Fifteen minutes

My work, Soul of the Seal, is featured on In Leaf, a very stylie blog by Lotta Helleberg, an Etsy textile artist.


She does leaf printing from nature, which is a technique I love, using non toxic dyes etc.

Adding another few seconds to my lifetime allocation of fame is an article in the Hamilton Press, a local free weekly paper, about chalk poems. Since the chalk was all washed away within a couple of days of intermittant showers, the photo at least proves that it was there!


As usual, when I am featured in the newspaper, I feel too embarrassed to leave the house for a while. But I will anyway because tonight we are going to see my friend's production of The Taming of the Shrew at the Gardens as part of the same festival as my chalk poems.

There's something magical about Shakespeare in the open air. I still remember a wonderous production by the same company of my favourite Shakespearean play, Twelfth Night. I have seen many versions of Twelfth Night but nothing beats seeing it out among the trees, under a starry night sky.

Love Letters to Hamilton

Kids and mums reading poetry in the White Garden

Months ago, when I was first invited to chalk poetry at the 2009 Hamilton Summer Garden's Festival I was living in Australia with every intention to still be living there in 2009. I took the gig as a ride home for summer holidays in NZ. Yet sometime between arriving in Melbourne at the beginning of December and leaving Whangarei at the beginning of February I had decided I was going to settle down and make my home in Hamilton.

Stream Walk with Gaye Jurisich's beautiful, mysterious installation of blue plastic hanging over the water

So by the time the Festival rolled round, and there were heavy rain warnings, I could postpone my chalk installation because I don't have to go anywhere. I live here, I can just wait for the rain to pass and write my love letters in my own good time. Those of you who have been following Bibliophilia for a while may remember the first time I did Love Letters at Your Feet we did it twice because it rained, hard, in the middle of my writing.

Huge pumpkin, about a metre diameter in the Kitchen Gardens

The weather cleared on Sunday which was the Family Fun Day of the Festival. The Gardens were full of families with small children. As the day progressed I found I invariably had an audience for my writing, often a group of kids following me and reading the words out loud in unison. Which was lovely and funny, but I became acutely aware of the 'adult themes' (as they say) in many of my love poems. Though my sexy poetry is nothing like as explicit as what kids will see on Shortland St at 7pm every night, I still felt uncomfortable about my juxtaposition with the Teddy Bears' Picnic.

Hot honey in the White Garden

Luckily I had decided that this time I would include lots of pieces from my very long poem/play, 'Fall' which is a translation of the Bible's Song of Songs into a modern day romance between a couple of middle-aged public servants living in Wellington. It's a bit raunchy, but no more so than the biblical version so I didn't feel so worried about corrupting the young.

My beloved texted his desire and I trembled to the core of my being.

When I rose, to go to my beloved, nectar ran off my hands
pure nectar off my fingers onto the keypad of my phone.

Actually, quite a few parents commented on the excellent teaching moments afforded by having their children read my poems aloud. I had lots of feedback from people as I was writing. Except for the woman who told me she thought I was a vandal (and it did seem to many people that writing on public property, even in chalk, might be an illicit activity; but I guess they hadn't read my listing in the Festival programme) everyone was positive, or at least politely curious.

I am a house and a door for my children

but for my lover
I am a silk tent flapping.




I have a number of methods for writing on the ground, which I alternate as different parts of my body become too painful to continue. I squat, either bobbing up and down as I move rapidly along the path or else sidling in a sort of squatted waddle, which must look pretty funny to watch. Any lengthy squatting is hard on the front of the thighs, and after writing 21 poems over two days I now walk like an ancient and arthritic old lady and cannot lift myself in or out of a seated position without moaning in agony. So I also sometimes sat down to write on the ground, and shuffled myself along on my bottom like a baby that hasn't learned to crawl yet; leaving the palms of my hands raw from the rough concrete (and very impressed than my denim shorts survived this punishing regime). Very occasionally I would stoop, bending from the waist to write, but mostly when working on a low ledge like the lawn sampler rather than at ground level. I attribute the few twinges in my lower back to minimal indulgence in this pose.

