Gin's Place

Site search

4-1-02  A week or so ago when I was up at Churchill Weavers, I picked up some lovely “lemon ice” cotton yarn to pulp.  After today, I wish I had never seen it.  But I learned a lesson — new yarn does not pulp the same as cotton rag.  After four hours of nothing but hassles — floating “islands” of yarn, outflow blockage, pulling out partially beaten pulp to restore circulation, etc. — the new yarn still had long fibers that clung and clumped together.  This may be due in part to the fact that the yarn is new and, in part, because it is made up of long cotton fibers.  Cotton rag, though woven from yarn made up of long fibers, is old and basically rotten.  After an hour and a half or two in the beater, rag is reduced to fine pulp.  Because they are rotten, the length of the cotton fibers in rag isn’t an issue.  I have some tobacco baling twine that seems to have shorter cotton fibers than the weaving yarn.  I’ll give that a try at some point and see if that will beat up to a usable pulp.  (All of this rotten/short fiber/long fiber stuff is pure speculation.  There may be a dynamic to beating yarn that is totally beyond me at the moment.)

4-2-02  Being a glutton for punishment, I tried to beat a white cotton yarn that Jo Mink had given me, but only used 13 oz instead of a pound and a quarter.  Different problems, same results.  Using the reduced amount, the “floating islands” that blocked the outflow did not develop, but this time the yarn insisted on climbing the side of the drum and twisting around the shaft.  Beat it for four hours and the yarn broke up lengthwise, but the long fine fibers remain to twist and tangle, just as yesterday.  Neither batch is a total loss.  I have two deckles that will work with it.  Both have large flat surfaces covered with duct tape and the long fibers slide off of those.  That does limit what I can do with the yarn pulp, though, as these deckles are for cards and envelopes. 

4-3-02  Turned cold yet again.  Checked the mulberry trees and the bark still will not strip.  I did gather five or six long bittersweet vines and a few elm branches and stripped those.  I’ll dry the bast until I have enough to cook, then dry the pulp for use someday.

4-5-02  Pulled paper from both the yellow and white yarn pulps.  Added canna lily to the yellow yarn pulp and bleached daylily stems to the white yarn pulp.  They’re not the easiest pulps to pull, but with the addition of a little abaca, both made acceptable and usable paper.

4-6-02  An online papermaking acquaintance asked not long ago what I did with all the paper I make.  Though I generate a great deal of pulp, I really don’t make all that much paper.  My focus is on the process, not the product — understanding which plants or materials will make paper, how they should be handled and what are the qualities of the resulting  paper.  Right now, my interest is more that of a technical craftsman than an artist.  At some point, this focus may shift, but for now I’m more interested in wandering the fields and dragging new stuff back to be cooked.  After pulling test and record sheets, I dry most of the pulp.  It’s becoming increasingly apparent that I will be forced to invite friends over and have a paper pulling party to get rid of this stuff.  Although dried pulp really doesn’t take up much room, enough of it will eventually fill a guest room closet and begin to creep out and fill the room itself.

4-8-02  Tackled the cotton tobacco baling twine today.  The twine was made up of 48 twisted cotton yarn-like threads, which were approximately the same diameter as the yarn I worked with on the first two days of the month.  Unlike the yarn, I could easily break tobacco twine threads, which led me to believe that the cotton fibers used to make twine were shorter, and that the twine would beat up into usable pulp.  Again, I just used 13 oz.  The circulation dynamics of beating yarn seems to limit the amount that can be introduced into the vat.  More than 13 oz and you’re dealing with islands and clogs.  At 2 hours the cotton twine was at the same beaten consistency that yarn was at 4 hours — twisted tangles of beaten fiber — but the next two hours of beating did almost nothing to change that.  The cotton that the twine is made from isn’t “clean,” but has small amounts of cotton plant trash in it, but not quite enough to make it interesting.  At about 3 hours, I added a handful of dried black willow pulp to make the pulp more appealing (read that “hide the dirt” if you wish).  Since the black willow had been dried in tufts, I didn’t bother reconstituting it before putting it in the vat and it worked fine.  The beater reconstituted it for me.  **Set up a display of “plants to paper” at Tourism this morning.  Jean Horror stopped by while I was there and handed me about a pound of dried lemongrass.  Life is good.

