The week that was: edited highlights

Forgive me for any vaguenesses I am about to commit; I am chronically underslept and overworked, and all that is keeping me awake is the thought that in four (four!) sleeps I am going to the south coast of NSW to a rented beach cabin to do nothing but eat, sleep and wade. Holding that thought is wonderful.

Where was I? Let's start with Thursday week ago.

Dateline: Thursday 31 July.
I'm introduced to Indian artist Tushar Joag, who is the Chief Executive Officer of the naughty anti-establishmentarian corporation Unicell. Tushar was visiting Canberra and the Art School for ten days to install a hand-drawn piece for the human rights exhibition Recovering Lives. I offered to do a collaborative piece with him using letterpress (fake certificates or something). Tushar was keen and goes away to think about it.

Dateline: Sunday 2 August.
Tushar and I met up at the Book Studio to discuss our project. Tushar rightly pointed out that he could manufacture false certificates with an inkjet printer, and would like to utilise the letterpress more creatively. He showed me his idea, which ties in with his Monument work.



It's a piece that talks of wasted urban space, and ways to make good use of silly things like the valuable Floor Space Index over rotting old memorials, and involves recreating the Gateway of India Monument in Bombay using letterpress.



It looked very complicated, but so interesting that the enthusiastic right side of my brain crash-tackled the dubious left side of my brain and I started planning how to make it possible.



My first mock up looked promising, but it brought home the fact that to make it work, I had to do a number of passes of the press; you can't inlay one letter inside or on top of another, because they are solid blocks. I started calculating [numbers of layers x amount of time available] and thought that I could just wing it.



But! The test pull of the press was not a good one, and Tushar was worried about the proportion of the central arch to the rest of the building. We had a frenzied search amongst the studio type cases and wracked our brains for solutions. We came up with this:



And we decided we were happy. Full steam ahead. I set and printed whilst Tushar worked down in the gallery, drawing directly onto the walls with chinagraph pencil and solvent to make huge graphic novel panels. He did the [number of panels x amount of time available] calculation and also thought he could just wing it, albeit with some student help.

First pull -- the basic framework of the Gateway:



I started with an edition of 50, which decreased as I bugger up.

Dateline: Monday 3 August.
Second pull -- the second arches and some frilly bits:



Dateline: Tuesday 4 August.
Third pull -- the third arches and the project title and explanatory footnote:



Unicell proposal to utilise the FSI* of the monuments and heritage buildings in Bombay
*Floor Space Index = Total covered area on all floors of all buildings on the plot [divided by] Area of the plot


Dateline: Wednesday 5 August.
Fourth pull -- the first silver 'support' structure and the colophon:



Plus the fifth pull -- the second silver 'support' structure:



In the morning I found time to record an interview with Sydney community radio 2ser's book program about The Lost Dog and other bizarre things I get up to, including setting the Gateway of India Monument in wood type. I'll let you know when it airs (I think I gabbled too much, but never mind).


Dateline: Thursday 6 August.

Sixth pull -- large hypothetical structure. This took a while to set, but then had to be reshaped a bit to attempt to make it less temple-like, which took a slab out of the day.



Tushar and I managed to print this together minutes before his exhibition opening (we didn't have to use the print for the exhibition, thankfully!) and then we both went down and ate our bodyweight in gorgeous cheese and passable wine (actually, I stuck to the bubbly water, because there was still a lot to do).

Afterwards I dashed home for some dinner and then came back to set and print the very last bit. I couldn't work on Friday or the weekend due to other commitments, and Tushar was leaving on Sunday, so it was crunch time.

Pull 7: the last silver tower, finished about 10.30pm:



Dateline: Friday 8 August.
Visited the Aged Poet in the morning, sorted out all her worries, then dashed back to the Studio to hand over the finished posters and farewell Tushar. Phew! There are more photos about the poster at my flickr set if you're interested. We ended up with an edition of 45, which is pretty good when you think that seven runs of the press leaves a few openings for error. (If you're interested in buying a poster, I have no idea how much he'll be selling them for, but Tushar's contacts are here if you want to ask him.)

Then I ran home, threw lots of relevant stuff into boxes and bags and jumped in the car. I swung past B's school and picked him up, then we hit the highway for Sydney.

Halfway there I threw him out onto the highway for his dad to scrape off dropped him off to his dad and kept going. I reached my lovely hosts at their magnificent Enmore residence at about 6.30, in time to hear the cork pop. Le puff! Le pant!

Dateline: Saturday 9 August.
Print to Book Workshop, Warringah Printmakers' Studio, day one.

This was a lot of fun. I spent a lot of time talking about the work I'd done, both personal and collaboratively, I showed lots of examples of books as artworks, and then I encouraged the participants to think about ways that they could use their prints to create both artist's books and in more traditional book techniques. I armed them with a variety of techniques, and let them loose on their own prints. I think we all had a great time.



The workshop co-ordinator, Susan, had given me a lift from Enmore that morning, but I wanted a bit of fresh air, so she dropped me at Manly in the afternoon after class, and I bought a lemon gelato, donned the ipod and caught a ferry back to the city, and then a bus back to Enmore. I love that trip from Manly to Circular Quay, not least because I get to gaze lovingly at the Macquarie Lighthouse and think about the time we lived next door to it in the (Army-rented) stone lighthouse-keeper's house. I realised with a shock, as I looked and thought, that next week is my brother's deddiversary, and that this was a fabulous time to be gazing at the house lovingly, since that's where I have a mental picture of him when I do think about him (did that make sense?).

Once back at the hosty house, we all headed up to the Warrenview pub for a clandestine blogmeet with Harry (whom I have met, reasonably often) and Speedy (World Peace and a Speedboat), whom I have never met and have often been encouraged to meet by the other members of For Battle.

