Gin's Place

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7-1-02  Went to Richmond in search of Argo laundry starch, but didn’t have any success.  On the way home, I took a back road looking for Johnsongrass growing alongside the right-of-way near a place I could pull off safely.  Didn’t have to drive far.  Stopped and cut a good size armload, brought it home and laid it on the back deck to dry.  Right now I don’t have much time or energy for paper.  The early morning hours when it’s cool enough to pull paper, I’m busy forking up the flowerbeds at the new Kentucky Guild office.  As hot as it is, two or three hours of that, and I’m shot for the day.  I’m still gathering for paper, but the plants have to be dried for later.

7-2-02  Found time today to pull a few more sheets of paper incorporating lint.  This time I chose blue cotton lint added to abaca and bleached beardtongue.  The beardtongue really didn’t work out well.  Its slightly yellowish cast gave the paper a sick look.  Live and learn.  **Experimented again with using cornstarch in the place of the Argo Gloss Laundry Starch that I have used in the past, and I’m disappointed with the results.  Cornstarch, used at the same level, simply does not provide either the sizing I want and need in stationery.  Doubling the amount I usually add seems to help.  A web search yielded an online country store in Ohio that still has Argo laundry starch in stock.  Before I contact them, I’ll check with a local grocer to see if he can still order it.  If not, I’ll order online.

7-3-02   I am owned by a large neutered yellow tomcat named Punkin.  He acquired us when we bought our house a couple of years ago.  He chose not to move with the couple he formerly owned, feeling, perhaps, that we might be more interesting.  He was justified.  His former mother had no wonderful flowerbeds he could hide things in.  Neither did she weave baskets and provide him with wonderful twisty vines to chase and tug on, or comfy, cozy baskets he could curl up in.  Now that I have moved on to papermaking, not only do I drag home vines, I provide him with wonderful mats of iris, daylily and pampas grass leaves he can toss and scatter or curl up in to take a nap.  And not only that, he now has wonderful flavored water to drink.  I might call it a vat, but he prefers to think of it as his own private water bowl.  Before I find myself being chewed out for letting him drink that stuff, I’ll share that he has a water bowl on the back porch that is kept full, but which he ignores.  Until the vat, he preferred to drink out of the pool (which is nothing but a chemical bath) or the driveway drain (with all its petroleum additives).  I really wouldn’t mind him drinking from the vat, but note the freshly pulled sheet of paper his dirty feet are standing on.

7-4-02  Took the day off from forking the flowerbeds and ran the Hollander on some of the daylily leaves I’ve harvested at the Guild office.  Beating time was so short, it was hardly worth the effort to set up, so I went ahead and beat one load of abaca and one of cotton rag, while I was at it.  Pulled a few sheets of stationery and envelopes from daylily, abaca and cotton rag and used double the amount of cornstarch in the vat.  The result is acceptable, but barely.  I really don’t want to use Hercon, but I may be forced to.

7-6-02  Had a load of mulch delivered this morning, spread that, and I’m finished with the Guild flowerbeds until September or so.   July and August are hardly good times for planting anything.  **Pulled some red lint paper this evening.  Red, again, isn’t exactly my favorite color, but it did make nice paper that would be appropriate for Valentine, I suppose.  I’d like to have several colors of lint paper by the middle of next week so I can give them to the weaver who furnished the cotton lint.

7-7-02  Pulled gray lint and cotton rag paper this afternoon.  I had forgotten to add methylcellulose to the cotton rag while beating in the Hollander, and I thought it would be smart to add some of the chemical to the vat.  Mistake.  I put a half teaspoon in water in the blender, then poured a little of that in the vat.  I should have strained it first.  There were small, gooey lumps that weren’t apparent until I pressed the paper.  It stuck every place there was a lump.  Fortunately, because I was exchange drying, the sticking wasn’t permanent, and I was able to salvage the paper with no damage.  The gray lint paper is quite pretty, a very pale gray with darker accent areas.  Nice.