Back to the top

4-9-02  Worked with the lemongrass this afternoon.  Since I don’t know where I can get any more of it, I cooked only half and saved the other half just case I blew it.  Cooked it for an hour in washing soda, then took out enough to work up in the blender, leaving the rest to cook for another hour.  There isn’t much difference in paper quality between the two batches — the one that was cooked for an hour and the one that was cooked for two — but the pulp that was short-cooked produced a slightly more figured and more interesting paper.  An hour would have been sufficient.  When I cut the lemongrass up before cooking, I became concerned because the base of the leaves were so much thicker and tougher than the leaf tips.  In one respect, the concern was valid.  The leaf tips do cook up more quickly than the base, but fortunately, the base softens enough to be blended, or most of it does.  The bits that don’t blend lend the paper a rather strange and unique quality.  With the light from the front, they appear as dark spots, but with the light behind, they are a semi-transparent orange, allowing the light to shine through the paper.  There is another aspect of those base leaf blobs that is not so nice.  As the paper is drying, the blobs stick to the drying sheets.  It is as if each spot is a glob of glue.  Lemongrass paper must be restrain dried, so that meant exchanging drying sheets often to prevent permanent attachment.  Oh, yes...the odor.  At first I thought, gee, this is so much nicer smelling than the other plants I’ve cooked lately (particularly the wild garlic), but the lovely lemon odor only lasted about the first ten minutes.  Then it became business as usual, just another grassy cooking odor.  **Pulled paper from the cotton tobacco twine/black willow pulp.  With the broad, duct tape covered deckle, it wasn’t that difficult.  With the addition of a little abaca, it made a nice, though heavy, paper.

4-10-02  This morning I went to the “ground clearing” for the 8.7 million dollar Artisan Center that is being constructed at Berea.  Many suit-and-tie dignitaries were on hand from the state, county, city and College.  Being the bold, brash person that I am, I cornered a Berea College official and received permission to harvest plant materials from a portion of the 8,000 acres that the College owns.  And encouraged by that success, I cornered a state official and received permission to harvest from the 18 acre construction site.  Ask and ye shall receive.  Yes, most definitely, life is good.

4-11-02  Every year about this time, Berea hosts a Celebration of Working Hands in honor of the working craftsmen of Berea.  Craftsmen throughout the city demo for the public, hopefully impressing the tourists with both their skill and the friendliness of the town.  Day after tomorrow I will be demonstrating papermaking at Tourism, the old L&N train depot.  The hands-on participants will pull paper from cotton rag pulp infused with a bit of wild garlic.  The garlic paper is striking and speaks of springtime here in Kentucky.  By using the cotton rag base, the pulled sheets can be pressed briefly, then ironed dry without warping, so the participants will be able to take home dry paper.  This will be fun...if it doesn’t rain.  **Stopped by Tourism briefly this afternoon to check on the location of the water faucet and the electrical hookups.  Should be no problem.  While I was there, I stopped by Honeysuckle Vine, a nearby craft shop, to visit with Dinah and Jimmy Lou.  On the way into the shop, I noticed the 15 or so winter killed Boston ferns in the outside planter.  Hmmmm…  “Um, Dinah, can I have those dead ferns outside?”  Reaching for the scissors, she said, “You need a sack? And here, you can cut them with these.”  Not “what in the world do you want those for?”  Life is good in Berea.  (Don’t get tired of hearing that “life is good.”  You’re going to read that again and again.)  Most of the leaves had fallen off the plants and little was left but the stems.  Broke those up and set to soak when I got home.

