Gin's Place

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4-1-03 I had nothing planned for today and I was just settling down for a nap on the couch this afternoon when UPS rang the doorbell. The chipper/shredder that I ordered last week from Harbor Freight arrived. Shot that nap all to pieces. For some time I've been looking for an electric shredder to use for chopping plant material prior to cooking. For me, that is a tedious, time consuming job, not to mention being hard on the hands. Most of the shredders are too large and are gasoline operated. Combustion engines and I do not get along well at all. Best I can hope for is four or five easy starts before it becomes a game of tug of war. I wanted electric and I didn't want something that was big enough to reduce trees to toothpicks. This one is advertised as being big enough to handle limbs up to 1" in diameter, but I think that might be pressing it a bit. However, that's not my purpose for this. I want something to chop up straw and hosta stalks and various plant materials like that. As I said, my nap was shot. Assembly went quickly enough, though I'd like to shoot the engineer who situated a bolt hole behind the on/off switch. I had several plant materials available to use for a test - Siberian iris leaves (which the cats have been using as a bed), wheat straw (something I hate cutting up!) and a three foot high pile of last year's hyacinth bean vines that had over wintered under the pines. The vines make lovely paper, but I've only worked them up when they were green. This pile really didn't look too promising and earlier this spring I almost pitched them into the trash. I'm glad now I didn't! Not only did the shredder chop them up, but it beat them to shreds in the process. It did the same with the Siberian iris and the wheat straw. I was having so much fun with the straw that I failed to pay attention to the large leaf bag I was using to catch the material. It filled to overflowing before I could turn around. Can you tell I'm well pleased with the results? The only problem that I've run into with the shredder is the intake opening. This thing is designed for stalks or limbs and has a narrow opening that is guarded with rubber flaps to protect against chips flying back out. I found it was necessary to use a heavy dowel rod for a "poke stick" to get the plant materials through the opening. I may try removing the rubber guard to enlarge the opening somewhat and see if that makes loading it any easier. But even if that makes no difference, I have no complaints. I love it when a plan comes together! If you're interested in more information from Harbor Freight about the shredder, click here. No, I get no kickback on this. :) *Last fall I gathered a double handful of Indian hemp seedpods, and yesterday I put them in to soak. Cooked them up this afternoon and processed them in the blender. The yield was surprisingly good. The pulp made lovely paper - fine, silky and feather light. At a casual glance, it looks much like daylily paper, but in the light, the fine fibers from the "parachutes" shimmer and shine.

4-3-03  Broke out the beater for the first time this year to pulp some off white cotton rag.  Till now, it has been too cold or uncertain to do any beating, but I really did want to have some cotton pulp on hand for mixing with plant fibers.  Even though I’d rinsed the rag twice, there were still suds.  There was a bottle of defoamer with the hot tub supplies, and four or five drops of that pretty much killed the bubbles.  Also discovered that I can cut up to 20 1” strips of rag at once with garden shears.  Makes quick work of the chopping.  **While the rag was beating, I pulled a few more sheets of Indian hemp seedpods, then when the rag was finished, I mixed a little of that with the hemp.  Doing so rendered a pleasant pale tan sheet with flecks of seed pod on the surface, but it killed every bit of shine in the paper.  I won’t do that again!  Took the remainder of the pure Indian hemp pulp and bleached it to see what kind of paper it will yield that way.  The bleached pulp is a lovely pale yellow, but there wasn’t time to pull anything else today.  Tomorrow’s job.

4-4-03  The bleached Indian hemp seedpod pulp made a lovely yellow sheet.  The dark bits of seedpod turned a lovely golden color and the shine is even more evident in this sheet.  The paper is soft, or rather, is not crisp and does not rattle.  **Did something today I said I’d never do again – cooked up mother-in-law tongue.  Over watering the large plant that lives in the foyer meant it had to be repotted, and of course, there was all that wonderfully fibrous papermaking material left over.  I couldn’t just throw it out.  Why did I swear I’d never use it for paper again?  Because it stinks to high heaven when it’s cooking.  Bleah!  But...I did it anyway.  Unfortunately, I had to leave the house and I had to stop cooking at 2.5 hours, which wasn't quite enough time on the base end of the leaves.  I left it in the pot, hoping the residual heat would finish the job.  It didn't, but I went ahead and ran the material through the blender, planning on using it as an inclusion rather than making pure paper out of it.

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4-10-03  I've been AWOL working on setting this site up in FrontPage rather than Publisher.  Interesting learning experience.  (Fill that last sentence with sarcasm, if you like.)

