September 2002 Journal

9-1-02   This afternoon I did the cattail heads that were shedding and there is no apparent difference between paper made from those and paper made from the solid heads. It has the same color and same odd pigskin texture. I will say that the heads that are shedding are far easier to strip than those that are not. The fluff almost falls off. If you gross out easily, you may want to stop reading at this point. There was one small difference, though not one that affected the paper, and something that I didn't notice until halfway through cooking. The fluff that was cooking in the pot had small, quarter-inch white worms in it. I had stripped five heads to for this batch of pulp, and there were probably 30 or 40 worms in the plant material after it was cooked. These worms weren't in the fluff from the solid heads that I did the first time, not unless they were there in egg form. I can't help but wonder if they, in some way, play into the shedding process, perhaps by eating at the base of the fluff and causing it to release from the stalk. I know Mother Nature works in strange yet carefully planned ways. Some plants, such as the peony, will never bloom without the intervention of insects. In the case of the peony, ants must cut the casing on the buds so the flowers can open. Perhaps cattails need the worms to help them shed their fluff. Just speculating. Whatever. The worms dissolved in the kitchen blender and the paper is none the worse for the addition of a tiny bit of protein. (Have I mentioned lately that I have a dedicated papermaking kitchen blender?)

9-2-02 The day was forecast to be sunny, no rain, so I took the opportunity to play around with pulp painting using the natural colors of the plant pulps. Did a couple of “pictures” on the large screens. The second, “ Oregon Wildfire, Summer 2002,” using only two pulps — bleached gayfeather stalks and cattail head (the redness of the cattail pulp did not come through on the jpg) — was far more successful than the first, which I’m not about to post. I was far too ambitious with the first, trying too many colors and too many pulps. I did learn, though, from it that various pulps work differently when poured. Good to know. It was fortunate that I kept an eye on the sky. The forecast of “no rain” yielded a sudden afternoon thunder shower. Snatched the screens of paper and pulled them onto the porch just as the first raindrops fell. **Bleached the gayfeather leaf pulp. I thought the unbleached paper was busy, but the bleached leaf paper is even more so. The fibers that were hidden by the deep green show now. Not sure what I’ll use the pulp for, other than an inclusion.

9-3-02 I had some extra pulp that didn’t have a purpose (seems like I always do) and had been wanted to experiment a bit with different drying techniques. Seemed like a good use for it. I’ve dried using several different methods, but always with different pulps. Since I would be using the same pulp for every method, this wouldn’t be comparing apples and oranges. I pulled and line dried between couching sheets, couched and dried on paper towels (thinking workshop method here), glass dried, dried on the screen, exchange dried without pressing, and several variations on all those methods. It was interesting seeing the difference in the paper surfaces with each method. By far the smoothest was the press/exchange dried paper. Next was the paper dried on glass. By far the roughest was the paper that was that dried on the screen. None of those were any surprise. However, the surprise came in the paper dried on glass. Initially, I had two sheets on the glass — one that was board pressed first and one that was simply sponged. When I removed both of them, the board pressed sheet, which was drier when I place it on the glass, came off easily. The sheet that was just sponged, and as a result was wetter when it went on the glass, was considerably harder to remove. Made me wonder if the water content had anything to do with how tightly that sheet had adhered to the glass. I wiped the glass off, pulled four more sheets and smoothed them on the glass. This time I had 1) one that was pressed in a book press, 2) one that was board pressed, 3) one that was sponged, and 4) the last that was simply pulled and couched, with nothing done to dry it before it was put on the glass. I waited until all were dry before removing any of them. The book pressed sheet (1) almost popped off the glass. The board pressed sheet (2), again, came off easily. The sponged sheet (3) was more difficult to remove and curled somewhat from the pulling pressure. The sheet (4) that had nothing done to remove the water before being placed on the glass did not want to release. I went ahead and pulled it off, but it left bits of fiber on the glass, along with one corner of the paper. The backside of that sheet was furry. Fair assumption — the wetter the sheet is when it goes on the glass, the harder it will be to remove.

