Be the roller, grasshopper

I spent the last three days editioning my Banjo print, and finished the pile at lunchtime today. 115 sheets, and to my utter dismay, only 50 of them were any good, with a 'vaguely acceptable' pile of 40, and the rest absolutely shite.

So I was a bit gloomy in the early afternoon. I went for a walk in the fresh air, bought some stamps so that I could start writing letters to people who don't read this, and then on the way back decided to HARDEN THE F*CK UP and sort out my roller method. I'd pretty much sorted it just as I'd finished the pile, so I got out another 60 sheets (after working out that there were still enough to do the other editions) and got to work.

I started printing at about 4pm, and finished the 60 at 8.30pm. So now I know
[a] how many prints I can do an hour if I work hard, and
[b] how to use the rollers on the type.

After a while I wasn't just using the roller, I was the roller. I realised that I'd been using too much ink. I had to create the sensation of silk, as my excellent wood engraving teacher once told me. But only for the metal type. Wood type is thirsty, and needs a good juicy roll-up. So my brain had to be ultra-vigilant, to not get the two rolling needs mixed up. I was in The Zone, and didn't want to leave it until the lot were done. Loud music helped.

In the end, I printed the 60 beautifully with only about 5 bad prints, and they're only marginally bad. I feel good. And the huge pile of crap prints can get recycled into something else while I'm here. Donald the Special Collections Librarian has never seen my hawt recycling skillz.

Sue Wootton (the poet I was printing) came in again during my first session today and took some photos of me at work:





Note the pigtails (I love the fact that my hair is long enough to have pigtails again, I love having my hair off my face when I work) and the Megalo apron, with a pocket made from a piece of their screenprint table.

I feel buggered, but so much better. Tomorrow I will diss the banjo (diss doesn't mean disrespect, it means disassemble, disappear, dismantle, and properly, distribute back into the cases) and start on the Les Murray pome. In the meantime I'm going to have a sound and satisfied sleep.

The (other) Look

I'm sick. I'm hacking up chunks.

I'm going to blog about that more later, after I've finished watching Little Dorrit on iView, but I'm not allowing myself to watch it until I've blogged about Sunday.

Sunday was one of those days that you HAVE to do, because it's been planned and cancelled and planned and postponed and planned and planned until even though you're hacking up your lung linings and running a fever, you just have to go through with it.

It was also one of those days where you have to depend upon the goodwill of your loved ones. Halfway through days like Sunday, they look at you as if to say 'you'd better do something good with this' and you know that if you squander your life on playing the pokies or watching crap television, you'll never be forgiven. Anyone whose chosen path through life involves heavy, dirty machinery and equipment and doesn't have a big company or institution looking after them knows this look well.

So. Best Beloved, Bumblebee and I went to Braidwood to FINALLY pick up the four cabinets of type that I bought from the sadly extinguished Finlay Press. And to help my friend Andrew move the Arab platen press that he'd bought from them. We'd decided to share moving costs, and that meant putting in the hard work too.

A photo essay:



Julian (with his back to camera) and BB moving a type cabinet from the back of the house to the front. You can't move the cases with the type in them, because the type is so heavy and the vintage cabinets are so fragile that it would all fall apart... so you have to remove every case, one by one, move the cabinet, put it on the truck, reload the cases, move the truck, unload all the cases, move the cabinet... and so forth. Halfway through this you get The Look.



Doesn't the Polaroid setting make the type look jolly?



This is Andrew with his press. All external bits have been removed, and the central spindle will also have to come out, because when stripped, this press is 76cm wide, and the door we will eventually have to go through at his house is 76cm wide. Ahem. yes, but first we have to get it out of this house, where there is no back ramp or step, just a half-made deck and lots of rustic things like stones and weeds and a well.



Andrew and his (very practical, luckily) friend Alan had a lot of fun devising wedges of wood and rollers of metal pipe and taking glass doors off their hinges, while we moved trays of type.



