and added them to some abaca pulp. I guess the mushroom paper is...okay, but I doubt I’ll do it again unless I run up on mushrooms with more color than these had. 3-18-02 I don’t know whether it was spring fever or left over feelings from St Patrick Day, but I had a great urge today to get my hands on something green. The weather has been warm and stuff is growing here now, but not really enough even to think about harvesting...except, I noticed, for the wild garlic It’s 8-10” high. I’d never tried it...why not? Gathered enough to make a cooking, and if I’d really paid attention to the odor when I was cutting it, I would have known “why not.” I cooked the stuff on the back porch, and the garlic/onion fumes drove the cat off. Whew! Breath taking! Fortunately, most of the odor cooked off and little was left when I ran it through the blender. The pulp was very fine, probably because the plants hadn’t had time to develop much in the line of fibers, but it will make paper — a deep, deep green and tissue thin. I doubt the green will hold, but it was an interesting one time only project, especially for someone who was starved for fresh pulp. 3-20-02 It has done nothing but rain for the last four days. More or less kills the urge to get out and gather. A good thing, perhaps. Put a pound of white cotton table cloth in the beater this morning. Wanted to time it and see just how long it took. I ripped the cloth into lengths, then made the crosscuts diagonally just to see if cutting on an angle would reduce the processing time, and it did. The load took two hours, about a half hour less than usual. I had pulled out a scoop full of the cotton pulp shortly before it was finished beating and mixed that with some of the wild garlic pulp. The garlic/cotton rag paper is outstanding. Doesn’t take much of the garlic to flood the paper with a lovely green background for the under beaten white cotton threads. 3-21-02 Spent the day mixing odds and ends of pulp with the cotton rag to see if anything jumped out. All of the pulps mixed with the cotton — blue fescue, Siberian iris, canna lily, daylily stems, black willow — made nice papers, but nothing as outstanding as the wild garlic/cotton rag. **Gathered the red hot poker leaves from the side garden, cooked them and pulled sheets. Turned out to be a very difficult plant to deal with as a pure paper because of the central leaf rib, which did not want to cook up, while the rest of the leaf cooked into a very fine mush. When I had enough fine fibers in the vat to pull sheets, there were too many heavy ones, which climbed the sides of the deckle. Might be okay mixed with another fiber, but it is difficult to pull a sheet from nothing but red hot poker pulp. Not an especially interesting paper (my website, my opinion; your opinion might be different). 3-22-02 Last summer while playing with various plants, I made far more pulp than I needed. I froze some, then experimented with drying thee rest of it. Some I dried in thick sheets, but found that these did not dry quickly enough, nor were they easy to break up so I could reconstitute small amounts. When that didn’t work well for me, I dried some in “tufts,” but until today I had not tried to reconstitute any of it. This morning I played with several of those dried fibers — tobacco stalk, Japanese knotweed, black willow, iris — to see if there would be any problems. Soaked each in hot water a few minutes, then ran through a blender for 5 or 10 seconds to break up the lumps. All the fibers reconstituted and pulled as if they’d never been dried. For me, there are several major advantages of drying, particularly in small tufts, over freezing — 1) the fiber dries quickly, less than a day, even in winter; 2) the small tufts allow me to use what I want of the fiber without defrosting more than I need, particularly when I only want a small amount for an inclusion; 3) my freezer space is freed up for real, honest-to-gosh food; 4) no one is going to mistake dried fiber in the closet for frozen turnip greens. Three gallons of fiber dehydrated will fit into a potato sack, and could probably be squished down more than that if necessary. The heavy fibered pulps are easier to dry in tufts than the fine fibered ones. It’s difficult to squeeze the water out of fine pulp, though it is possible to make “cakes” from those, then when the cakes are partially dried, they can be pulled apart into tufts. 