Deja Vu around the Lawn Sampler

All the pain (including a bizarre huge blister on top the knuckle of my right index finger) was worth it because I got to fulfil my dream of transforming my favourite park in the world into a book of my own poetry. I reckon I may have offered a few kids (and adults) another way to think about poetry than boring schoolroom obscurities. Making, and reading, poetry with your whole body is exciting!

Crystanthemum Walk

If you can get to the Hamilton Gardens before it rains, here's where to go looking for my poetry:

• Rhododendren Walk
• Camellia Walk
• Stream Walk
• Crysanthemum Walk
• Woodlands Walk
• English Country Garden
• Japanese Garden of Contemplation
• Chinese Scholars Garden
• Italian Rennaissance Garden
• Herb Garden
• Kitchen Garden
• Lawn Sampler
• American Modernist Garden

Teaser

Hamilton Gardens is my favourite park in the whole world, and today I got to turn it into an artist's book by writing my poetry all over it in chalk.

I wrote for five hours today and tomorrow I get to go back and do another two or three, to get all the poems I want to write into all the places I want to write them.

Right now I can't actually identify any part of my body that isn't sore, scraped, grazed, blistered, bruised, aching or exhausted.

So, I'm sorry, you are going to have to wait for the big post about Love Letters at Your Feet. Right now I'm going to bed.

Today's Post Brought to You by Winnie

Back when I was living in the rainforest, my friend Misha Hoo, told me about an exercise for summoning your inner resources. It involved visualising 'Self-Healer', 'Self-Nurturer', 'Trust', 'Forgiveness', 'Intuition' etc as images or characters and communicating with them. When I tried this on myself, my Intuition appeared in the form of a little toy horse, similar in shape to the horse in Science of Sleep, but more colourful.

Soon after the little horse of intuition made itself at home in my imagination I had a substantial sale on Etsy, found my PayPal account flush with US dollars and decided I wanted the horse to exist in the real world, not just my imagination.

I've been following Gretel's lovely blog, Middle of Nowhere, for a year or two, enjoying her stories and photos of rural life in England and admiring the distinctive needle felt animals that she makes. So when my idea of manifesting my intuitive little horse co-incided with the financial means to achieve it, of course I asked Gretel to work her magic on my intuition.

Despite being very busy, she agreed to add me to the end of her long waiting list. Some months later, she sent me a sketch and after a little negotiation about hooves, began to make him. Gretel was great at providing me with progress updates, so I knew that my little horse was challenging from the start. It was fascinating, but a little sickening to see the photos of the mane-making process, a bit like watching a gorey hospital drama, but knowing it's your soon-to-be-adopted baby being sliced and diced. I appreciate him all the more so for knowing how much labour went into his creation.

Photo from Middle of Nowhere

And now Winnie is here! And he such a perfect wee dapper, darling thing. Every detail is exquisite. Everytime I look at him I feel happy and pleased. And he has a twinkle in his little glass eye as he watches me. Like any proud mother I've enjoyed my sense of naches* as I've read the admiring comments about him on Gretel's blog. And can boast that Winnie is already a minor internet celebrity, having been featured on another blog called Cuteable.

I almost cried when I found the wee heart on the base of his hoof.

*Naches means sense of pride in other's achievements.

The Happy Bibliophiliac

A small excerpt of the happy sticker chart in my journal

Thank you to everyone who participated in my happiness giveaway competition. The 13 people who shared some of their happiness tips did so with such enthusiasm, generosity, wit and compassion that every message I read was like a warm hug. I've been inspired and delighted by your contributions, and I hope you don't hold back on sending more tips just because this competition is finished.