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7-8-02  Went out to the Artisan Center construction site this evening about 5 and gathered teasel, ragweed, jimsonweed and milkweed.  Under normal circumstances, I would not have harvested the milkweed, but left it for the Monarchs until the leaves dropped.  However, I suppose because of the late spring freeze in Mexico that killed so many of the butterflies, I’ve not seen the first one here this year.  It’s likely, too, that these milkweed plants will be bulldozed shortly, so I cut them with no guilt.  I’ve not done ragweed, teasel or jimsonweed before, but they all appear to have enough fiber to make paper of some sort.  Not sure about the quality, though.  I’m a little leery of the jimsonweed because of its hallucinogenic properties.  Not knowing how much of that may be absorbed through the skin, I’ll likely use gloves when working with it.  Brought all the plants home, stripped the leaves from the milkweed, then steamed and stripped the bast from stalks and set that aside for cooking later.  The milky sap makes for sticky work!

7-9-02  Tackled the ragweed first.  I had gathered only young, unbranched plants, knowing full well how tough the old ones can be.  Stripped the leaf stalks from the plants, then the leaves from the largest of the leaf stalks.  Cut those and the main stalks into 1” sections, then cooked that for 4 hours in soda ash.  To prevent clogging in the beater, the cooked material must be run through the blender for 20 seconds or so.  Beat the resulting pulp for 3 hours in the Hollander, and it made a very fine, light olive green pulp, but I didn’t have time to pull sheets from it.  While that was beating, I cut up the teasel.  The stalks were more mature than I had wanted, so I pulled off the side branches and cut those into 1” sections and set those aside while I cut and steamed the bast from the heavy stalk.  Discovered that there really isn’t much bast on teasel.  However, I cut up the bast that I had stripped, added that to the small side branches and cooked all together for 2.5 hours, then turned the pot off and left it to cool overnight.  Teasel is no fun, and this will likely be the only time I work with it.  The plant’s sharp stickers require that gloves be used, and even then, sometimes that doesn’t protect the hands.  Still, the flower heads are lovely.

7-10-02  Processed the teasel, and though it didn’t beat up quite as fine as the ragweed, the pulp is soft and smooth.  I’ve not pulled paper from either the ragweed or teasel yet, primarily because both will be used in a book and I haven’t decided on the format of the pages, but also because I have no Argo laundry starch on hand to use as sizing.  Yesterday I ordered twelve boxes online from a store in Kidron, Ohio, and those should be here either Saturday or Monday.  By then, I should have decided on the book’s format.  **Learned a strange thing while researching sources for Argo on the Internet — that individuals with pica may crave and eat laundry starch, as much as a box every two days.  And here...I’ve ordered twelve boxes at once.  Can’t help but wonder what the folks in Kidron think of me.  **Cut up and cooked the jimsonweed this evening.  Given the rank odor of the plant when bruised, I was expecting a wretched stench when it was heated, but the cooking odor was almost pleasant...almost.  Don’t have enough of it to use the Hollander, so it will go in the blender tomorrow.

7-11-02  Ran the jimsonweed through the blender this morning, but didn’t pull sheets.  I’m not satisfied that it is fine enough.  Not sure what I’ll do about it, so it’s stored in the refrigerator crisper.  If I can locate more of the plant, I’ll cook and process all in the beater.  **This evening was a gathering expedition — black-eyed Susan, ironweed stalks, field thistle stalks and swamp thistle.  (Didn’t learn my lesson with the teasel.  Slow study, I guess.)  Actually, neither of the thistles are difficult to deal with.  The swamp thistle prickles are few and insignificant.  The field thistle looks and is formidable while standing, but the leaves bear the stickers and can easily be removed by running a sharp knife down the stalk before cutting down.  Unlike nodding thistle, there are no stickers on the stalk itself.  Steamed and stripped bast from the field thistle stalks.  The stalks themselves look promising, so those were cut into 1” lengths, all to be cooked and processed tomorrow.  Not sure whether to strip the bast from the ironweed or use the whole stalk.  I’ll use only the stalks on the black-eyed Susan.  Again, problems for tomorrow.