4-11-03  This is the first pretty day in forever, and I ended up having to do other things in the morning -- oil change, grocery, stuff like that -- but there's always a way to work in paper, regardless.  When I took some celandine poppy plants up town to a friend, a plot of wild garlic beside the parking lot said "hey, Gin, it's spring, time for garlic paper."  Couldn't resist cutting some.  Friend Dorothy drove up while I was on my hands and knees and laughed at me.  "Spring greens for the table?"  She should know be better than that...or maybe she does know me, and all too well.  The trip for an oil change yielded last year's Indian hemp plants growing alongside the highway.  Brought them back, ran them through the chipper/shredder and learned a good lesson in the process.  The bast fibers in Indian hemp are t-o-u-g-h, that I already knew, but when damp, they're even tougher.  The tops of the plants chipped well, but the lower ends, which actually held water, were pliable and the fibers stripped from the stalk, wrapping around the shredder's upper blades and jamming it.  The machine handles dry stuff or green stuff well, but soft, damp, dry stuff can be a problem.  **Someone, who is trying to work through circulation problems with a Hollander, asked me what ratio of water to pulp I use in the beater, and I had to answer that I really didn't know, that I simply measure by filling the beater to a certain level.  Took time today actually to measure the water.  The beater I have uses 13 gallons of water for 1.25 pounds of presoaked abaca.  This ratio gives a good circulation.  The same ratio works with cotton rag.  However, the ratio of water to fiber varies with different plants.  I can only beat 3/4 pound of curly dock in the same amount of water.  Too much fiber and circulation slows at the intake end.  You pretty much learn how much fiber is too much by watching the circulation.  If it goes well at the beginning, then slows down, some of the fiber needs to come out to restore the circulation.

4-12-03  Cooked up the wild garlic, mixed it with cotton rag pulp and pulled enough sheets to have for bookbinding next winter.  They're a nice color but not as pretty as the ones I pulled last spring.  Those were done with underbeaten rag and were considerably more interesting.  There was still the mother-in-law tongue to deal with, so before I emptied the wild garlic/cotton rag out of the vat, a few handfuls of that went in.  The sheets from that mixture were interesting enough, though nothing I'd do intentionally again.

4-14-02  Before I began drying pulp in tufts as a way to preserve it, I bagged and froze it in the chest freezer.  All well and good, but it's still there.  For me, it's just not an efficient way of storing extra pulp, with the exception of a few bags of beaten abaca for winter when I can't use the beater. I've promised myself that I'll defrost and pull that stuff up this spring before new growth plants are ready to harvest.  Took an inventory today, or rather, I started an inventory.  Ten minutes of handling frozen bags was enough.  I gave up and piled it back in, but I do have a better idea of what's there now.  And it's frightening....  I did keep out a package of bulrush, mixed that with the cotton rag and pulled some stationery.

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4-17-03  Two days ago I split, cut up and put some western red cedar bast in to soak.  The bark is interesting.  There seem to be three layers -- the outer weathered gray bark; a rather lifeless (dry feeling even when wet) bast under it; and an inner bast that is soft and pliable when wet.  It's this inner bast or bark that basketmakers treasure.  It's also the bast that I wanted to try for papermaking, though I saved both the other barks for later.  The bast resembles that of black willow, though somewhat softer and more pliable.  After cooking for 2.5 hours in lye, I was surprised at hope easily the strips mashed easily under the tip of a wooden spoon and even more surprised when the pressure of the hose broke up most of the bast.  Made for easy circulation in the beater.  Beat easily and quickly, taking only one hour, but it was bad about gathering on either side of the drum.  I pulled 8 or 10 test sheets from the cedar pulp, and although lovely, they don't appear to be paper.  Rather, they are sheets of compressed fiber, though very fine fiber, mind you. I'm not sure how to define the difference, but my guess is that the fibers, fine as they are, aren't frayed and hydrated enough to bond into what I view as paper.  I'm not sure whether beating longer would have broken them down more and hydrated them, but I have enough unprocessed cedar to give this another try.  I'd dump this batch back into the beater, but I really didn't have a full load, even before pulling sheets.  I'd rather do it again with enough to completely load the beater.  One interesting thing happened while pulling sheets.  There were "knots" of tiny fibers about the size of peas in the vat.  Only extremely vigorous swishing would break them apart.  Not sure what dynamics made them, but it's possible that these clumps of fibers were compressed under the drum into knots just before the machine was shut down.  If that's the case, running the beater with the drum slightly elevated for the last 10 or 15 minutes might eliminate them.  (FWIW, I don't iron paper to dry it, except as a test to see how it does.  Cedar bast is one of the few pure plant fibers that can be ironed dry without wrinkling.) 

