slowly she turned

Living the Slow life in North Carolina

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  • Tonight I am drying and pressing the sheets of paper I made on Sunday on this groovy little dry mount press that Susanne is lending me. (Lending as in, you can have it until I need it again, which will probably not happen.) I’m going to “lend” her my greenhouse in the same way. I really don’t have a good place for it now that the fruit trees have grown so much.

    The great thing about this press is that it makes the sheets nice and flat and dry at the same time. I can only do two sheets at a time, but still it is a much quicker and better result. Even though I’m walking over to it and switching papers every 12 minutes, it is enough time to do other things in between. And the main reason I like it is that I don’t have papers spread out all over the place drying! It is a real space-saver.

  • dental

    I had the root canal. I lived. It was not so bad, and it turns out that once she got inside it she found that I had two dead nerves and one live nerve, which was why the tests were not accurate. She said that I probably would have had a lot of pain in about three weeks, so it’s a good thing that I decided to go ahead and do it as soon as the pain started coming back.

    My fears were not unfounded though – she used a lot more anesthetic and it still began to wear off just before she finished. But the pain was not unbearable and she stopped and numbed me up again. She said that I must have a high metabolism. I wish that my fat cells were aware of that.

    It’s a relief to have it done and off my mind more than anything.

    That’s it. I’m spending the rest of the evening reading and sleeping.

  • Okay, I’m having the root canal done tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. whether I need it or not, just to rule it out if for no other reason.

    After that, I can start mustering up the courage to go back to the orthopedic surgeon for another steroid shot in the hip.

    Moving on…

    Yesterday I made paper from cattail and artichokes and cotton. I think that I’m going to have to accept that I cannot make big batches of paper in one session, as convenient as that might be. My back simply can’t take that halfway bending over stance, which is one reason that I don’t weave for long stretches of time either. Not that I’ve woven anything lately.

    I’m trying to rethink my studio situation. Obviously, I’m not drawn to work (or play) in that space. It is nice to have the space for storage. As much as I THINK that I want that separate space for a studio, maybe in my heart I want to be in my house or the gazebo. I feel like I should want to be in the studio, but when I’m there, I spend most of my time rearranging things. I coveted that little building for a studio for years when I lived next door. Sometimes it’s hard to let go of an idea that seems really good.

    Projecting ahead to this coming weekend and a week and a half after that, when I will have a change of scenery and hopefully feel much better all the way around.

  • Book with recycled basil blossom paper

    This paper was made with any kind of brown paper I could get my hands on, leftover plant fibers, and lots of dried basil blossoms. It smells nice. The paper was a little bigger than the cover, but I decided not to cut it down to fit. I like it sticking out.

    The cover was stamped with an walnut ink dauber, and then acrylic paints. The book is bound with coptic stitch and I used corn shuck/abaca paper as spine reinforcers. The little bisque-fired ceramic buttons I’ve been using are by an artist in Brasstown, NC. I’m going to make my own buttons at some point, since I’ve run out of my own. I love making textured, stained ceramics and haven’t done any of that for a long time.

  • Saturday morning coffee pot post

    I’ve already gone to Susanne’s and the farmers’ market, so I’m working on my second pot.

    I have found it curiously difficult to write this week, either here or in my written journal. Depression pretty much reigned, so I blame that. I’ve had dreams that influenced my days, and my hip pain is slowly increasing, and all I have wanted to do is eat and sleep. Last night I devoted to cooking dried cattail leaves and artichoke stalks and flowers in soda ash, while watching Hulu and binding a book. I feel better this morning but this house is just plain horribly nasty and must be tackled with a stout heart TODAY.

    The only big thing that happened to me this week is that I got a flu shot, and once again, I fainted for about ten minutes afterwards. Or I would have, but the nurse held me sitting up in a chair and constantly joked and tried to convince me that it was all in my head. If I hadn’t been so desperately miserable and half-conscious at the time it would have infuriated me. I did a bit of research online and found other cases of people who faint after injections, but aren’t fearful or consistent about it. In my own case, I don’t like shots, but I’m not afraid of normal shots in my hip or arm any more. I know that they aren’t so bad. (Now, a shot in the roof of my mouth or into my hip joint…that’s different!)

    I have had shots in my hip, and have had blood drawn for tests, and did not have a problem. But each time I have had a shot in my arm, I have fainted. I had two incidents of fainting after injuries – once when I had a puncture wound in my foot, and another when my little Squirtley laid my finger open when I was dumb enough to stick it between him and Jazz in a fight. He was being Darryl Feral that day. I have had fainting incidents since I was a little girl, sometimes for no apparent reason.

