Tuesday, March 04, 2014

Drenched in trouble

Each month, I think things will get better, but really, every month is just as busy, so who am I kidding? I started my apprentices on picking bark before I left, so that is keeping THEM busy. Though I do want to scale up production, feeling nervous about our timeline.
This is what got me very behind on all of my writing and application deadlines: a mobbed table at the American Museum of Natural History last weekend!
This is when I still had the energy and time to snap pictures; I was only able to get about three bites of pizza in my face at a time while working. I never even saw the inside of the green room or the food catered for us because it was so busy!
I was fortunate, though, to have Esther (haven't seen her since our Fulbright year!) appear and volunteer for most of the day. I'm not sure how I thought I was going to man this table all by myself. It was wild!
I was also so happy to see Maria, even though we didn't have much time to catch up because I was doing my thing and she was doing hers. I stayed a little longer and booked an evening flight for yesterday so I could get 24 hours with the precious 5-mo niece. But that set me up for a horrific delay due to bad weather in Raleigh (that was where the plane we needed in NYC was coming from), so I didn't get back home until 1am. I promptly got up and left in the morning for Oberlin but had to stop for gas because I was too crazed to fill up on the way to the airport last week. Overly tired Aimee + self serve = Bad News. I accidentally splashed a whole lot of gasoline all over me and so the jacket above and my purse are now soaking in something that I'm sure will not solve the problem. I was lucky to have an extra coat hanging out in the trunk, but I was very unhappy. I haven't needed to locate a good dry cleaners in town but now I need to find one, pronto!
However, my visit to the Book in East Asia class at Oberlin was wonderful. It was SO good to be able to talk about what I care the most about and am most interested in: Asian paper/making. I showed them some videos of Chinese, Korean, and Japanese papermaking, had samples of all those, and then had them test brush and ink on an array of papers from Chinese calligraphy practice paper, hanji, Morgan Thai hanji-ish, Morgan cotton, and bristol. Somehow, I made it back to the Morgan to train Charity, and I was so tired of the fiber going bad that we made deckle box sheets to at least get it dry and in a better form to store.

Oh! My photographer (the best in the world, hands down) is going to be showing in NYC this week. I wish I could be there. If you are in town, visit!

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