inventory

it's time for the reckoning, or in modern americanese: inventory.

i've taken a totally arbitrary approach here, 
picking photos from my desktop:

1. copper pipe marked by goldenrod leaves from a workshop years ago 

with india flint at long ridge farm.

it's resting on one of the stump looms.
the right kind of alchemy.

 2. linda marshall of washi arts is an amazing advocate for japanese paper

a fine friend 
and host who took care of me in vancouver last fall. 

she's a terrific guide for me, 

and provides all kinds of 

help for artists wanting to use 

really good papers.

 3. this book, 

Indigo Patterns 

was purchased this year by Owen D Young Library at St Lawrence University. 

it's a book i loved making, 

the cover is "shifu" with dyed pattern paper, 

linen paper, 

and slippery elm bark weft, linen paper warp. 

pages are indigo dyed pattern papers,

tacketed binding.

 4. my little Flax Notion edition sold out!

i loved making this one.
all flax.

 5. fern dust: 

i'm in a conversation with mari newell who also works with it.

and yes, it IS a thing.

 6. rocks. 

i love rocks, 

these are from jasper beach
and i love how shanna wraps lake michigan rocks. 

 7. milkweed. 

as ever my favorite ever paper that i've made, 

my fist edition done so long ago that my children 

(now 33 and 36) were in grade school while i made it. 

it's a generous and strong plant.

 8. we lost gwen this year, 

shown here in the foreground.

 unusually behind her pack 

 9. raw flax paper. 

absolutely nothing like it.

 10. i think this book, 
12 Moons, 
sold this year to Baylor University by Alicia Bailey 

(but maybe it was last year, sigh) 

shifu cover, silk endpapers, pages all botanical contact printed.

double pamphlet stitch binding.

 11. still contact printing mostly on paper, 

occasionally on shifu 
(which IS paper). 

mostly.

 12. my papermaking class. 

only one student in the bunch was an art major. 

the four adult students and i meet every so often to talk 
and make books. 

it's nifty. 

this group was such a blessing to me, 

keeping me thinking about papermaking. 

all autumn.

i started a post today and meant to go way elsewhere, 

but here we are instead. 

you all who read are blessings, too.

thank you, you are a joy.

please feel free to contact me through the website, 

blogger seems to be ignoring me here and out on others' sites, too.
as for from now until february 2 when hannah and i get on planes for california, 

i will be working on 

inventory
for CODEX .

all the things by hand

all the things.

the first time i heard this phrase

was in michelle moode's beautiful letterpress book

PARTICULAR.

it was index item #1.

the first thing was all the things.

 i handle this book,

handle, the touch or the feel of something held in the hands

this book

haptic knowledge

anyway, it has delights and puzzles quietly presented.

The whole world is a series of miracles,  but we’re so used to them we call them ordinary things. Hans Christian Anderson I've been thinking about the intelligence of  our hands, how they become smarter with practice, like our brains do. unmoored, by shanna leino  i've read over and over. it's a small poem, not many words, but about big things. the care she took as she stitched this exquisite spine   the monoprints on silk... see her tiny stitches? an exit in SLU's print studio with my favorite cheesecloth drying after being washed out.

i'm not quite sure why it is

but for me the things that have meaning

are the things made by hands that have knowledge,

and also are my favorites

for (whatever/all the) reasons.

in last summer's seattle workshop

my students' hands all together could indeed have ruled the world,

with exquisite intelligence, grace, and love.

hazel and gabby

 an envelope came recently that held this rich 

surprise:

 Banks of the Dogbane by sarah swett

a hand sized tapestry (3 x 3") rich in simple detail

and texture

 woven on handspun linen

 i love this thing.

 over on the next farm this structure

was never honored by finishing

or by use

 now it's failing

i believe it was intended for hay storage 

for these bovines.

why leave it undone, 

a public testament to failure of some kind?

i watched them build it, but then it was ignored.

these cows don't seem to care. 

the lovely little brown calf stands out in this black and white crowd.

a lilac burl

from my garden.