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9-4-02 I was curious about what the cattail head pulp would do when mixed with a smooth pulp. On its own, cattail makes a strangely rough, yet smooth, leathery feeling paper. The finest pulp I had available was eucalyptus, and when only a small amount of cattail head pulp was mixed with this, the cattail won. The normally soft, silky eucalyptus turned almost as leathery and bumpy as the pure cattail head paper. It’s hard to explain the texture, but it definitely isn’t unpleasant. It’s a soft, smooth bumpiness, much like finely textured leather, and it made lovely stationery.

9-5-02 This was a day of multiple small disasters, most of which had nothing to do with paper. However, one did. I pulped a load of jeans in the beater and forgot to rinse the denim before I cut it up and put it in to beat. As a result, my beater runneth over. It’s fruitless to scrape off and remove the suds, but stirring down occasionally stops the stuff from piling up and falling over the side. **Most often, I exchange dry in the press, but I have a problem maintaining even pressure when drying different size papers. Today I cut plywood boards to use in the press between the different shapes and sizes of paper, allowing me to maintain even pressure and dry different things at once.

9-6-02 I haven’t been especially careful about bringing excess pulp in and putting it in the refrigerator at the end of the day. This morning I found that the three small pails of pulp under the table had developed an interesting odor. Two just plain stunk, while the third had a rather yeasty, home brew odor that was pleasant in a strange sort of way. I started to pitch all three pulps onto the compost heap, then curiosity got the best of me. Would the dry paper stink like the pulp? There was no mold or mildew, just the off odor, and the pulps looked and felt fine, so I mixed them to pull a few sheets and see. Curiosity killed the cat, but this time it taught a lesson, though I’m not sure I understand the lesson yet. All three of the pulps — gayfeather stalk, nodding bur-marigold and wool-grass — had been average draining pulps, not too fast, not too slow, but after having soured (or fermented or whatever you want to call it), the mixture was one of the slowest draining pulps I’ve ever dealt with. The mixed pulp wasn’t slick or slimy, so that wasn’t the reason. Not sure exactly how to explain the change. Pull a sheet and wait...forever...before couching, not something I’d want to do all the time, but as a single time pulling, it was okay. As it turned out, the odor did not remain with the dried paper. The sheets had the normal earthy/planty odor. I really hadn’t intended to do anything with the pulp other than find out about the paper odor, but as it turned out, the mixture was lovely, and I ended up pulling it as envelopes and stationery. The wool-grass makes the surface appearance busier than I like, but the design is muted enough so that writing or printing is clear.

9-8-02 Next Saturday 10 or 12 people will be coming over for a paper pulling day. It’s not a workshop, just a day for the fun of it. Some of them know paper, some don’t, but all of them are fun people. Should be interesting. We’ll have six vats of different plant pulps — cattail, cornshuck, denim, daylily, straw and spiderwort — which should give a good range of colors and textures. There are also all those odds and ends in my refrigerator. (Perhaps this paper pulling day is a subconscious plot to get rid of extra pulp?) **I’ve done straw before, but always in a blender, never in the beater, and I was curious about the difference. Yesterday I cut up a bucket full and set it on to soak overnight. This morning as I poured the soaking water off through a strainer into the drain, I noticed that it was thick, almost like okra goo. Sometimes I’m slow on the uptake and this was one of them. As the last of the goo escaped down the drain, it occurred to me that I should have saved the stuff to see if it could be used as a formation aid. Duh. At some point, I’ll soak straw again to see if this thick water was a fluke or not, and if not, save and try it. Set the straw on to cook for 3 hours in soda ash, then rinsed and beat it for a hour and 45 minutes. Straw beats easily, but it’s bad about packing on the side of the drum. By itself, straw makes a lovely, crisp golden paper. No surprise, straw processed in the beater makes a smoother, finer fibered paper than that processed in a kitchen blender. About an hour into beating, I pulled out a handful of the partially beaten pulp to use as an inclusion. That, along with dark chocolate bulrush, added to abaca makes a lovely paper with an oriental appearance. **Gathered daylily leaves for Saturday’s pulp and it was a strange experience. I use the leaves both as a papermaker and a basketmaker, but gathering techniques are totally different for each purpose. I caught myself playing basketmaker, ever so carefully selecting and pulling each leaf, taking care not to damage it. Not damage the leaves? Leaves that will be cooked and ground up into individual fibers? Excuse me, Gin, it’s time to be a papermaker, not a basketmaker. Snatch and grab.