4-19-03  Cooked the Indian hemp three hours in lye yesterday, then left it soaking overnight, not my original intention, but we had unexpected company.  Didn't get around to draining and washing it until nearly noon today.  From the looks of the plant material, it could have cooked longer and not been hurt.  This stuff is tough!  Whatever.  It went into the beater "as is" to see what would come out the other end.  Pulp that was pulled out after three hours of beating would make a sheet well enough, but required a formation aid.  Rather than drain the vat, I opted to add about 4 oz of dry abaca and beat it another hour.  The resulting pulp won't require formation aid.  **All spring I've been eyeing dandelion blossom stems as a source for novelty fiber, wondering what kind of pulp it would make, if any.  I can now report -- don't bother, at least not without adding additional fiber.  This year our backyard has been a seemingly endless supply source for the stems, and I gathered two double handfuls for a test batch while the hemp was beating.  Cut and cooked them with a tablespoon of soda ash for 10 minutes, drained and washed.  The act of washing totally demolished the stems into a slightly fibrous goo.  There really wasn't enough fiber to fool with, but I wasn't about to let that stop me.  Put the pulp into a small vat and pulled a sheet, which because of the goo, would not come off the mold.  Tried several times, but with no success.  It's evening now, and the pulp still sits in the vat outside.  I refuse to give up.  Tomorrow I'll add a pinch of abaca and see if that will cause it to couch off.  (Stubbornness runs in my family.)

4-21-03  Stubbornness may run in my family, even to the point of muleheadedness, but absolute insanity doesn't.  This evening I did try one more time to pull the pure dandelion stem pulp without luck.  Hopefully, my iris plants will enjoy the pulp more than I did.  In a fit of disgust, I sent the contents of the vat over the deck railing and into the flowerbed.  If I couldn't have the pure sheets, I wanted nothing from it.

4-22-03  In all of last year, I only saw two Monarchs, and those at the tail end of the summer. So far this year, I've already seen six, and all of those were laying eggs on my butterfly weeds, which, FWIW, are only 4-6" high with the leaves still firmly tucked against the stems. Over the last few days I have developed a love/hate relationship with these lovely butterflies. I'm glad for their population resurgence, but I hate it for my flowers. If only a small portion of those eggs hatch, there will be no butterfly weed blooms gracing my garden this summer, nor bast in my vat this fall. Because I really do love the Monarchs, I'm going to be a "cake and eat it person."  I'll spend some time during the next few days looking for wild milkweed so I can do a relocation program if necessary.

4-23-03  Heavy frost last night and still cold up into the morning, too cold to pull paper.  The afternoon warmed up, but a walk down by Sliver Creek was far more inviting that wetting hands in the vat.  A small marshy area, not more than 20 or 30 yards long, held some interesting, unidentified grassy plants with round, hollow leaves.  They grow in clumps are likely in the bulrush family.  At this time of year, the leaf bases are distinctly red.  I'm hoping that Julie Johnson, a papermaker/basketmaker from Oregon who works for the forest service, can be some help with identifying this one.  [I need to thank Landon McKinney from the Kentucky Native Plant Society for his email identifying this plant as soft rush, Juncus effusus.]  Cut enough for a beater load and brought them home.  (Cutting the leaves up for cooking proved interesting.  Five weeks ago, I acquired a new 9 or 10 month old helper, Caesar, who feels his duty is to be intimately involved in every paper project.)  For early spring leaves, these proved to be surprisingly tough (2.75 hours to cook in soda ash).  Unlike bulrush leaves, these did not turn chocolate brown while cooking.  Rather, the color shifted from green to olive.  The batch is sitting on the porch, rinsed and drained, waiting for tomorrow's beating in the Hollander.

4-24-03  Still cold.  Had to wait until late afternoon before it was warm enough to beat the cooked plant material.  (For lack of a known name, I'll call it bulrush for now.)  It beat quickly, the leaves separating into fine lengthwise fibers within the first 10 minutes and only requiring an hour of beating in all.  Return for amount cooked isn't as great as with other leaves, but there is next to no labor in gathering and cutting up (unless you have a helper).  Too late and too cold to pull sheets today.  (FWIW, the Indian hemp pulp from the 19th still isn't pulled.  One way or the other, inside or out, it will be tomorrow.)

