Robots or plants

This arrived to delight me to no end. Still have no time to use it on the entire new home but at least I feel like a real adult with a real...what is it? The first guesses I got from Morganites were: sandwich press, George Foreman grill, and robot.

After literally YEARS of the Morgan talking and thinking and charging interns after interns with researching a dye garden, I got incredibly impatient and just went to get a few plants to start it. This is obviously nowhere near enough for much color, but it will give us a bit to experiment with. Hardly room for failure, but it's so important that we learn to fail in real life with real tangible things in our hands instead of all this talk and thought. During these trying times, I realize that most of our suffering comes from each other: humans are crazy making! No wonder people love to garden (I have never done it because that's how I grew up; didn't know any better or worse). Spending time with dirt and plants is so much more satisfying and enriching and involves slightly less drama.

However, I got these at the end of the work day yesterday, thinking I'd store them in my car until this morning. But halfway home, I saw a HUGE mosquito in the car and decided there was no way I could harbor any more. The first devil of the season! I was pulling paper yesterday after a long hiatus due to injury and body unwillingness, and was so so so happy to get back to the vat (though now that it's warm enough to be in the studio without winter coats, people are coming to interrupt me more and more. That's what I miss about winter papermaking: the real quiet). But I know it's only a matter of time before those awful mosquitoes return.

Good news about our naginata beater progress: the blades were cut a while back by a water jet company, and the stainless tub and stand will hopefully be done by the end of the month! Machines, another class of creatures to turn to for solace.