    So I wonder what is behind these fainting spells. It has to be a physical over-reaction to certain things. Today there was an interesting article in the New York Times Magazine that discusses the physical causes of anxiety. I really wish that more people understood anxiety and depression. Maybe then when we need real help, we wouldn’t be expected to relax on cue or snap out of it because it is all in our minds. Or told that we really don’t need our medication, because we are being manipulated by culture and advertising.

    Anyway, if I do get another shot, it will be in the doctor’s office instead of in a public place.

    Susanne is going to beat the pulp that I prepared last night and I’ll make paper tomorrow. Today, after I finish cleaning, I’m going to glue and paint and work on covers.

  • New books

    Finally took a few photos tonight.

    This one is definitely for me. It is made with both recycled handmade paper and commercial writing paper. The cover is made with an envelope that Rice sent to me – too precious not to reuse! The binding was a bit tricky because I used lots of different scraps and bits of paper. It wasn’t as hard as I thought it might be so I’ll probably make a few similar to this for sale.

    Not a very focused photo, but I’ll get another later since I plan to keep monkeying around with adding things to this book.

    Here’s another coptic-stitched book with a painted cover. The cover and end pages are handmade artichoke papers, and the inside pages were made with corn shucks and abaca fiber. This is a gift for Sherri, the paper collage artist who showed us Mendenhall Glacier while we were in Juneau.

  • Papermaking

    I find it interesting that every papermaking session is different. I thought that the iris/abaca pulp would be almost just like the corn shuck/abaca pulp. But I ended up doing everything backwards from the beginning.

    I thawed out half of the frozen pulp in the vat, so I decided to add water to it instead of the other way around. It was much too thin and I added another quarter of the pulp.

    I got a few sheets that were thick enough for my liking, but the pulp ran out before I got very many. So I took a break, in which I began cooking the corn shucks.

    When I returned to the vat, the solid pulp had settled to the bottom and there was about four inches of water on top. So I scooped out two gallons of water, and that made the pulp thick enough that I could get a few more sheets. The last two were hopelessly thin so I played with embedding a feather and some leaves between layers of thin pulp. I worked that pulp to the maximum!

    Also, my cheap mould and deckle was frustrating. The screen is not attached and it shifted and wrinkled when I dipped it. Finally I tried dipping the mould in the opposite direction than I normally do it, and the screen stayed in place.

    So the whole thing was kind of backwards, but I hope to get a couple of dozen thin sheets out of it anyway. I learned a lot for the next session. One thing that I learned is that I’m going to buy a good mould and deckle from Carraige House Paper, because the last mid-range m&d I bought from an unknown source was unusable.

    Working in the dining room/kitchen did work out well, except that it was a bit awkward couching the sheets on the counter, but that can be remedied by bringing my folding table in from the studio. At least I have more room to move around, which is nice. Having a water source in the room was very convenient.

  • Sunday morning coffee pot post

    Maybe it helped to get those complaints out of my system, or maybe it helped that I spent the late afternoon with good friends, or maybe it helped that Sandy and I had a delicious meal at Fishbones, now a weekly event. At any rate, I feel much better.

    My iris leaf and abaca pulp has thawed out, so I’ll spend the morning making paper and cooking corn shucks with soda ash to prepare them for making into paper pulp. Once I finish my coffee and the cats hunker down for their post-breakfast snooze, I’m going to try this in the dining room with cardboard on the floor to protect the floor and cushion my back.

    I decided that part of my problem was that my studio has too many distractions and it was making me overwhelmed. So I cleaned the clutter that had been collecting on the dining room table for at least a couple of months (and in doing so, found a wedding invitation near the bottom that I’ll be sorry to miss), and brought in just enough from the studio to prepare signatures and bind books. That helped a little, but I still have monkey mind so maybe once I cook the corn shucks and make paper I’ll be able to focus better.

    Laura came to my house for the first time, so I enjoyed the appreciation that she showed for my work, past and present, and her general presence, which is gentle and intelligent. She brought me a nice eggplant, which I’ll make either into parmesan or lasagna this week. I love eggplant and I have problems growing it. Anyway, she had a question about paper casting so I took her over to Susanne and John’s house, where John, a sculptor, gave her some ideas, and we hung out talking to Susanne, who was distributing type. The three of us have a lot in common so it was a good, relaxing time, and I think that we’ll probably repeat it.

    Susanne and John gave me a drymount press to dry paper evenly and smoothly with heat. I don’t know exactly how it works yet but Susanne is going to help me set it up and show me how.

    I found a couple of books at Ed McKay’s on Thursday night that will be sure to bring me much inspiration: al-pha-bet-i-ca, by Lynne Perrella, and 1000 Artist Journal Pages, compiled by Dawn Sokol. These were two that I’ve been tempted to buy online for quite some time, but I found them at less than half-price with no tax or shipping at Ed McKay’s. I feel good about actually buying something from them now and then because I take so much free stuff, but when I’ve mentioned it they say that other people take a whole lot more than I do.