In time honoured tradition I put all the names in my green sunhat and asked my housemate to take his attention from the cricket for a few seconds to pull out the winner's name. Jane from Dunedin won the box of handmade goodies, which is lovely as she has been one of Bibliphilia's most loyal and interactive readers since I began. Also when I told her the news, she was languishing on the sofa with the 'flu, so seemed greatly cheered by her win.

If you want to read the original (entertaining) competition entries, go here, but for quick reference I have summarised the happiness tips of Bibliophilia readers along with some of my own into a a handy list to print out and keep by the phone. As a policy analyst by profession, I am well aware of the hazards of lumping together people's comments under general headings. I trust a lively debate will ensue in the comments section challenging my controversial taxonomy of happiness.

Since this blog is called Bibliophilia, you will not be surprised to see how often books appear as sources of happiness, whether reading them, making them or writing them.

Sensual pleasures and escapism

• A cup of tea and a lie down. Especially with biscuits. And a good book/escapist fiction. Couch and loads of comfy pillows.
• Selective TV watching eg old re-runs of Seinfeld, a cheesy Sci-fi DVD or watching my faaavourite TV shows with a bestie - it's the highlight of our week and we spend days anticipating it, and then analysing the episode later!!
• Music from your past eg an old compilation tape you made years ago and be hit with nostalgia as the songs take you back in time... or opening iTunes and finding a band I used to love listening to when I was younger and turning it up LOUD
• Having a bath. A long, deep, hot bath, taking a book with me so I can remember to drop it just outside the bath before I fall asleep.
• Finding the perfect shoes in your size on sale in a recycled clothing store!
• Getting or giving a soothing foot or neck massage
  
• Exercise: Swimming laps in any body of water, yoga, tai chi qi gong, bicycling, walking
  
• Food: cooking/sharing/eating fresh food; baking treats
• Singing: alone or in a group
  

Connecting with people, place and all life

• Friends: I really can't overstate the happiness quotient of spending time with friends, eg, Sunday morning a big lazy big pancake cookup with friends. Yummalicious!!
  
• A walk in the woods. Taking the dogs along is an even better idea.
• Children eg giving my daughter a hug and a kiss, blowing bubbles with my daughter, playing cricket with my son. We take a bat, a ball and (if we're feeling really energetic) a set of stumps to a nearby field and take turns batting and bowling, to an audience of appreciative tui and the occasional jogger. (One brave soul wrote 'anything with children' but I wonder if she's had a two year old tantrum in the supermarket lately).
• Giving gifts eg spontaneous present giving; buy a lotto ticket at the checkout of the supermarket then give it to the person behind you as you leave and watch their look of shock as you say Good Luck; taking a cup of tea and a biscuit to whoever you live with; sending surprise packages through the mail.
  
• Being "in the moment" in a beautiful spot eg the rock garden seats in the Botanic Garden, listening to Blues Music on a sunny, summery afternoon, eating a picnic lunch, getting out to the beach or forest or anything not a city. The ocean. Being in it, being on it, looking at it, being near it. It's all good. Walking up a hill and finding a good "happy place" to sit, play, and realise how beautiful it is here and how lucky I am to live here. Taking a walk someplace quiet and pretty. Twilight.
• Laugher, play and silliness eg playing silly games at circus, like the ones you played in primary school. Get a bunch of friends together and play hug tiggy in the park. Promise you'll feel happy
• Hugs: eg a loving, reassuring hug (usually from partner), or hugging my household cat. Best blood pressure reducer EVER. Also see 'Children' and 'Laughter' above.
  

Satisfaction and meaning

• Writing. Those times when I can concentrate on writing, without any distractions - they don't happen as often as I want, but I love them when they do happen.
• Creating. A project allows one to exist in the moment away from all ones cares. When you finally arise from the project to exist in the world again, things probably haven't gotten any better, but here is this awesome thing that you made!
• Starting a new stitching project - although this does mean I have more started projects than finished ones...
• Being inspired to paint and having it turn out well
• Reflection. It can take the form of journal keeping, photography, a long chat, or (for me) workbooking and blogging. It allows a purge if that's what needed, and a revisiting of ones past successes, and a reaffirmation of why you do what you do.
  
