Sunny Monday

The smaller bal (screen) works like a dream, and my first batch of paper came out wonderfully...while still damp. When I peeled them away today, they stuck like crazy to the shiniest surfaces, which I suspect comes from the gampi content. The gampi is too soft to start with, was probably cooked with too much caustic, and then beaten in a hollander. So this recipe needs to be tweaked. But at least sheet formation is great, and our new teul (frame) works great.

Charity watered the tororo on Saturday, and then we rotated the table so that the ones in front could get a little more light and less direct heat. I think it worked to some extent, because when I checked on them today, some that refused to come up were finally poking out.

I realize now that because these are plants, I feel fine constantly posting images of them—unlike my niece, who is a person that belongs to other people, so I can't flood the internet with pictures of the cutest baby ever (of course I am biased but I think that she ranks up there in objective cuteness). I am so excited by these babies! But today I realized that we will come up against a problem: the gallery season begins at the Morgan on Friday, and I don't think we will be allowed to leave them in the perfect south-facing window under the heater. I worry that if they move to a less desirable location, they will fail. But we'll see what the verdict is later this week on forced relocation.

This Madagascar Labradorite was my splurge yesterday before I embarked on five to six hours of taxes. I cooked and rinsed some Ohio mulberry (regular mulberry, not paper) today, which smelled even better than a regular kozo cook, and wonder if I will be able to keep myself from picking out all the bark before prepping it for a tiny batch of local mulberry paper. In the meantime, I have been looking at apartments almost daily. Today, I will have gone to three cities before, during, and after work, and I can't wait for this part of the hunt to be over.

If you have a TV, tomorrow will be the national broadcast of the documentary that my sister edited, on PBS! Town Hall airs on Tuesday, April 1 at 8pm.