letterpress and spinning make excellent bedfellows

In less than one week, I'll be finished with Lace Stories. I'm a little nervous because I do have some printing left to do, and although I've figured out how to make binding the edition a task that is not horrendous, I still have to figure out exactly how to easily attach my lace insets to the front covers. I was thinking about using 1" t-pins to hold everything in place. That, however, means for each book I'll need to insert four t-pins, clip some of the length, carve out notches in the board for each pin, hammer them into place, and sand to finish. And that's before I glue the accordion tabs in place and cover with a pastedown.

Maybe this is a case where the easy way would not be the best way anyhow; I'm just not looking forward to the 120 t-pins that I'll have to deal with.

Despite my reluctance to bind the edition, I'm excited about posting pictures of the finished work here. you can expect them sometime next Tuesday!

In the meantime, I've been relying on spinning for more immediate gratification. I've maybe focused a little too much on improving my skills this week, but the practice has yielded some yarn that I'm pretty proud of.

I'm still waiting for the gobs of fiber I ordered as soon as I got my wheel, so I've dipped into my felting stash. The yarn that's emerged from my bits of purple, pink, orange, and blue roving is much more lovely than I expected. I attribute much of this to plying. It's amazing how well colors offset one another when they're plied into a single strand of yarn. Here's what I mean ...





Too-bright orange merino and pink handpainted merino become a lovely variegated yarn that's the color of sunset. And underwhelming blueish-pink roving, when I plied it with handpainted purples, became a muted, lovely grey with touches of pink. I can't wait until this weekend when I plant-dye my own roving! I'm expecting the yarn I get from that will be beautiful.

Finally, if you're in the Tuscaloosa area, I and a few of my friends are offering a series of book arts workshops at the One Night Only Artique in a couple of weeks. All one-day classes cost only $25 and two-day classes are $50. Here's all the pertinent information (click on the image for a copy you can actually read without a magnifying lense!)



hopefully we'll see some of you there!

and now I spin

I don't often write posts about my crafty endeavors that fall beyond the book arts realm, but I can't resist the opportunity to write about my newest fiber addiction -- spinning. I've been considering taking up the wheel and spindle for close to two years now, and when I got to try out a wheel two weeks ago at a spinning party I happened upon at the local Barnes and Noble, I decided I could wait no longer. The fact that there was an Ashford Traditional for sale at a price I could afford made the siren song of spinning impossible to resist.

When I got to take my wheel home, exactly a week after my first introduction to spinning on the wheel, it was love at first sight. I've already spun a few skeins of beginner's yarn, including this merino.



I've also spun nearly 6oz of what I believe is a merino-romney blend and some super-squishy and soft alpaca. My fingers are beginning to remember what it is they're supposed to do as I treadle, and the amount of overtwist in my yarn in already significantly less.

I've already ordered 6 pounds of mill ends for future spinning projects, which will include lots of plant dying (another craft to add to my ever-expanding list of skills to develop). In two weekends, I'll be prepping my first dye pots to experiment with dying handmade paper and my handspun yarn and prepared rovings.

Between the logwood, indigo, walnut hulls, and onion skins, I think I'll end up with a lot of beautiful paper and fiber. But until then, I'm working hard to finish my book and spinning myself into a frenzy.

Opening and DCDC craft fair

It's been a whirlwind of a couple of weeks (I know, per usual), but I'm happy to report that the Fiber/Book opening was a great success. We saw more than 125 people come and go over the course of five hours, which is no small feat for little, football-obsessed Tuscaloosa. Everyone seemed to enjoy the work; there was a lot of reading of handmade books, some broadside purchasing, and lots of questions. Most people who came didn't really have much of an idea of what good handmade paper could look like, or what it could be used for. I was really happy that the work on show spanned the spectrum of possible uses, from prints, books, and broadsides, to sculpture, lampshades, and vases.
Call me a glutton for punishment, but even though it's a lot of work to put together a show, I'm ready to do it again. The response was enough to convince me that all the pain of nagging people for work, rallying together a core of co-curators, and stressing over installation is worth the effort.
Here are a few pictures from opening night. The space was the perfect backdrop for our work, with it's clean, white walls with some exposed brick. I especially loved our display of handmade paper samples and broadsides hanging from clothesline. I also really liked our reading area. It was a bit of a contrast from the clean, organic feel of the paper display, but it was a center of activity throughout the night.


There will be many more book arts/ONO collaborations in the future! But for now, I'm busy preparing for other events, including tomorrow's Druid City Drinking Club craft fair. It's being held in conjunction with the local aroboretum's annual plant sale, so we should have a good turnout. I'm hoping that plant sellers like books as much as I like plants, because I'd really like to trade for some heirloom tomatoes and peppers. I'm going to be spending the better part of today preparing the 10 ethiopian-style link stitches (most of them embroidered) that are in various stages of completion. I would have more inventory, but I'm now one of the regular artists selling at the One Night Only Artique, so some of my work is now in their stock.
And since everything happens around the same time here, next weekend is the Alabama Festival of the Book in Montgomery. If you're in the area, you should stop by the book arts table and say hi and check out all the great things we've been working on recently.
I'm off to assist some papermakers, do some printing, and brave the alumni-day football game crowds now. Wish me luck, and I'll write a new post soon.

