Top Three Posts

Blogger counts each time a post has been viewed and of my 80 posts, the Eco Bundling - OMG post has received the most by far - 102 views and climbing. This post has been viewed almost every day since I posted it! My post Papermaking Adventures: Water Retting is second with 87 views and Experimental Printmaking I (carving into Masonite) is third with 81 views. In general, most other posts get anywhere from 6 to 35 views. I suppose these three topics have very little written about them although India Flint and her eco-bundling technique is getting more popular every day. She has spent much time traveling and conducting workshops and posts on her blog regularly. The popularity of the technique has folks searching for more, I suppose.

To those who have searched for information on these topics, please leave a comment and let me know if you found what I wrote to be helpful and share something about your own experiments and experiences. Thanks!

Papermaking Adventures: Water Retting

Back in March (see post here), I set out several fibers in buckets of water and wood ash to ret for a few months. Today I strained the fibers and and thoroughly rinsed them with the power wash setting on my garden hose.  To my delight, three of the four had broken down to form a wonderful pulp. Here are the before and after photos:

               Gampi

             L: before

             R: after

             Kozo
        L: before
        R: after
 

              Mulberry
    with bark attached
         L: before
         R: after

                Willow
           L: before
           R: after





The only unpleasant part of this process is the foul smell of the pulp, though that is to be expected. The kozo is the most smelly and the willow has no foul odor at all, in fact it has the same pleasant, aromatic scent it always has. To help mask the odor, I added lavender essential oil to the pulps. I am storing the gampi, kozo and mulberry in the buckets and hope to make paper with them in the next few days. The willow I laid out to dry. I will try cooking this with lye to see if it will break down.

To be continued...

2012 Papermaking Season Has Begun

It was a beautiful, sunny day today and I was off from work, so spent some time outside straightening up my papermaking studio and setting some fibers to ret.  Mulberry, willow, kozo and gampi bast fibers were each put in a five gallon bucket with approximately six ounces of wood ash and four gallons of water. I put tightly fitting lids on them and placed them in the sun. I plan to give them a stir or tumble once a week for a month. Hopefully April will be warm and sunny so that I can cook these fibers and then beat them. Then the real fun begins!

Mulberry bast with bark

willow bast with bark

gampi

kozo

The mulberry and willow basts were gathered here on our property.  I bought the beautifully clean gampi from Keith Gum of IFUGAO Papercraft. The kozo is from Magnolia Paper.

 I am also reading up on preparing fibers for natural dyeing.  My plan is to dye the cotton sheets first this year, then cut and beat them. This should be easier than trying to mordant, rinse, dye and rinse pulp like I did last summer. From what I read, I believe I need to treat the fabric with tannin (need to find a natural source of that), then mordant twice with alum. Fibers/fabrics can be premordanted and kept indefinitely, ready and available when the dye materials present themselves! I am also planning to use this dyed cotton fabric for weaving and small sewn projects.

Gathering Willow Bast

My husband, Bob, grows three or four types of willows for basket making material. Yesterday I cut back a number of branches that were growing into a pathway and put them on the ground in the shade so that he could strip them when he got home from work. It rained for about 15 minutes which was just what the willows needed to stay moist. Bob informed me that it is too early in the season to gather branches for basket making because the wood is still too weak.

I checked them in the morning and tried peeling the bark away from the woody core. It came away very easily. I knew I could not pass up the opportunity to harvest this bast for future paper, so this afternoon when I was finished with what I needed to do, I moved the branches to my new papermaking outdoor studio (that Bob built for me as a 25th wedding anniversary gift) and began to spend the rest of the afternoon stripping the bast from the woody core.

About halfway through the stripping process it became evident that the branches were drying out because the bast was not coming off easily any longer. I put the remaining branches in a bucket of water and let them sit for about ten minutes. This helped to revive them.

I placed the stripped bast in a bucket of water so that they would not dry out. I wanted to be able to remove the outer bark from the bast.
It was a very easy task! I just laid a strip of the bast onto a board, held it down with my fingers and with a putty knife, scraped away the green bark. I was not able to get all of this bast scraped today. I hope to have some time tomorrow to finish the job. If I don't, I think I will put it in the freezer. If I let it sit in the water it will ret, which would probably be okay, but it will no doubt change color.I am saving the green bark that is removed to use at a later date as a dye. I did a dye experiment in the spring with willow bark, but it didn't work. There are too many variables to know why, but I will try a different technique with this batch.