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journal |
April 2004 |
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4-1-04 I'm back! Well...sort of. I'm not back to papermaking yet, though I truly wish I were. We're experiencing weather that gives us a glorious 80 degrees one day followed two days later by a chilly 51. The 80 I can handle, but pulling paper at 51 is impossible, so I haven't hauled out the vats and moulds and deckles yet. But at least I'm back to journaling. I really missed it over the winter. Usually I post to a bookbinding journal during that time, but instead of binding last winter, I did butt-in-chair writing on the papermaking swatch book that I promised last summer. I could have journaled about the writing, but unlike my husband (who is a real writer), I didn't. By the end of the writing day, I was "writ out" with no more words left for the cyber screen. Too, there was the fear that my daily frustration at working with words would be boring. I am a tactile person, accustomed to holding the work at the end of the day, being able to touch what I accomplished within those hours. My daily collection of words, no matter how few or how many, was too nebulous to offer that satisfaction. However, the book is finished and is off being edited for the inevitable errors. (Of course, immediately after sending it off, I found five punctuation errors and/or missing words. Such is life.) Also such is life...my camera is off being repaired and there will be no pictures until it comes back. (The camera has some technical glitch that causes pictures to disappear, then reappear, then disappear forever. I'm sure if the camera were running on Windows, this could be fixed by simply rebooting. Unfortunately, cameras don't reboot.) 4-5-04 Well, the camera has returned from being repaired (thank you Sony), but it didn't bring any warm weather it. But according to the forecast, mid week looks good, so I may take a stab at beating some torch ginger that came from a papermaker in Costa Rica. It will be good to get my hands back in the vat. Too, I'm anxious to try out a new handcream bar that an online friend from New York made for me. She made it without adding any fragrance. It has beeswax, coconut oil, grapeseed oil, shea butter, tocopherol and glycerin. I have a feeling it will be a good papermaking hand cream, because when I use it, my hands shed water. 4-7-04 Interesting day. I am now in the process of binding the book I wrote over the winter. The official title is A Papermaker's Season. The book is hardbound, 96 pages in quarter cloth, and covers the 2003 papermaking season. It includes 47 swatches from 25 different native plants, along with information on how the paper was made. So many books on papermaking are formal and dry. That's not me, nor is it the way I wanted to share papermaking. Paper is exciting and fun, and it most definitely isn't dry. (Sorry, that one was irresistible.) With this book, I tried to share some of that fun and some of the wonder I find in the entire process of converting plants to a sheet of usable paper. This project has been in the works for a year -- from planning to pulling swatches to writing to binding -- and it really felt good to hold the first completed book in my hands earlier this week. I don't have a release date yet, but I'll be sure to mention it when I do. (So far in this journal, I've resisted adding those cute little smilies. With that last sentence, I feel my resistance crumbling.) **As I said, It was an interesting day. Combining a day working as bookbinder (everything must be absolutely dry) and papermaker (everything is absolutely sopping wet) proved...interesting. There were no disasters, just a lot of paranoia. **Yesterday I put the torch ginger in to soak. (The fiber had been cooked in Costa Rica and dried before shipping. It's interesting, hairy looking stuff.) After having soaked this stuff for 24 hours, I had serious doubts. It was tough, and it really didn't seem as if it had absorbed the water. Though I work with rehydrated pulps often, I've never worked with plant material that has been cooked and dried prior to beating, so I wasn't sure what I was looking at. Was this the nature of all cooked/dried plant material? Was this just the nature of this particular material? Had it been cooked long enough? Had it not been soaked long enough? It was so unyielding that I boiled some water and let it sit in that for an hour. Even that didn't make any difference. Rather than do anything else at that point, I gave it a try in the beater. No go. It sank; it made islands; it jammed. The fibers remind me a great deal of hollyhock and rose mallow bast, both of which were mean to beat and have the same stiff, horsehair characteristics. I fought it for an hour, but couldn't find any way to make the material circulate on its own without problems. At that point, though the ginger had been cooked for four hours in soda ash, I began to wonder if that had been long enough. The fibers really didn't seem soft or done, so I drained the Hollander and recooked the fiber for 2 hours in lye. Even that that didn't soften it, nor did it solve the sinking or jamming problems. By then, it was dusky dark. I unplugged the beater and just left walked off and left it. This is proving to be a rather inauspicious beginning to a new papermaking season. 