forgetgutenberg

Trying to make a title page that looks awesome.

… I think I will be carving a linoleum block, and printing it in … grey? Maybe. Pale green? Depends. With text in black.

And next time I will plan to have some kind of bigger type, or use photopolymer, or … something.

I upped the contrast a bit, so it’s a little strange and grainy … but it’s a pencil sketch. It will be much better in the final version. The lines will be cleaner, anyway.

Also, I am listening to Borgel, as read by Daniel Pinkwater, and life is suddenly really awesome.

Because these are the neighbors:

I’ve been working; there’s so much to take pictures of that I’m completely overwhelmed. It’s coming.

I spent Thursday night in the shop and printed three runs, so I am almost done with the broadsides. (It turned out that I hate my original plan for one of them, so I’m carving a second lino block to add to it.)

I did the batch on French Paper Co. Speckletone (in Natural) dry this time, and boy howdy does it make a difference in the impression. Of course, it sucks up ink, but whatever. I’ll deal. Next time, I’m doing the dampened handmade paper first so I can experiment with adding more ink for the dry paper. I can’t tell if it’s me doing something wrong, or if our rollers are actually that bad, or if it’s the paper.

Here’s a detail of the finished product:

Which came out pretty well. A little grey, I guess, but overall I’m pretty happy with it.

Here’s the same detail of one on dampened handmade cotton paper:

You see the difference, I’m sure. That’s why I keep printing damp, and why I have this crazy long-term goal of printing on handmade paper all the time. It’s still not perfect, but it’s definitely better. (Also, this particular sheet is amazing if I do say so myself. It’s cotton/abaca/silk. Yeah. It rocks hard.)

And now, I carve a block and distribute type. I used all my spacing on the second broadside, which is an issue. Guess I need to buy more spacing. And more leads – I suspect I’m going to be short for the next project.

So. I did a run of 125 for a broadside. (Which is a lot of prints to pull in three hours, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. I’d like to point out that my preferred method of printing maxes out, for modern operators, around 25 prints an hour…) Twenty-five of them are on handmade paper, and the rest are on text-weight French Speckletone.

I’m using handset type from a semi-local monotype foundry, so I knew I was going to have to dampen the handmade paper (honestly, I should never even try to print on handmade paper dry, it never ends well). All right, well, I thought I’d dampen the other paper too. Just because. After all, what harm could it do?

Look closely at this picture.

Ok. I’ll give you a clearer one. (Turns out it’s hard to photograph this phenomenon even though it is painfully obvious in person.)

You can probably see it, but if you want, click on the image and take a closer look. I’ll wait.

Yes, dear reader, I have crashed into my poor paper. This stuff doesn’t want to be dampened — which I knew — and I did it anyway. I saw how it took water when I was marbling it (not well, but it does take up the pigment well enough to be worthwhile), and still I dampened it!

Then I exacerbated the problem by overcompensating for our rather elderly rollers in, oh, the worst possible way: I added packing. *sigh* Really. I do know how to print, I promise.

Seriously — I feel a little like someone is going to come take away my press privileges or something. It looks ridiculous, and it’s terrible for the type. (I’m almost afraid to print the next thing: what if I smashed my type into oblivion?)

I can take some comfort in the fact that Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, who is basically a professional knitter, also makes insane mistakes. And blogs about it. Go Steph. And thank you.

I take more comfort in the fact that, from the front, these broadsides look awesome. Have a fragment:

The text is a poem called “The Invention of Zero” and it’s from a book called The Kingfisher’s Reign by Jonas Zdanys. I haven’t showed him these broadsides — I’m waiting for the full set to be done — but I really hope he’ll forgive me for the printing.

On the bright side, the ones on handmade paper worked beautifully. The paper was just damp enough, and while the impression isn’t perfect, it’s not like you can read it from the back.

Let this be a warning to you: think before you dampen! (But don’t be afraid to dampen when it’s necessary — it’s not that complicated, and sometimes it makes all the difference.)

A story about an epiphany, illustrated with some jewelry.

This is Obstinate:

Which has been a useful reminder in the face of what often felt like overwhelming despair.

This is Things Change:

Which is not so much a reminder as a declaration.

About five years ago now, I had a conversation with my then-adviser, who said that I was risk-averse, and told me it was going to be an issue. After a fair bit of reflection, I have to admit that he was right. I am risk-averse, in many ways. I like a certain amount of stability, regular schedules, predictable flows of business and busy-ness.

On the other hand, though, I was getting frustrated with feeling like I was in a work-related rut.

And a couple of other things happened, all of which ended with the realization that yes, it probably is ok to just leap off the deep end and assume that even a cannonball is going to be more fun than just sitting at the edge of the pool whimpering about how cold the water is.

So I’m trying it. I’m doing something else. Because things do change, but sometimes one has to help it along.

