weary abundance

rock pages

washing daylily pulp

lace

stained

dyed

a coming together

fiber

iridescence

incandescence

transcendence

students

presents

the day started with coyotes barking madly and me convinced that wandering wendy had met her death. she appeared (after i armed myself with boots and pitchfork to foray into the tanglewood. 

i worked and taught four students from slu, and mark and i put their sheets on boards to dry.

valerie brought me okra, to freeze for mucilage.

abundance.

rock paper no scissors

redefining red

paper

mirror

sky rocks

rock pages

moving slowly

sometimes it feels like your own work is moving slowly, sometimes it plods along like a good ox team, and sometimes it's like the amazing pair of belguims i saw trotting a wagon down the highway on my way home from work. so quick they were with their young amish men driving that i hadn't time to dig out my camera. the team was high stepping with brilliance. i had a few ends to weave in on this milkweed shifu square. which drove me to prepare more lokta for spinning.

a well loved and much used reference. i have a only few dye books i reuse. india's is much marked. i'm on the verge of making notations in the book! this book is the perfect reference, the only criticism i have with it was a publisher's glitch, my copy has the paper grain running perpendicular to the spine, so the pages curl a bit. 

last night's violas and pickle juice (vinegar) on my sister's old linen pants. (thank you, claudia)

same jar of dye... border leister from andrea

unwrapping from the copper pipe. it's still this color today after drying.

i'm getting the mill ready for mark's class to come on wednesday to make paper. i am working on the stone book pages. i like having several projects going at once, only need more hours, those few at night (for sleeping) would be handy right now! 

september shifu

early september mama nature encroaching on wake robin. not much autumn showing, but the light show is beginning.

this is all that's left of the milkweed paper i made years and years ago, in the days of frequent job changes and unemployment. it was made in winter, from field retted milkweed fiber. i remember stripping the fiber in my kitchen, cooking, then taking it out and preparing it in a blender, adding tororo aoi, and making the thinnest sheets. these are strong despite being thin. and so i sacrificed a poorly formed one to the shifu goddess.

and made several short lengths of spun paper.

this little ball of paper was spun from a variously thick and thin sheet, and the resulting thread is quite irregular. 

i am growing weary of struggling with unevenness, however, and may take a more deliberate approach to my thread making. it looks like i may travel to toronto's japanese paper place to hear hiroko karuno speak about her work. this is for me an amazing opportunity, and i am quietly excited. 

oh, and my student's book: he said guess who i gave my book to? and i, thinking only that he was unhappy with it, said you didn't keep it? and he said no, i gave it to my brother in law. (who is a soldier, heading back to afghanistan) why? i asked. so he can use it to write while he's there and he'll have a special book to bring back to the family. that's perfect, i said. this soldier is my student's hero. how beautiful is this?

growth

on the way to work this morning there was a rainbow arching over the school. only either end was visable, but it was a big one. rainbows are about light shining through darkness. that was what happened today.

i witnessed a student learn to sew, increase his skill base, make a book, and most importantly learn that he can make things. things good enough to be proud of.

he made a long stitch binding with a button closure. he used a natural flaw in the leather for his buttonhole.

this isn't a particularly difficult binding, and the book is all made of hand-me-downs. but this is what he said: i've never sewed before. this is too hard. i'll never get this. i made this and it's good. and he worked diligently because he now trusts me and when i told him it would work, he tried to make it work. it did. he is fully aware that he has believed a story about his own incompetence. he's now rethinking that tale. 

gary frost wrties about the haptics of books, and this student, who used to hate to read and write, is writing despite his poor spelling, and telling his story. now he has a book he designed and built. i hope he will use this book and, perhaps, bring it back to show me. he gladly let me take photos. 

birch bark and violas

rayon and silk velvet

silk and rayon and silk

ice flowers: violas, wrapped, in the sun and pickle vinegar, one week

sunday country road trip to the birch bark bookshop

monday: evidence

look up

and around

glad to know which tree this is!!!

laundrette for india: the truth, updated and otherwhirled

imagine: "commercial dryer, hottest temperature, commercial dryer, HOTTEST temperature" in a loud voiced, strong korean accent. "commercial dryer, hottest temperature", she said, over and over. every single syllable enunciated. my teacher sun-ja insisted this to us as we were getting ready to put together our research sample notebooks for her advanced textile printing course. "all dyes must be fixed. use heat! no need to wash!!!" so off i trundled one fall evening to the "laundra-mat". on grand island. in 1977. i was 19, a junior in the textile design department. 


into the commercial dryer they went. dozens of samples. dozens of fiber combinations, all sorts of colors and patterns, screen printed, direct dyed, tie dyed, photo emulsions, painted... in they went. the lady (there's always a lady) hobbled around as i sat down with my history text. and read, while the dryer thumped. 


thumped.


and thumped. the lady hustled to the phone with alarm and called the volunteer fire department. making eye contact, i emerged from the study trance to see her fling open my dryer "HEY!" i protested.  inside my somewhat smaller precious collection of samples nestled in the steel drum were in flames. over i ran and in scurried firemen and poured in some water as smoke poured out of the vents under the dryer. the firemen scooped up the fiber and flung it out the door onto the walk. one semester's work. burned. melted. unsalvagable.


a new version of "the dog ate my homework".


...and to explain, you must visit india's challenge and know that this story is NOT fiction, so it doesn't qualify, but oh my god, it's true and it just about killed me. 

thistledown paper

a small circle sample of paper. thistledown, actually canada thistle seedheads paper. i am mill cleaning and that includes the extra pulps in my freezer. so i repurposed this pulp which seemed granular and "funny" but has made a decent paper, with fold strength and interest. i think i'll keep it. perhaps mix it with some recycled paper bits i also repulped. now to make paper! the felt is the leftover navy blanket, a small piece that didn't get regular use, so survived the felt massacre.

vining

transitioning weather and trees. i noticed leaves coloring, they're saying the color show is early this year. could be. vines are thriving. virginia creeper is reddening. 

where this truck lives other vehicles live also. and a herd of horses. i love this site. it's rocky and southren exposed, beautiful. but what a mess, essentially a junkyard. all this old metal. shanna leino who makes amazing books and tools for bookbinding (talas sells them) also repurposes found steel in her jewelry. she is inspired by objects full of meaning, sewing machine bobbins, for example. strike metals.

three tube rivets hold the discs apart.

a gathering of cards made their way to me from warwick press. mouse on mouse. carol's attention to the smallest detail amazes me, the colors handpainted. love that face! i don't pretend to be able to understand this: running a trapline year round and loving the beautiful mouseness of mice. c.s.lewis portrayed a workable truce between humans and mice in that hideous strength. i wish it were so. 

hannah kate

twenty five years ago i had a child. she was impatient to arrive, and i barely made the 1 1/2 hour trip to the hospital. monday she moved to boston for grad school, and today is her first class. she will be an archivist. 

a story. when she was two weeks old i loaded her in a front pack my friend kathy, who hannah is named after (h. kathleen), made for her older brother ian. and climbed a mountain. a small one, nevertheless i did it. on top, i nursed her, and changed her diaper. and down we came. the leaves were turning. just like now. 

the thomases, who were so briefly here, blogged about their visit.