3-23-02 Given that the experiment reconstituting pulp worked well yesterday, I set about cleaning out the refrigerator crisper of pulp that was in danger of going south unless it was used or dried. I faithfully promised myself that by day’s end, I would have room for the lettuce, celery and carrots that have been displaced for the last few months by the pulp. The day slightly overcast, so I spread sheets in the dining area and crumbled well squeezed pulp onto those. All would have gone well and the crisper would have been empty that evening if I had not gone outside and found the hosta stems. (Nature abhors a vacuum. This must apply to crispers, as well.) Last fall I had rejected hosta stalks as a source of fiber, just as I had the daylily stalks, but after looking at them, they seemed worth a try, too. They cooked and worked up into a pulp quite similar to that made by daylily stalks. I divided the pulp in half, pulled a few sheets from one half and bleached the rest. The unbleached hosta stalk paper is somewhat heavy and interesting, but not outstanding. The bleached hosta stalk pulp made a paper that is indistinguishable from daylily stalk paper. Place a sheet of each side by side, and it is impossible to tell which is which. Both are lovely! Filled a couple of gallon Ziplock bags with the remainder of the pulp...and put it in the crisper. 3-24-02 Experimented some today with different drying techniques to see how they affect the surface of paper. I had some odds and ends plant pulp that I didn’t care to waste and used that with some cotton rag. Mixed a large batch of that and used cooked laundry starch as a size. Dried some paper between cloths in the cardboard dryer, ironed some, dried some on glass and air dried some. Tomorrow I’ll exchange dry paper under pressure. 3-25-02 According to MJ, an online papermaking friend, I made tapioca paper today. That definitely wasn’t my intention, and it wasn’t tapioca, but she did make a valid observation. I use starch as a size for any writing surface, and normally it works perfectly. Today...it didn’t. And it didn’t because I kept yesterday’s starch over till today, something I’ve never done before. Advice — don’t ever do that. Throw it out! When I started this morning, I dumped some starch into the vat as usual, and pulled away. The first sheets didn’t couch quite like normal, but I really didn’t think much about that until later. Put the wet paper in the press and went back to the vat to pull more. When I took the first papers of the press, they were stuck to the drying sheets. They were stuck so hard, it took a fillet knife to free them. Huh? Then I happened to catch the light behind one of the sheets and notice five or six pea sized clear spots scattered throughout the paper. Hmmm… That was familiar. I’d seen the same thing once before when I had used some methylcellulose that wasn’t perfectly dissolved. Went back and looked at the starch. Yup, it had jelled and had jelled hard enough that it wouldn’t dissolve, even with all the swishing in the vat. Starch makes an excellent glue, even if it’s an unintentional glue. 3-29-02 Wandered up behind Churchill Weavers and noticed that Don, the gardener, had dumped fresh green plant trimmings over the bank in a waste area. Went inside the shop and asked for permission to pick through the pile for papermaking materials. (Somehow, it seemed ludicrous to ask if I could pick through someone’s trash, but I asked.) The trimmings I was interested in are similar to daylily leaves, but shorter and thicker. They came from beside the entrance to the shop, and I don’t know exactly what they are, but I can ask Don later. Cut, cooked and pulped them. The pulp is very similar to red hot poker in that the leaf cooks up well, but the central rib does not. Pulled a few sheets of whatever it is to keep for a record and...yes, put the rest of the pulp in the crisper in a plastic bag. (The lettuce, celery and carrots still sit on the shelf above the crisper.) When I find out what the plant is, I’ll come back and update this entry with the information. [The unknown plant is turf grass, Liriope muscari 'Variegata'..] 3-30-02 Lovely day! Spent most of it outside working in the yard and wandering fencerows. Checked some of the bast plants to see if they would strip Elm and lilac strip easily. Bittersweet is still a bit iffy. The young shoots will strip fairly well; old ones will not. Mulberry isn’t even close yet. **While I was digging dandelions out of a flowerbed, I noticed that the heavy roots were very fibrous. Took a few minutes and dug a pail full of plants to cook up and check for papermaking potential. Why not? Violets make one of the prettiest of papers, yet you’d not think it to look at them. So...why not dandelions? 3-31-02 I’ll tell you why not. There isn’t enough fiber in the whole dandelion plant, from the top of the bloom to the bottom of the root, to make them worthwhile as a source for papermaking material, and on top of that, the fibers that are there aren’t interesting. Yesterday I didn’t know. Today I do. I’m richer for the knowledge. (I’m justifying here, folks.) It is possible to pull dandelion pulp paper, but just barely. I think I managed to get three decent sheets before I gave up and mixed the rest with some cotton rag. |
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