We spent a lot of time laughing, and my hosts liked my blog friends very much. A lot of time laughing, except when Speedy and I did Teh Girly Bonding with stories of bad exes and sweet children. Every now and again we surfaced to find the others roaring over things like Harry's testicular modelling or Brad's strange costumed historical re-enactments. Speedy gave me a CD of The Church's Box Full of Birds. I was embarrassed to admit that the only CD I had in my backpack was the Greatest Hits of Hall & Oates, thanks to Bumblebee's latest obsession brought on by watching The Wedding Singer. We decide that I will send her some (now rare) Arty Fufkin.

We retire to the hosty Mansion and eat wonderful Turkish pizza until host Brad and I tripped over our eyelids and forced the others out onto the street, still laughing. Fun. Sorry I couldn't catch up with more peoples, but I didn't have the energy to organise anything else than what Harry organised. It was really so nice to just talk to a few people after gabbling on all day.

Dateline: Sunday 10 August.
Print to Book Workshop, Warringah Printmakers' Studio, day two.

Goodness me, more gabbling. And looking. And making. These people went nuts. Good things were made.





My flickr set for the workshop is here

Fun was had. Rain poured down. The City to Surf came and went, apparently with casualties. And then, sooner than expected, it was time to go home.

I stopped halfway home to scrape Bumblebee off the road outside the truck weighing centre pick up Bumblebee, then we went to a Retailer of Fried Foods and bought a very greasy and salty dinner to keep us awake and on the road. We got home to Chez Duck about 9.30pm.

Dateline: Monday 11 August.
Let the students loose with the letterpress. No-one was fatally injured. Hooray! Got some way through cleaning up the Tushar mess. Fought the eyelid droop. Came home.

And here we are. And I haven't seen or heard a single second of the Olympics. Don't want to, neither.

Now I just have a Clamshell Box workshop to teach on Wednesday, an opening to attend on Thursday, and then it's off to the beach! Four sleeps... mmmm...

A squeak and a snarl

I had to stop. The squeak of the press defeated me. Damned Martini! So good! So bad!

I had to solve a lot of problems today, one of which was whether I could print on spun polymer (yes), another being: if you make an imposition mistake on a page in an earlier print run, do you adjust the framework of the second side of the page to attempt to hide it, or do you just decide to live with the mistake as an oddity of the page? I went with the latter decision, because trying to hide the problem would have thrown the problem further along the book, and I might as well have an honest mistake in every book to please the jealous gods. It's not a huge problem, just a slightly wandering title and page number level. And thar be the vagaries of hand-printed pages.

Once I'd solved these issues, I started editioning the page in question. But I only got 50 pages done (out of 250) when every squeak and thud of the press started to pierce my brain like a dentist's drill. Here's a taste, and this is with very bad sound (taped last year):



So I did myself a favour, cleaned up the press (the Crisco almost made me vomit) and went out for an instant fat-and-sugar hit in the form of a soft drink and hot chips. Now I am home and about to lie in a very hot bubble bath before I have to go out with my parents-in-law... what a day.

But not before I vent my poor spleen about David Stratton's review of Prince Caspian in yesterday's Australian.

I quite like David on the whole, but he has moments when he just. doesn't. get. it.

Get this:

The human-like Telmarine (who for some reason speak with Italian accents) are led by Miraz and his loyal commander, General Glozelle (Pierfrancesco Favino), and they have been waging war on the Narnians, a colourful mixture of creatures, to the point where they are almost extinct.

Where do I start? Let me start by saying it's an ACE movie. If you're a fan of Narnia, you won't be disappointed. It's grand, rich and true to the text. Obviously David has never read the book, but even so, the movie makes it quite clear (and this is a mini-spoiler) that the Telmarines are not only human ('human-like'! Tuh!) but from the same world as the Pevensie children.

The second TUH! is that it is also quite obvious to anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of European history and costuming, that the Telmarines are being presented as if Spanish Conquistadors, with their dark beardy faces, flashing dark eyes, rounded helmets and Spanish accents. It not only supports the information given to us by Aslan about them evolving from European gypsies and sailors, but also sets up a lovely subtext about ideological clashes (Church of England v. Catholicism) and Colonialism (the Spanish and the 'savages' of South America).

I can't believe David missed this completely. I'm sure Margaret hasn't.

It really is a very good movie. It's got an 'M' rating, presumably for all the violence, because it's wall-to-wall war, but there's not a drop of blood to be seen, except in one scene where you see blood, but it doesn't drop :)

In our family, a movie's worth increases if there's a cat in it, and this one got full marks for cat-centred humour. Reepicheep the Mouse didn't disappoint; he's my favorite character from the whole book series. I'm looking forward to The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (due 2010), where he gets much more screen time.

Anyhoo, time to smooth this ruffled and aching brow with a bit of a bath. Hooroo.

Just to let you know...

Crisco is known for helping millions prepare food. Crisco has been helping make food delicious for years. Crisco shortening is multi purpose and can be used for all your cooking and baking needs.

It certainly is multi-purpose. This is a bucket of solid hydrogenated fat, not the liquid oil. I use it for cleaning my press rollers, something I learned from the multi-talented and now non-blogging Girlprinter. It works a treat! I haven't had a full lungful of Kero in ages. If you're interested, you can find it here.

As you were.

Letterpress: how to get a piece of the action

I have just discovered a place in Sydney that teaches letterpress classes, for all of you who email me asking after such things. I haven't managed to get any classes up at the Bookstud this year, because I'm editioning bigtime and it's hard to reset the press and get my head in the right space. So this is a good opportunity for anyone wanting to play with type... it's the Penrith Museum of Printing, and they look pretty friendly. Next time I'm up that way I'll pop in and have a look.