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9-9-02 Cooked and beat daylily leaves this morning and pulled a sheet from it. I’m pulling a sheet from each pulp partly to make sure that it pulls easily, and partly so the people who are coming on Saturday can have these sheets as a reference when they get home with their paper. I’d never bleached daylily leaf pulp, and did so with a handful, then pulled a sheet, just to see what it made. I was surprised at how consistently light the bleached daylily paper was. Most pulps from leaves with have leaf parts that remain unbleached. Perhaps this didn’t because it was processed in the Hollander rather than the kitchen blender. Just for the heck of it, I pulled a sheet with just a pinch of unbleached pulp added back. The bleached/unbleached paper looked more like what I had expected out of the pure bleached paper. **I have done cornshucks (they're "shucks" here, not "husks") twice before, both times from field corn shucks that had matured and dried while still on the stalk. Those were tough and required 4 hours of cooking in soda ash to tenderize. The dried shucks I did today were from freezer corn put up earlier in this year. They were green and tender when removed from the corn and cooked up in a little over two hours. There seems to be a marked difference in the cooking time for shucks, depending on whether they mature on the stalk or are harvested green. Rinsed the cooked shucks well in a wire strainer, squeezing them a little along the way to break them up and get more junk out. Then I put them in the Critter to beat. That's when trouble arose. Oh, they started circulating immediately and didn't require any attention. Fine, I thought, I'll just run inside, lie down on the couch and close my eyes for just a few minutes. I never nap more than 15 minutes, so no problem. Yeah, sure. Um...two hours later.... Ran out, turned the beater off and looked at the pulp. Um, sorta thin. I really knew I had problems when I dipped the contents out of the beater and the water wouldn't drain out of the paint strainer. At that point, I should have resorted to the wire strainer to drain pulp from the beater, but I waited around on the paint strainer and finally got it emptied. Then I pulled a few sheets, but it took f-o-r-e-v-e-r for the water to drain through the screen. I didn't seem to have any trouble couching, the sheets came off cleanly, but draining was so slow I knew something would have to be done if this pulp were to be used on Saturday. I did save those sheets and dried them to see what they were like. Lovely, but way too crisp and crackly and thin. Did not suit me at all. I opted to bleach the pulp while I was at it, then rinsed it using the wire strainer to get rid of some of the finest fibers. After that, all was well. The pulp drained perfectly, no couching problems and the bleached/rinsed cornshuck paper is of a far better quality. One thing I did differently this time was to include the dark silks with the shucks. I'd never done that before and I love the effect.

9-10-02 Major problem. I can’t make more pulp for Saturday because there is no more refrigerator room. I suppose buying another refrigerator is out of the question. The storage space problem resulted in one of those light bulb revelations, though. I was going through the small bags of odds and ends in the refrigerator, seeing what I might do with them, when I came across a nice size bag of agrimony hiding at the bottom of the crisper. It hadn’t gone bad, but it wouldn’t last much longer, even in the refrigerator. In the past, the only ways I’ve used to keep pulp were to bleached or dry it. I really, really didn’t want to bleach this stuff. It’s a gorgeous cherry/mahogany. I didn’t want to dry it, either, since I may want to use it next week. That’s when the light bulb went on. The purpose of bleaching is to kill off the bacteria/yeastie beasts that make the pulp sour or ferment, but...duh... there was another alternative that would do the same thing without altering the color! All I had to do was to put the pulp back in the cooking pot, add water, bring to a boil, then turn down and simmer for 10 or 15 minutes. As I said...duh.

