Thursday Thoughts...

“And the days that I keep my gratitude higher than my expectations, I have really good days.” 

Ray Wylie Hubbard

Expectations are funny things. So much of our subjective experience seems to be impacted by what we expected might happen.  In small ways - expectations may be high about a book or movie because everybody you know says it's brilliant; and then the book or film doesn't meet expectations.  Keeping expectations of say an event low, can mean that the experience is enjoyed far more, simply because it is better than you thought it might have been.  As I said, funny old things.

I quite like how this quote brings into play not only expectations, but also that sense of gratitude.  I imagine it is about keeping an eye on the small things to be thankful for: the moments; the words; the beauty; the small acts of kindness that we come across or find and taking the time to not only acknowledge them, but to also have gratitude for them.

Having gratitude for something places value on, it means that you realise that it benefits your life or your wellbeing and that you know that it might not have been there and now it is.

I think it is a simple way of looking at the world - imagine the opposite where expectations are high and gratitude is low - a bit of a recipe for a miserable old time really. So I shall be trying - especially at this time of year, to manage both my expectations and my gratitude.

I was so grateful that my dad planted sweet peas at the cottage in the hope that they might bloom when I was there - and they did - and every day for 8 weeks we had sweet peas in the kitchen...

Making things

I am pleased that as I get older I work a few things out.  I have learnt to complete all my commissions and commitments (pretty much) by November which gives me some clear air in December when things go all a bit ditzy.

And so this month I have been able to finish odd jobs; test out things I want to test; make a few things; work with the garden's bounty; and sit and stitch and repair.

All of which adds up to nothing much, yet quite a lot!

As we head towards gatherings and celebrations around Christmas here, baking becomes a thing.  I have been making shortbread for gifts and preparing food for guests and visitors.  For reasons completely unknown to us, our tomatoes have gone ballistic this summer (hot and dry perhaps?) and we are collecting about 1-2kg each day of these tiny sweet cherry tomatoes.  Bags are given away but also sauce and relish are made and others roasted to stir through pasta and the like.

They are so cheery!

And then to making more cards.  My grief cards are selling well - I think they speak to folk who want to say something about grief without actually using a with sympathy card.  I had been looking at them and thinking however, that they were a bit bright, and so I went and played with my Graphitint watercolour pencils instead and came up with some slightly more restrained, slight more sombre or gentle colours which I think still work well.

They are available over at decklededgepress shop if you are interested...just select the colours and the numbers of each you would like. They are, priced at $8each including postage anywhere in the world! You will also find some new baby cards and wedding cards there...

And so to stitching and fixing.  I have become one of those people who has an alterations/repair pile! Who knew?  This old dress has been a bit of a favourite - a nice linen which has been modified a few times and then sadly got a blob of oil down the front of it.  It has become a house dress (ie I don't wear it out in public) but  I thought I might be able to make something of the blob, so off we went.

I used a template for different sized circles and drew them onto the front using one of those pens which will iron away.  I gathered some beautiful silk thread I had bought at Fibres West back in July - a variegated one called Hannah from Beautiful Stitches - and started stitching around them  with a bit of variety here and there.

So far so good - plenty more to go but I think it will make me happy when I wear it around the house in the heat of summer!.

Experiments - printing on fabric

Looking back over my goals for 2019  I noticed I had written once again - print on fabric.  So before 2019 was farewelled, I wanted to give it a shot, rather than roll it over for yet another year.

I wanted to do letterpress printing on fabric in particular, so went around the interweb to see how people did it - with very limited success.  So I googled a bit more and found a few people who I thought might know how to do it.  I emailed them and got replies from nearly everybody which was very kind and very helpful.

And so I decide to do some tests and some trials with the inks I had to hand.

I really wanted to find out if the rubber-based inks I use for most of my letterpress would print on fabric.  Nobody I contacted had ever done it, so there was a challenge!  I also wanted to test the Permaset Aqua inks which folk tend to use for screen printing; and I also had a go with some of the Golden Open Acrylics just in case.

