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journal |
June 2002 |
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6-1-02 The Jacob’s ladder seedpods are just now beginning to turn brown, and I didn’t want them dropping all those seeds in the bed, so I broke the stems off at the base. Of course, I looked, and yes, they are fibrous, so they went into a pot. I did strip off most of the leaves and seed pods, but still way too many were cooked along with the stems. The blender broke the plant into both extra, extra fine fibers from the leaves and heavier fibers from the stems. I was afraid when I pulled sheets, the tiny fibers would stop up the screen and make draining too slow, but they were so fine, that for the most part they passed straight through, leaving the heavier lighted colored stem fibers sitting on a bed of dark green fine fibers. The two extremes in fiber size and color made a weird, but lovely paper. When backlit, seeds show up as bright orange lights. The quality isn’t especially good, given the extremes in fiber size with nothing in between, but it would have its place as a decorative paper. 6-4-02 I hate in the worst way to throw away pulp, even the half handful left when I finish pulling a new paper, so I save it, a dab of this and a half dab of that, all tucked away in plastic bags in the refrigerator crisper. Comes a time, though, when something has to be done. Because of the differences in pulp — color and/or consistency — it isn’t possible just to throw it all in a vat and pull away, but if I’m careful about mixing, sometimes I come up with lovely combinations, such as the one I pulled as stationery today. The paper is a mixture of bluegrass, plantain, iris stems, mulberry bast/bark, Indian hemp bast/bark, horseweed, Japanese brome, Gray’s sedge, a pinch of black willow, cotton rag and a couple of pulps I couldn’t identify because I forgot to label the bags. (Hey, they all begin to look alike after awhile.) The majority of the pulps came from bleached fibers, so the paper is basically cream with inclusions, and the quality is excellent. The pulp mixture for this paper can’t be reproduced, but that’s okay. It used up the majority of the stuff I had stashed in the refrigerator, and that’s what I was after in the first place — room for more stuff. 6-5-02 Last year I cut a bittersweet vine that was growing up a power pole, and this spring it has sent out long green shoots that were twisting up a nearby young hackberry tree, a favorite of my neighbor, George. I felt a bit responsible, since the bittersweet was sending out the new shoots because of what I had done, so I pulled them off the tree. Then I began to wonder what would happen if the shoot, bast, bark were all cooked up together. I’ve done the young vine bast alone in the past, and it made an extremely strong white paper. Pulled all of the young shoots, then looked for more where the power company had cleared trees and vines under the lines at Churchill Weavers. Cut all the shoots to 1/2” lengths and cooked for 2.5 hours in washing soda. The bast and bark, which was simply a green covering, cooked up readily, but the inner core didn’t soften all that much, though it would mash with the back of the wooden spoon without much effort. Tried a handful in the blender, but it tended to chop more than separate the fibers, so I used the Hollander. At the end of two hours beating, the inner shoots had been reduced to heavy but softened fibers, but the bast was beginning to clump up. Not wanting to fight that, I emptied the beater. The pulp was an uninteresting shade of pale green that bleached into a cream. The fine, tough bast fibers caused the pulp to clump in the vat and the pulp would have benefited from a formation aid, but sheets could be pulled by keeping the pulp to water ratio down and dipping three times. The paper is coarse fibered and heavy, but the bast fibers make it extremely tear resistant. The paper would make an excellent booklet cover, but I doubt that I’ll try this one again. 6-11-02 Totally off the papermaking topic, but I spent this last weekend at a Cherokee mat making workshop at the Gladie Historic Site in the Daniel Boone National Forest. Had a great time, learned a lot, especially how to be careful splitting the cane. Blood was shed freely at the workshop. Fortunately, none of it was mine. 6-17-02 Spent the 12th-15th at a basket retreat at Jabez on Lake Cumberland. While I enjoyed myself and learned several things I may be able to incorporate into bookbinding and possibly papermaking, I missed fooling around with the plants and paper, and I found myself wandering away from the facility looking for new plants. Gather Korean lespedeza and redbud bark from limbs freshly cut by the grounds crew to try at some point. **There were storms here while I was gone that laid many of my flowers down. The husker red beardtongue probably suffered the worst. Ever since they shot up four feet tall, I’ve been eyeing them for paper. Clipped the stalks off at the base, stripped and discarded the leaves, cut the deep purple stalks to 1” lengths and set them on to cook in soda ash. I’m always disappointed when stalks that are a lovely vibrant purple or orange or red turn a dull brown in the pot, though by now I know they will. I keep hoping that someday the color will remain. Processed the cooked stalks in the beater and pulled sheets. The unbleached beardtongue fiber produced a stiff, rather nondescript tan paper. Bleaching creates a slightly stiffer, uniform cream colored paper. 6-20-02 Back in August of last year I tried early spiderwort and it made a lovely, highly figured paper. Since I had few sheets of that left and my white spiderwort was looking ratty, it seemed like a good idea to cut it off and make paper from it. Whether it was because this was a different spiderwort (stalks, though bigger, are softer and meatier), whether the plant wasn’t mature enough, or whether it simply won’t make paper at all, the plant cooked to mush. Even ten seconds in the blender left little of value to pull. The pulp simply wouldn’t make paper by itself. It could be pulled and couched, but it would fall apart that that point. When I added some underprocessed cotton rag, the white spiderwort made a highly figured, deep green paper. Bleached beardtongue added to the spiderwort shows up as coarse fibers floating in the green. 