enhanced by me cleaning and oiling it,

rolling it around in my hands with pleasure and love

handling it into another use

(maybe an awl?)

 a beautiful handwoven hemp textile

hand spun hemp on a cotton warp

found by my dear friend who allowed me to buy it

at mjolk in toronto.

 tiny waxed linen crocheted basket by Nina Payne

a gift from a gifted friend.

 shanna's lake michigan rocks

beautiful and useful.

 a little natural history book nest i made

two feathers on a shifu page and a seaweed float/bladder

 milkweed bast becoming thread

 ginkgo message

from therese

and words from the wise.

i'm reading a new book: 

Craeft by alexander langlands

which may help me understand (or perhaps just frame)

my thoughts on hand work.

all the handwork.

november for certain

there's no reason this job isn't done

completely stripped and seed fiber separated.

(that milkweed again)

 the whole pile should be this

 but i have been otherwise occupied.

i've bruised my forearms on the beater at zone 4

after a long disentangling with pliers and my aforementioned arms

and fingers that escaped in rather good shape.

hemp sliver

beautiful stuff, it was hard to cut,

so i cut it into too long bits

and they ground around beautifully until

they

didn't anymore.

it may have taken me an hour to unscrew the keeper plates,

pull out a ton of hemp

haul out more,

and using pliers, haul out the rest

bruising up those forearms meanwhile.

 solace was available

 and some experiments are happening at home with the woven books

 and a simply lovely large and flat sketchbook

sometimes things go the right way.

students are busy, finishing up three projects.

one of our students is making a felted vovelle for her interpretive book.

she told me she knits (evidence: her scarf), crochets, sews, and felts,

so i suggested she might be interested in fiberarts and she said,

and i love this,

"oh, (pause) i didn't know that was a thing".

our students are loving learning, exploring and strengthening hand skills

as they make beautiful books and enclosures. 

~~~

i'm off to toronto tomorrow morning and back on sunday

(as long as my car issues keep working themselves out)

then it's thanksgiving week.

i won't see the class for almost 2 weeks. one of them said yesterday

this class needs to be another semester long.

so many of them love what we're doing!

asclepias

it's milkweed harvest season.

the monarchs are all done

and in my 25 acre grown up meadow

amongst the head high and higher goldenrod and brambly blackraspberry

i strove for an hour and a half harvesting

asclepia, milkweed.

it's between green and field retting time,

the leaves are gold or gone,

and only a little milk left.

the bast fiber  in the stalks is what i'm after, 

and the few pods left 

will provide me with seed fiber

all this fiber is for making paper later this fall.

i can't even begin to describe how jungly that meadow is.

much grown up to baby trees or bushes

but the goldenrod! over my head!

and the warm october meant that the thankfully tick free toil

was some of the hardest work i've done in a long time.

the result was a huge heavy plastic bag of potential.

 i always make a little twine for fun

thankful that i don't have to make all the string i use in a year.

 on my stove is a big pot

full of the black walnut harvest from two trees in town

in dye form.

(i only took some, the squirrels got most).

i've already dyed paper and cotton and silk and maybe some wool in it.

but i put in woven cotton tape a couple weeks ago.

it's cooked, steeped, cooked, steeped, fermented a bit

and the tape isn't dark enough yet.

but it will get there.

skein of twill woven cotton tape, dried

the last reveal included a fruity growth

moonorlichenscape?

see those beady bubbles

baubles

looking like amber treasure. 

 and some spores...

this layer went right into the garden

before i removed the skein.

my friend told me this summer

that if i was born 200 years ago i'd have been 

accused of witchcraft.

perhaps he's right. 

old asclepiadacea

knowing that the latest indigo

findings are that a textile

a peruvian, not an egyptian textile

has the earliest indigo archaeological evidence is cool.

here

 but

what's even cooler is that the textile

that old peruvian one

woven with several techniques,

has white and brown cotton

and milkweed fiber!

MILKWEED!

glennis, aimee, melissa, gin, 

and the rest of you who along with me

are 

milkweed nuts,

well, YAY!