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journal |
July 2005 |
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7-1-05 I love Berea, that's no secret, but I especially love Berea on the first Friday night of the summer months. That's Gallery Hop Night. The shops stay open late and provide refreshments and entertainment for visitors. It's a great chance to get around to shops, see what's new, visit with old friends and hear some good musicians. Lots of fun. JimT and I stopped by the shops uptown early, then went down to Old Town, set our chairs up on the lawn of the Shifflet Cabin and spent a toe tapping evening listening to some of the best Bluegrass music I've heard in a long time. Dale Ann Bradley was there singing and playing guitar, Michael Cleveland (IMBA 2001/2002/2004 Fiddle Player of the Year) played fiddle and mandolin, Vicki Simmons (an original member of the New Coon Creek Girls) played bass and Pete Kelly (newest member of the band) was there on banjo. Tell me, where else can you hear 2 hours of good, solid Bluegrass by one of the best bands in the business...for free? I'm passionate about Bluegrass and equally passionate about Berea. Okay, it's a small town, but it's a small town with heart and soul that offers some of the best things of life to those who visit or live here. (Okay, I know...I'm beginning to sound like the Chamber of Commerce, but I wouldn't trade living here for living anywhere else in the world. I love this town and the people who live here that much.) 7-4-05 This has nothing to do with paper, books, basketry or any other craft related stuff, but I had to share that Mother Nature did a far better job of fireworks this evening than the city did. This is not to put the city's efforts down, by any means, just to say that the cloud to cloud lightning was absolutely spectacular and timed perfectly to coincide with the evening's celebration. Kudos to Mother Nature! 7-6-05 I am involved in a book swap and for the last few weeks I've been floundering for ideas. I could do a very nice basic, blank book, but I wanted to do something different, a book with content, something I'm not accustomed to doing. The problem I've had is that, at least in my eyes, there should be some relationship between cover design and content in order to to be effective. I've had ideas for content, I've had ideas for covers, and each on its own was good, but until a short while ago when a minor accident happened, there was no connection between content ideas and cover ideas. Earlier this week I was binding a soft cover book for a friend, but sometime during the process, a corner of the back cover was bent under creating an unsightly crease. I carefully straightened the fold out, but of course, the damage was done. The crease was still there. Even tried smoothing it with a bone folder. No go. I looked it a minute, and then thought, okay, if I can't get rid of it, how about hiding in in and amongst many folds. So I proceeded to fold and twist and roll the cover evenly until it was soft. Yup, the fold disappeared. Out of this intentionally damaged cover came my idea for the swap books. A "used" cover mated perfectly with one of my ideas for content. I know having lead you this far, that it's grossly unfair that I not post pictures of the books, but I can't because the swap won't take place until early September. But if you're interested, check back then, and I'll have pictures and an explanation of the content and its connection to the cover.. 7-7-05 Fooled around a little today doing long rolled beads from handmade paper. They're finished with high gloss Minwax Polycrylic. 7-8-05 The Berea Craft Festival ("the July Fair") runs from today through Sunday, and I went out for awhile to see who was there and visit with friends. Have you ever seen someone "out of place" and knew you knew them, but couldn't figure out where you knew them from? I had that happen. This woman was demonstrating chair caning. I looked at her. I knew I knew her, but something wasn't right. I couldn't make any connection between the chair caning, her and how I might know her.. She looked at me with the same, "geez, I know you but from where...." look. As it turns out, she is Kathi Pruett, and I know her as an employee of the Artisan Center at Berea, not as a practicing craftsperson, thought heaven knows she most definitely is an artisan of the highest degree. She's a juried member of the Southern Highlands Handicraft Guild and works with cane, hickory bark, leather, rawhide, cattails and various other materials to bottom chairs and stools. Wonderful work! While I was there I ran into Carla Gover and Mitch Barrett (Zoe Speaks). They had some of their tapes and CDs in a neat basket that Carla had picked up in California. She said it originally came from Africa. Also stopped to listen to Amy Carwile do a little Bluegrass fiddlin'. 7-10-05 Rocks have always fascinated me, and I'm forever coming home with pockets full, then not knowing what to do with them other than fill my baskets. Today I covered several with various handmade papers, then painted them with the high gloss Polycrylic. They make rather pretty beads. The piece on the left is about an inch long and covered with curly dock leaf stem and yucca root paper; the one on the right is Thoroughbred horse dung. This one is the prettiest, though. It's about an inch and a quarter long and is covered with pure curly dock leaf stem. 7-12-05 I'm dancing from one thing to another to another, and I have a feeling this week is going to be a really mixed bag. I like to have something to work on that I can simply pick up and put down at will, something that doesn't hold me to a start-to-finish in one operation. So I started this woven piece this morning. If it goes as planned, the