Energy Deficit

I'm battling fatigue which tends to make me cranky, enough so that when the seven month old Janome Platinum Jem refused to sew I seriously thought about tossing it into the trash can. The Redlands Sewing Center is about
1.5 hours from here and that of course made the situation even larger than it needed to be. In the yellow pages I discovered only two repair shops in the entire area, one of them isn't in the most desirable of locations. Happily, the second one isn't too far away and I was informed that if I got the machine in on Wednesday the repair guy was in their shop on Thursday so I could probably have my machine back on Friday. "I'll bet," I thought. Often I'm surprised when things turn out; the machine is back home after being reset to factory settings. I'm terrified to try it, what if it doesn't work? In the mood I'm in I wouldn't be able to handle it. Energy deficit due to insomnia, enough said.

I did however whip up two more batches of paper pulp with an additive that is supposed to help the paper become acid free. I forgot to mention that before. Two examples of some of the fragments and small sheets of paper that I made are below. The scans seem to make the paper look like one sheet rather than a small embossed fragment on top of a sheet of paper. I haven't adhered them together yet simply because I'm still wondering if I like them well enough. To achieve the blue tone on second one I used chalk pastels. I don't make delicate paper to write on, why bother when one can purchase beautiful papers. The paper I make is often chunky, highly textured, or chock full of things that appeal to me like herbs, dried flowers or whatever is on my work bench such as onion skins on their way to the compost pile. I think that the paper made better use of them.


The other thing that I tried was to use hand sanitizer, Purell, to transfer a photo I shot in Arles, France in 1997. This particular print was too dark. The details of the house in the background weren't evident. I do like the sunflowers so I tried the transfer on a sheet of handmade paper
I made years ago. Failed paper, failed print, what did I have to lose? I have a feeling that this process invented by Glenda Bailey is something I will continue to play with. I'm impressed with how easy it is to do. (Note: Glenda continues to add new information about the technique so scroll through her blog to the first entry.)


Quote: Insomnia is a gross feeder. It will nourish itself on any kind of thinking, including thinking about not thinking. Clifton Fadimen