For Melbournites there also seems to be renewed activity at the Melbourne Museum of Printing.

If you're in Canberra and want to see a big of printing action from arm's length, try the Queanbeyan Printing Museum, usually open on sunday afternoons. For a taster on what they offer, we have a delightful collection of photos taken by moi on a Bookbinders' Guild excursion.





PS: I went to my osteopath yesterday and encountered a young woman I now think of as 'Elbows of Death'. She had the sharpest, hardest, most brutal deep tissue massage technique I have ever, in my twenty-five years of bad back and neck, experienced. When I got home I couldn't focus my eyes; this morning I have a mass of bruising in the area between my shoulder blades and below my neck. It'll settle down over the next few days, but until then I'm a bit stiff.

The fellow that swapped with her late in the massage (she got called out to help with another patient, and I wept with joy) laughed when I used my new nickname. 'That's perfect for her,' he said. 'She hasn't learned "medium" yet. She's still focussed on "hard".' Classic.

happy Mothers Day yourself

Happy Mothers Day to any of you that partake in such rituals, and an extra special hello to Jahteh and Lady Duck (and anyone else who has lost their children).

My MD treat was a cooked breakfast in bed then being allowed to have as long as I wanted to print book pages in the BookStud without guilt-inducing phonecalls or pleas to come home. As it turned out, I was horrendously hung-over from a wee dinner-party with my sister outlaw and her current moistie* plus Zoe and Owen and squillions of little boys here at Chez Duck (details of the food to be guested posted at Progrock Dinner Party when I pull my finger out), so I only managed to print 200 pages with many quick breaks to play Scramble and Scrabble and unscramble my braincells, and I was home by 5.30pm, ready for a hair of the dog. It was a pretty good printing day, but not to full capacity.

Best Beloved took Bumblebee to see the Duntroon Dixieland Band at Old Parliament House (I made up a song about it tonight to the tune of 'Spiderpig' (Spiderman) to amuse B and now I can't get it out of my head:

Dixieband, Dixieband
Does whatever a Dixieband does..
Does it swing? Yes it can,
It can swing, it's a Dixieband.
Look out! Duntroon Dixieband...)

and then they went to JB HiFi, BB's fav shop, to spend his birthday money. He came home with series 2 of Jonathon Creek and a couple of other things. Bumblebee, despite having been with BB when he bought it, asked him tonight why he'd bought series 2 and not series 1. We have a family policy of answering dumb questions with equally dumb answers, so I wasn't surprised at the start of this exchange, but I was most admiring by the rest of it:

BB: Well, the makers of Jonathon Creek decided that it was such a good concept that they wouldn't bother making a first series, just jump straight in with series two.

B (clicking): Oh yeah, right...

BB: BUMBLEBEE, do you think I'm making this up?

B: Yeah, of course!

BB: So the makers of Star Wars jumped right in at the first movie, did they?!

B: ...

[He started looking puzzled and scratched his head, until I completely lost it and started giggling.]


It was fun to watch it tonight; I'd forgotten how much I like Maddy as a character.






*I've always wanted to use that line, but now I feel guilty. He's a lovely man, and it was nice to meet him :)

Regaining momentum

My days of glorious solitude are up. Everyone came back, including Bernice Balconey and her brood of one, enriching my life with light and laughter. I do like days and nights of being alone, but only, I suppose, because they are precious and few. Mind you, I think the cats feel I'm short-changed when I'm alone, because they brought me presents of rats each day. They don't do that with a full household.



While they were away I cracked my printing problems, and the world is shiny and lovely again. I was in a bit of a rut for a while, which I tried to conquer by keeping busy in a chore sense, but nothing beats the thrill of solving an overwhelming problem. Makes me all light-hearted, which gets me through the manic obsessiveness of print production time.

It helps to have something I can listen to obsessively as well. I've said repeatedly that I print to the eclectic sounds of Machine Translations, but even they have to be given a break occasionally; a couple of years ago I was hooked on Kate Bush, last year it was The Postal Service and DNTEL, and now it's Joni Mitchell & Herbie Hancock and Eleni Mandell. I discovered Eleni on eMusic, and downloaded her more recent country-style albums (Miracle of Five, Country for True Lovers) and fell in love. But then I tried her first two albums (Wishbone, Thrill)... they'll all be on high rotation for the next few months. She's got a marvellous voice, sort of Lucinda Williams without the angst, and she's heavily influenced by Tom Waits without being Tom Waits, and I'm completely hooked.

Having a constant musical companion whilst printing is like having a studio cat, without the chance that it will jump up on the press and get mangled. It's soothing and stimulating simultaneously, if it's the right music. It has to have a sense of sitting in the background, but always be there with something interesting to offer if your mind happens to tune in for a moment. It's wonderful when you find something that works.

Here are some pics of my efforts over the last couple of days (when I haven't been kid-wrangling, like today):


This is a placement sketch to help my imposition (which way up poems go on the page, as I print four at a time, with another four on the other side of the page, to be folded down into a book section).


This is the poem, printed. I love this poem. For many reasons, one of which is that it mentions balloons. Hold that thought for a minute. (Apologies for the distortion in the scale of the type. It's photographed from an angle, not scanned.)


Because of the length of the book (over 40 poems), it would be impossible to set by hand unless I bought some new type overseas, and I can't afford that. So I'm printing the book using photopolymer (or Nylar) plate. This is what a whole book looks like, which gives a whole new meaning to the word STACK.


And this is what the plate looks like, on the press, inked. It's essentially a relief plate, like a lino or woodcut plate. It's soft plastic that is UV-hardened through a negative. Looks very similar to letterpress when printed... very similar but not quite the same to the trained eye.


Aahh... there's nothing better than a stacked rack -- of prints.



