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journal |
June 2005 |
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6-3-05 Life in Berea is full, just a little too full sometimes. I had fully intended to get back to harvest the mulberry tree limbs well before now, but stuff got in the way. I had two exhibit pieces to get ready, plus some web work for the Arts Council. And the CODA Conference is in Berea this week. Makes for a hectic time. But yesterday I stopped by the creek just long enough to make sure the lower mulberry limbs were still there and would still strip. They were and they would, so I made time today to do the harvesting. The Japanese cultivate their paper mulberry trees, carefully grooming them and allowing shoots to grow up straight and tall with no side limbs. And because of that, the bast is perfect and easily harvested. Here, I'm not dealing with perfectly groomed young shoots. This is a fully grown tree, complete with side branches and blemishes, and that fact makes for awkward and difficult harvesting. Still, the bast is worth it. The tree grows on the edge of a creek, so close that the bank has actually crumbled out from under it, and now the base of the trunk actually overhangs the creek. Flooding has exposed some of the major roots below the bank's rim (photo shot straight down from above), and another flood strong enough to erode more of the bank will likely collapse the tree into the creek. I have permission to harvest on city property, but before I went to work, I stopped by the Municipal Utilities office to explain what I would be doing. The office wasn't open, so I just went ahead, drove around behind the facility and parked in the lot that abuts the creek. Then I went on about my business, whacking away at limbs. It didn't take long before a couple of city employees noticed the crazy woman down by the creek and came to see what the heck I was doing. Nice fellows, easily placated with a "the city manager gave me permission." Judging how much to harvest of any plant material is always difficult. I usually have trouble with my eyes being bigger than the amount of time I can devote later. Because of CODA, I really tried to keep in mind that my time is limited this weekend. I didn't want to cut more than I could strip. If the bast dries out on the limbs, it becomes impossible to strip, short of steaming, and that was not something I wanted to do! After loading the van, I noticed a bright orange root that had been bulldozed up when the area was cleared. About 2' of it stuck out of the ground. I pulled up another foot and cut it off at ground level. My first thought was bittersweet vine root, because they are orange, but after comparing it to the exposed roots beneath the bank, I realized it was mulberry. The bast stripped off the root far more easily than it does off of limbs, even in the best of times. Interesting looking stuff. (And right beside the root was a nice size deer track.) After I got home, I stuck the root bast into a bucket of water, stripped about half the limbs, then cleaned up and went to a reception at Arts Council. 6-4-05 Got a good laugh at breakfast this morning. The first Saturday of every month, the Berea Volunteer Fire and Rescue Squad hosts a breakfast to earn money, and I wouldn't miss it. Good company, excellent food (all-you-can-eat country ham, bacon, sausage, eggs, biscuits, gravy, coffee and juice). The mayor came in, filled his plate and sat opposite me. He's a neat guy, very involved in the community and just plain fun to be with. Out of the blue he said, "We need to get you a certificate and a permit, maybe a badge." "Huh?" "I hear you were challenged by the Utilities people. Maybe we need to get you an 'Official City Weed Whacker' badge." Small towns. You gotta love 'em. Word gets around quickly. **I washed the mulberry root bast and it's gorgeous! I've never seen a more vibrant orange, but this orange "bark" is weird, tissue paper thin and almost elastic. It feels something like crepe paper. I debated about just cooking and processing it with the bast, but I was afraid it would change color, and afraid, too, that the blender processing would reduce the bark to pieces so fine that they wouldn't look right in the paper. It scraped off easily enough, and I saved the pieces to add back to the cooked processed bast. The bulldozer had damaged one side of the root, and that area had turned dark brown. At first I thought the darkened area was only dirt that had been ground into the bast, but a good washing showed it was the bast that had browned. It's a shame because the rest of the bast is a lovely cream color. If there had been more bast, these areas could have been trimmed out, but as it is, there's really just enough to try, so discarding them isn't an option. 6-6-05 I cooked the bast yesterday and got around to processing and pulling it today. As I feared, the darkened areas got even darker during cooking. There were a few flecks of the orange root bark that I didn't get off, and those did hold their orange color, but they darkened somewhat and weren't as vibrant. I was glad I chose to scrap the bark off and keep it separate. Handbeating is not something I find enjoyable (too hard on the shoulders), so the bast went into a blender briefly, and the pulp that came out is soft, smooth and slick...sweet stuff!!! It pulls well, though drain time is slow. The pure sheets have a hint of brown and are a little disappointing because of that, but it's still excellent paper. I had enough to pull 13 4"x7" sheets of various thicknesses. The thinner the sheets, the prettier they are. I pulled six pure, then added the orange root bark to the rest of the pulp. These sheets with the bark inclusions are lovely! (That last picture was shot against white paper and shows the brownish tint of the sheets more clearly.) I pulled until there was next to nothing left in the vat, then did a pour sheet with what was left. There really wasn't even enough do to that and get a perfect sheet. Still, this thinnest of slurries gave a see-through sheet of little more than two or three fibers thickness that, amazingly, holds together beautifully. 