Old home, new home

Sewing scraps is always very soothing, though also flares up my tennis elbow (from work, not tennis!) and stuff in my hand and shoulders. It also messes with my back and hips and feels similarly to what happens when I drive, which is mostly why I avoid and dread long drives. Who thought the ergonomics of driving should be/stay this way? But it's hard to stop sewing, as there is never any end to the scraps. This random bit is from a friend, a friend's mom, and old clothes.

This is the book I had been thinking about and mocking up since before my Bay Area trip, maybe even before UAE. I am not convinced but it has been a long and grand experiment, and a good way to figure out how the studio works. 

The hanji embedded here in abaca is what I made when I first moved my papermaking stuff to my basement years ago while waiting for the studio to be ready. I had added kakishibu powder to the sheets, which works well for 2-ply hanji. But the hanji is really not interested in fusing with the abaca, no surprise. It can't, and the persimmon makes it even more resistant.

I had to oxiclean this batch and it was not even 50% as nice as it was when I left it, but there was just no time to pull all of it before I left, so that's why I came home to the mold in there. Besides, abaca turns immediately.

Scenes from cleanup: my cheat sheets to figure out which printed papers went where and in which direction, and my new favorite Tim Moore mould. I'm so grateful to have a light one, given how much PT I've been doing on my shoulder.

The Aardvark Press, in the useless corridor that I should never have let the architect draw in the first place. I didn't realize that we'd be digging up the floor regardless for the floor drain in the beater room, so it would have been on the way if we just put the sink against the same wall instead of the half wall here. I really wanted to tell the contractor to stop when I saw him framing it out but it wasn't my call. The new idea is to use the leftover laminate sheeting to cover parts of this side of the half wall to use to dry more paper.

The lovingly-made drybox by Jim Elling, one of his last ones. I love it and wish I hadn't cut my blotting layers an inch too short.

Since the ceilings are really high, I want to rig clotheslines that sit on a frame that goes up and down on a pulley like in Kalamazoo, but for now I figure out anywhere to hang. This is not a good solution without sandbagging/weighing the feet of the grids, which are not structurally strong.

I had all this energy over the weekend to start weeding my beds to prepare for compost and mulch, but then I tired out REAL FAST and have been avoiding weeding for the last two days. Yesterday I saw a broken egg and moved this bit to the side of the driveway so I wouldn't run it over and then feel even more sad.

Today on my late walk I saw this one next to the new tree on the tree lawn. Sigh. But soup is on the stove and the windows are open...mostly to air out the house because I didn't know that the gas was on with no flame for a while. That doesn't explain my vertigo but it doesn't help! Just two weeks until Dallas and still not all here, but I suspect that it mixed with deep hurt about how politics here spends so much time in hateful places. Hating women is so tiresome. Let us BE. And fingers crossed that the Korean burdock seeds I planted last fall next to this new tree take!