Today I spent the day with Bumblebee and his mate, making the most of my one full day between his arriving back from his dad's place and his going to Colonel Duck tomorrow for a few days. Everyone wants a piece of him in the holidays. he's never been to a holiday program.

We tried to attend the annual Balloon Festival (there's that balloon thought -- quick, catch it!), and got there about 8am, which is late in balloon terms, but not THAT late. We arrived to emptiness and nothing. BOOO to the new organisers of the event. There was a poor lassie singing on a stage, all miked up, singing to nobody, and no balloonists in sight. So the boys resorted to using their brand new phones. I enjoyed the nice reflections.



Later in the day we saw 'Horton Hears a Who'. I love the philosophical bent of the book, but they buggered the movie up with reactionary kangaroo plots and other stupid Hollywoodnesses. The animation was excellent, I have to admit. I wanted to poke my finger into Horton and feel it sink in, and my favorite character was Katie.

Afterwards I felt that the boys needed to run and jump and play, but all they wanted to do was loll and flollop.



So I gave up and took them home where they spent the rest of the afternoon adoring the cats in the garden and loungeroom while I worked. Sigh.

Tomorrow I drop B off in Cooma and head back to the studio to keep printing. I have to maintain the momentum now, or the book will never get done. And then I can spend the rest of the year practising the gentle art of bookbinding...

Catching up (ladybits alert)

I'm sorry to leave you hanging... this is the first chance I've had to get back to the blog since the last post!

Bumblebee is away with his dad, Best Beloved jumped a plane to Devonport (for work) at dawn this morning and I've now got three days to myself... which I will hopefully put to good use. I am planning to be in the studio printing, and going home via the movies. No cooking, just leftovers and takeaway, no cleaning until the very last moment before everyone gets back on Tuesday afternoon (bringing with them Bernice Balconey and her offspring for a sleepover).

I hope.
I'm in the BookStud now, finding my makeready (the work you do to set up the type and press to get a good print) extremely frustrating. Lots of eeny-weeny measurements that seem perfect one moment, and completely out the next. GAH! So I am going to take a blood-pressure break and tell you about Bumblebee's birthday.

THE FIRST

Because I dangled it in front of you, I'll give you a quick overview of B's actual birthday.

I'd gone to the obstetrician that morning, and it was a week before his due date. He made a joke that if B turned around, I'd be right for a natural birth. Not having prepared for a natural birth, having been told all the way that it was going to be very tricky if I did, what with my weird insides and masses of fibroids, I reacted quite violently to this suggestion and told him that if he left me to have a natural childbirth at this late stage I would personally wrap the cord around his neck. He laughed nervously and said 'see you in a week!'.


Here's the little tucker in utero, looking just like himself, except with a touch of the deep-sea creature about him. They did a few of these scans, to make sure he was ok amongst the fibroids, but at no point picked up that he had a dicky heart...

Anyhoo, I came back from my appointment, and went for a walk with a friend to the local secondhand bookshop. While we were looking at books, I had a contraction. I'd had a lot of Braxton-Hicks contractions, so it didn't bother me. All afternoon, though, I kept having them. My mother was my planned birth partner, and she was ready to drive up from Bega. My father was staying with me for a business trip. (I was a single almost-parent already, by choice. I only wanted one child in my life.)

I rang the hospital, but they weren't fussed and told me to hang about at home. Colonel Duck was getting nervous -- he's licensed to shoot people, but the idea of birth makes him go green around the gills. He tried to distract me by buying fish & chips and putting on a video of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (borrowed from the local library, and complete with subtitles for the deaf: 'Music swells. Bird goes tweet'). It was quite fun for a while, until the pain ramped up, and the hospital said come in for a check.

CD bustled me into his Little Red Ute and we drove to the hospital, with him nervously sucking and clacking his dental plate all the way. We rang Lady Duck, but we couldn't tell her to come yet because everyone seemed to think it wasn't time. I begged to disagree, and after an hour of people faffing around me and a whole whack of indecisiveness, someone finally checked between my legs properly and discovered that the baby was trying to shove his knee through my cervix. Oh! Emergency caesarian time!

CD rang Lady Duck, who jumped in the car. Unfortunately two hours of driving wasn't going to get her here in time, so I told CD he'd have to come in and hold my hand. He nearly fainted at the thought of it, so I asked him to ring my friend (M) I'd been shopping with that morning. She took 15 minutes to get there, by which time I'd been given an epidural and I'd yakked fish'n'salad (I couldn't hack the chips earlier) all over the nurse.

M did a sterling job, holding my hand and making jokes. I was shaking violently, scared that I'd feel the first cut, since the epidural had masked the pain but not the physical sensation of cramps. I asked them across the green sheet if they'd started, and they said 'yes, we're halfway through!' so I started to relax a bit. Then there was the most extraordinary sensation of a huge weight lifting off me, and I heard a squalk... OMFG, I've had a baby.

They passed the baby over to M, and we both sucked our breaths in, as he looked EXACTLY like his father, and neither of us thought that was a particularly good thing at the time. Then I said 'oh, it's Bumblebee', and the moment was broken and we fell in love.

It took ages to sew me up and do all the things they have to do, and I forgot to send word out to Colonel Duck, who was pacing a rut in the corridor. By the time I did remember, Lady Duck was there, and they had first cuddles as we emerged.

He wasn't a well baby -- he'd tied true knots in his cord, and was starving and eating his own brown fat, which is why he'd gone into distress. He was also jaundiced, and small.


On the way home from hospital -- tiny! I had to cut off the cuffs from his little home-dyed babyskins to make them fit.

But he was/is mine, and he's a bloody trooper. We hoped he'd plump up once he got home, but he didn't thrive, and it turned out to be his heart. For that story, go here. That kid has been close to death so many times and survived that I've stopped fretting.


