Despatches from the front

More thinking has been happening. After the talk about paper, I began to think about collecting foliage for paper pulp. This usually involves collecting from out front, iris, daylily, but that's not a thing in March.

And I remembered my house is full of foliage, quite a bit needing to be pruned, because it's gone mad since the daylight has started to lengthen.

Viz:

Including the leaves I trimmed from the March flowers. I can include the flowers in the mix.

And there are a couple of big paper artworks around here, while we we're thinking paper, the left made with second cut cotton linters, the right with a combo of abaca, banana, fiber and some cotton linters.  The right one dates back to papermaking class in the 70s, this stuff is so stable it will outlive us all. This is just a tangent, where was I..

So papermaking will happen, with other ingredients as well as boiled leaves.

Meanwhile I've been casting a cold eye on my current tapestries and thinking better continue with four selvedge technique, so as to get a better finish.

 The idea of four selvedge is that there's practically no finishing beyond removing the tapestry from the loom. What there is, though, is fiddling about with special jigs and warping and my set-up was for much bigger work, not miniatures.

 I blogged about this a while back, and if you're interested, you'll  find links to posts about four selvedge in that endless list down the right of the screen.

So I looked around for ideas and see I can probably make the exact size loom I need very simply, using materials I have. Weave the loom completely full, slip the weaving off , adjust the warp threads, no fringes.

So here we go

I can also use this little loom as a guide to creating there mold I'll need to make paper to the right size for the covers.

I think I'd better stop and pick this up tomorrow with new energy.  Enough excitement for one day, all these discoveries.