6-22-02 Went to Midway this afternoon to the 50th anniversary celebration of Jo and John Mink. (Jo is the friend who, when I asked for horse manure to make paper, said without missing a step, “You want dried or fresh?” Friends like that are hard to come by.) The gathering was held on the enormous front lawn of her daughter and son-in-law, Tom and Mur Greathouse, who raise tobacco, cattle, hay and garden produce. As Jim and I drove in, the first thing I spotted was the patch of asparagus growing in front of the barn behind the house — a half acre of 6’ tall. lush, ferny green plants. Potential paper? Perhaps. Along with a yard full of other guests, we enjoyed the reception. At one point, I caught Tom and learned that he planned to mow the asparagus on Monday. Oh? May I have…? Why of course. Fortunately, it was a very informal celebration. I was wearing shorts and had a pocketknife in my pocket, so harvesting was no problem. I snuck around the house, back to the barn, cut 40-50 6’ stalks in no time flat and hoisted them on my shoulder. The lawn full of guests was between me and the van. I rounded the house, shifted the load between me and them and walked on as if I had all the good sense in the world. The asparagus is my project for tomorrow. 6-23-02 If I knew then what I know now, I would only have harvested the lower 18-24” of the stalks. That is surprisingly tender, while the upper part of the plant is major tough. Even with the number of stalks I had, there would not have been enough had I just used the lower portion, so I stripped and set aside the ferny parts, cut the remainder of the stalk into 1” lengths and cooked it in soda ash. It was as I figured — after a couple of hours, the fat, lower portions cooked up well, but the upper parts of the stalk remained tough. Left it on to cook another couple of hours, which helped marginally, but I was forced to run the plant material through the blender before putting in the beater to keep the material from clogging at the drum. Because of the tops, beating took five hours, but the asparagus paper turned out nicely, a pale olive with small bumps which must have come from the stem bases. Made for an interesting textural paper. The bleached asparagus pulp produces a stiff, cream paper very similar to beardtongue. 6-24-02 I had set aside the fuzzy fern parts of the asparagus plant to try on their own. Stripped and discarded the larger stems, keeping only those with the fernlike leaves and cutting those to 2”. Even those smallest stems were far tougher than the tiny leaves, which presented a problem when cooking. If the stems were cooked till they were tender, the leaves would have been overcooked. Instead, I left the pot on only long enough to cook the leaves, then washed and put the entire mess in the beater for an hour. The stems were flattened and tenderized somewhat by the beater, and when pulled and pressed, the asparagus leaf/stem pulp made a lovely deep green paper that highlighted the lighter colored underprocessed stem lying on top. Because the beater tenderized the stems, they mashed flat in the press, and the paper, though visually extremely textural, is smooth. 6-25-02 I raise a wildflower called celandine poppy for its yellow dye properties. Each year about this time, the seed stalks and older leaves begin to turn yellow. Before they wither and turn brown, I harvest and cook for the yellow dye that I use on reed and honeysuckle for baskets. This year I decided instead to try the plant for paper. I gathered the seed stalks and leaves as usual, but only used the stalks and the stems from the leaves, discarding the leaf itself, since it has little fiber value. Cut them in 1" lengths, cooked for 30 minutes, washed well, processed in the blender and pulled some very nice, brilliant yellow/green paper from it. As I mentioned, this is a dye plant. My nails are now a lovely yellow, much as if I had yellow jaundice. The cloths that I used for couching match them beautifully. Celandine poppy produces a rather permanent dye for reed and honeysuckle, even without a mordant. I suspect the same applies to fingernails. I'll be wearing nail polish for some time to come. This may draw as many laughs as the yellow fingernails would have, since I’ve not worn nail polish since I was a teen. One note of warning, if you try celandine poppy, be aware that the plant contains a chemical irritant. When working with the plant material, keep hands away from all mucus membranes. Also, for some individuals, the pure juice may have a skin irritating effect. This may be the reason the plant was used in folklore medicine for removing warts. **UPS brought a large box this afternoon. I took one look at the return address, turned to JimT and said, "Dryer lint!" He took one look in the box at bags and bags of various colored lint and said, "You have strange friends." (Later he said that was the kindest thing he could think of to say at that moment.) Ah, but this wasn’t just any dryer lint. This was thirteen individual bags of pure cotton lint, some of the most beautiful shades of teal green and dusty rose and soft blue, sent to me by Martha Richards, the owner of Weaver’s Corner. It came from washing and drying the various weavings she has done since last May Fair. I’ll mix the lint with abaca and turn into paper. Can't wait to try it...but it's raining. 6-30-02 Finally had a chance to pull some paper with a lint inclusion. I chose purple lint, my least favorite color. My attitude has always been if you’re going to make a mistake, make it with something that doesn’t matter...only there was no mistake. Abaca, cotton rag and purple lint make a lovely paper, well, as pretty as purple can be if you don’t like the color in the first place. I really expected the lint to completely disperse in the vat and make a solid color paper, particularly since I ran it through the blender with some abaca first, but it didn’t. Instead, some of the lint remained as tufts making lovely flecks of color throughout the paper. **I have been using Argo Laundry Starch as a sizing and have been completely satisfied with it, however, I am now I am unable to locate any on the grocery shelves. I checked the Best Foods website (manufacturers of Argo), and though I could find no information on the laundry starch, in the FAC I found that the cooking variety of Argo cornstarch can be used as a sizing on clothes, and is mixed in the same proportion as the laundry starch. I tried it on the purple lint paper, but it is difficult to say that it achieves the same level of sizing, since I’d not made lint paper before and had no way of control comparison. I need to use it on a fiber that I know before I can say for certain that it works as effectively. |
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