THE LATEST

You can see why Bumblebee is utterly indulged by his grandparents and I. He's not spoiled, mainly because we don't have enough money to give him everything his friends get, but he keeps up enough.

So. He got a mobile from his grandad this year. It's not too fancy, with enough credit to let him ring me if he needs to, but not too much so that he can learn how fast it runs out. He messaged me yesterday to tell me his dad had taken him to Sydney. I love knowing stuff like that.

His nanny made him a cake for his party:

Isn't it lush? Choc sponge layers with fresh cream and sliced strawberries between, topped with all sorts of nice things.

It was a Lasertag party. I've never seen so many happy boys in one place.


This is the geekboy demonstrator showing off the new equipment. Flashing lights and noises... they were in heaven.


He gave a few of the teams some strategic tips, but only if they asked the right questions. The place was pretty scraggy on the outside, but once they got inside...


...it was the place of their (electric) dreams.


Team Red. Note extreme seriousness. Gawd I hope he grows out of this phase... I prefer swords to this stuff!


I love all the names they were given. They also got scorecards at the end with statistics on who shot who.


Once geared up, they ran around a darkened maze, shooting each other and the bases. I stayed outside and watched the screen, but I could hear the music and the yelling through the walls.

They emerged from each game red-faced, adrenalin charged and shouting constantly. For anyone planning to have one of these parties, take these tips:

They really only want to drink water and light fizzies. They guzzle down chips, but don't try more elaborate party fare because they're not interested, just needing a quick snack so they can keep yelling and pumping their fists. A slice of cake, another drink, and they're off again. Take earplugs. Have a Bex and a good lie down afterwards.

It was, perhaps, the easiest birthday party I've ever hosted. But I was still exhausted afterwards, from the noise and lights and testosterone levels.

I went to see 'Lars and the Real Girl' a couple of days later, and it was the perfect antidote. Highly recommended.

Back to the makeready. Wish me luck...

PS -- JUST FOUND, thanks to Helen. Heh.

Catching up

I haven't spent all my time since the last post playing Scramble, no no nee no.

Busyt busy busty. Gawd, I don't think I'll correct that particular typo, because it's eerily true. My left boob has been large and hot (in the non-sexy sense) for at least a week. But you don't want to know things like that! You want book sexiness and cooking loveliness or some such thing. OK!


YUM



Let's start with Sunday breakfast. This incredibly dodgy photo (my hands are definitely going -- my typing is crap and my photography is shaky) is a gorgeous sorrel and potato omelette with rocket on the side. It's become Best Beloved's latest scrummy Sunday breakfast offering. He cooks potato chunks in the microwave, then sautes them with mushrooms, butter and fresh sorrel leaves and puts the mixture inside a thin omelette. Ohh, the lemony tang of the sorrel is delightful!

We've been buying our vegetables more often, rather than just once a week at the Growers' Market, because there's a new local shop that sells local produce for local people (hello, hello, there'll be no trouble here). It also stocks produce from further afield, but the proprietors always mark the food miles on the labels. Some is organic, some is not, all is fresh, and the prices are very reasonable.

It has a fancy name, and someone may be able to translate its obviously relevant, caring and beautiful meaning to me: Choku Bai Jo. Unfortunately the only way I can make myself remember it is by thinking 'Chokos by Joe', as if it were a weird rural fashion label.

They stock lots of lovely Asian vegetables and herbs like fresh sorrel, but we're so hooked on sorrel that we've planted at least three batches in our wild back yard, having been told that once it's there we'll never get rid of it. Well, anything that can survive extreme neglect apart from two avid weeks of gardening at the beginning of spring is alright by us.

If you're interested, Choku Bai Jo is at the NORTH Lyneham shops (not the Lyneham shops), and they are open during decent hours for workers: 3-8pm weekdays, 7am - 12noon on Saturdays.


READING

I don't know about you, but a new Helen Garner book (let alone a novel!) is on par with a new Harry Potter book for me. I finally managed to get to my COOP bookshop this afternoon and buy a copy, and I'm already 40 pages in. I hope you realise how much reading time I'm missing out on by writing this post! Most excitement.


BOOK CLINIC

The other fun thing that's been happening is the institution of a formal chance for me to allow people to release their inner book... the studio I maintain at the Art Skool is tucked in a quiet corner, and no-one except my once-weekly book design students and the printmaking students know it's there. At a recent staff meeting I heard that someone suggested the studio be used as the 'sick-room', since it's being under-utilised!! Someone who has obviously not been up there since the old regime of being out-of-bounds to undergrads (three years ago!).

So I decided to be pro-active and slightly cheeky, and announced a weekly drop-in Book Clinic for Honours and Postgraduate students from all workshops. For a few hours of two days a week, people can drop in and get ideas, tips & tricks, help, a cuppa, and help to keep the space relevant to the entire school.

Yesterday I had four people dropping in, and it was great fun. It's amazing how many people love the idea of making books, no matter what art they practice. Each person came in tentatively, with a vague idea of what they'd like to do, and left completely keen and enthusiastic. I'm keeping a log of visitors, so that I can throw the statistics around next time they're needed...


MAILOUT

I'm finally at a stage where I can promote my Nan McDonald book, and I've printed 300 letterpress brochures to put about a bit. I'm compiling a couple of lists for my press, one virtual, one snail mail. If you'd like to get emails from me about my publications etc, please email me on ampersandduck[at]gmail.com. My snail mail list is for serious buyers and supporters, and if you want to be one of those, email me with your mail address and I'll put you on the list.

Meanwhile, here's a bit of brochure:



I will make it into a PDF and send it to the Australian Artbooks email list. If you want to be part of Artbooks, go here. It's the best way to know about artistic booky activity around our country.