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9-11-02 I had gathered several cattail heads last week to save for later use, but I knew there were worms working inside of them and didn’t want to store them that way. Last night I layered them in an old baking pan, covered it with aluminum foil, preheated the oven to 300, turned it off and set the pan inside to “bake” overnight. This morning when I opened the foil, the bottom fo the pan was lined with dead worms. Amazing how many there were! I’ve bagged the dewormed cattail heads and hung them in the garage. They’ll be there safe and sound when I went them. **I figured it was safe enough timewise to finish up making the pulp for Saturday, so I cooked cattail leaf to beat tomorrow and made a grand mixture of the odds and ends I had in the crisper — Shasta daisy, field thistle, dwarf red plains coreopsis, bluegrass, butterflyweed, velvet leaf, kudzu, huskers beardtongue, swamp thistle and pigweed. It was a lovely mixture after it was bleached and pulled quite well.    **Just for the heck of it, I tried pulling daylily using just a screen, no deckle. It was an interesting experience. The pulling wasn’t all that difficult, but because of the extreme deckled edge, managing the wet sheets afterward was a pill. Ended up drying them on glass. I have a feeling this is something I’ll play more with as I have time.

9-12-02 Beat the cooked cattail and pulled a couple of sheets. This pulp will need formation aid on Saturday, along with the denim. Also, cooked spiderwort and processed it in the kitchen blender. Added a little abaca to make it pull a bit better. **My warped mind took the notion that it would be interesting to have some horse dung pulp for the people to play with on Saturday. Now, mind you, it has been over a year since I have fooled with the stuff. Now I remember why it has been a year. Set some dung on to soak in a five gallon bucket this morning and by mid afternoon, it had developed an interesting ...ripe?...odor. Put it in an old pillowcase and hosed it down thoroughly. When that was finished, it simply had a nice earthy odor. Cooked, processed and pulled a couple of sheets. The pulp pulls easily and the paper is quite similar to that made a year ago. It’s a deep olive with lighter and darker flecks. I didn’t bleach the pulp a year ago, but took time to do it today. The lighter and darker flecks show up much more in the bleached dung paper.

9-14-02 Paper pulling day for the group, and of course, it rained, but it was a much needed rain and no one objected. We were dry, tucked away in a double car garage with the doors open, and could enjoy watching it fall. There were eight pure plant pulps to pull eight different papers (from left to right — spiderwort, horse dung, cornshuck, cattail, denim, daylily, odds and ends and straw). It was a good group of people and they worked well together as a group. We laughed and talked; we got serious about pulling; we did a paper dance; and the youngest member of the papermaking team spend much time grinning about it all. The horse dung pulp? After an initial “ew!” or two, it turned out to be the hit of the day. Even Scott, the editor of the local paper, stuck his hands in to pull a few sheets. Good people. Good day. We’ll do it again.

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9-15-02 Kay Osborne, one of the papermakers from yesterday’s pulling, had brought me a pail of cooked yucca. Ran it through the blender this morning and pulled sheets. Both the unbleached yucca and the bleached have flecks of skin from the leaves. Some of these are imbedded in the paper, while some float on the top with nothing to bind them to the paper. For the most part, the floating flecks stuck to the couching sheets and came off. After drying there were still a few that were loose. These might cause problems in a printer. **Those of you who have been following this journal know the problems that I ran into in April of this year trying to pulp cotton yarns, and not just once, but three times. After that, I swore off beating yarns. I’m a fast study, but apparently a forgetful one. The swearing off lasted until this morning. (This next swearing may be permanent.) Last week a friend gave me a pound of help jewelry cord. Neat stuff! Very stiff double twist cord. I cut it to 1” lengths and soaked and rinsed several times to remove any processing starches or whatever had been used to render it so slick. Then I cooked it for a couple of hours in soda ash. By this time, the cord had swelled and loosened considerably. (The .jpg shows both the beginning cord and that which had been cooked.) At this point, it appeared that it would beat easily. Appearances can be deceiving. Oh, the beater quickly unraveled the twisted cord and separated the fibers in less than 30 minutes, but as quickly as the fibers separated, they latched onto other fibers and gommed themselves together into masses. (If you don’t understand the verb “gommed,” visualize yourself reading the evening newspaper while at the same time holding twelve or fifteen feet of loose duct tape.) There was no difference in the fiber properties or in the clumping between 30 minutes and 2 hours of beating. The cord was noisy beating from beginning to end. I’m accustomed to noise at the beginning while the tightly compressed material is breaking down, but this continued, with bumps and thumps as the mats of fiber went under the drum. There is a dynamic at work here that has me totally stumped. I don’t know whether the clumps form because it is cord that I am beating or whether it is because it is hemp. The stuff still sits in the beater. I’m sorely tempted to take half of the pulp (if it can be called pulp) out and replace it with abaca or unbeaten cotton rag, then beat for another two hours. And I may do that after I sleep on the matter.

