A perfect rainy day – love it!
This was supposed to be a blueberry picking day with a couple sisters, niece and grandniece, but that has now been postponed till Monday. Instead, I get to play a bit more with the paper pulping I’ve been doing.
The corn is still beating as I’ve decided to give it more time. ITMT, I’ve pulped leeks, daffodil leaves, linen and garlic and have a pot of tender willow stems and leaves cooking at the moment.
The garlic really stank while it cooked – and I think my hands may still smell a bit from pulling sheets. Only got three sheets out of the pulp (with a bit of leftovers going into an overall leftover vat) and they look really nice – we’ll see how they dry.
The daffodil sheets also look nice! I gave most of the pulp a bit of bleaching and that helped a lot as the pulp is almost black. I also noticed a bunch of gunk in the pulp so I did a second straining after pulping and came up with two sets of fibers. The second string fibers (the stuff that washed out of the strainer) is really gritty and very dense – not sure how that will hold up to being handled as a sheet. It also left a mess on the mould/deckle and me while pulling. The first string fibers were much nicer with no mess. I’m debating on whether to add some cotton to the second string or just to forget about it!
The linen came as sort-of halfstuff from LW who had some linen material from her mom which disintegrated when she washed it. It felt like silk after handling the corn husks!
The leeks pulled nicely, too. Amazing how you have this big bag of leaves and they cook down to almost nothing. Maybe four sheets that look really nice.
I’ve had some palm pulp in the freezer, so I’ve got that out thawing and we’ll see how it pulls and forms.
I might even get some sewing in today – if the pulps run smoothly!