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7-13-02  For the past week I have been working with plant materials gathered from the Artisan Center site.  Because it is a construction site, everything will be either destroyed during building or mowed afterward, so I have been given free access to cut and gather anything, other than trees.  Working the plants up has been an every day event, but I’ve not pulled test sheets until today.  For the most part, I have been working with summer hardened stalks rather than leaves, so processing has been a time consuming thing.  (JimT left Friday for a writers’ conference, and since then I have been almost literally immersed in pulp.  Fortunate scheduling of the conference.  Since my husband left, there hasn’t been a meal on the table.  How could there be?  It has been covered in pails of pulp.)  I’m not going to write a blow-by-blow cut/cook/process for each plant.  Rather, below in no particular order is a list of the plants, links to jpgs of the test sheets, and after each plant in brackets is specific information about processing:

 Milkweed — The juice from the plant is gummy, sticky and milky.  Removing the leaves releases beads of the milk, which will coat everything they touch.  The stems were cut, steamed and stripped, and produced a pulp that was a pale yellow/green, soft and smooth.  I didn’t pull from the unbleached pulp because the green would fade anyway.  Bleached milkweed pulp produced a white sheet, with properties very similar to mulberry bast paper.  Bast from the green plants worked up much easier than the bast from dried plants I had done before.

[ soda ash, 2.5 hours, blender 30 seconds ]

Black-eyed Susan — The leaves and flower heads were stripped and discarded, and only the stems were used.  (FWIW, the hairy stalks created a temporary and very itchy rash on my legs.)  Black-eyed Susan produced an excellent, smooth, pale tan paper with shiny fibers visible on the surface.  Bleached, it is a shiny pale cream.  The paper is stiff, but not heavy.

[ soda ash, 2 hours, Hollander 3 hours ]

Ironweed — I harvested only the youngest stalks, about 3’-4’ tall, stripped and discarded the leaves.  Some of the larger stalks had a pithy, almost corky interior that did not cook up.  Pieces of these floated in the beater tub, and I removed as many as possible.  Those that remained did not present any problems with the paper, though they were visible.  Ironweed stalk paper from pulp processed for 3 hours is somewhat fibrous and heavy, though still a good solid paper.  Processing longer would have reduced the fiber size and lightened the weight of the paper.  The sheets are flecked with a few dark specks (source unknown) and white flecks from the corky interior, an interesting effect.  Beaching eliminates the speckling effect and produces a cream colored paper. 

[ soda ash, 2 hours, Hollander 3 hours ]

Ragweed — Aside from the milkweed, the ragweed plant produced the finest paper, perhaps because I chose the youngest, most tender, unbranched plants.  The pulp is smooth and even and pulls an evenly distributed sheet easily.  Ragweed paper is tan, crisp, with a smooth surface that has no special distinguishing fibers.  It can be pulled quite thin for stalk paper.  Bleached ragweed is a soft cream.  Pulp drains well.

[ soda ash, 4 hours, Hollander 3 hours ]

Teasel — Nasty, nasty plant to deal with!  No place to hold that doesn’t have stickers!  Because the plants were so mature, I removed and used only the side stems for paper, discarding the main stalk, leaves and flower heads.  Teasel paper is fibrous enough to have character, with dark and light flecks.  As with most stalk paper, the fibers floating on the surface shine in the light.   Bleaching produces a cream paper but does not completely remove the darker flecks.  Teasel produced the heaviest papers of those I pulled from the week.

[ soda ash,  2.5 hours and left overnight, Hollander 2.5 hours ]

Field thistle bast — Stickers, yes, but there are none on the stalk, only the leaves, and those could be knocked off with a sharp knife in the field, so none came home with me.   Cut the stalks in sections, steamed and removed the bast, setting the stalks aside for later.   After cooking, the bast was only partially washed, leaving some of the thinner, finer fibers as a base for the heavier bast fibers.   Pulp drains very slowly.  The field thistle bast paper is interesting both visually and texturally.