PUSSY CAT HEADS & TAILS

Mr Padge is healing nicely after blowing out my credit card. His head looks scarred but presentable, and his tail is, well, curly. It doesn't seem to bother him much, but he's always been a pretty laid-back cat. Mr Pooter is on my lap as I type, an when he sleeps his little top fangs creep out over his bottom lip like a buck-toothed vampire. Uber-cute.


Have to go. Just itching to go back into Helen's world, fall asleep to the tone of her voice. Love that woman's writing, no matter how crabby she gets.

Folk-a-duck!

Well, that was the weekend that was. Easter, the time for the National Folk Festival! We always get season tickets, because it's only ten minute's bike ride from our house, and has the added bonus of some of our lovely relatives working there (they run the stall that sells the official Festival t-shirts, along with other lovely things), so it's our chance to spend some (reasonably) quality time with them.

I don't actually do a lot at the Festival; I find that once I'm through the gates, I leave the rest of the world outside, and my poor overworked brain just goes into meltdown. I tend to sit quietly in corners and watch the other people getting excited about the gigs, and I also grasp the golden opportunity to spend hours doing nothing but reading -- so if you were there, and you saw a woman sitting in the corner of a concert reading a novel and tapping along absently, that was me. I read the whole of The Kite Runner yesterday.

The quiet starts to each day gave me a chance to whip into the BookStud and do some printing. Today I managed to print about 150 halves of a brochure before I rode up to the Festival. Feels good to flake out knowing that something's been done to lower the tideline of the in-tray.

Anyhoo. I did catch some good acts, mostly because each day I went to the Infinity Tribute session. Every year they choose a corny theme, and invite Festival acts to participate in a competition to play covers according to the theme. They started years ago, unimaginatively, with Led Zeppelin's 'Stairway to Heaven' (making it any Led song would have been Teh Bomb), and since have progressed through Bob Dylan (limiting it to the 'Blood on the Tracks' LP), ABBA, Queen, The Sound of Music, and this year they did Grease. It's a fabulous way to get a taste of a variety of acts, and I invariably discover someone/something that I later follow around the festival like a puppy dog.

This year my crush was on a group called The Fourth Realm, who used to be The Fellowship of the Strings. Imagine Anna and Agnetha, mix them up with Stevie and Christine, throw in some dulcimer and harp and some very 70s folk rock, and you have a heady mix of fabulousness. I saw all their gigs at the festival, including what turned out today to be their last. gig. eva. [sob]

Martin Pearson, one of my fav funny men, had quite a low-key but excellent contribution to the festival this year. He gave a book reading of Terry Pratchett's Reaper Man, divided into four sessions. I only missed the second part, thanks to a programming irriot who put the Grease heats on at the same time. Choices, choices! I knew Martin would give a precis of the previous episode each day, so I followed the action.



The readings were terrific; he's a very clear, expressive reader, and he does excellent voices. I'd be very happy to buy him narrating Pratchetts for audio books, and I hope he recorded this one for release. Unfortunately the crowd dwindled more each day -- but those who remained were quality crowd :)

Mal Webb, my other darling festival funnyman, did an excellent job with his Grease act. He did so well that he won the whole thing. He worked out that most of the songs in Grease use the same timing, and took advantage of this (and his magic recording pedal) to make a vertical medley. I recorded it -- but in one of my best DOH! moments, I've done it sideways on my camera (he looked so good in a portrait format!). If you have a bad neck, don't try to watch -- until the last minute or so -- but it's really, truly worth a listen. In the first few seconds his microphone is having problems, but then it kicks in. He's so frigging clever. And do hang about for the high kick at the end, lithe bugger.



I taped a few other acts, which I'll add later, because they're taking forever to download.

Other highlights:
-- Liz Frencham (as ever. That woman can do NO wrong)
-- Rory McLeod
-- Dr Stovepipe
-- King Curly
-- Martin Pearson's blackboard gig last night, when he sang his triumphant "Farewell John Howard" song (that's the polite way to describe it), to the crowd's utter delight.
-- Catching Zoe's choir performance. Zoe has joined a world music choir, delighting in the fact that with world music she only needs to learn bits of songs. Unfortunately she is too tall to hide amongst the other singers, pretending that she knows the words:


Zoe is not standing on a box.

Luckily she seemed to know the words and looked like she had a lot of fun.

Over the weekend I drank a hell of a lot of Troubadour mulled wine, and ate a lot of chocolate. Bumblebee ran wild all weekend, and is now sleeping like a log after being completely exhausted and in tears all evening. Tomorrow will seem weirdly mundane after all the colour and fun.

PS: I did forget to write last night (half asleep!) that if you want a really good low-down on the Festival, check out Enny-Pen's efforts. She did lots more than me, and has better photos. And I'm glad she covered the weirdest act in the Grease heatlap trials. BTW, Enny, I had a similar reaction to your mum re. David LaMotte, but I warmed to him eventually. I think it's the Michael Bolton hair and the accent. He'd look ever so much better with a short back and sides :)

Bah Glum bug

I am sick. And getting more ill every moment, which doesn't bode well for the next 24 hours, in which time I must

-- wrap presents
-- pack
-- clean the house enough so that the catsitter doesn't gag when she walks around
-- post various things in the traditional red box sense
-- drive down to the Bega Valley for the start of the Official Christmas Season.

The bin beside my computer is overflowing with snotty tissues, my head is thumping, and my eyes are watering so much I can hardly see the keybort. Behind me prowl two suspicious cats (they know that when we clean we're either going away or receiving guests, or both), a coughing boy (just behind me in viral descent), and a barely-recovered Best Beloved brandishing something toxic to clean the bathroom. It's a case of everyone pitching in, with the cats leaping on each other to provide comic relief. So I'm guessing that this will probably be my last pre-holiday post.