6-11-05 Some time ago I committed to a three book swap. Make three books using handmade paper,. send them off, get three in return. Simple enough...except, I've been floundering for an idea. Almost all the books I make are blank books, no content, but this time I really wanted to experiment with content and binding. And there is a relationship between the two, but I've been at a loss for ideas for either. Oh, I have ideas, but they don't mate. Great cover...but I can't think of a content that would match with it. Or great content...but how to bind it. An accident this morning may have solved my problem. It's that way so many times with accidents, if I keep my mind open to what is in front of me. I was doing a soft cover binding this morning and a corner of the cover was accidentally folded under and creased. Bad news. Okay...there are two ways to deal with something like that. Remove the flaw...or use it. And I tried removing it by reversing the fold and smoothing the area with a bone folder, but that didn't work. It was still very much there. Okay, if that won't work, I'll use the flaw to my advantage. To do that, I creased and folded and mutilated the cover until the initial crease disappeared among many, many creases and folds. Hey...this isn't half bad. At least, the idea wasn't half bad. This particular book was already bound when the initial error occurred, which made folding and creasing close the to spine impossible, but if this were done before binding.... Yes! And I have an idea for content that will go well with this "pre-worn" cover! 6-15-05 I spent yesterday with friends from New England who had flown in for a basket conference at Jabez that runs from Wednesday through Saturday. Today I drove down to visit the conference. While I was there, I saw something that disturbed me. There were multiple classes going on, each in its own room. and posted outside the door to each was this notice: "If you are not signed up, do not enter while class is in progress." If the reason for the notice was to prevent disruption, the notice was such a negative way of handling it. I would far rather have seen "We encourage you to come in and see what's going on, but please avoid disrupting the class." 6-16-05 I am such a responsible person. This morning I actually remembered to get my 10-year booster for tetanus. Given some of the...um, offbeat papermaking materials I work with, I figured it was advisable. **Last fall when my neighbor cleaned out his garden, he gave me his okra stalks. I didn't have time to make paper from it then, so I steamed, stripped the bast and froze it for use this year. This afternoon I thawed and cooked it. (The strips were just as slimy or slimier than they were last year. Yuck!) Cooking was an interesting experience. The water thickened immediately and kept threatening to bubble over the edge of the pot. The bast is weird stuff. The good fibers are obvious in the picture, but just as obvious is the material between the fibers. I had a feeling this in-between stuff would result in massive amounts of gunk in the cooked bast, and it did. It took spraying forever with the hose to get rid of the gunk from the cooked plant material, but rinsing left a mat of gorgeous fibers to be beaten tomorrow. 6-17-05 The okra bast was no trouble at all to beat. Circulation started immediately with no jamming and beat nicely, but I can't help but be concerned about return for labor with this stuff. I remember the number of stalks I had to cut and steam last year. I remember how long it took to strip and scrape the bast. I also remember all that slime. And maybe it's that slime that's coloring my perception, but after beating, there really wasn't all that much pulp for the amount of labor that went into getting it to that point. Still, it's nice stuff. I wish now I had spent a little time after thawing it to clean it yet again. There were still flecks of outer "bark" here and there. But the bast was so doggone slimy at that point, all I wanted to do was cut it up and get it into the pot. The flecks beat up into smaller flecks, but they're still visible throughout the sheets. The fibers are super fine, and pull like a dream, no matter how thin the sheet is pulled. I pulled this sheet, thinking it would be as thin as the pulp could be pulled, but there are no signs of pinholes, indicating that it could be pulled even thinner. Nice stuff! And the okra bast paper is lovely when it's backlit, but I wish the dark flecks weren't there. 6-19-05 For the last two years, the City of Berea has been sponsoring Bluegrass in the Park, two evenings of free Bluegrass music by various groups. They're always professional, always good, and this year's experience was beyond excellent. It didn't hurt that the weather cooperated with delightfully pleasant evening temperatures. Friday's groups included Earl Barnes and The Journeymen, Pine Mountain Railroad and Dean Osborne. Saturday was Southern Harvest, Raymond McClain and the Charlie Sizemore Band. The festival is a wonderful chance to hear good music, visit with friends and spend an enjoyable evening. You take your lawn chair or blanket, find a comfortable spot and just settle in. Now...I love good Bluegrass music, but I simply cannot sit and do nothing but listen. My hands have to be busy, so I took some daylily leaves with me to weave while I toe-tapped to the music. I didn't have anything in particular in mind, just wove and listened...well, wove and listened and ate kettle corn until I was stuffed. Hey, that stuff is a side benefit of the festival. I finished the daylily leaf basket up this afternoon. The top curled in that manner naturally. I could have forced it to follow mirror images on each side, but I like what it was doing on its own. 6-23-05 Linda Fifield came over today to learn a little about papermaking. Linda is an amazing bead artist who works