Tuesday, January 06, 2015

New papermakers

Day 1: Scrape one pound of Morgan kozo. Four righty knives and one lefty knife and I have a lefty student! I was so very happy about this.
Jane, the textile conservator / amazing milkweed harvester, shared a bunch of milkweed silks in various stages—clean, mostly clean with some seeds, still in pods, and even a few stalks she grabbed just an hour before I picked up the booty on Sunday. I had harvested pods from the Morgan lot in September and froze them. Here they are now, being opened and de-seeded.
Beating Thai kozo. I always, always forget how quickly this gets processed when you have many hands.
Day 2: Sheet formation! Pressing, drying, and cooking Morgan kozo and chiri on the side. This is one of the tall people tables, on risers made of PVC piping.
The shower area is still so very hot and muggy. But they don't seem to mind. I was able to provide cooler vats by putting the beaten kozo in my trunk last night to slightly freeze. Tomorrow we'll make Morgan kozo paper, chiri paper (both hand beaten and naginata processed), and maybe cook the milkweed silks. There are more in my freezer but I'm too tired to finish the batch; time to lay down and rest the back.

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