4-12-02  Cooked up and processed the Boston fern this afternoon.  Pulped some of the cooked fern at both three and at four hours of cooking, and three is sufficient.  If, and that's a big "if," the plant material is processed long enough in the blender (I didn't have enough for the beater), it does break down enough that the fibers will hydrate and hold the paper together.  It's true paper, but it's only marginal.  But oh my goodness, the appearance of the paper is outstanding!  I don't think I've worked with anything that is as striking, or I haven't in a long time.  It is a deep, deep rich chocolate brown and highly fibrous looking, and the shine of the fibers is striking!  Mixing the fern pulp with some abaca improved the quality of the paper, but the abaca ruined its appearance.  It's just too light to mate well with the dark fern pulp.  Then I happened to think that I had dried some tufts of canna lily, which is a fairly deep brown, though not nearly as dark as the fern.  Hydrated and ran a few tufts of that through the blender, then added to the vat.  Perfect!  Excellent paper that is difficult to tell from the pure fern paper.  The paper is best pulled a little thick, something I have trouble doing.  Unless I’m thinking, I pull as thin as I possibly can, and that's not always what I really want.  It's just an automatic thing.

Back to the top

4-13-02  Today I did the hands-on papermaking demo at Berea Tourism, and I was really surprised at how many of the tourists were willing to put their hands in the vat to pull paper.  A big part of the incentive was that they could actually take home the dry sheet of paper they made.  Most signed and dated their sheets and seemed rather smugly proud of themselves.  Normally, I "don't do kids."  I simply don't have the patience to work with them.  That's just one of my built in limitations and I accept it.  Usually I avoid involving myself with any children's projects, but yesterday's demo was open to the public, and several children came with their parents.  Of course, they wanted to make paper.  (Did you know you it is actually possible to smile while gritting your teeth?)  I helped them (in a reasonably cheerful manner, if I do say so myself), and there were no major child induced headaches, but an incident happened with one eleven-year-old boy that I have to share.  I offered to let him pull paper, but in no uncertain terms he told me that he did NOT want to do it, he just wanted to watch.  Fine with me.  I pulled a couple of sheets, and he really seemed interested, even asked sensible questions.  When he turned to leave, he noticed that some kind of bug had fallen into the papermaking vat and expired.  H'okay...  I fished the bug out, but when I started to pitch it in the wastebasket, he asked if it were possible to "make the bug into paper."  I said, why not, threw it back in the vat and pulled a sheet that incorporated the insect.  "NEATO!" says he.  Hmmmm, thought I.  I put the sheet in the press to squeeze out the water, then took it out and showed him how well the bug had stuck in the paper fibers.  But I told him that I was not about to iron it dry for him.  It had a BUG in it, ugh, yuck!  He'd have to iron it himself.  The kid didn't question my reasoning (heh, heh), just took the buggy sheet, ironed it dry, then ran to show his parents.  When I looked up from straightening out the couching sheets, he was standing there again.  "Um, can I make some paper now by myself?"  He pulled five before his parents decided enough was enough.  Good kid.  If all of them were like that, I think I might (and I stress “might”) be able to work with them.

4-17-02  David and Martha Larson are visiting from Connecticut.  David is a woodworker, but he expressed an interest in seeing how paper is made.  We beat weathered bearded iris in the Hollander.  The paper it made is entirely different from weathered iris processed in a blender.