over wooden forms that she has turned. (If you have time, do a Google search on "linda fifield" and follow some of the links. Linda's husband, Jack, is an equally amazing woodturner.) We spent the morning outside on the back deck pulling sheets, then moved inside when the day warmed up. Linda has been experimenting using different mediums to cover her turned forms, and I had told her to bring some of the forms to play with today. She had used heavy waxed nylon over one of the forms, then removed it to create a lovely open piece. Instead of doing paper over her turned forms, we opted to play around with using the wet sheets of paper over the waxed nylon netted piece instead. She covering the piece, gently molding the paper into the netting so the impression from the nylon was embossed into the wet paper. After the paper is dry, she'll remove the netting, turn a wooden base for the piece and mount the paper form on it. Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures. Bad Gin! Just take my word for it, the piece is interesting and I think it will be lovely. 6-24-05 We're in the early stages of drought here with no guaranteed rain in the forecast, nothing but the possibility of scattered or isolated thunderstorms next week. When you really need rain, it seems that "isolated" or "scattered" turn out to be the storms you see dumping in the distance, the ones that allow you smell the rain but never experience it. And my flower gardens are suffering. I water the plants that are blooming at the moment and the things that will otherwise die, but the rest languish and fade in the hot sun. (Did I mention we're in the 90 to 100 degree range right now?) This morning I surveyed my spring garden. It's pitiful. The celandine poppies, which were so lovely this spring, were lying flat on the ground, sprawled in a wilted, circular heap. Sickening. Only the plants that are near my paper working area, those that get the residual spray and waste water from papermaking, are standing upright and still blooming. In order to reduce the stress on the wilted plants, I trimmed off their flower stalks, trying to cut back on the volume of each plant, and thereby the amount of water they will need to survive. Several years ago, I made paper from the flower stalks, so I opted to make lemonade out of what the drought forced me to do. The stems are about 12"to 18" from the base to the branching fork. This is the section I used. I cut them into 1" lengths, discarding the upper, forked portion, and cooked this for 1 hour in soda ash, then rinsed well. They were definitely tender enough by that time and some of the stems came apart underneath the pressure of the hose spray. The cooked stems processed in the blender into a wonderfully smooth and silky pulp. And the celandine poppy paper is equally smooth and silky. The fibers are tough, yet fine enough to allow for pulling see-through thin sheets. Revisiting plants that I've done before is interesting. Sometimes the results are markedly different. I checked back through my records and found that I had done celandine poppy in June of both 2002 and 2003. The color and textures of the papers were quite different from the sheets I made this time. Several things can account for differences between papers, but this time I'm certain the longer cooking time is the reason, that and the fact that I only used the lower portion of the stems and discarded the joint and firmer upper portions. The papers this time are far superior in terms of total quality to the older ones because the plant material was totally broken down, no chunks of plant material left floating in the pulp. That is all well and good, but the new paper isn't as pretty or as visually interesting. Ah well.... 6-26-05 Gwen Childs, the director of the Arts Council, is getting married next month and she asked me to make her guest register book. She selected one of Laura Poulette's dyed cloths for the cover and Coptic for the binding, leaving the rest to me. I used straw paper for the pastedowns and pulled a nicely matching green celandine poppy paper for the end sheets. The yellow of the straw and green of the celandine worked beautifully with Laura's cloth. Brown waxed linen was used for the binding, and I added a strip of the straw paper down the front stitched with green ribbon and brown ribbon. The green ribbon worked well with the cloth and the brown ribbon picked up the brown of the waxed linen. Jerry Workman from here in Berea did Gwen's and David's invitation. The birds are created from flower petals and the wings from ferns. They're perched on tiny, tiny twigs. The original of the card is fragile, so for the wedding and reception, a print of the invitation will be mounted in the book, but after this is over, I'll put the original in it. 6-27-05 Teresa, a long time friend from Smiths Grove, came yesterday to visit for a few days. I showed her how to play around with daylily leaves to make a basket. She got a good start on the basket yesterday and finished it up today. Janet/Charlie came over today and wove with us. Charlie is working on a basket with a honeysuckle frame and will be finished with fine hickory strips. I didn't have anything in particular started, so I slipped over the hill and cut a bittersweet vine to use for a frame. It didn't exactly twist the way I wanted, but it worked well enough to use as framework for a paper basket. We worked until we got hot, then stripped off and swam. Charlie decided that we should call ourselves the Underwater Basket Ass(n). (We basketmakers have a wretchedly warped sense of humor.) After Charlie left, I showed Teresa how to pull very fine paper from abaca with just a hint of gray weathered iris leaves. She used these sheets to form a tripod nightlight. Because this was a first time effort, we kept the light simple. It's built on Kentucky river cane with money plant inclusions, and it's really quite elegant when lit. The picture doesn't quite do it justice. |
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