It all got a bit hairy at times, and I kept getting flashes of The Look, but we persisted, because we had to. The alternative was another press being scrapped, and I say Not on My Watch.



And then along came Glen 'Moonman' Moon, blacksmith and crane operator, and my knight in greasy King Gees. He saved the day with his sensitive cranework, practical bossiness and excellent sense of humour. I love these men. I will never be out of parts for my press while he is in the world.



...and onto the truck. Sighs of relief all around... but they didn't know, like Andrew and I did, that the hardest bit was yet to come.



I volunteered to drive with Glen in the truck, to show him the way. That was lots of fun.

There's a whole chunk missing now, when we got to ANCA and had to pack and unpack all my type cabinets and then load some of the cabinets I didn't want to take to Andrew's place. My head was about to burst in pain but as we got started, who should appear but Bernice, who was visiting with her son, and Byrd, who'd dropped by to say hello, and who both rolled up their sleeves and helped, to my utter gratitude. It didn't stop them from giving me a variation of The Look, but I've had worse. Lovely peoples.



OK. So here we are, in Campbell, at Andrew's house on the hill, getting the truck to back down the steep slope so that we can get the press into its cubbyhole. See the nice cubbyhole, on the right? Eek! We'd whittled down now... everyone had gone home except Andrew, Glen and I. I wasn't fit to operate heavy machinery, but that was just a small concern.



I'd hoped to be finished and back in bed by mid-afternoon, but as you can see, as we were wrangling the press, dark had fallen. This is the press halfway in the doorway. I'm omitting a lot of running about grabbing bits of plank and brick, and unable to relate exactly how skillful and graceful Glen's cranework is.



Here is the money shot. The lovely Arab press, in it's new home, awaiting all the bits & pieces to be restored. I was very happy to pay my half of the cash and then get home to a hot bath, roast chicken and the boys.



Here is the happy ending: four cabinets of gorgeous metal type, installed in my studio.

I now officially have ENOUGH TYPE. And yes, dears, I will try to do something good with it. Once I've recovered my health.

And now, for part two of Little Dorrit.

impressed

I heart Tuesdays. If all goes well, I get to work from home for part of it, and then the studio for the rest. I think all is going well today.

We went up to the Blue Mountains for the weekend to visit Dr Sista Outlaw and warm her beautiful house. From the moment we got to the outskirts of Sydney until a couple of hours before we left to travel home, it POURED with rain. Mountain residents seemed very blase about the incredible amount of water falling upon them, but we felt like the fish of Lake Eyre. I haven't had an entire weekend of heavy rain for YEARS. The rain was so hard on my in-laws' tin roof that it. kept. me. awake. Both nights. I feel moisturised. I feel hydrated. I am secretly quite glad to get back to cool dry climes.

The housewarming party was very good as well, despite all plans having revolved around outdoor activities like BBQs and bonfires. We all managed to squeeze into the lovely 1940s metal-clad fibro gem and no-one scratched the floorboards too badly. There was a fantastic array of interesting people, and the kids managed to stay reasonably out of the way.

We spent Saturday morning cruising the main street Katoomba, and I visited my favorite junk & antique arcade, Macarthur Arcade, a conglomerate of dealers wrangled by Mr Pickwick of the famous bookshop next door. I was trying to find Bumblebee a cheap leather jacket, as his heart yearns for one, but instead I found one of these:



It's an Adana five-eight tabletop press. I couldn't help myself, I bought it. I'd just borrowed one from Poppy Letterpress (who is about to pop a sprog at ANY minute) to try and get some batches of small printing done, and now I have my own. I won't say how much I paid for it, because I probably paid a bit too much, even though I haggled and won (and Mr P threw in a handful of comics for Bumblebee), but when I later figured out auction fees and freight if I'd bought it on the net, I think I probably did ok. Now I just need to make time to clean up all my presses and get jiggy wiv dem.