• NTS book (Note to Self). On a fresh page each time, I write a compliment someone might have given me - in quote marks with the persons name and date under it, or it might be a line from a song that is uplifting or has meaning to you right now, writing a personal best. The trick is not to dwell on any entries, in fact, forget about them until your Self needs some loving and reassurance, then you get to open just one page to see what you have to share with your Self.
• Creating order eg making a list; rearrange your house, it's such a treat to see everything in a new place, it's like you're seeing it for the first time again...
• Learning something new whether reading or watching new information or theories or trying to make or fix something with my hands (very rarely does learning new computer software make me happy though).
  

My new friend, Winnie, poses on top of Jane's prize parcel (packed into the same box that Winnie arrived in). Look out for Winnie's story in my next post.

Watching paste dry (and last chance to win!)

It's 100% humidity here in Hamilton. Ah, humidity, the bane of a book artist's life. Most of the stress of the past ten days of making these 25 little books has been related to waiting for paper to dry, either from painting or pasting.

Today is the deadline for mailing off the finished edition and I was getting a little worried that the books just wouldn't be dry enough to send in time (uncontrolled drying in transit could warp them). I mentioned this problem to my new housemate and she said she had an old dehumidifier* in the garage I could use if I could get it to work. It turned out to be easy to fix with toothpicks and cellotape so I installed the humming machine in a closet with the drying edition of little books and left it to run over night.

Soon I will pack them up and post them off to America, but I wanted to write a quick post and remind you all that today is your last chance to enter my first giveaway! Answer the skill question (three things that make you happy) in the comments section and go in the draw to win a surprise package of goodies handcrafted by me, including two blank books and a fabric vessel.

The draw will take place tomorrow, Saturday 14 February (NZ time) and the winner, and uber-list of happiness announced later in the weekend!


* I still chuckle when I remember a German housemate years ago who mispronounced this word as dehumaniser.

4 studios, 2 towns and 27 books in 10 days!

This week I've stayed at four different houses in two towns, culminating with moving into my own room in a lovely share house which I hope will provide me with the stability I need to really get to work.

This week of moving around also unexpectedly coincided with an exciting commission to make an edition of 25 little books (plus two samples) within 10 days. Unlike say, sketching or crochet, making an edition of books is not a particularly mobile activity.

The clock started while I was house-sitting for Katie and Nip in Whangarei. No-one familiar with my process will be surprised that I chose this project to try out an unfamiliar technique. The book structure (what Alisa Golden calls a flower fold) is the same one I used for The Optimistic Heart in an edition of 1000 (although only 400 or so were completed before the reamining unassembled pieces got water damaged). Even though I made The Optimistic Heart edition in back in 2004, I vividly remember the efficient assembly line process I used to make such a lot of books. But it would be too easy, too boring, to simply replicate what I've done before. So my first step this time was to hand paint every page on both sides before printing the text.** After some trial and error, I discovered that line drying followed by pressing under piles of books created the most beautiful results.

The house-sit included a beautiful studio with a ledge in front of the window, just wide enough to work on. I completed the two samples and sent them off to the USA on Day 3. Day 4 I moved out of the house-sit into a Couchsurf with Chris and Tagish. There I started cut most of the pages for edition on their dining table (but forgot to take a photo).

Day 5 I packed up again for a ride to Hamilton where I was house-sitting for Sarah, Ramona and Eli. Their kitchen bench is just the right height for me to work comfortably standing up and I finished cutting the pages and started folding them.


