4-17-07  Yesterday was windy and cool, but the sun was shining, pleasant enough to pull me outside.  I love Berea, but there are things I miss from the farm.  One of them is dry land fish, or morels as they're called here.  I knew many places I could gather them where I came from, but here I'm at a loss.  They grow where they grow, and I don't have any "spots."  Other morel hunters are chary about sharing theirs.  Can't say that I blame them.  On a lark, I went to a couple of different woods looking for them, but had no luck.  I don't know whether that was because they weren't up today or whether they don't grow where I was looking.  Finding spots means being in the woods often, and I'm not.  What I did find, though, was Japanese knotweed killed back by this month's freeze.  Last year I didn't get out early enough to harvest any.  There is such a small window of opportunity because the plant grows so quickly anf becomes too large before you can turn around.  Again, this year, I thought I had missed it.  Not so.  The freeze saved it for me.  The four and five foot stalks I found were drooped over to the ground and soggy, but the fiber is perfectly good.  I harvested about a hundred stalks and threw them in the back of the van.  At home, I stripped the leaves, and because the stalks were soggy wet, even dripping water, I split them, then hung the strips on a fence to dry them out.  Once they're dry, I'll run them through the chipper to shred them, and either store or use them right away.  Knotweed makes amazingly good paper.  There's no need to separate the bast from the stalk.  Both make the same fine paper.  **There is something about me that hates to retire jeans.  Over the years, they become beloved friends.  This morning when I put on an older pair, my foot went through the knee.  In this case, RIP has two meanings.  So sad.  On the other hand, these jeans are all cotton.  They will go on to live another life as paper.

April 18-22  I'm playing catch-up here.  It has been one heck of a week.  I do Traveler's Journals specifically for the Artisan Center here in Berea.  They're handbound books containing travel quotes randomly scattered throughout the otherwise blank pages, leaving room for the owner to jot thoughts and notes.  They're printed on commercial linen paper and bound with a handmade paper cover.  The Center hadn't ordered any, but because I had a demo scheduled for the 20th, I checked their inventory.  They have everything logged on computers, so that's simple enough to do, just ask any clerk.  Hmmmm...they had no Journals.  H'okay, I thought, bet they'll need some.  So I spent a day making up a dozen.  And I was right.  The morning of the demo, the Center called saying, oops, they had intended to send me an order for the Traveler's Journals and some other things I sell through them.  ::insert smug grin here::  "Um, I thought you might need them, so they're ready and the invoice is printed out."  The Artisan Center celebrated its Earth Day on Friday, April 20th.  For the last four years, they've asked me to be the demonstrator for the event, and each time they've specified the paper - recycle cotton rag with Kentucky Bluegrass inclusions.  I had made the rag pulp a few days ago, then gathered and cooked the Bluegrass on the 19th.  The grass is used strictly as an inclusion, so it isn't run through a blender, just mashed well when rinsing.  The combination makes a gorgeous paper.  It pulls easily enough so that even a novice can create a perfect sheet.  The paper has the advantage, too, that it can be ironed dry so the new papermaker can take the sheet home.  I had a ball, and so did the employees.  Several of them took their breaks at the vat.  The Center was crowded with visitors from all over the country, many of whom pulled and ironed sheets to take home with them.   (Teased my husband by telling him his old t-shirts were now scattered all over the country.)  To help visitors understand a little about papermaking, I bring printed material and a board to help illustrate fiber sources.  It's always a pleasure to talk with the people, learning something about them and what they do.  During the day, I met a young writer and shared information with him about a couple of agents I know, met a distant cousin of Barbara Kingsolver and an engineer involved in the commercial papermaking industry.  He was amusing, because while he knew the commercial end of the subject, he knew nothing about hand papermaking.  He was fascinated by it.  He made the comment that it was interesting how the process had been adapted for hand papermaking.  Then he laughed and agreed when I said, excuse me,  it was the other way around, that hand papermaking had come first.  Delightful fellow!  (The photographer for the Richmond Register spent the morning there taking pictures, which made the front page below the fold on Sunday.  Neat!)  I closed up shop at the Center at 3:30 and drove 150 miles west to Bowling Green to be with my husband, Jim Tomlinson, at the Southern Kentucky Writers' Conference where he had taught a session that day.  Then Saturday, he participated in the SoKy Book Fest where I played author's photographer.  The woman beside JimT is Kathy Hardy Rhodes who was there with her anthology.  There was a nice surprise Sunday when I got home.  As part of Earth Day, I learned that the state of Kentucky had honored eight Kentucky artists for being earth friendly and I was one of them.  Here is a link to the press release.  What a nice ending to a wonderful weekend, a tiring one, but definitely fun.

4-24-07  I would call what happened to day a senior moment except it's been that way all my life.  Way too many things going on remember small, insignificant details, like which book I used to press the ginkgo leaves a couple of weeks ago.  I looked for them today...off and on for the better part of the day.  Particularly frustrating because I thought I knew where they were.  Three large books have been stacked on the floor beside the computer since April 10th.  They held the leaves that had been frozen.  I knew that, but when I opened the books, the ginkgos weren't among the pages, just the two types of maples and the oak leaves.  Huh?  They're not here?  Surely I didn't put the ginkgos in a book, then put it back in the bookcase!  I wouldn't have done that...but maybe I did.  So I thumbed through every book that could conceivably hold leaves, but they weren't there.  Given that I have two walls of books in my computer room, that took some time.  Then I went through two walls of books in the living room...none of them held ginkgo leaves.  Neither did the books stacked beside my reading chair in the living room.  It was only after all the thumbing, all the mind searching for what kind of book, that the light bulb went off.  Kind of book!  That's the key.  That's when I remembered taking a picture to post here on the journal.  And when I looked back at it, the kind of book was obvious.  Ah, ha!  I know where that book is!  It's under my mousepad.  I use it to raise the pad to the proper height!  And I remember thinking two weeks ago that the leaves would dry just as nicely there as on the floor with the other books.  I would start writing notes to myself except I'd have to remember that I had done that and remember where I put the note.  No, just best to accept that stuff like this is going to happen, live with it gracefully and laugh at myself.