4-8-04 This afternoon I revisited the ginger. I could have solved yesterday's problems by adding abaca to the ginger fibers in the beater. The abaca would have "thickened" the water, separating the ginger fibers and preventing their sinking and islanding, but I wanted pure ginger paper. Again, I emptied the beater. Then I ran about a quarter of the fibers through a blender for 30 seconds. Doing this did not produce a pulp, far from it, but blending did soften the fibers and reduced their bulk. When I put the blended fibers back into the beater, they circulated without jamming, though I did have to stir because the volume wasn't enough to beat on its own. Over the next ten minutes or so, I reintroduced the remaining unblended fiber bit by bit. The blended fibers separated and carried these heavier ones along, much as abaca would have done. The ginger beat without stirring at that point. Like hollyhock and rose mallow, this fiber collects on the sides of the drum, and had to be cleared often, but that was the only problem that remained. Why some fibers pack alongside the drum and why some don't is a mystery to me, but these have to be cleared often and put back in circulation to prevent ruining the pulp. I let the fibers beat for 2.5 hours and it appears the ginger will make a good paper, but I ran out of time. I may beat it an additional half hour or so in the morning, depending on how the pulp pulls and how the paper looks. I'll decide what to do at that point. 4-9-04 I'm trying to juggle two things at once -- bookbinding and papermaking -- and it's proving to be interesting(?). Despite the fact that they're related fields, they are not compatible. There is the conflicting "sloppy wet/must be absolutely dry" problem. About the only way to manage both is to do one in the morning and the other in the afternoon or one one day, the other the next. Not sure yet how I'm going to handle this. It was late afternoon before I got around to pulling test sheets from the torch ginger pulp that was sitting in the Hollander. It pulled sweet. The pulp had a good consistency and the drain time was good, and I opted not to beat it longer. The quality of the torch ginger paper is excellent, though the picture doesn't do it justice. It isn't as roughly fibrous as it looks. The sheet is quite thin and smooth and surprisingly tough. I suspect the fibrous appearance look is caused by the variation in the fiber colors, making some stand out from the background, but all the fibers are fine. The color leaves something to be desired, though. I'm not sure what the specks are, but they may have come from leaf bases, a few of which were included with the cooked stalk material. I bleached some of the pulp and it came out a lovely cream with no specks. Didn't have time to pull sheets, though. Tomorrow. 4-10-04 The weather isn't cooperating. Much cooler today and the forecast doesn't look decent until the middle of next week. At some point when it warms back up, I'll pull the bleached torch ginger. **This has nothing to do with paper, but I can't help sharing that I had the opportunity to become a child again today. Hey, everyone deserves to relive some moments. Doug Haley, a Berea woodworker, has created a super size rocking chair, which is on display at the Kentucky Artisan Center this month. Today I ran into Doug at the Center and talked him into posing for a picture with me. Until you have some size reference, it's impossible to grasp how large this chair and footstool are. Looks fairly normal, doesn't it? But the perspective from sitting in the chair is totally different! Climb into that rocker with your feet dangling over the edge and suddenly you become a child again. 4-13-04 It's snowing. 4-14-04 It's 62 degrees outside. Typical Kentucky spring. And I took advantage of the day. I've been binding books inside and until now, that's been fine, but the sunshine and warm weather today killed any urge to stay inside. I filled the vat and finally got around to pulling the bleached torch ginger pulp. The sheets are a cream or very pale yellow, smooth and excellent for writing. The tear strength is good. I had saved back some of the underbeaten, unbleached torch ginger pulp and mixed that in with the bleached pulp to pull a few sheets. (The weather may be warm, but the water from the hydrant isn't! I have a feeling I'll be heating water and adding it to the vat for awhile yet.) 4-20-04 Took a break from bookbinding to play in pulp with Brenda, a friend who had never done paper. She's a quick study. 4-21-04 Some time ago, I sent sample papers to a Montessori class in Virginia. The 6 to 9 year-olds were studying the history of Asia, and the teacher was interested in information about paper to share with them. Today I received a thank you note along with their comments: Bennett - "I think the paper is fasanating! I never new there were so many vergins of paper!" Luke (age 6) - "I like the things that they wer made out of." Daniel (age 6) - "I like gingko because it look smooth." Al (age 9) - "I think the pieces are very colorful. It's nete." Demetri (age 7) - "I like the striairias and sircals in Jacobs lader." Catie (age 9) - "I think its intresting that paper can be made with horse dung. Also I never knew that can be made from gingko." Nguven (age 7) - "Some of these samples are very colorful! Is horse dung paper stinky??" 4-22-04 I did an Earth Day demo at the Kentucky Artisan Center today and had a ball. Julie (age 9) - I think that all the papers are interesting. I like the colors and textures." After finishing their studies, they made paper from mushrooms and shared a sheet with me. They were very proud of their paper, and they should be! I think we have budding papermakers here! 4-22-04 I did an Earth Day demo at the Kentucky Artisan Center today and had a ball. I used a pulp with cotton rag so the participants could iron them dry and take the paper home. To make it truly Kentucky, I added cooked, partially processed Kentucky Bluegrass, which gave the sheets a delightful spring green color. The visitors ran the gamut from high school kids on an Earth Day outing to a touring group of antique car collectors. Age didn't seem to matter. They all wanted to pull paper. The kids' enthusiasm and curiosity was a delight. I let them pull, and then required that they do their own ironing. This paper was their project, start to finish. (The trick to getting the paper dry enough to iron was placing the freshly pulled sheet between newspapers, putting that between boards, then allowing the budding papermakers to do a paper dance on the boards to squish the water out.) They were happy. I was happy. It was a good day. |
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