Day 6 I moved into my big sunny room in a character villa sharehouse full of funky art and two cats called Bubbles (who has already made herself at home in my bed) and Minx. Day 7 (today) I painted the covers and pasted all the pages, so that right now the text blocks and covers are drying in separate stacks of books. When I was sorting all my things for storage last year I discarded my lovely book-pressing masonite boards.** Big books are ok for pressing, but awkward to work with as they are not of uniform size and weight.

The fiddliest part of making this kind of book is putting wax paper masks between every single fold so that none of the adhesive goes where it shouldn't. On a book like this with lots of folds nearly half the time the assembly time is spent on making and placing masks before the paste dries.

With all that behind me, I now have three days remaining in which to print, cut and glue the covers and attach them to the text blocks so that they look like the samples pictured below, and then package them up to send off for their adventures in America.


* Sadly the timeframe means the text is laser rather than letterpress printed
** In this case, the pasted-up pages; more traditionally, the sewn-together book pages
*** If anyone knows where I left my masonite boards wrapped in brown paper, please let me know

Happy! Happy! Win! Win!

Medium blank book with upcycled pulp-fiction cover

My major personal goal for 2009 is to develop a reliable habit of happiness; to reset my emotional default to positive; to consistently seek and savour joy, minimise misery, and sustain a sense of satisfaction with my life. It's an exciting, enjoyable project to be embarking on.

Some of the tools and resources I am directing towards this objective are mentally rehearsing/remembering pleasant events, choosing a positive spin when I'm talking about my life and putting glittery stickers on a star chart of happy-inducing activities. I have a pretty long happy-list, which includes both learning new things and making things with my hands.

So, learning a new handcraft is pretty much ecstasy for me. Lately I've been experimenting with stitching coils of fabric into vessels, a slow and satisfying process. Which so far has produced this lipped bowl:


and this asymmetrical lidded pot:

I'm quite excited about the possibilities for making very large objects with this technique, but like so many of the big ideas fermenting in my brain, it will have to wait until I am settled: big work is a liability in my-still transient lifestyle. In the meantime I am fine tuning my skills and my plans on a smaller scale.

I also made a whole bunch of blank books last week. They are hand sewn with 150gsm construction paper: sturdy for drawing, as well as list making or journal keeping, whatever you like to do in your blank books (and I like to do it all). I don't usually bother making blank books (being more interested in creating content), but I just needed a new notebook and it seemed less trouble to make one for myself to search out a good one I could afford. These pamphlet stitched babies are so quick and easy that once I got into the groove they just kept coming, til I ran out of cover stuff.

Mini notebooks covered with letterpress proofs

Another of the activities on my happy-list is giving gifts, so in the interests of adding more stickers to my star chart, I've decided to run the first official Bibliophilia giveaway!

I'm giving away a surprise parcel containing a variety of goodies handmade by me, including two blank books and a soft vessel (as pictured above). All you have to do is make a comment on this post sharing three or more of your own tried-and-true happiness resources: things that you choose when you need to get the smile back on your face.

All the entries received by 14 February will go in a hat and someone neutral will draw the winner's name. Plus I will post a collaborative uber-list of sources of joy as contributed by Bibliophilia readers. That's you! This is your chance to stop lurking and make a contribution to increasing the amount of joy on the planet in 2009!

Medium notebooks with upcycled LP covers
(my favourite is 'Air on the G string' staring the hot couple listening to the tranny in a horse paddock)

Summer Reading

The whole time I was in Australia, I was frustrated about books. When I could find something to read, it was rarely exactly what I wanted to be reading. When I did get a really good book it was over all too quickly (there are disadvantages to being a speed reader) and then I was once again faced with my book drought.

Returning to New Zealand is a chance to dive into a pool of satisfying and stimulating reading. Firstly, a stay with my friend and sister bibliophile, Jo, netted me a small stack of books to borrow. Then a visit to my storage unit allowed me to access a few of the most useful and missed volumes in my personal library. And finally, arriving in Whangarei allows me access to the excellent public library here including its fine science fiction collection.