9-16-02 Even after pulling all day on Saturday and cajoling and threatening the folks if they didn’t take pulp home, I still had some left. Spent most of the day pulling it up into stationery and book pages for this winter. **The hemp still sits in the beater, but I know what I’ll do with part of it now. Did a little research on the papermaking list and located a post from Peter Hopkins saying that cotton rag would work well with hemp. When I was washing up wet cloths from Saturday’s pulling, I found several pieces of white sheet that someone had left. After drying and ripping apart, there was four ounces of the cotton. That, along with 6 ounces or so of abaca and half the hemp, is the beater project for tomorrow.

9-17-02 Dipped half the hemp cord pulp out of the beater, then beat the remaining pulp with the cotton rag and abaca for two hours. As usual, I forgot to rinse the cotton rag. That resulted in a thin coating of bubbles floating in the tub. The previous masses and clumps of hemp fibers softened and separated considerably, though they never totally broke up. The thumping and bumping that occurred on the 15th did disappear after the first hour or so. To be honest, after beating I wasn’t certain the pulp would pull. It still had much of the clingy quality, with fibers forming into hefty strings. When the pulp was put into a vat with formation aid and forcibly agitated, though, it dispersed and I was able to pull clean sheets.   The quality of the paper is outstanding. Not talking about beautiful paper, here, because it isn't. It's plain, smooth and featureless, but the texture is nearly perfect and the tear strength is unbelievable. The fibers are so fine and so evenly distributed that when the paper is backlit, it's still appears perfectly smooth. It would make a wonderful base for inclusions and be perfect for any use that required strength. The paper may be fine fibered, but it's tough, tough stuff! Hemp cord paper if left unbleached is a very pale tan; bleached, it is so close to white that were it standing alone, you'd call it that. Nice paper!