4-19-02  I really didn’t have any papermaking in mind for today other than beating a pound of abaca to have on hand when I needed it, honest.  After I set the abaca to beat in the Hollander, I started about today’s real job of cleaning flowerbeds and trimming back bushes.  I suppose all would have gone as planned and my flowerbeds would be in good shape now if the first branch of forsythia had cut off cleanly.  But it didn’t.  I snipped, but it hung there by a thread.  I pulled.  A strip of bark came off...easily.  I pulled another strip off...and another.  Then I tried stripping the outside bark off the bast and it came off like a dream.  The inner bast was a pale green and fibrous.  There were many of last season’s branches than needed trimming and those were trimmed.  But the flowerbeds?  That’s now a job for another day.  Instead, I peeled and cooked forsythia bast for an hour and a half and pulled paper.  It is an unusual pulp and makes an unusual paper.  Though the fibers are incredibly fine, the pulp is not a mush and the fibers are long enough to create an unusually strong paper.  Like all fine pulps, this drains slowly, and makes the thinnest sheet I have ever been able to pull.  Even with the light from the front, you can see through it.  (The dark flecks come from the flower nodes.)  I tried pulling a thicker sheet, but the wait on draining was prohibitive, even with a coarser screen.  Mixed a little abaca in with the forsythia pulp and that cut draining time dramatically, but the paper lost almost all its character and uniqueness.

Back to the top 

4-20-02  Cooked up some gill-over-the-ground, but it’s not worth the effort.  Unless it is washed, it drains very, very slowly, and washing drastically reduces the pulp amount.  Far too little usable fiber for the amount processed, and the pure paper quality is poor.  Mixed it with some abaca, and that improved the quality, but it still drains too slowly.  Mixing with forsythia pulp greatly improved both quality, appearance and drain time.  Still, not worth the effort.  **Went down by the creek late this afternoon and gathered about 20 green Japanese knotweed stalks.  They’re about 4-5’ tall now and very tender.  Kept only the lower 3’.  I want to see whether the plant is easier to process green instead of dry.  While I was splitting and cutting it to 1” lengths, I noticed that the “bark” stripped cleanly and easily from the stalk.  Stripped 10 stalks and kept the bark to process separately.  Put the cut stalks on to cook in sodium carbonate.  Cooked the pot three hours, then turned it off but left to set overnight.

4-21-02  Processed the cooked Japanese knotweed stalks in the Hollander this morning for 2.5 hours, then pulled a few sheets.  Decided to let it beat for another thirty minutes.  The green knotweed paper is far superior to that made from the dried plant, and the plant is infinitely easier to process.  The pulp can be pulled very thin and has lovely long fibers that course across the face of the sheet.  Bleached, it is a golden color with a few dark flecks that I don’t believe are trash.  Cooked the bast from the ten stalks for an hour and a half, then processed that in the blender.  The bast paper makes is somewhat finer in quality than the stalk, but there is almost no difference in appearance.  There is a major difference, though, in the color and the quality of the bleached paper.  The bleached bast paper is a lovely fine cream base with slightly heavier cream fibers on the surface.  It is also somewhat crisper than the bleached stalk paper.  For several weeks I have been retting some dried knotweed stalks out behind the garage.  I suspect that mess will be going to the compost heap.  Working with the green plant is much easier and much more rewarding.

4-23-02  This morning I pulled a few more sheets of the Japanese knotweed to share with friends.  Spent part of the afternoon wandering around the area across from the Artisan Center.  The strip along the road is well mowed and nearly useless for gathering, but the back acres are a garden of papermaking and basketry materials.  A swampy area holds cattails and bulrush, while on the higher ground above that red osier dogwood, honeysuckle, grapevines and elderberry grow in abundance.  Much of the land is overgrown in brambles and cedars, but the open grassy areas hold Johnsongrass, millet and broomsedge.  While I was there, I gathered eight or ten tall elderberry stalks.  They stripped easily enough, but when I was through, the pile of bast seemed very meager for the amount of time involved.  Cut the bast in 1” lengths and cooked it for 2 hours in washing soda.  I suspect cooking longer or in lye would have helped.  There wasn’t enough plant material to use the beater, so it went into the blender.  The pulp was surprising.  It was very viscous, not wanting to drain through the paint strainer, yet when it was pulled as a sheet, the water cleared the mold and deckle far too quickly and required a formation aid to make a smooth sheet.  Heavy and stiff, with a dirty olive background, small bark flecks and gold fibers on the surface, it’s not a pretty paper (personal opinion).  The bleached elderberry paper is somewhat nicer with a cream background for the gold fibers and bark flecks.  That, too, is heavy and stiff.  The pulp leaves a sticky residue on everything it touches — paint strainer, vat and hands.  Soap does little to remove it.  Three strikes against this plant for papermaking — low yield, ugly paper, sticky residue.  Mark this one off my list to do again.