Tutorial: how to make paste paper

A few weeks ago, I promised to post a tutorial for how to make your own decorative paper. I've finally managed to complete it, so onto the blog it goes.

Paste paper was one of the first things I learned to make when I started out in book arts, and the skill has served me well. It's a great way to make decorative paper that's not like the stock you'll encounter at paper and scrapbook supply stores and it lends a distinctive look to any project.

These are only a few examples of the papers I've made in the past. I don't attempt to model my designs after historic patterns, but many people do. If you're interested in traditional patterns, the University of Washington has an extensive collection of marbled and paste-decorated papers from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Finally, now that you've seen what you can do, here's how to do it.

Read this doc on Scribd: pastepaper

In addition to this tutorial, you'll also need to know how to make paste. Here's a simple recipe.

Mix 2/3 cups of wheat starch and 2 cups of water in a microwave safe container. Let soak for at least 30 minutes. After 30 minutes have passed, stir mixture and microwave on high for 2 minutes. Remove from microwave and stir. Now microwave mixture for 30 seconds at a time, stirring between each round. Repeat this process until the mixture is thick and translucent (about five minutes of total microwave time). Let stand until cool. To store, cover firm paste with cold water.

Paste is good for about a week if kept in a covered container and water is changed out daily.

Handmade paper at ONO

If you're in the Tuscaloosa area this Thursday, stop by the One Night Only Artique for the opening of Fiber/Book. It's a group show that I've been working hard to coordinate, and it should be good. We'll have books, sculpture, broadsides, and even a little knitting on view.

Thanks to Amy, we've even got some lovely postcards to advertise the event. They make me feel like a very important artist.

For those of you who can't make it, I'm going to photograph all of the work and upload it onto my flickr account. You'll be able to view to online exhibit sometime early next week, after the insanity of installation and presenting the art at the opening.

I'm particularly excited about this show because handmade paper is one of my favorite mediums to work in. Before I learned bookbinding and letterpress printing, I was a knitter and a fabric hoarder, and my love for fiber competed with my love for book arts. However, learning to make paper by hand, from all sorts of forged and recycled materials, allowed me to find ways to incorporate fiber arts into my bookwork. Fiber/Book is my first attempt at bringing my love for handmade paper (and by proxy book and fiber arts) to the community. Alongside the finished work, we'll have photographs of the paper making process, a nice introductory placard that begins to answer the "why/what about handmade paper?" question, and a gathering of handmade paper samples arranged like a spectrum across one gallery wall.

I want other people to be as excited about making paper by hand as I am. Hopefully the informative nature of this show will allow for that to happen. And maybe it will build enough interest for me to teach a workshop in May. That would certainly be a lovely outcome of this already lovely event.

the long-awaited update

This month has been crazy. And every time I intend to update the blog, another task to be completed announces itself. Right now, I'm working to make the might could universe a little bit bigger. I've got a web address and a site design in progress, and I just opened up shop at DaWanda, a lovely online craft community. You can check out the shop by following this link.

Because spring and summer are the seasons of craft fairs and farmer's markets, I've kept my hands busy sewing journals. I'm especially enamoured with using handmade paper as covering material and hand embroidery. These new designs represent a product line that's been a long time in the making; there's focus to my production work, and that makes me a very happy book artist.

These are two of my favorites. An ethiopian style link stitch with waves embroidered in lavender linen floss on the cover and mini longstitch notebooks with machine-sewing on handmade paper covers.

Of course I haven't been working solely on journals. I'm also getting ready to print my new book, Lace Stories. It's an accordion-style binding with handmade linsey-woolsey paper and overbeaten flax and cotton endsheets. I'm warming up by printing some eye-popping bright note cards with the lace pattern that will serve as the book's background.


Soon, however, I will be printing the real thing, lace, text, linocuts, and all. And I will also be posting that long-promised paste paper tutorial soon. I just have to find a scanner and a few more spare moments!

Alternative Media Expo

I just finished unloading the car after my whirlwind visit to New Orleans this weekend for Antigravity's Alternative Media Expo. The event was great; my Alabama-based collective talked to lots of talented, engaging, and unapathetic people. The interest that our table generated only reaffirmed my belief that New Orleans is the city for me, and that it really is the perfect place to establish a center for book arts in the southeast.

Some of the people we talked to were Sarah, a staff writer for Gambit Weekly, one of the city's alternative publications, Alison of Circular Accessories, whose screenprinted goods are gorgeous, and Lillian of Go Green Nola, who had lots of great information about the community and its potential for change. We were also interviewed for local radio station 91.5 WTUL. You will eventually be able to listen to a streaming version of it here.

Overall, the weekend was a success, and I'm really excited about returning soon to teach workshops on sustainable papermaking at home, bookbinding, and maybe even some letterpress. But that's all to come. In the meantime, I'm working hard on the new book; the paper (a linen and wool blend) is made, and I'm in the final stretch of designing. I should be at the Vandercook printing within the next two weeks. I'm excited about how easily I've been able to accommodate my changing vision throughout this process, and I'm sure this will show in the finished piece.

Finally, now that I have enough of a blog to show people, I'm going to begin weekly book arts tutorials. This Friday, I'll post instructions for making paste paper. I plan for these tutorials to be cumulative, so the skills demonstrated in earlier installments will turn up in later projects.