I was working with a white 50% cotton-50% linen mix fabric (and some calico for trials as well).

First up, some wood type went onto the bed of our new proofing press. Held in place with magnets.

The results of the printing.  The calico strip in the middle has them all; the four white rectangles have one each.

The orange is a rubber-based ink, the black is Permaset Aqua and the red is Golden Open Acrylic. Here they all are drying in the sun in the gravel at the back of the studio (weighed down so as not to blow away).

On the calico - the rubber based ink was crisp and printed beautifully.

The Permaset Aqua applied using a foam roller  was bit blotchy and didn't cover as well.

So I tried it with a small rubber roller which slipped and slid all over the shop but created a rather painterly look.

On the calico I applied the Golden Open Acrylic with the rubber roller. And I used a small foam roller on the piece of white line/cotton.

First up you have to dry them.  The rubber based ink dries by absorption - so it has to seep into the fabric.  The others dry by evaporation and will disappear into the air to dry.  It has been hot and dry and so they worked pretty well.

After drying you have to 'cure' the ink by ironing. Which I dutifully did.  I knew at this point that the orange rubber based ink wasn't really dry like the others, but decided to wash the calico strip anyway just to confirm my understanding.

And I was right - it bled and made a lovely orange backdrop to the calico. Lovely, but not the look we were going for.

All the others held well after washing.

And so I let the orange on linen/cotton dry for a week.  It sat in the sun some days, it sat inside, I forgot about it and decided that I would probably have the patience to let something sit for a week, so it was now or never - if it worked it worked if it didn't then I had to find an alternative to rubber based inks.

Yay it worked.  I ironed it then washed it and it came out fine.

Here it is crisp and clean but apologies for the odd coloured background - it is a beautiful white still. The shudder judder mark was me messing up the actual print, not a result of the washing.

And so I have written down all my notes, and marked each one with a sharpie as the notes refer to it so I should always remember what I did and what I might do.

I then went and washed the orange on the linen/cotton again just to make sure and it came out good as gold so I think I have the whole drying/curing thing right. Phew.

Now what to print?!?!?!?

Thursday Thoughts...

“What we can or cannot do, what we consider possible or impossible, is rarely a function of our true capability. It is more likely a function of our beliefs about who we are.” 

Albert Camus

I imagine that this quote could pertain to two of my three rotating topics - life and art; but today I am pondering art so about art it shall be.

There is a certain truth isn't there in trying to understand how we limit ourselves; how powerfully our brain can direct and or limit our pursuits. And I think creatively we are often blocked by whatever odd little stories we tell ourselves about something; or about ourselves.

Whether or not we can do that, are good enough to, know what we're doing or should be doing something else.  All are stories we tell ourselves along the way at times.

Who know what we could do if we didn't tell ourselves a story but rather asked ourselves the questions what if or why not?

I pushed myself so many times when working with Susan on our Pas de Deux collaboration...

Ode to Stones

So, I got my act together and managed to complete this Variable Edition of 5 books.

I had wanted to test and try a range of things when I began, so the books are on different papers, with different surface treatments and are different sizes.  In the end one of them has a completely different finished look as well.

All I know is that I know a whole lot more about letterpress and making now, than I did when I began making these more than 18 months ago.

I dismantled the ones I had stitched and prepared earlier because they were so flimsy.  I had tried to rescue them a few times with different approaches, but in the end all the covers were binned.

See what I mean by flimsy? An overhead shot of the spine with it nicely held at the tail but way too much play in between. To this day I don't know what I was thinking...

A couple of the earlier covers, ready for binning.

And the first look at one of the finished ones.

I prepared a firm-soft cover in Magnani Pescia Grey to act as a wrap around cover.

I unpicked all the stitching on all five books and started again - this time with a simple coptic stitch holding the book block together.

I stitched in a fly leaf both front and back and these slip under the inside fold of the cover to hold the book block in place.

 And so to the words and printing.

The books are all about stone circles  or standing stones which we love to visit and discover when in Scotland.  They are majestic and powerful and I really feel their strength and presence.

