Final bits

I've been getting lots of pressure from my PT (and my body!) to exercise more. With the break in the bitter cold, I took a brief walk before going back home to greet a new teenage raker (he raked those leaves so fast! I forget how much more energy a young teenage boy has than I do—all I managed this morning was to rake about a third of my front lawn before calling it quits). I was so happy during my walk to be greeted by milkweed. About a mile from home is a park that is slowly being changed from a golf course back to forest, wetlands, and so on. Which is good, because across the street where there used to be woods from a wealthy estate is now a huge outdoor mall. All the deer that used to live there now are regular guests at my house.

Last week my students presented their final projects for class: an edition of five, with several prompts that led to some grumbling (like having to use their handmade paper in some way, even if it's as small as a title dropped into a well on the cover). The theme was gifting. Maddy did this one about reciprocity and had been inspired by Robbin's book in the library collection. She was also taken by the process of making paper thread, which I taught them about a month ago. Robbin was my inspiration for starting to make paper thread, and had shown me shifu by Asao about 12 years ago, so it's always great to see others inspired by the path that I took.

50 books by 10 students, now scattered out into the world with a little more awareness of books than when I met them on the last day of August. This is a preview of gifts that some people will be getting over the holidays, which is always a good direction for early editions.