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9-21-02 Several times I’ve done paper from hosta stems and leaves together, and also from hosta stems alone, and in every case the stem paper has been far superior, requiring far less washing of the cooked material. Fortunately, the hosta plants that grow in my back yard have stems that are 12”-15” not including the leaves, so I have quite a bit of stem to work with, but I’ve been curious about just how much fiber the leaves were contributing as compared to the amount of gunk they seems to add. This summer I’ve been saving the hosta leaves as they yellowed and died back. (Given that the plants are in full sun and the summer was miserably hot, there have been many.) The leaves were clipped off the stems, crumbled into a plastic bag and saved separately from the stems. Today I dumped the crumbled leaves into a pot with soda ash and cooked them until the central leaf rib would pull apart easily. Took about an hour. Ran a handful through the blender for 15 seconds and put that into a small vat to see what it would do before I blended it all. Good thing, because it wouldn’t drain. Almost pure gunk, very little fiber. Nothing to do other than to pitch the blended stuff, but I stood there looking at the unblended leaf material. Interesting appearance...neat colors...nice textures. Just for the heck of it, I put a couple of handfuls into a clean vat of water and pulled a few sheets. Pulled well, distributed evenly and the sheets dried thin and slick in the press. This isn’t paper, mind you, it’s simply compressed plant material, but the unblended hosta leaf sheets are lovely. They won’t handle being folded, but they would be useful as flat decorative sheets or pasted up in a collage. **The middle of August I used some commercial paper to create a prototype for a folded piece that’s been playing around in my mind. A week or so ago I pulled a sheet of velvet leaf/agrimony paper slightly larger than 1.5’x3.5’ to create the actual piece, but I had put off doing anything further because there was one thin spot in the sheet. Today I repaired that flaw by pouring a small amount of agrimony through a screen, then using starch to bind that over the flaw. The agrimony blended in nicely with the design and fiber glued down perfectly under the iron. Trimming deckled edges really goes against my grain, but this piece required smooth edges and exact measurements. Scoring the sheet with a bone folder is time consuming. A 3” strip, running lengthwise down the middle has no cross scoring and will have no folds. It will form the central rim. Scores run out from that at 3/4” intervals to the edges on either side. Because the sheet is so heavy, my major fear was that the folds might crack, but that didn’t prove to be a problem. After scoring, I gently creased the folds, then glued the ends together and left it hanging over a roll of linoleum till tomorrow. The original prototype was drawn together on the ends with waxed linen, and it’s likely that this one will be, too. I’d rather have it bound on heavy copper wire, but I think that’s going to be technically impossible...not that I won’t try it, mind you.

9-22-02 I did it! It actually worked! This afternoon I finished folding the piece and pulled it together with waxed linen, and it actually worked!!! Every fold is perfect and there’s not a single crease or buckle in the center rim. Oh, happy day! (You’ll have to excuse me. Not all my hairbrained ideas work out this well.) The “dangles” beneath the double cone are Kentucky coffeetree seeds that have been drilled and hangman-knot tied with waxed linen. There are also three at the top as part of the hanging arrangement. I went ahead and used the waxed linen because I needed this piece for a gallery exhibit and didn’t want to jeopardize it by trying the copper wire. I’ll likely do some variation on this and try the wire with it. Tomorrow I need to get a shot of the piece in daylight. The flash pretty well burned out the folds.

9-24-02 A box of rice straw showed up on my doorstep yesterday, compliments of Allen Roberts. Rice doesn’t grow around here and I’d never seen the plant before. I’ve done wheat straw before, but I’m quite interested in the paper that rice straw will make. After cutting it up yesterday to soak overnight, I do know it is quite a bit easier to prepare for cooking than wheat. Cooked it for two hours in soda ash. It seemed very tender and I opted to process it in the blender rather than the beater, which as it turns out, was a poor choice. It made paper that way, but I’m certain the quality would have been greatly improved by running through a Hollander, instead. Wheat straw paper is golden. The unbleached rice straw paper is a dull olive green. The paper produced in the blender is fibrous and somewhat rough in appearance, though not to the touch. The pulp drains slowly, to the point of aggravation and even sheets are hard to pull. I doubt that formation aid would help, because the pulp does distribute evenly in the vat and most definitely doesn’t drain too quickly through the screen. As of right now, I’m not at all impressed with rice straw for paper. Perhaps the bleached paper will show more promise. One interesting thing happened with the rice straw. Quite a few grains of rice got into the cooking pot without my knowledge. I found them when rinsing with the hose. I’ve had seeds go through the cooking process before, but they’ve always softened and when pulled in the paper, flattened out in the press, some offering quite nice effects. The rice was quite another matter. Even after two hours of cooking, the grains were still quite hard, especially at their core. I picked out as many as I could find, but I didn’t get them all. The blender chopped them up into bits and pieces, some of which found their way into the paper sheets. When pressed, some of them flattened, some did not. It was possible to pull sheets without the seed inclusion by stirring the vat, then allowing it to settle for 10 seconds or so before pulling. Just had to remember not to allowing the deckle to scrape the bottom. **A week or so ago, I harvested the hosta flower stalks and cut them up into 1” pieces to dry. I’d kept the top foot or so separate because of the dried flower stubs. I wasn’t sure whether this would add to the pulp/paper or detract from it. As it turns out, much gunk has to be washed out of this portion of the stalks after cooking, so it is well to keep this part separate from the “clean” end of the stalk. If the cooked stalks are put into a wire strainer, they can be spray hosed to remove the unacceptable plant material fairly easily. Processed the clean cooked plant material in the blender to use later. I want to use the left-over unprocessed leaf material (9-21-02) as an inclusion with this to make “real” paper.