    The only bad thing about one of the books is that it smells a little like stale smoke. I never noticed that until I had stopped smoking for a couple of years. What a shame, because I love the smell of books. I saw a tip somewhere that putting a book that smells like smoke in the freezer will help remove the smell. I don’t know how long, because I tried it for a few days with one book and the smell came back. Maybe I need a freezer as a library for these kind of books!

    The novel that I am reading is American Gods by Neil Gaiman. At first I didn’t like it so much. I’m not a Stephen King fan because I don’t like being reminded constantly of body fluids and decay and nastiness, and there was a lot of that. But now I’m rather fascinated with it. The plot line is unusual and makes you think. I can say that I’ve really never read a book remotely like it.

    Okay, coffee is gone, cats are asleep. Time to get crackin’.

  • Saturday morning coffee pot post

    Actually, I made another little pot. I used to drink coffee all day long every day, which finally had to stop due to the fact that caffeine, in large quantities, turns out to be not so good for you. Otherwise I’d have a 24-cup coffeemaker instead of a 4-cup coffeemaker.

    Gave up trying to post every day lately. I still think that it’s a fine idea, but my thoughts have been rather bleak the last few days. I’m sure that part of it is the weather and part of it is hormones, and part of it is my body reminding me that I do suffer from chronic depression that I can’t just wish away. The medication I take helps a lot but is not that strong.

    So I didn’t go to see Alice Waters and the Edible Schoolyard inauguration, which I rather regret. I didn’t go to yoga Thursday night and I’m not going this morning. Yesterday I felt like I’d been beat up. My hip is hurting again. I’ve had migraine vision and background headaches. I feel kinda like one of those little roly bugs. Just want to curl up and hide in the darkness when someone comes around. Fortunately, I’m pretty good at hiding it at work, and it’s easy because I have my own office.

    Today a friend is coming to my house for the first time to visit, and I hope that it will pick me up some. She’s a mixed-media artist and a farmer and sheep-raiser and we have a lot in common. Her passion right now is wool and needlefelting and so I asked her to bring some work and hang out. Thank god the house has cooled down but it is supposed to rain again. I think that I will lay some cardboard down on the dining room floor and make paper in there.

    I didn’t have the root canal, but that’s not to say that it will not still be needed. In a way I wish that I had gone ahead and gotten it over with, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do something that would be expensive and painful when it was not indicated by tests. However, the endodontist said that the nerve is so close to my crown/filling that if the dentist needed to do any more work on it she might require me to get the root canal anyway. So I’m still waiting for the permanent crown, and the plan is to put it on with temporary adhesive “just in case” for up to a year.

    In other neurotic fretting, I’ve decided to get a flu shot.

    Bleh.

    Two things that make me happy: I got my confirmation packet from Teesha for Journalfest this week. It is going to be wonderful, and her information packet is full of beautiful funky art.

    And Sandy is taking a week’s vacation the week of Fall Break, which is only two days but still it means that I won’t have class that Monday and we are planning a long weekend in the mountains around Asheville, which is one of my favorite places. I think that I’ve found a cheap motel in Black Mountain that doesn’t have terrible reviews. Sandy and I have stayed in some pretty horrible motels in our day, but we don’t need fancy as long as the room doesn’t smell bad and is clean. Normally we would camp but I don’t think that my body is into it these days.

    So I’m really looking forward to this afternoon and tomorrow, and to my October trips. Things really aren’t all that bad – in fact they are pretty doggone good if I can just get my body to believe it.

  • Sunday sweep

    I decided what to do with the little bit of Italy money leftover after paying for Journalfest and airfare to Seattle. I bought a small upright freezer so that I can store pulp and papermaking fibers that I gather and cook for times when it is not possible for me to make paper right away. The rest went to supplies. Susanne gave me a paper press and some wooden boards to go with it. I need to buy a small hydraulic jack and…I guess my paper studio will be in good shape! Maybe I’ll get a good drill with a paint-mixing attachment.

    Susanne is generously beating pulp for me in her equipment (Hollander beater) until the temperatures get too low to do it, which means I only have a few weeks left. I’ll do some more corn shucks and some cattail and bulrush trimmings from my hatmaking.

    Then I’ll start putting more money toward paying off the Honda. I still have $100 a month deposited directly into a money market account that is used just for vacations and art trips. Sandy wants to do a Caribbean cruise – we’ll see!

    My creative juices were really flowing in the studio today. Because I tend to work on several pieces at one time and it’s too dark to get good photographs, I’ll post photos later this week.

    Finally watched Dirty Dancing last night. Yeah, it was better than I thought it would be. Sandy made a remark about it being a chick flick, and I told him that it wouldn’t hurt men to watch more “chick flicks” because most men could stand to learn a thing or two about romance. So he watched it with me.