Another moon, another year

We had another lesson this weekend, upstairs in the room that has my jiseung garbage can. It's fun to have a student who is willing to grip the basket between her feet like I was first taught. Another reason to work with flexible, growing youth: it's much easier for them to sit this way than those of us who are slowly ossifying.

This vat was delayed a week through a mix of my inertia and unwillingness to do hard labor during the super cold temps last week.

But yesterday I was much better about agitating my vat (it's terrible that I get lazy about this step, of all steps, as it is one of the easiest in comparison and makes a big difference in the final sheet). That means that I was sore immediately and today. It uses a lot of muscles in a way that I usually never do.

My new camera makes it possible to get better action shots, though I still need to sort out compression because these look worse than my cell phone pics. I dislike spending so much precious time learning the device, but am grateful for my lesson from a pro friend so I understand the most important basics.

What's this? An experiment I have wanted to do for a while!

Powdered persimmon coating sprinkled between layers of hanji. I used a pepper shaker, but it dumps a bit too much so I want to find a better tool, maybe like a tiny sifter. Results are very promising as the color migrates through layers and layers to create almost photographic layers of blur and crisper points. Sadly, I have to put this aside while I work on another deadline, but glad to have another batch of fiber tested. Happy new year (though a friend warned me that the year of the pig may be a difficult one for me, a snake. That's not how I want to start out the year, though, so I won't)—this is my final month laying low before big travel.