But I won't go without sharing a sneak preview of my first Ampersand Duck book:


The cover.


The endpapers. I've used the offcuts of the page paper to make the endpapers, and because they're too narrow, I've also used offcuts of the cover paper that has been run through the rollers of the press after printing the cover, giving them a lovely pale metallic green sheen. It looks great.


The title page view.


Usually I'd photoshop these to make them float on the computer screen, etc etc but I'm too poorly. You'll have to wait for a glimpse of the rest of the pages until I'm better too. I've bound 6 copies so far, and they've gone to those who were involved in the project, and now I just have to hope that the school has no other disasters over the holidays so that I can bind the rest when I get back.

Today I gave a copy to Jan Brown, the artist whose drawings are on and through the book. Jan is 84 and pulls no punches. She opened the package and stared at the book, stony-faced. She gazed at the cover, front and back. She opened the back, and worked through the pages from back to front, and then from front to back again. Then she looked at me and said 'It's totally different to what I expected'.

'Different GOOD, or different BAD?', I said, with heart in mouth. All the way through the process of this book, I'd make design decisions based on what Jan would like. She was my inner voice on this trip.

'Good different. It's wonderful,' she said, and gave me an approving smile, and at that moment my holiday started. Except for the being sick and the list above, I'd be floating on a sea of champagne right now. HUZZAR [coughs, sniffles, weakly waves hands in air].

I may get a chance to post from various locations over the next week, but no promises. So have a great Christmas, all of you.

Dot point photos

Oh, blossoms, I'm a frustrated duck. The road to the end (of the book) was crystal clear and smooth a few days ago, then I had a big whack of doubt* and now it's back to dirt road. The cover needed to be taken back to square one and rethought.

The last few days have been dominated by my body trying to keep busy while my brain ticks over in the background, thinking and rethinking through design ideas. I've rustled up a makeshift shade curtain on our front verandah, gone to a couple of Xmas party-type things, hung out at the ANU Art School Grad Show and tried to coax Bumblebee through the last major homework assignment of the year.

The latter is extremely time-consuming, as he has to be given pep-talks almost between every word he writes. Does anyone else have that problem?

I think I've cracked the cover. I had a breakthrough late yesterday, and I'll try it out again today to see if yesterday's thoughts were true or just exhausted desperation.

In the meantime, here are some dot points to catch up with all the little things I've been wanting to blog about but haven't found time for:

-- BUMBLEBEE'S SCHOOL CONCERT


His year danced to a music medley of the decades since WWII. His class did the 60s. his teacher is too young to know that the 60s consisted of more fashion styles than merely hippie culture. Bumblebee was quite impressed that I owned a peace medallion (from my 80s anti-nuke protesting!).


Mr Pooter is quite a droll character who likes to make snide comments about such things. I can't tell you what he was saying here because some babyboomers might get offended. I'm sure you can guess, or make up your own caption.

-- BEST BELOVED'S COOKING



Best Beloved has been channelling any boredom and frustration at my working hours into the creation of some pretty spectacular food. I gobbled before photographing the stupendous sorrel and potato omelette I received for breakfast yesterday, and this was presented last night for dessert. It's a gooseberry tart, with a very bready cake base, not too sweet, so the whole thing was beautifully tart and chewy. Yum!

-- THE GRAD SHOW

If you're local and you like art, go and see the ANU Art School graduating student show. We have a hopeless new arts reviewer for the Canberra Times, and she failed to even mention the show's existence in Saturday's paper. Obviously she doesn't know anything exists unless a memo in triplicate lands in her in-tray.

There are some fun things and some absolutely beautiful things. Here are a small selection, by no means the best, just stuff that caught our eyes on one walk around.


This, believe it or not, is the entire typescript of Finnegan's Wake. In one slab, about the size of a tea-towel, screen-printed onto a panel of wood. A feat achieved by Nicci Haynes, and I'm trying to persuade her to make a t-shirt and t-towel edition of it. You'd buy one, wouldn't you?


This is a pendulum pendant by Katie Green, from Gold and silversmithing. It's called 'Walking to your own beat', and this is her description:
The design of this pendant is based on the concept that as the wearer is moving around, a pendulum is caused to swing. On the opposite end of the pendulum is a set of spikes that during the swinging motion pluck the teeth of music box combs. This action creates random notes.

Lovely, isn't it? I love the shadows it casts, as well.



This is Bumblebee's favorite: 'Spiderman and Wonder Woman after Titian', oil on canvas, by Daniel Vukovjak.


It even has Superman, but no Batman.


This is a big wall piece, like a quilt, and called 'Memory Quilt', by Kate Maurice. There are bulldozers stitched in silk into the right hand corner. All the panels are flyleaves from old books, discoloured and all holding incredibly personal and emotional inscriptions. I spend time every day looking at this piece and find something different and usually amazing each time.

Like this:


It's a hand-drawn Ex-libris in pencil! Done straight into the book!

And this:


Any relation to Chrissie Amphlett, I wonder?



Here's another of Kate's pieces. It's called 'The Forest for the trees', and it's made up from a lot of the left over books from the Lifeline Book Fair. You can see some non-book spaces in it; they are little dioramas of bird and wildlife scenes.


Another of Bumblebee's favorites, a huge skelington made of cardboard with all the bits labelled. That's Bumblebee in the Simpsons shirt...




This was Best Beloved's favorite piece. I think he wants to revisit it with his own bit of foamcore label.


I will try to blog a few more; there are some nice artists' books, and a series of rings with a twist. But you know me with my blogging promises...





*According to Nigel from Artwranglers, this is what makes art Art rather than Kitsch. Heh.

a message from the man waving a light at the end of the tunnel:

TITLE PAGE



I HAS ONE!!1!