[ soda ash, 1 hour, blender 2 minutes ]

Field thistle stalk — The pulp made from the stalk is short fibered and, though completely processed, is chunky looking.  The field thistle stalk makes a good sheet of paper, though it appears quite fibrous.   Both the bast and the stalk from the field thistle leave a gummy, unpleasant residue on the hands.

[ soda ash, 2 hours, blender 2 minutes ]

Swamp thistle — Yet another stickery plant.   (Yes, I’m a slow study.)  The plants for this paper were gathered from a “grove” of thistles so thick they had no choice  but to send their stalks straight up with no branches.   Many of the lower leaves were curled and brown and all, both brown and green, were covered in the wispy seed parachutes from the mature seed heads at the top.  There was no option to remove the leaves, so I stacked the stalks in a large yard waste bag I had brought for the purpose, hoping to contain the seeds as much as possible.   (I usually work plants up on my back deck just above one of my flowerbeds.  From past experience I’ve learned that the stuff I bring home immediately sheds its seeds, which sprout and grow.  I have enough weeds as it is without importing more.)   I was forced to cut up and cook stalks and leaves together, but after cooking, I placed the plants in a wire screen strainer and the leaf trash washed out easily with a hose.   The swamp thistle made a nice, smooth, interesting tan paper with dark flecks and shining fibers.  It can be pulled quite thin for stalk paper.  Bleaching produced a cream paper and eliminated most of the dark flecks.

[ soda ash, 2 hours, Hollander 4 hours ]

Jimsonweed — Of all the papers I pulled, bleached jimsonweed produced by far the most interesting and, at the same time, the most impractical paper.   So far, I’ve found only one small patch of jimsonweed at the Artisan Center site, though I’ve not covered the entire place yet.  These plants were small and had been damaged by truck tires.  Because of the hallucinogenic properties of the plant, and because there was no information available about whether this could be absorbed through the skin, I chose to wear surgical gloves each time I worked with it.   I had few plants to work with, so the entire plant was cut, cooked and processed as a whole, but from the results, I suspect that the bast alone would make a lovely, thin, smooth paper.   These bast fibers, I am assuming, are the background base for the heavier shards of stalk fibers.  I’m assuming, too, that they caused the pulp to drain very slowly.  When backlit, the heavy fibers are especially striking.

[ soda ash, 1 hour, blender 1 minute ]

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7-15-02  Finally got around to bleaching the field thistle bast and stalk pulp and both were cream, not much of a surprise.  Bleached bast paper has a thin cream fiber background with heavier gold fibers floating within.  The bleached stalk paper is a sold cream.  It seems that papers made from stripped stalks are super clean with no extraneous inclusions.  Any dirt or trash that might have adhered to the plant are gone with the bast.  Of course, those are some of the things that make handmade paper unique.  **My flower garden dwarf red plains coreopsis had pretty much done its thing, so I cut and cooked the stalks.  I had been wanting to beat a load of something and do hourly pullings to show a progressive contrast of the sheets, and I did it with this plant with pullings at 1, 2 and 3 hours, but I had really hoped for something that would take 5 hours.  Had some really tough stalks of teasel that I thought might take longer, but again, these beat up in 3 hours.  (No jpg on that one.)  With both these pulps, the greatest visual difference is between the first hour and the second.  Though there is little apparent difference between the second and third hours, there is a marked improvement in smoothness, crispness and quality.

7-16-02  The Argo Gloss Laundry Starch came yesterday, so today was spent pulling book papers from all the pulps I’ve had stored in the refrigerator.