So, like a starving person at an-all-you-can-eat buffet I have loaded my plate and am circulating my attention between several books I'm actively reading, while looking forward to some treats to come.

January's reading list:

• Happy at Last: The thinking person's guide to finding joy by Richard O'Connor (pathways for reducing misery, learning joy and increasing satisfaction and meaning)
  
• The Places that scare you by Pema Chodron (my second read of this worthwhile book)
• What should I do with my life? by Po Bronson (interesting stories of people figuring out careers that are meaningful and satisfying)
  
• Miles in Love (omnibus) by Lois McMaster Bujold (includes a new story I hadn't read about my favourite hero in all of literature, Miles Vorkosigan)
• Salamander by Thomas Wharton (a fun fantasy novel starring a letterpress printer and book artist!)
• Animal Vegetable Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver (I've been looking forward to reading this for ages)
  
• Three Dimensional Embroidery by Janet Edmonds (inspiring me to new textile experiments)
• Creating Handmade Books by Alisa Golden (this was the first how-to-make artist's books that I bought, and still one of the best: if you can only have one book of inspiration and instruction to hand, I recommend this)
  
• Fearless Interviewing by Marky Stein (a handy book to have around when job hunting, negotiating salary etc)
  
• Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert (dipping into my favourite bits)
  
• Infoquake by David Louis Edelman, Wrack by James Bradley (novels I haven't started yet)
  

Responding to The Water Hole

One of the weird little creatures at The Water Hole

One of the highlights of my final week in Melbourne was Shelka's workshops at Medium Arts Space in Brunswick. The best one was called Install it Like You Mean It and involved first visiting an installation at ACCA and then returning to Medium and creating our own installation in response to what we had seen.

Crystalised fertalizer grows in fantastic shapes and colours across The Water Hole

I'd wanted to see The Water Hole, an installation by Swiss artists Gerda Steiner & Jorg Lenzlinger, ever since I met the artists who have been living upstairs from the Melbourne Museum of Printing for three months while they created this installation. They travel around the world creating large, site specific installations constructed mainly from things they find in each place. The photos on their website give a hint of what their work can look like, but didn't really prepare me for the intense, intelligent and interactive nature of The Water Hole's response to the water crisis in Australia, and Victoria in particular. The review in last weekend's The Age describes the installation pretty well, but also confirms that it such a complex, layered piece that everyone will have a different response to it.

Two tiny echindna meet on the edge of an old bathtub

For me, most powerful and moving part of The Water Hole was the last. After the mysterious anticipation of the long and winding foil and dead-tree tunnel entrance, the exuberantly weird and wonderful chaotic systems of the water hole, the perspective offered by the bird hide, then a swoony waterbed multimedia dreamscape, followed by three horizontal perspectives: lying under a (real) meteorite, lying on a swinging bed, and lying under a water-hole type mobile you come out into a gallery space that feels conventional, aside from the burgeoning side of a foil tunnel billowing into the room.

Desalination plant for tears

The walls are hung with colour photographs of Gerda lifting people she has encountered on their world travels. The familiarity of perusing a row of wall art and its accessible humour felt like a transition back to the normal world, coming down from an incredible trip. Reluctant to leave I postponed rounding the final corner to what I assumed was the exit, but when I finally did it was a dead end, a tiny nook set up as a scientific laboratory: a desalination plant for tears. Retracing my steps though the whole installation, with the desalination plant for tears on my mind gave me yet another fresh perspective on the water crisis.

In response to the photographs of Gerda lifting people, some Shelley and I get lifted outside ACCA.

I'm very glad that I got to see such an amazing exhibition with a group of people who immediately set to work trying to manifest our responses. Instead of wandering into the next gallery, or back to work or meeting up with people who hadn't seen it, I got to keep thinking and talking and being immersed in the installation experience for many more hours.