(for more details, click on the image and be whisked to flickr-world)

The sweet spot

and then there's those (uncommon) days where you set up the next woodblock and realise that it's a completely different height to the last one, and you spend half the day trying to get it to print ok. It's being very frustrating: smudges here, pressure lines there. It had to be padded, the rollers tweaked, the press bed raised and subtly lowered. So many variables...

You get to 3pm and think oh well, I'll get it set up and then edition it tomorrow -- oh damn, I can't tomorrow, I'm getting my hair cut and it's circus school day, I have to pick Bumblebee up at 3. oh well, I'll edition on Wednesday.

And then you print the perfect print. You've hit The Sweet Spot.

So you think, I'll just print a batch, and when the rollers fall down or it starts getting hard, I'll stop and do the rest on Wednesday.

But they keep printing well. You ring the partner, and yes, he can pick up child from after-school care. They keep printing well.

Suddenly it's 7pm and you know that if you just keep going they'll be finished, and you'll feel like a champion.

At 8.30 your son rings and wishes you goodnight wistfully as he goes to bed. Time to put something energetic on the stereo. So what if the security guard spies you dancing up and down beside the press?

Then it's 9.30 and you've finished 260 prints. But you don't feel like a champion. You feel old and tired, and the back of your neck is burning. That was a twelve-hour effort. And all you've eaten is a packet of chocolate buttons and four scotch finger biscuits. The sort of working day you'd only do for yourself, not for a boss.

But. They are are printed.

You can't even muster the energy to say hoora...

Drawmo 18

This is another conceptual drawing; well, I claim it as a drawing because I like the marks. It's the rag I used to skim the side of the wood engraving block I was printing -- successfully -- today. Each mark is a skim.

Forgive my brevity, I'm absolutely shagged. I printed about 300 pages today in total, including the bloody test prints and crap ones. I've been on my feet all day, and I see out the window that there is some refreshingly light rain to ride my bicycle home in.

Hooray!

Drawmo 17: desperate measures

Placement sketches made as I tried desperately to find the best position on the press for the wookblock I was printing. Each one gets simpler until I've made a quick final notation of the one that works.



The little circles indicate the gripper end of the press. The rectangles with circles in them are quoins.

Ahem.

I just found a post that rings my bells. I like a bit of printing attitude on a friday afternoon. Or should that be ALTITUDE?

Ahem. I'm nowhere near as fierce as that blogger, but sometimes I wish I could be.

Drawmo 12: A New Hope

It's not easy being green premenstrual with a broken press. The lowest lows, the highest highs, and hormones in between. No wonder Best Beloved caught an early plane to Melbourne yesterday. He's at some sort of airport conference; every time he goes to one of these things he comes home laden with promotional crap, just because they gave it to him. Gah. There's only three of us in the house, five if you count the kitties, and he brought home NINE baseball caps last trip, all embroidered with logos of flight or oil companies. I wanted to have a ritual burning, but it would have increased my envo-footprint more than the making of the caps did. Double GAH. He's under stern instructions to resist, this time. I don't want anything else in the house with a picture of an airplane on it, unless it's a ticket. For all of us.

Anyhoo, today was the first chance I had to ring someone about fixing the press. All weekend I'd feared the worst -- obscure parts needed that would take months to import from some museum in Germany (it's an obscure German press). Instead I got three cheery fellows from ANU Facilities and Services who whooped with delight at seeing such a grand old lady (the press, not me) and rolled their sleeves up. They poked and prodded and debated excitedly about seals and fluid thingies and dryness before one of them cried EUREKA and held up a shard of hollow pin, something that had shattered and wasn't connecting to the doobie (see Naomi? It is a usable word) that went around and thus the rollers couldn't be supported. Nothing to do with oil!

Then there was a tense waiting period when Bloke 1 ran back to their workshop where they had a storage room of Half of the Things You Need and the Other Half the Things You'll Never Need Again (their words). This pin would come from the latter category. While we were waiting, Bloke 2 (a first-year apprentice) watched admiringly while Bloke 3 negotiated dinner at his girlfriend's mum's place later in the week ("Geez you're slack, I'm surprised she still admits you're her daughter. How about I cook? I can do lamb with heaps of garlic and rosemary. Yeah!") and I doodled:



It's a Waiting Doodle. I do variations of it when I'm stuck somewhere or listening to something. This one started a lot darker and blobbier, then I rubbed out and as things got better over the morning it got lighter and bubblier. It's small, only about 3cm across.

Bloke 1 came back with the exact size pin. There was much cheering and rejoicing, especially from me. They had other urgent things to do, so they just fixed the most pressing urgent problem and promised to be back in the next few days to give it a proper oil change and service. I think they like her. She's pretty endearing, albeit Brunhilda-ish.

So I could print my colophon this afternoon! O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!

Happy girl. Doesn't take much. And now my project is back on track. And I got to have a lovely day yesterday with Bumblebee, wallowing in chocolate. And there's a new Machine Translations album out, which I bought yesterday, which is terrific, apart from the best song being spoiled by a bloody ghost track. (I hate the construct of ghost tracks. All that bloody space and you can't listen to the two songs independently. But the ghost track itself is lovely.) And two of my loveliest cousins bought me a book voucher for my birthday (love vouchers of any kind, thanks!) and I used it yesterday to buy Garth Nix's Abhorsen so I'm finally finishing the trilogy. So again, all's right with the world, and I'm a lucky, lucky woman.

Drawmo 6, juiced up a bit

I printed over 400 pages today, then rode my bike past hordes of stupid drunken people, the females all under-dressed and freezing their young silly tits off in the glorious 15 degrees we were granted today for weather, as obviously wearing anything as sensible as a jacket or sleeves