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October 2005

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(Okay, this is October's journal.  What happened to September?  Don't ask.  But stay tuned.  It may reappear at some point...or maybe not.)

10-8/9-05  The last week has been in the lower 80's, absolutely glorious Kentucky fall weather.  On Thursday (the 7th) a front moved in, the rain began and daytime temperature dropped to the mid 50's.  Why?  It's the Guild's Fall Fair, of course, and I was scheduled to demo papermaking...outside.  The forecast for the weekend was more of the same - misting rain and cold.  I am not a complete masochist.  I did do the demo at the Fair, but I switched from papermaking to basketry.  That's not to say that I was warm.  I wasn't.  But at least my hands didn't turn blue and fall off.  And to be honest, I had a good time.  Ran into two different people who had bought wooden utensils from me many, many years ago.  Neither of them recognized me, but they did recognize my business name, "The Whistlin' Whittler," and made the connection.  Selling isn't allowed out of a demo booth, but I did have various finished pieces displayed - paper vessels, bound books and basketry.  The feedback from the patrons was good, but even more gratifying were the comments from other craftsmen.  (I haven't done a show since 1996, only wandered around the Fairs taking promotional pictures for the Guild, and many of the new members thought I was a photographer.  I lay no claim to that field.  As long as I can take a thousand pictures, then crop and edit, I'll get a few good ones.)

10-11-05  Dory and Graham Hudspeth from Alvaton were at the Fair on Saturday.  They hauled along several sections of a banana tree trunk and dropped it off at the house for me to work up into paper.  In one way, the trunk reminds me of yucca because the leaf bases wrap themselves around the outside of the core and make up most of the trunk's thickness.  But unlike yucca, the leaves aren't solid.  The insides of them have honeycomb pockets, much like cattail leaves. This worries me on two levels.  One, because these air pockets take up space, I won't be able to get much into the pot at once, and second, I have a strong feeling there will be much gunk involved.  I don't think the material that forms the pockets has any usable fiber, at least, it doesn't feel that way.  Whatever, I've cut up and am cooking a huge pot, more than I normally cook at once, hoping to get a beater load out of it.

10-12-05  Umph.  I'm not happy with the yield from the banana tree trunk.  The pot cooked down to what would have been a beater load, but the problem is that the good fibers are buried in a mass of material that has no business in paper...the stuff that is dangling here.  The gunkish stuff has the consistency and feel of cooked, mashed potatoes.  By the time I washed that out of the cooked plant material, this was all I had left.  Mind you, I started with that pot crammed full before cooking.  The pure banana tree trunk paper is interesting and quite pretty, but there's only enough pulp for something like three or four 81/2"x11" sheets, if that much.

10-13-05  Last weekend during the Fair I took a break and walked for awhile just to warm up a little. I wandered down to a nearby 40-or-so acre field bordered on one side by a creek and on another by the railroad tracks, both good gathering places for paper plants and basket material.  So there I was, complete with umbrella and soaking wet feet, wandering around, peering into the bushes and occasionally pushing them aside to crawl in for a closer look at some interesting plant and getting soaked to the skin in the bargain.  (Sounds like a great way to warm up, right?)  But the plants were interesting and I didn't really pay much attention to being wet.  Even though it's pretty much the tail end of gathering season, except for dried material, there is still stuff out there.  I found a huge patch of curly dock where the city maintenance employees dump grass clippings.  Some of the dock plants had been totally covered up, but a few stuck their leaves out above the clippings and most were actually behind the pile.  Today I went back to gather the leaf stems.  When I dug down into the grass, I found that the stems of those plants had turned a gorgeous pink.  Lovely stuff!  Dock is one of the few plant materials I've worked with that retains pinks and purples.  Neat coloring.  I have a specific purpose in mind for these curly dock leaf stem sheets.  Unfortunately, that huge pile of stems only made 14 6"x9" sheets, so I'll have to go back for more.

10-15-05  Finished up a couple of baskets, one of I was working on during the Guild Fair (on the right) and another that I had here at the house (left).  The first is entirely daylilies, the other is hosta leaf stems with accents of willow (lower line) and dark daylily (upper line).  The taller one of the two is about 4" high.

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