Fall walk and handmade paper

Saturday was a wonderful day. I woke at 4am ready to go. Organized the kitchen while the kettle boiled to make coffee 

Then I went back to bed with a snarling strong coffee and a piece of sweet potato apple cake. Got set up with the heating pad warming the bed -- temp in the 50s indoors -- - and a Pargeter mystery.  Five star start to the day. Then I slept a bit before getting up to a second breakfast at about eight. Such luxury, the freedom to just please myself.

This morning was bright and cool, great walking weather, so here's a bit of what was out there 

I like those shadows 

Can anyone identify this little friend? Scuttling busily around the grass. Top end is the head. He didn't look hairy, more shiny.

I had planned today on covering a wonderful program on textile collections by the Textile Museum Associates, and asked them if screenshots and commentary would be okay on my blog with full credit.  I thought I'd better check, since some people aren't too keen, though I'm boosting their signal. 

They're getting back to me. Not yet heard, so if and when that happens, I'll do it because it was wonderful. A huge panorama of collections from all over by a collector who wants them to be seen, by everyone.  He's sensitive to the history of textiles as often an unrecognized women's domestic artform, and honors it.

Meanwhile there's plenty to talk about. First food. I converted a helping of the Ethiopian cabbage and potato stew into soup, added tomato paste, garam masala, and curly pasta and it was pretty good.

S asked about handmade paper, which I've made a lot of over the years, using tools I've put together, and all kinds of pulps including plant fibers from my front yard.

By the time I found I couldn't go ahead with the textile program,the light wasn't very good for wall art pictures, so I'll return to them at some point. 

Meanwhile here's some small stuff. But first, here's the tools I use to make it. Pretty glam.

The frames are molds and deckles I adapted from cheap picture frames. I built a mold and deckle back when I was learning but then I had access to a much bigger vat of pulp. With this dishpan vat I use smaller tools, often just a piece of screening. The bits of interlining are the felts I use to flop out the pulp pages on, before pressing out the water. 

I blogged ages ago about the process, and you might like to do a search on November 6 and 8, 2020, in my art blog. Art, the Beautiful Metaphor is the art blog,  still open to read, but please don't leave comments over there, it's inactive. 

https://beautifulmetaphor.blogspot.com

When I left a live link blogger insisted it was invalid. But you can access it by cut and paste, or a search engine.

These shapes and inserts are from a workshop I did with Sue Smith at Peters Valley years ago. She provided the long Western pine needles 

In this framed mixed media piece , the miniature books have pages made of iris paper. The covers are spun and woven paper. They're about one by one and a half inches. 

When you have lovely scraps left, you can make landscapes like this lampshade, never waste a bit 

This is an artist book made from daylily paper with daylily stems laminated into the cover.  A kind of visual title.

I've sold and given and exchanged and bartered many handmade artist books over the years.

So that's us for now. I'll take pictures in daylight of a few large wall pieces if you'd like to see them. Lemme know.

Happy day, everyone, do what you'd like today even for a while. Important to keep our spirits up. For me it's walking around trees and making stuff, different folks different things.