Right now, I’m kind of in the denial phase. I’ll deal with practical stuff, oh, soon enough. I have a plan. It’s a good plan. I’ll probably talk about it more, as it gets more fleshed out — at the moment it’s kind of an incoherent mess — but basically I am going to try to help run a community studio, and make books, and be an art-making troll in a factory/cave, and print things, and maybe do some of the ridiculous performance book arts I’ve been thinking about, and heck. I guess I can do anything, can’t I?

(The bracelets are from Vagabond Jewelry, the marbled paper in the background is on my handmade paper, and I took the pictures with a delightful new camera that I am for real going to learn to use properly.)

Saturday was an unreasonably gorgeous day (and I had a rather extensive errand to run), so instead of spending time in the shop, I had an Adventure. (I declared it a Day Off for Personal Reasons.)

I’m afraid I don’t have any pictures yet — I made a small tactical error, so I have no way of transferring files from my Shiny! New! Camera! (I love late holiday presents) to show them to you — but here is what I did:

Got on the inbound train at Harvard Square. (There are no outbound trains on weekends until March.) Thought very hard about what I was going to do, came up with two options, and instead got off the train at Charles MGH. Walked down whatever that street is, looked in the window of several antique stores (actually went into one, where I found myself wishing that I had bought a stereoscope at the really-more-of-a-junk shop where I got quite a few interesting things in my childhood; one of the other ones had a chandelier with blue porcelain roses that matched almost perfectly the one I got for less than two dollars at Unique Thrift lo these many years ago), stopped in at Rugg Road, which was … distressing, actually, and my take-away lesson was that I really need to make scrap paper grab-bags.

Then I walked for a while. I took a lot of random turns, arbitrarily, attempting to navigate sort of … towards the harbor. I had, you see, a goal. It turns out that a lot of sort of improvisational navigation will, eventually, lead one to the harbor. It just may also lead one to walk all the way around Government Center and what passes for a CBD here. I have no idea how I ended up at the Garden, so don’t ask.

Fortunately, the Garden is close to where I was going. I think it only took me an hour to weave my way down to something that was at least recognizably harbor. Of course, then I had to walk halfway back around Boston to get to the correct wharf — and I missed the ferry by two minutes because there are two T stops, and of course I found the wrong one first. That’s ok, though. It was warm, and sort of sunny, and tourist-watching is hilarious.

Also, I did successfully get on a ferry from Long Wharf to Charlestown Navy Yard. It was an excellent trip. Short, but also inexpensive; this means I should probably write some kind of letter to the MBTA about how much less awesome it would be to live here without the ferry. There are some really excellent views to be had, and it’s kind of soothing. I mean, don’t look too closely at the ferry. It’s a little rusty. But water! Water is awesome! Open water! Well, kinda.

And then I had to walk through the Navy Yard to get back to the shop (I left most of my stuff there, although sadly not my pocket knife, so no trip to the Constitution for me). That was fascinating. The decaying warehouses are fascinating; there’s definitely interesting history in there, and some really great signs. There’s also some extremely cool buildings for sale, and a large-blade research facility (wind turbines, I assume). As well as something that looks suspiciously like grain silos but may in fact be a construction supply place. There was, once upon a time, a sugar company. It’s long gone, and the sign is faded to illegibility, but the site demolition sign from Massport is still there. Also there are old train tracks — once upon a time, they led to all the warehouses (including the one I work in), but now they’re just there. Going nowhere.

Anyway. I’m glad I got to go out on the harbor. I hope there’s a way to save the ferries — they’re one of my favorite things about living near a large body of water.

And on Monday (technically still today!) I did the first batch of three broadsides in an edition of 125. Hahahaha. What was I thinking? Wait until I tell you about the process …

Apparently.

This is suminagashi, not traditional at all, from sumi ink in a little bottle (I’ve had it for a while, and it seemed worth experimenting with) and Kodak Photo-flo for fun with surface tension. On French Paper Co’s excellent recycled Speckletone. (This batch of paper has amazing wet strength for a machine-made not-rag paper. I’m quite pleased. I hope that the formula is consistent, because I’d like to be able to keep using it.)

I believe that this edition of sheets — it’s something like 50, but they’re not very big — will serve my purposes nicely.

And I have to make lots and lots more, because this is a most excellent way to satisfy the urge I occasionally have to make an edition without repeating myself not even once.

This is the easy way — plain water, ink, and PhotoFlo. FUN. It does seem like cheating, though. It’s too quick. (Which leads me to make mistakes.)

Also, the only color that stuck to the Speckletone was black, by which I mean grey.

Should work for printing on, though, and that’s what I was looking for.

I marbled some paper.

Part of the reason I did so many sheets is that I got over-excited on Sunday and put alum on a rather enormous stack. Then it seemed like a good idea to just finish all of them – I hear tell that leaving alum on one’s paper for too long is not good for it. Also, this kind of marbling takes a fair bit of prep and pre-planning. Best not to waste that, right?

And it turns out that this batch I have of French’s Speckletone marbles quite nicely – which means I am seriously considering doing this again, but with a giant stack of Speckletone. (Most of what I did Monday is recycled lettra/rag blends.)

First I am going to try doing something the easy way. Just to see what that’s like.