I'm still waiting for my room brochure essay to arrive on the Craft ACT website, and apparently the Canberra Times is writing about my bookbinding show some time this week, so I'll keep you all informed when that bunch of excitement happens.

In the meantime, I have a whole other bunch of excitement to get done such as a PhD layout, an exhibition brochure, masses of photos to resize for a book and an index layout. Not cutting edge stuff, but they will, thankfully, pay for the press. I'd better get down to it, if I want the day to go well and get me to the studio...

POSTSCRIPT
OH noes! Have been derailed by snortingly funny post called Pride and Twitterverse!! must. get. back. to. work.

brown paper packages tied up with sticky tape

Today I got a parcel. Hooray! Doesn't it look exciting?



(Please note the whiteboards in the background. They are the subject of an upcoming post. Promise.)


Mmmmm... wrapped things. Things wrapped in bubblewrap. My favorite.


Mmmm... UNwrapped things! At the top is a roll of lovely paper: Maniro Diachi and Kozo Light, ten sheets each. From left to right: an Arkansas sharpening stone; three wood engraving tools: a spitsticker, a scorper and a graver; a roller, and, just to show Fifi, an wooden burnisher that I found recently at Walker Ceramics for the princely sum of $3!

I already have the wood engraving ink (as I use it to mix with offset ink to make nice stiff letterpress blacks), and one block (that I can also engrave the back of). Now I just need a source of good blocks (there is a fabulous one in England, but I'll save him for when I've practiced a bit) and I'll be off! I also have a pack of gummed label paper, because I'd like to make some ex libris plates (I bought it last year and used one sheet to make a whole stack of letterpress ex libris plates for my mother-in-law).

O wot fun!

Orange from Greens

My studio is cool. Not in the 'oh wow, amazing' sense (I'm working on that), but in
the ten-degrees-cooler-than-outside sense.

It has a tin roof. Right now it is raining, hard, and I am transported back to... Just back, somewhere where there are tin roofs. The sound is fantastic.

I am playing Machine Translations, which is my rainy-day studio music, always has been. They've got the right sense of atmosphere.



I hope that photo turns out. It shows the only nice corner set up with all the things that will allow me to work until I get more shelving and move in the press paraphanalia.

Today I went looking for bookcases and shelving. I went up to my local Salvos on the way to Aussie Junk (looking for a teapot, but there's a DEARTH of them in Canberra op shops. I may -- gasp -- have to buy a new one) and intercepted two people with a trailer full of stuff trying to offload it to the reluctant shop assistants. They had a couple of bookshelves, and I asked if I could buy them directly from them -- or should I wait & see if the shop would take them? Turns out that they were jolly people from the Greens doing an office clean-out, and since the Salvos were looking harried, why not?

We ended up with them following me back to the studio and they helped me move the bookcases into the space, plus they threw in a couple of whiteboards. I gave them a donation to the Party in return, and I think we were all pretty happy. I heart The Greens.

One of the bookcases is wildly eccentric: hot orange, a bookcase on one side and a display case on the other! I think I'll slap a rough coat of lighter paint on it to knock it back a bit, then use it as a divider to hold all my poetry on one side and show off a bit of making on the other for anyone that peeps in the window at gallery openings.









Ooh, thunder! What a great day. Not for poor BB, though, who is home feeling miserabubble from a spider bite incurred whilst helping me move shite from the garage. Poor bugger. Still, the beauty of this studio is that it's less than one pop song's ride from the house. And with Bumblebee away, I can play for hours. And I will!

-- Post From My iPhone

the lost hours

I meant to post yesterday, all about how great Bumblebee looked for his end-of-year disco. The theme was famous characters, and he chose, of course, Dr Who, David Tennant style:


Without glasses, and with brand-new sonic screwdriver, bought by me.


With glasses; it's a wee bit fuzzy, but the one in which he looks the most authentic, I think.