I did some naive type lino prints of different circles, wrote some words, sorted out the layout and printed the lino then the letterpress.

This one is on cream BFK Rives paper.

 You can see here how the fly leaves slip within the fold of the cover.

Four of the Variable Edition of 5 - the long tall one is Gmund Cotton 300gsm covered in book cloth to try something new and different.

The two tall ones have Grey Pescia paper for pages with some marks on the paper.

The fifth in the edition where I just taped the sides together to create a simpler journal sketch book kind of thing. Also nice in its own way, with grey rolled ink as the background.

 So many learnings, so many steps forward then backwards, but before the year is out they are complete!

Little bits of making

So I have been trying to commit to more time in the studio - to engage more actively with my making; to try and have it become a bigger part of my everyday.

I have been tidying up the studio space as well as my sewing room and I am interested to discover just how much I am gripped by enthusiasm for the possibilities that now await, rather than responding to the sense of chaos and unfinished business everywhere.

Observing your own life at times can be intriguing.

So studio time this week has seen me testing and trialling some printing on fabrics; trying a wee lino cut for the first time in ages; picking up some books that had defeated me for 18 months and finding new paths forward; and stitching together a small pamphlet book for my sewing group.

Small successes.

I had thought it would be fun to try and do a small (7cm x 7cm) lino print of the cottage in Scotland. And so I reduced a photo to black and white, traced it and transferred it onto a 10cm x 10cm piece of lino.

And then began to carve. Enthusiastically I dug out bits in the sky, and then tried to work my way around the small details of the cottage, the fences, the washing line. the gables, the door, the stonework...

What was I thinking?!?!  Not the easiest of things to attempt after years of not doing it, but hey.

I did a quick ink, masking off with some tape I had recovered from around some tubs of ink.

And realised that I had clearly cut our bits that should have stayed, but this was a beginning and I didn't beat myself up.

I pulled a couple of prints and smiled.

So many learnings from that small and quick process. I think in part because I had started something just for the fun of it, that I had worked out a few tricks for myself, and that nobody was invested in it I could really look at it clearly and work out what I liked and what I would do differently.

It feels surprisingly good to have printed something that doesn't work, yet offers so much potential.

And then it was back to the books that hadn't worked out 18 months ago. So many things were tricky with them and the documented process is full of ups and downs and roundabouts from way back when...

I said to Barry it felt as if they had been sitting there for that long quietly criticising me. It was a fairly negative conversation so I was interested to see that I suddenly wanted to pick them up and do something with them; that in fact I thought I might have worked out what to do to rescue them.

I had been stuck with the covers.  For whatever reason way back then I just hadn't thought through how I would attach the pages and the cover and they had ended up being totally loose and flimsy and I must say, rather awful and rather disappointing. So they sat there in their flimsy, weakened state for over a year.

I tested the idea of a cover, and then thought to make it better I could emboss something so pulled out the lino I had carved for the pages and tried to emboss/deboss it.  Interesting result but not what I had hoped for.  However, the trials remain in the ether as options in the future for something...

And then to my wee pamphlet stitched book.

My sewing class is finishing up next week forever, which makes me sad, yet grateful for the amazing time we have had and the many many things I have learned and made.  A few weeks ago I thought to go early on a couple of occasions and sit with Narelle (seamstress extraordinaire) and get her to to tell me some of the things she knows and which she says in class but which we always forget.

I wrote them down and typed them up.  I could have just printed them on A4 paper, stapled them and shared them around with everybody; or simply emailed them through to people, but I thought they deserved a little bit more and created a booklet in Word, then printed them onto 150gsm paper, creased them, pierced them and sewed them with a pamphlet stitch.

They look and feel nice and will be a nice memento (and a useful one I hope) for all of us as we head off to be independent sewers (eek).

A few tips and tricks for those of us who will forget - like which direction to press your seams; the sewing sequence for pants; how to do french seams and so on.

As ever, spines and stitching, I  love.

Its fun to realise just how much I have enjoyed no major achievements, some resolutions and some fun exploration and learning.