7-18-02  There was a threat of thunderstorms late this afternoon, but I’d processed everything from the Artisan Center and the clouds didn’t look all that bad, so I though I’d chance another trip out there.  I’ve barely covered the front of the site, and haven’t explored either behind the Center building or anywhere else on the 28 acres away from the construction site.  The opportunistic plants that are taking advantage of the disruption are so abundant that they’re keeping me too busy to explore.  Two of the plants I gathered today are prime examples of those opportunistic plants — giant ragweed and velvetleaf.  Ragweed is abundant wherever the ground has been disturbed, but I had seen only scattered velvetleaf plants until I walked around behind the building.  There, growing on two bulldozer piles, were hundreds of velvetleaf plants, four feet or so high and just beginning to bloom.  At the time, I knew nothing about the plant other than its name and that it is a nuisance to soybean farmers, but I cut one plant and found that the bast stripped cleanly and easily from one end to the other, so I knew it was definitely worth a try.  (Research later provided information that the plant was introduced into the country in the 1700’s as a fiber plant.  Colonists used it for cordage and thread.)  Most plants were tall and straight; a few around the outside were branched.  All were extremely woody at the base and very tender at the top.  Gathered about 30 or so stalks and removed the leaves and side branches, saving the latter for their bast.  Earlier in the month I had done common ragweed, which made good paper, but I’d not tried giant ragweed, so I gathered 10 or 12 stalks, leaving the branches on the sides.  Found a patch of wild (escape) asparagus and gathered the stalks from those.  (As an aside, I’m seldom completely alone at the site, even after hours.  Today there was a lone surveyor working.  I walked past him packing those three large bundles of plants, but he seemed to see nothing strange in this.  His only comment was, “Hot, isn’t it?” )  The last plant stop for the day was the patch of 6’-7’ tall milkweed growing alongside the back access road.  I was just tying up a bundle of about 30 stalks when the first raindrops hit.  I made it back to the van before I was totally drenched.  It was late when I got home, but the only plant that concerned me this evening was the velvetleaf.  I stripped the bast for fear it might not strip as well the next morning.  The milkweed bast will have to be steamed regardless, and I’ll be using the entire stalk of the ragweed and asparagus, so there should be no problem there just leaving them in bundles in the garage.

7-19-02  This morning I cooked the velvetleaf bast one hour and processed it in the blender for 20 seconds.  It made lovely paper, but looking back, if I were doing it again, I would process it a bit differently. I would cook it longer and use the Hollander.  There are still many, many plants at the site, so I’ll have another shot at velvetleaf bast.   Unbleached velvetleaf bast makes an extremely thin, pale green paper with many silky threads running across the surface.  It has a solid base of fine fibers, causing it to take forever to drain, but the quality isn’t what I like.  I suspect using the beater would improve that.  Bleached velvetleaf paper comes very close to being white, but again, is too thin.  **Steamed, stripped and set the milkweed bast out to dry for use later.  It’s amazing that something so ugly ( the dried bast) can make paper so lovely and soft.  **Stripped and discarded leaves from the giant ragweed, cut the stalks into 1” lengths, cooked for 3 hours in soda ash and beat for 3 hours in the Hollander.  The pulp is amazingly smooth and promised a good sheet, but the paper was a little disappointing.  Giant ragweed paper is somewhat soft, no crispness, no rattle, and the color is basically a pale, blah olive green.  Bleached giant ragweed is cream with a few dark speckles of accidental inclusions (dirt, bugs, whatever).  Both papers would benefit from the addition of another crisper fiber such as, perhaps, iris.  (Aside — One of the advantages of drying pulp in “tufts” is that it allows the option of adding one fiber to another while reconstituting.  I suspect in and amongst the many bags of dried pulp, I have some iris that will shortly find itself in with the giant ragweed.)

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7-20-02  After stripping the bast from the velvetleaf, I had bundled the stalks, intending to throw them away, but changed my mind.  The bases of the stalks were very hard and woody, but the tops were still tender.  Instead of pitching the stalks, I cut the tender top two-thirds into 1” sections and cooked them for 2 hours in soda ash.  After one hour in the beater, the pulp was actually finer than I like.  Didn’t watch it as closely as I should have, but given that it was a stalk, I had figured a minimum of 2 hours in the beater.  I was wrong; not the first time, and probably not the last.  The velvetleaf stalk made a really nice, smooth paper with excellent crispness.  The color, a very pale olive green, fades almost immediately into almost cream.  Bleached, the stalk makes a paper that is a solid clean cream with no extraneous inclusions.  Because the unbleached fades so easily and to a paper that is so light, bleaching really isn’t necessary.

