Gin's Place

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6-7-06  Survived the first evening of watercolor.  This stuff is neat.  And I knew most of the participants in the workshop, which helped with the insecurity.  More, with pictures next week.

6-8-06  Yesterday, I pulled a couple of very thin mulberry sheets like those that went over the ginkgo leaves on the book fronts.  Because the fibers in the sheet seem to disappear when waxed,  I wanted to have these to show the workshop participants what is holding the leaves in place.  For me, couching sheets this thin requires a perfectly rounded post.  Otherwise, the fibers won't come off the mould properly.  Thicker sheets aren't as particular, so I've been getting by with a slight hump in my couching station.  Yesterday I had to redo the station to offer a nice, smooth, curved surface before the thin sheets would come off cleanly.  After it was fixed, no problem.  I found out right away that I couldn't see the mulberry on the white cotton couching sheets.  It totally disappeared.  I knew it wasn't on the mould, so it had to be on the post, but I didn't like that I couldn't see it, couldn't tell how thin the wet sheet was.  Fortunately, I had some dark turquoise couching sheets and that solved the problem.

6-9-06  I was going to write up an entry about what my husband and I did last night, but he's the writer in the family, and he'd already done such a good job, that I figured I couldn't add anything meaningful.  Instead, I'll just offer you a link to his blog entry about the pickin' on the grounds.

6-11-06  Yesterday's Coptic workshop at the Lexington Art League was just plain fun.  The facility is excellent, even awesome in some respects.  The classroom was spacious with gorgeous windows that gave it an airy, open feeling.  Lighting was excellent.  LAL provided a monitor to help.  Just a great place to teach.  But even better were the participants.  Sometimes class groups work and work well together; sometimes they don't.  This particular bunch was a delight, fun to be with, fun to teach.  The one thing that I truly regret is that I didn't get a group photo.  I did manage to get these six shots (1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6) while we were working.  If all groups were like this one, I would teach every weekend.  Thoroughly enjoyable.

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A quick plug for this coming weekend's Bluegrass in the Park.  If you're planning on being in Berea, put this on your calendar.  Bring a chair or blanket, even a picnic dinner, then sit back and enjoy.  It's free and a great place to enjoy an evening of music with friends and family.

June 16-17 Bluegrass in the Park

Friday night
7 pm Dave Hurt as Grandpa Jones
8 pm – 10 pm The Dale Ann Bradley Band

Saturday
5 pm – 6:30 pm Lewis & Donna Lamb
7 pm Sherman Family
8 pm – 10 pm New River Line

6-14-06  Okay, so I lied.  No pictures from tonight's watercolor class.  I was having too much fun and simply forgot about having the camera with me.  Maybe next time...maybe. 

6-15-06  Several weeks ago, Kathi Pruett gave me the hickory bottom out of a one hundred year-old settee.  The boxes of hickory (yes, it took two of them to hold it) have been sitting out in the garage ever since.  Today I finally found time to get started with it.  The stuff is dry beyond belief, basically lifeless, so much so that it could be broken more easily than it could be cut.  You even be able to get a sense of how brittle it is in this shot.  (It was also incredibly dusty, so please excuse the dirty hand in the picture.)  At some point early on in its life, the settee bottom had been finished with what I'm assuming was varnish.  That doesn't really concern me.  The hickory will be cooked in lye, and I've used lye many, many times to remove paint from old boards.  What does concern me is that brittleness and how that plays into fiber strength for paper.  It was interesting, though.  Once the hickory had been soaked for half and hour, it was as pliable as new bast just off the tree.  I'm glad I broke it up before soaking!  I'll let it soak a few hours, and probably cook it either this evening or Saturday.  **While I was waiting on the hickory to soak, I pulled some extra thick sheets of abaca with partially beaten hickory inclusions for booklet covers.  Gack!  I don't like pulling thick!  The sheets seem bulky and utterly unlovely.  Still, these had to be thick...but that doesn't mean I have to like the sheets or like pulling them.

6-17-06  I cooked the 100 year-old hickory a couple of days ago, but didn't have time to beat it until today.  Cooking only took 2.5 hours and beating 2 hours, as opposed to 3.5 hours and 3 hours for new hickory.  That's a plus.  The pulp from the old hickory is darker than new hickory, but that's no big deal, and I doubt that it will be noticeable in the paper.  However, there is another problem.  Apparently some of the hickory in the seat bottom contained the black, corky stuff that I find in #2 hickory.  When I was breaking the hickory up before cooking, it was so dusty, I didn't bother checking for that.  And, too, I'm not accustomed to seeing #2 hickory used in seat bottoms.  (The craftsmen here are far too particular about their work to do something like that.)  I first noticed the stuff about an hour into beating.  It had collected at the bottom of the outlet....gritty, nasty feeling stuff on the bottom.  I've been through this before when I beat #2, so I knew what was going on.  When it came time to empty the tub, I carefully skim-dipped, staying away from the bottom, hoping that the majority of the chunks would stay on the bottom and allow me to get at least part of the pulp out clean.  Dipping that way worked for about half the load, and it was fairly chunk free.  That batch I kept separate. The second half was full of the gritty stuff.  Bad.  If I knew then what I know now, I would have checked the pieces as I broke them.  It's easy enough to see what will cause problems and what won't.  But then...I would have had to wash them before I could actually see the wood.  Remember?  There was 100 years worth of dust on the inside of that seat.  As it turned out, the paper really isn't all that bad if it's well pressed.  This is a shot of the worst section of a sheet.