Garden cleanup, patio style, larceny and handmade paper

My garden cleanup now that the zinnias are finally done, was to shake the soil off their roots and toss the greenery into the trees to feed the earth.  That's about it. 

On the way back I committed a bit of gardener's larceny, just swiped a bit of Gary's ivy to start in the house. I don't like ivy outside, clawing at the stucco, but I fancy some trailing indoors.

Last year I made soap using ivy Gary gave me when he was pulling it back. That was a bit of fun. Ed: April 6, 2023, but who's counting.

Just boil a bunch of leaves in water until the saponiferous element is released, and it thickens up a bit, let sit a day to gel further, and you've got a soap solution. I did a batch of laundry just to try it out, worked fine.  I imagine it's friendly to the environment, too. 

I do make my laundry liquid, not usually with ivy, but with borax, washing soda and castile soap. No perfumes, additives, unknown brighteners. 

About handmade paper, as promised

This piece, about 24" x 18", is made from first cut cotton linters pulp, the way you get that brilliant white

And below, blogger dropping pictures any old where,  is abaca, banana, fiber molded over toys and numerals, a Fibonacci quilt idea.  About 40"x 30+"

When this was on exhibit, I was there when a little boy studied it for ages then announced to his mom "There's no number 4!" I'm guessing he was four. And no, it's about the Fibonacci sequence, so there isn't a 4.

I had to angle this a bit to avoid reflections, a pulp painting about moonlight. You load tube things with pulp, and paint using them as if with brushes. It dries like a painting, it's not a collage. I added copper wire later.  About 30"x18"

 

Here's a sheet of iris paper from my plants, overprinted with stamps I carved from plastic erasers. That's fun you should try.

Sometimes a sheet of paper is a useful backing piece for small weavings. Here a couple of small four selvage tapestries are mounted on a sheet of abaca mix paper 

And when you've made all the things, you salvage every tiny scrap from the vat and use the bits  to cover photo frames, so your frugal self will consent to finally dumping the vat. Outdoors, okay for the earth, not in the sink, bad for plumbing.

Sunday evening, in anticipation of the temp going to the low 30sf, I reluctantly turned on the furnace.   Set at 68°f.  I hoped to make it to the clock change next weekend, but oh well.

Happy day everyone, make all the things, or read about them, and say not in this life, honey!

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.

Decisions, decisions..

Continuing winnowing: art materials, here handmade paper I created from plant materials, quite a bit from local leaves, day lilies, iris, grasses, red onions in the kitchen, all kinds of flowers and foliage. 

Some of it's stamped, some could be framed as is, but it's all a lot of fun for collage, with or without kids. There's a few dyed coffee filters, too and other interesting stuff.

I'm

It's very light in weight and currently on Freecycle, pickup today. If you read the earlier text, I wrote before a local pickup came up.

I'm Freecycling this glass bowl,too, pickup today

The ruler resting on it for size indication. People tend to register pictures better than words. They'd rather squint at the ruler than read the descriptive text, search me why.

And here's another decision. It was at this point that I realized I was bored and impatient with this endlessly annoying puzzle. 

I checked and found they've repealed the law that says you have to finish everything you start. So it's boxed and back in the library collection now. 

I might borrow another, or I might take a puzzle holiday. I can't do my usual walk under the trees just now because 

We got two inches of rain, meaning slippery mud. I can walk on sidewalks, not quite as interesting but meanwhile I did free weights, various weird stretches and moves on the stairs.

So, when my doctor at this afternoon's routine visit asks if I'm active, I can say certainly! That's the main advice I get these days, that and watch salt, which I do anyway.

There's worse things than a doctor with little to suggest you should do.

Happy day, everyone, someone's coming this afternoon to get handmade paper to play with.