Two of the first bits I made for our installation: releasing the urgent desire to be making with my hands

Back at Medium we pooled the bits and pieces we had been collecting for our installation: litter, shrubs, fabric, discarded appliances etc. Mostly each of us was working fairly independently, creating small elements that responded more to the style of The Water Hole than its content, but as the afternoon wore on and we became more concerned with integrating each contribution into a coherent installation, the work became more actively collaborative and more focused on water.

The last thing I made was my best and most ambitious: a hanging screen of shrubs laced with tubes connected by a long flow of blue fabric.

Happy Fourth Anniversary Bibliophilia!

Bibliophilia is 4 years old today! This is the 586th post I have published here. These days the posts aren't always so frequent, but at least they are much better illustrated than they were back in 2005.

For the past year or so Bibliophilia has averaged 170-180 hits per week which doesn't break any internet records, but is enough for me to keep going, knowing that there's folks out there who are interested in what I have to say. All the loyal readers, especially those who post comments or otherwise let me know they are following, make the effort worthwhile. Without you all, I may as well be still be doodling in my diary.

In the past four years I have blogged from homes in five regions in two countries (including seven housesits, six wwoofing gigs and a few rented rooms). Tomorrow I fly home from Australia to New Zealand. I'm not sure how long I'll be there or what I'll be doing once the first few weeks of plans run their course. I do know my internet access is going to be much less reliable over the next month at least, so there might not be so many posts. But I will eventually sort that out, I promise and be back to my normal, variable level of broadcasts.

Meanwhile, if you miss me, you can check out the other blogs I contribute to: Nourish Us, a family recipe blog, in which my quirky extended family reveals the secrets of our sweet rolls and chicken casseroles; and Response, a brand new blog to accompany a new collaborative book project (for which potential contributors are invited to contact me if interested).

Heads Up

I went into the Daintree to be inspired. I thought I would be inspired to write poetry about the rainforest and come out ready to use paper and ink to make book art telling forest stories. But the thing about inspiration is that it always doesn't comply with expectations.

Although I did write some poems, living in an environment so unfriendly to paper and books forced me to try other media. You've seen the crocheted coral. But I never told you about the embroidery which I started not long after my first disappointing effort at book making in the rainforest.


I had been given a nice linen dress with a stain on it that I decided to cover up by stitching an image of one of many pieces of bleached and broken coral to be found on the beach. Both process and outcome proved to be so pleasing to me that I decided to carry on embroidering bleached coral designs in a band around the whole hem of the dress.


It took me about four months to finish it, not counting the months I put the embroidery aside to crochet coral instead. I'm not sure why I never blogged about it while I was doing it. Partly because I never managed to get any good photos until this week. Partly because I was/am embarrassed about the dress with its stains, my amateur embroidery (I was just making up the stitches as I copied the patterns from dead coral) and the incredible amount of time it took to finish. Also it's not a book. There is no ink, no text, no paper.


As well as being embarrassed, I am also quietly pleased with it. Pleased with my increasingly adept stitching, pleased with the combination of subtle colours and rich textures, pleased with discovering a new medium to be passionate about. And passionate I am. Try as I might to get excited about being able to print again, about expressing my rainforest experience in book form, actually all my good ideas lately are for thread and yarn, not paper and ink.

A hard day's print

I finally got to print my pattern today. That big Western press turns out to be Very Hard Work. This evening I feel like I've had six hours of cardio and pumping iron at the gym (on top of my four hours of communting because the trains are on Christmas holiday timetables).

For a start, the press is too wide for me to reach all the lays and grippers to get the paper straight by myself. You have to stand on a pedal to lift the grippers, and if I ran around the other side of the press to reach that end of my big paper, I couldn't be standing on the pedal. Thank goodness Tiffany was volunteering at the Museum today, as she was willing and able to help me with positioning almost all of the twenty or so prints I took.

