checking and checking...

As a self-taught letterpress printer I am continually learning.  There must be better and faster and easier ways to do things, but I stumble along and discover things for myself.

At times, I would love to be in a shared print shop and watch others and ask and listen and all of that; but instead I just have to figure things out for myself and I laugh a lot along the way as I realise I could have been sooooo much more efficient!

Case in point.  Preparing to print the first 'verse' of the 'poem' that will accompany the images of standing stones, I first of all worked out the size of the print area and tried to place my small pieces of type within it just to get a sense of how it might look.

Of course several fell over.

 But I thought I was onto something size-wise and positionally, so I grabbed a few spaces to see how they worked. All looked OK.

Then I locked the type up in a chase and carbon paper proofed it. Told myself I wanted to move things this way and that, so went back in and changed the spaces and and hoped for a better look.

I di this several times...

I think maybe eight times?

And then thought - why don't I just cut the words out and lay them out how I want to see them printed, and then see if I can pop the type in to match my preferred layout?

And look at that - it worked!  I could have saved an hour or two I reckon if I had used my brain a wee bit earlier in the process. Laugh.

Locked and ready to test print.