7-21-02  Spent most of the day catching up on paper journal and database work.  Papermaking isn’t all fun and pulp. :)

7-22-02  Finally caught a sunny day to dry pulp and reclaim my refrigerator space, but at the end of the day I still had several plastic bags of pulp left in the crisper.  Most of them are bleached pulps, and I may be able to mix them with other fibers and use them for demo on “Paper Arts Day” Saturday at Tourism.  I’m planning on having three or four vats for patrons to pull sheets, and I really want to include velvetleaf stalk pulp since it’s so easy to pull, but I dont have enough. Went to the Artisan Center site and gathered enough velvetleaf to work up for that.  Found a few more jimsonweed plants and gathered those, too.  I’m still leery of leaving the velvetleaf stalks to be stripped the next day, so I came home and removed the bast, but I left two unstripped to test later.  I’ll see what will happen with those tomorrow.

7-23-02  Stripped one of the test velvetleaf stalks the first thing this morning, and there was no difference removing the bast 12 hours later, but when I attempted to strip the second stalk 24 hours after it had been harvested, the bast stuck and would not cleanly strip.  Question answered.  Cooked, pulped and bleached the stalks for the demo.  Cooked and pulped velvetleaf bast to have for myself.  The previous velvetleaf bast that I had done had been processed in the blender.  This bunch I did in the beater.  Mmmm…  The quality of the paper is improved by the beater, but the paper done in the blender has more character. 

7-27-02  Today was Paper Arts Day in Berea, an event co-sponsored by Tourism and the Berea Arts Council.  The event involved many aspects of paper art — papermaking, quilling, origami, papier-mâché, paper beads, even paper airplanes.  I took Mark Lander’s beater to demo how Hollanders make pulp and did a load of daylily stalks.  Had a laugh when a paper plate full of potato chips blew into the tub.  The beater ate the chips and half the paper plate before I could retrieve what was left of the plate.  The load of pulp didn’t seem to suffer from the unintentional inclusion.  I also had four vats of plant pulps from which visitors could pull — 1) giant ragweed, huskers beardtongue, Indian hemp, teasel and underbeaten cotton rag (basically these were my undried leftovers that worked well together [a convenient and useful way to dispose of them :)]); 2) velvetleaf stalk and black willow bast; 3) Japanese knotweed, Boston fern and green daylily leaf; and 4) asparagus plant and swamp thistle.  (Purely personal opinion and very subjective, but the prettiest paper, #3, came from what was truly the ugliest pulp.)  The Arts Council had arranged for help with the vats, so I had time to “pull” a red, white and blue 3’x7’ sheet of paper and dry it during the event.  The base for the sheet was abaca; the colors came from red and blue dryer lint from Weaver’s Corner and finely beaten white cotton rag.  I understand Mark’s wind problems now.  Several times while the sheet was drying, the wind picked it up and tried to sail it over a chain link fence.  I finally gave up and draped the sheet and screen it was on across a 2’x4’ supported on both ends by wrought iron railings.  Despite the wind and slightly uneven pulling ground, the sheet turned out well and now belongs to the Arts Council.

7-28-02  Miserably HOT!  It’s almost impossible to do anything outside between 10 AM and 7 PM.  Did run out and cut some gloriosa daisy stalks that were beginning to die back, but I brought them inside to cut up.  Stalk papers are becoming boring.  All of them seem to be only slightly different shades of tan/gold in the natural state and some form of cream with no natural inclusions when beached.  The gloriosa daisy follows the same pattern, unbleached and bleached.  The pulp was only beaten two hours and is quite fibrous.  Beaten longer, it would have been smoother, but I’m getting tired of smooth, tan/gold/cream paper.  Having promised myself that pulp will not go into the refrigerator without good reason, I dried what was left. 