When it came to turning the cylinder with the paper attached, it was too heavy and the sweep of the handle to high and wide for me to manage with one hand, which was problematic as I felt I needed to keep one hand on the paper so it wouldn't fly off into space or the inky rollers. Eventually (after only about four or five bad prints) Tiffany and I worked out the best way to do it, so that half way through the turn I entrusted the paper wrangling to her and threw all my body weight via both arms into a smooth sweep of the cylinder, inevitably ending with a spontaneous grunt and a little bounce as both I and the paper suddenly came round to the end of the cylinder's turn.

The heavy workout on the cylinder and the full-body stretches with the lays and grippers were interspersed with the on-going inking drama. I won't even tell you about the performance I went through buying the inks and then trying to mix the tint I wanted before settling for the ubiquitous shade of green that characterises half my possessions, (which I really intended not to use this time, really: its embarrassing to have that much of one colour in my life).

No, the main inking drama was due to the broken oscillating roller only oscillating in one direction, so I to slowly push it back the other way every two or three minutes. If I got distracted for say, five minutes of struggling with the grippers or something, then the ink got all stripey and I had to manually oscillate in both directions at length to make up for my neglect.

Plus, since my pattern is made up of about 30 different kinds of old worn-out type and not even seven (7) hours of makeready persnickitiness could achieve uniform height, I had to supplement the (semi) automatic rollers with some judicious hand rolling before every print (and don't forget that the form is so wide I have to stretch my body right across it, or run around the press, to reach the whole thing).

Since hand rolling was only half way to helpful, I soon started reinking the oscillating roller between every single print as well, even though its cheating because a good printer doesn't use more ink to cover up the inadequacies of her composition. But I did today. Because, well, I was really running out of options and with only two weeks left in Melbourne, I am running out of time at the Museum.

However, before I launched into the hard work and intense concentration of printing my big pattern, Sakura kindly helped me take some proofs of the Jewish logos on the small press that she's been using. They turned out really well, most of the chops in surprisingly good condition given their age and the circumstances in which I found them.


I'm going to take a proof of this with me to Temple Beth Israel next Shabbat and see if I can get some of the older congregants to help me identify all the old Melbourne institutions represented here. If any readers would like to see a higher resolution photo of this proof, and perhaps discuss future uses of this resource, please let me know.

Mermaid treasury

Soda water and mint leaves from below...

Christmas evening in Rayna and Karl's backyard.

I'm in another Etsy Treasury, with a charming mermaid theme. Check it out in the next couple of days before it disappears...

Kate, Anita and Rayna as we sit down to a delicious Christmas dinner in Rayna's backyard.

Old Paper

I'm almost ready to print, after 25 hours of composing, proofing and make ready (7 hours just for sticking pieces of paper on the back of each piece of type to bring it up to the same height as all the others). Since I don't want to waste expensive paper, most of my proofs have been on some very old newsprint that was lying around at the Museum. Old newsprint is brittle, weak and discoloured, but it seems to be a fashionable look. At least four people have gotten very excited about the paper when I showed them my proofs.

Perhaps people focus on the old newsprint because they can't think of anything nice to say about my proofs. I can only bear my proofs right now for technical purposes, knowing that once I print on Italian 200gsm hot pressed cotton rag paper with carefully mixed translucent ink, it might start looking how I want it too. Maybe people are politely deflecting attention from my ugly proofs onto the funky old paper.

It's the vintage look I guess, that genuine 'old' faded paper look that an acid free paper would only achieve after a century or so of careless stewardship, but that newspaper takes on after a day or two sitting in the sun. The newsprint I'm proofing on has probably survived twenty or thirty years of warehousing and virtually crumbles at touch.

It's one of those things where I can see that something is attractive in the current fashion, and if I squint and tilt my head right I can like it well enough as irony, but I know it's not for me. I'm too practical I guess to be seduced purely by the look of it. I need to see that it will do what I want, and other than the ephermeral purpose of showing me which pieces of type I need to lift, old newsprint offers me nothing as a printer or book maker.