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9-25-02 Rain has moved in, and with the remnants of hurricane Isidore on the way, this will likely last for several days. Normally, I pull on the back deck, but this morning I moved into the garage for the duration. Bleached some of the rice straw pulp and pulled sheets from that. The pulp still drains slowly, though it seemed easier to pull even sheets. I’m far more impressed with the bleached paper. It’s still somewhat rough in appearance, but the color differences within the sheet make it far more interesting than the drab olive of its natural state. **I have company coming. Took a look in the refrigerator and decided perhaps I should do something about the horse dung pulp, particularly since it’s labeled that way. Pulled most of the pulp into small sheets before I gave out. I’ll either finish it up tomorrow or put it on next year’s tomato ground.

9-26-02 Dull, dreary, rainy day. Hard to get into gear. I did need to do something with the horse poop pulp and pull some sheets from another pulp for a book, but it was afternoon before I could drag myself out to the garage. I do not like working out there! Even with doors open to both bays and the double doors open on the side, I feel claustrophobic. Pulled the rest of the horse dung pulp into sheets to share with others, but couldn’t make myself start another vat. Tomorrow.

9-27-02 Steady rain all night and still raining this morning. Makes me think there should be an outdoor craft show somewhere around here. It always seems to rain then. Put the piece I made a few days ago into a large garbage bag to protect it from the rain and took it down to the Arts Council for an exhibit that will be hung on the 30th. The piece was made from plants gathered at the Artisan Center site and decorated with Kentucky coffee beans, and nothing seemed more appropriate for a title than “Kentucky Crown.” **Came home and pulled 80 sheets from the hemp pulp with a pinch of agrimony for contrast. The more I work with the hemp, the more impressed I am with its qualities. It is so easy to pull even sheets. I needed 72 sheets and the other 8 were to serve as replacements for those with flaws. Not needed. I have 80 perfectly even sheets. Amazing. At one point I pulled a sheet and left a papermaker’s tear on it. Normally I pull the couching sheet up and kiss it off in the vat. Not sure what prompted me to pick up a corner of the wet pulp, instead, but when I pulled, the entire sopping wet sheet came up as a whole. Now mind you, the soggy mass wrapped around my hand, but even though it had not been pressed, it held together as a whole sheet that did not want to come apart. Just a bit mind boggling.

9-29-02 Pulled up the last of the rice straw pulp. Not sure what I’ll do with the sheets, but the pulp is out of the refrigerator and in a useable form now. **I still had the hosta stalk pulp to deal with along with the cooked but unprocessed hosta leaves I had left over from making pressed sheets. I thought about mixing them, but the hosta stalk pulp would have to be bleached first. In its natural state, the pulp is a rather uninteresting shade of pale olive. When bleached, it makes a lovely, silky golden paper, the perfect background for the pieces of leaves. The pulp pulls well, though it’s a bit slow draining, but the sheets are even and can be pulled thin with no trouble. The hosta leaf/stalk paper turned out to be far more beautiful that I thought it would be. It’s silky smooth to the touch and the hosta stalk fibers actually shine in the light. Unlike the unprocessed, pressed hosta leaf sheets that I made on the 21st, this is true paper. It has a solid base of processed fibers that form the paper and the leaves are simply inclusions. **Spent the rest of the afternoon moving my papermaking stuff and cleaning pulp off the deck. Tomorrow’s project is to paint the deck with wood preservative. Strange, I thought we did this last year.

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