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7-29-02  Harvested daylily stalks from the garden.  I’d done them before in the blender, but not in the beater.  The Hollander chewed them into a lovely smooth pulp, which pulled excellent quality paper, smooth and thin.  The color of the unbleached test sheets wasn’t terribly impressive (again, yet another tan), so I bleached the rest of the pulp.  Bleached daylily stalk paper is a nice cream that invited inclusions.  Added a smidgen of cooked daylily leaf and a little black willow bast.  Made a lovely paper.  The cooked daylily leaves added a bit of yellow to the pulp, which made it blended well with the green of the leaf itself.  **Set up to pull a large sheet of paper on the back deck, and learned a good lesson.  Pulps for big sheets need to be very, very fine fibered.  The two pulps I chose were not.  As a result, I ended up with holes in the sheet.  Not good.  (Sorry, no pictures of the failure.  The embarrassment of admission is enough without adding visual proof.)   **I’m getting more than a little tired of stalk paper, so I shifted focus.  I had tried Kentucky bluegrass back in May, but paper produced in one season can be quite different from paper produced from the same plant but harvested in a different.  Mid summer bluegrass paper contains quite a bit more dead and dried material and, very honestly, isn’t at all as pretty as May paper.  It might have been possible to pick through the harvested plant material and extract only the green leaves, but good heavens, I think I’ll wait till next spring to do this one again.  **Went to Artisan center site late this evening and gathered agrimony, Korean lespedeza, Queen Anne’s lace and elm bark from saplings growing on a damaged stump. 

7-30-02  Last evening I almost didn’t harvest the argimony because there really wasn’t enough for a beater load, but I’d never done it and hated to pass up the opportunity.  I know of no other patches of the plant.  I’m glad I did drag it home. The plant offered a delightful relief from the tan/gold boredom.  Cut the stalks in 1” pieces and cooked them for three hours in soda ash.  The stalks turned a deep reddish brown and dangled the possibility of a lovely colored paper in front of me.  The plant material was really bad about sinking to the bottom of the beater tub and I fought it for a good thirty minutes before resorting to removing it from the tub and running it through the kitchen blender to break it down enough to stop the sinking.  (Cooking another hour or two or, perhaps, using lye instead of soda ash might have helped.)  Usually I can defeat the problem of sinking plant material by adding abaca to the beater, but doing so with agrimony would have destroyed the deep rich color that the stalks promised.  A quick turn in the blender solved the problem, and there was no more sinking when the material was returned to the tub.  Beating for four hours produced a lovely, soft, deep rusty-red pulp.  The paper, while not as deep in color, is a lovely cherry brown.  

7-31-02  There are several Peruvian daffodils in the flowerbed.  Normally, plants with upright leaves that have veins running from one end to the other contain enough fiber for papermaking.  Not so with these plants.  The leaves, when dry, are tissue paper thin with no substance to them at all.  The flower stalks, on the other hand, did look promising.  Some were beginning to dry, while others were still quite green.  Cut them in 1” lengths, cooked for 45 minutes in soda ash and processed in the blender.  While the dried stalks didn’t completely blend, the green parts blended into super fine fibers, so fine they clogged and meshed with the screen and would not couch.  Back to the drawing board.  Added a little bit of milkweed bast and that solved the problem without altering the color of the pulp.  The paper is quite interesting with the chunks of underprocessed stalks embedded in a very fine green background.  Paper, such as this, will pucker considerably around the chunks not dried under solid pressure.  Exchange drying in the press is the only way I’ve found to prevent that from happening.  **Put the daylily stalk paper out to dry on the back deck.  Looked out some time later and found a wren checking it out.  She pulled on a tuft, discarded it in favor of another, then tossed that one to one side, cocked her head and looked around until she found the perfect one and flew off with it.  A short while later she was back for more.  I didn’t have the heart to stop her.  After all, I though, their nests are tiny.  How much pulp can a wren make off with?  Quite a bit more than I figured, but the fun of watching her was worth the loss.

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