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4-25-03  Pulled a few test sheets from the "bulrush" this morning, and I'm glad there were few.  Strange stuff.  The fibers are fine, though not as superfine as the dandelion stems, and the pulp drained nicely, but the sheets held an amazing amount of water.  So much so that the fibers seemed to be floating in it.  When I put pressure on the sheets, they flattened and distorted, becoming irregularly wider and longer.  The thicker the sheet, the worse the distortion.  Wrinkle marks formed during drying even though the sheets were under pressure.  Not good.  It's an excellent pulp, and discounting the misshaping, the paper is lovely and can be pulled as fine as tissue.  I think if the post is allowed to sit on an absorbent surface before pressing, that may solve the problem.  Doing that wouldn't practical for production pulling, but I'd like to get a few pure sheets for record purposes.  I really wish now I had pulled out some of the pulp halfway through beating.  Those long fibers would have been lovely as an inclusion.  Whatever.  There's no time to work through the problem this morning.  I'll get back to this one the first part of next week.  **Pulled 48 sheets of the Indian hemp pulp this afternoon.  I'll be teaching a bookbinding session in March of next year using hmp, and this will be one of the papers for that.  In May of last year I did Indian hemp using soda ash.  The batch today was cooked with lye and is a far better pulp and the paper is much finer.  Bleached the remainder of the hemp pulp and left it soaking in water for tomorrow.

4-26-07    I was really surprised at the color of the bleached hemp pulp.  It's distinctly yellow, though some of the intensity faded in the dry sheets.  Last year's bleached Indian hemp was a cream with a touch of tan, no hint of yellow.  Don't know if this color shift is because of the use of lye or simply because these were different plants processed at a different time.  **I had to laugh at a request from the women who work at the Welcome Center (Tourism) in Berea.  I'm not laughing so much at their request, but at the apologetic manner in which they made it.  I suspect if they didn't know me so well, they wouldn't have asked at all.  Tourism has a cat, Tux, by name.  Tux is loved by all.  She's affectionately referred to as "Mayor of Old Town," and is a true delight -- affectionate, but not pushy, slick and sleek and most definitely well fed.  A few weeks ago, one of the employees asked if could I "make paper from Tux," if they saved her hair.  Perhaps some people would be put off by the request, but knowing the cat and knowing how much the women who work at Tourism love that cat, I couldn't refuse.  I'm glad I didn't.  The paper turned out to be surprisingly lovely.  Instead of being single hairs scatted throughout the sheets, as I thought it might be, the cat fluff made strands and formed soft swirls through the cotton rag pulp.  The swirls reminded me a great deal of silk in Japanese paper.

4-28-03  A rather strange disconnected, disorganized day.  Unusual for me.  Couldn't really connect solidly with anything, just flitted from one project to another, not accomplishing a heck of a lot.  I did pull eight or ten heavier sheets of the "bulrush" pulp and let them dry somewhat before pressing.  Doing so did eliminate the distorting and did somewhat alleviate the perception of wrinkling along the edges.  The sheets are actually very flat, no wrinkles at all, but they appear to have them.  Weird.  **Each year one of the papermaking groups I belong to has a swatch swap, which involves producing 80-85 2"x3" swatches of paper.  I hate tearing paper, so one of today's projects was a deckle that would pull eight small sheets of the appropriate size.  All of my deckles are 3/4" thick, but the blueboard I planned on using was only 1/2".  I made it from that anyway and tried it on some cotton rag with cedar bark inclusions.  It works just as well as 3/4".  I started to cover the deckle with duct tape, then thought better of it.  That was way too much work for something that is easily replaced.  While I had the cotton/cedar in the vat, I pulled 24 full size sheets to use for books.

4-29-03  Really didn't have anything in particular planned for today, so I fooled around with the cedar pulp.  Added some to the cotton rag, but I wasn't really impressed with the appearance of the paper. The cedar changed the color and it's nice enough, but rather plain, so I filled another vat, added nothing but cedar to that one and pulled two-sided cotton rag/cedar paper.  The cedar worked very well for that.  When the pulp in the vat of cotton rag was kept thin, the two-sided sheets were a nice thickness.  The combination would make lovely envelopes with the darker cedar on the inside. 

4-30-03  Cooked the hyacinth bean vine that was run through the chipper earlier this month.  Used soda ash for cooking, but lye probably would have been better.  Cooking took 4 hours, too long to suit me, and too long to allow me to work with the pulp today.  **While that was cooking I fooled around with left-overs, those dabs of pulp strained out of the vat each time I change water and those small dabs of pulps that are always left after pulling.  It's basically a conglomeration of whatever I've been working with that could reasonably be added to the bag.  If I'm careful about what I add, it makes a nice mixture and the mixed pulp paper most times is lovely.  I've promised myself (don't scoff) that this year the size of this bag of left overs will be kept within reason.  It's definitely within reason after today.  The contents are on the compost heap.  I made the mistake of adding a dab of cedar and the remaining pure wild garlic pulp.  I knew better than to do that.  Never mix a reddish pulp with green.  I'll spare you.  There is no picture of that paper.

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