piece will have three sections -- the one of woven daylily leaves I just started, one of paper and the third of woven wire. It may work out that way or it may just take off in a totally different direction all on its own. Stuff does that sometimes. If the piece does end up with the three sections, I already have a title: "Odd Ménage à Trois." (Have I just tempted the fates by given a title to an uncompleted piece?) **Late this evening I went out across from the Kentucky Artisan Center and gathered swamp thistle seed heads. There are three or four large patches of thistles and the fluff is beginning to spill out of the heads. (The seed heads from swamp thistles look a good deal like those of spotted knapweed, but the plant structures are different. Knapweed is a much branched invasive. Swamp thistle has a single stalk topped by many blossoms.) It didn't take long to gather about a pound and a quarter of seed heads and fluff. 7-13-05 Hurricane Dennis moved in and IT RAINED LAST NIGHT!!!! Over an inch of it. Wonderful, glorious rain!!! Now I'm really glad I gathered the thistle down. Last night's rain must have put most of the fluff on the ground. I should say I think I'm glad I gathered it. After cooking the stuff, I really wonder. Swamp thistle pulp looks for all the world like piles of cow flop, so much so that I'm surprised it doesn't stink like it. And this is supposed to make pretty paper? (Yes, I know. I shouldn't try to judge what a paper will look like from the appearance of the pulp, but still....sheesh!) Given that it was off and on drizzle today, it wasn't possible to find out what the paper will look like. I'll do it tomorrow if it doesn't continue raining. **I got bored being inside and went out to Indian Fort Theater to gather pebbles between showers. Some of these stones are almost too pretty to cover with paper. 7-14-05 Well...surprise, surprise! The natural swamp thistle seed head paper isn't half bad! And the beached pulp paper is even better. And the bleached sheet is gorgeous when it is backlit! Repeat after me: "Thou shalt not judge a pulp before its time." 7-16-05 Last month (or the month before, time flies), Janet/Charlie brought me a 5 gallon bucket of donkey dung, and it has been sitting out by the garage ever since...waiting. Yesterday evening I put a couple of pounds in to soak in water., and this morning, when I walked out onto the porch, I was aware of it. Bleah! A good rinsing with the hose removed the majority of the odor...until the dung started cooking. When the pot got hot, the odor was...shall we say B-A-D. (My next door neighbor would have to choose that time to drop by and bring me some coffeecake. I debated telling her what the odor was, then thought the explanation might be worse than just letting her wonder.) The rule of thumb when rinsing cooked plant material is to rinse until the water runs clear. I don't think the water from dung ever runs clear. "Clear" is a very relative term. I rinsed until I was certain all the sodium carbonate and gunk was gone, then rinsed awhile longer and called that clear. There was enough cooked dung to use the beater, but after running a little through the blender to test, I figured out I'd be better off doing it that way. Blending for 20 seconds produced a solid sheet that, while not fibrous, has a nice visual texture. The paper is not especially strong, and I tried blending longer to see if that would improve. 40 seconds produced a more homogenous sheet (definitely not as attractive) and it did not improve tear quality. Blending longer also increased drain time dramatically, to the point that it isn't practical. I covered a rock to make a donkey dung necklace for Janet/Charlie. (It's okay. Her sense of humor matches mine.) The only real difference between the paper on the donkey (right) and horse (left) dung beads is the color. I'm almost certain that is because the horses were on fresh pasture while the donkeys were stabled and fed hay. It's interesting that both papers have black flecks. I have no idea what those are. 7-21-05 Not long ago I was bemoaning the lack of rain. The other side of the coin is face up now. It has rained every single day since July 12. Mind you, this hasn't been constant rain, just off-and-on showers with more than a few thunderstorms included. Still it's hard to make myself go out, get stuff ready and pull paper knowing that a cloud may come up in ten minutes and dump a couple of inches rain. I've caught times between showers to pull paper, but this is getting old. 7-22-05 More rain. Mmmmpht! This is particularly discouraging because I had plans to immerse myself in pulp and paper for two weeks starting on the 12th...the day my husband left for the Sewanee Writers' Conference. Two weeks of not cooking meals, not worrying about paper clutter, no schedule but my own...and what happens? It rains EVERY DAY!!! (Sorry, but I need a B&M paragraph.) **Back last month when I had friends over, I started a paper basket on a bittersweet vine frame. At the time, I wasn't exactly sure where I was going with it, so the piece has been sitting on the desk waiting for me to decide what to do with it. A few days ago out of rain desperation, I attacked the basket. The two nice solid layers of cotton rag paper made it quite sturdy, so I wasn't afraid to rip off the twisted rim, which really didn't work well in the first place. I covered the cotton rag cloth with curly dock, allowed it to dry, then began building up layers of Polycrylic on it. I'm not a big fan of high gloss, but the paper in this particular piece called for it. I like the contrast between the raw twig ends and the smooth, slick finish. (Am offline with an eye problem. Will be back when I can.) |
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