4-24-02   This morning when I went to the creek to gather knotweed to send to a friend, I cut 30 more stalks for myself just to get the bast.  I thought this would be a beater load.  Wrong!  Ended up having to take half out, beat what was left, then beat what I took out.  Here's the thing - there wasn't too much by weight, I don't think, but rather there was a dynamic at work that I hadn't considered.  I cut the bast in 2-3" lengths, way longer than I normally cut fiber.  Those strips jammed at the intake of the roller, at least, they did until I took half the beater load out.  Then they worked fine.  I know there is a relationship between the amount of fiber and the amount of water and the "thickness" of the water that affects circulation.  Apparently a relationship to the length of the fiber plays into all of this, too.  After both loads were beaten, I added the first back to the second and all circulated just fine.  Weird.  Complex little machine, I will say, when you consider all the factors.

Back to the top

4-29-02  Made the mistake of stopping in Old Town on my way to Wal-Mart.  Bobby Craig was cleaning out the overgrown area beside his shop, ripping bittersweet vines out of the trees right and left.  I ended up loading the back of the van with them.  The older vines stripped well, but the younger vines had to be steamed.  No great problem because they coil well.  The older vines make an entirely different paper from the younger ones, so I kept the bast separate.  Not sure when I’ll cook and pull them.  While I was in Old Town, I gathered an overwintered pokeweed stalk.  Last summer I had looked at it, but rejected trying it because there seemed to be so little fiber.  Apparently, I was wrong.  The retted stalk holds a good deal of fiber.  As to whether I can break it down or not is another matter.  I learned a lesson with the Japanese knotweed — if it’s difficult to break down seasoned or dry, try it green.  This summer or fall I’ll gather some poke stalks to try green.

4-30-02  Cooked and processed the pokeweed stalks, and learned two very valuable lessons about beating “chunky” stuff.  Normally, I lower the beater drum as low as it will go when I begin processing fibers in the beater.  Today I learned that with thick stuff, especially heavy fiber chunks that will bind at the entrance to the drum, it’s best to raise the drum slightly until the chunks are reduced in thickness, then drop the drum gradually until it is at its lowest to finish beating.  That was lesson one, which was learned at no great expense.  Lesson two was a little harder bought.  I already knew that some fibers sink and that there is a “dead spot” on the side of the beater where those fibers, especially long ones, tend to congregate.  Stirring that area occasionally is necessary until the fibers break down enough to circulate without sinking.  I stirred the poke stalks until they began circulating on their own, then occasionally agitated the area on the side to lift any chunks that might be lurking on the bottom.  As the fibers became finer, I was perplexed to find occasional solid chunks still lurking around.  It seemed as if they’d never gone under the roller at all, but I couldn’t imagine how they could be missing it.  I pitched eight or ten of them out, not wanting to beat the entire load longer just to beat those chunks up.  I still couldn’t understand how chunks could possibly exist when the rest of the stalks were almost completely beaten.  Then I found out.  There is another dead spot, one that really appeals to chunks.  I was clearing the sides of the drum, when I happened to run my hand down into the water at the outflow and found a whole handful of the chunks lurking there next to the edge!  Without thinking, I pitched them to the other side of the vat.  Arrggghhh!  I should not have done that!  Instead, I should have pitched the whole handful out.  There was no way to find all the pieces, so I raised the drum back up and started the beating process from the beginning.  This time I took care to check both dead areas.  The water, thickened with the fine fibers, made stirring almost unnecessary, and finishing the beating took far less time than I had feared.  Still, it was too late to pull any papers from the well pounded poke pulp (try saying that).  That will go on the agenda for tomorrow.

Back to the top