I meant to post about Bernice's car trying desperately to break down as she gave us a lift to the school (BB having taken the car for another purpose), the same car we gave her last year with the express warning that it is a cute moneypit. Well, it is dead now, and we all mourn.

I meant to post about going to my doctor, and that fact that there I was, on me back, legs akimbo (even though my dictionary tells me it can only be done with the arms, but that's how it felt), him with a torch, and he says 'this is your 6-week check-up, is it not?' and I replied 'no, it's been about 4 and a half weeks' to which he replied 'really? You're healing very well, then!' Huzzar! I can swim in a couple of weeks. I knew that bikini was a good idea.

I meant to post that I didn't get the Melbourne residency I was hoping for next year. It was only a little one, but it would have been fun to do some work away from Canberra and catch up with the interesting people I know in Melbourne, which is SUCH a print-and-book city.

I meant to post that I have found a lovely bookkeeper who seems able to sort me out, even though I don't know if she knows what she's getting into...

I meant to do all these things, but then in the last-minute haste to get my papers together for the Nice Bookkeeper, I discovered that my mobile phone contract had expired, and I decided to drop into the Mall and see what I could see.

An hour later, I came out clutching an iPhone 3G, dizzy with excitement and fear. I got home, fell onto the computer to do some research (that I probably should have done before I bought the thing) and started playing. Next thing I knew, the boys had arrived home and it was dinner time. Holy data packages, Batgirl!

It's a thing of beauty, and means that I should be able to blog and email from anywhere, including the Woodford Folk Festival (no more waiting in line for 30 minutes at a crap PC!), and it solves the problem of whether I should or should not get a computer for my studio. No! It shall be a computer-work-free zone, but I can still order things and check things when there! Double hooray!

I would be grateful for any important tips & tricks about the phone that anyone has. I've run across a few really good ones (like the fact that unless you switch it off, it has a setting that tracks the location of each photo you take, and chomps up the download accordingly).

The next two days are, effectively, Christmas for us (sans any tinsel or trees). Colonel and Lady Duck are hitting town for presents and a nice lunch at a restaurant with us tomorrow, and then on Sunday we start the trek northwards to Brisbane and Woodford. I'll either be out of touch or blogging a lot, depending on how bored I get :)

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.

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...

Wunderkammer: 4. The Mac Plus

Wunderkammer: a series celebrating the almost lost...



I've been trying all evening to find the source of that saying 'Get them while they're young'. It's probably a bible verse that has been condensed by someone brainy and historical. I should know who, and if any of you know who it is, I'll be the first to slap my forehead with one hand and utter that precis of the 20th century: DOH!

Anyhoo, Macintosh got me young. When I was a teenager my family bought a Commodore 64 but did nothing more than play games with it. It seemed modern yet a bit clunky. When I got to university and discovered the Mac Plus (whole roomfuls of them!), I was sold. Forever.

Streamlined. Self-contained. SCSI-enabled. Grunty. (1MB of RAM! Swoon!) What more could a girl want? The Mac Plus was the longest-running Macintosh computer to be produced, for the grand total of four -- yes, that's FOUR years. None of that new-fangled in-built obsolescence here, thank you very... well, until the Classic, the SE and the Mac II family came along, anyway. Still, the Plus chugged alongside these models, all behaving themselves nicely until they were all swept away by the Quadra, a confusing line of numbered models and then boxes starting with G.

Like the dial action on an old telephone, the thing I remember most about the Mac Plus is the wait. You'd ask it to do something, and wait. And you'd be happy, because while you waited you could do other things, like read the next chapter of the primary source you were writing a report on. And because there was really nothing to compare it to, you weren't impatient, unless you were naturally an impatient person. These days I get cranky if the internet doesn't load Bloglines within a nanosecond. But then I remember my Mac Plus, and take a deep breath. I guess running a program like Macpaint or Word back then was like trying to download photoblogs with a small modem and a shared phoneline these days. Patience, my young paduwan, patience.

I can thank Macintosh for my career path to date. Wherever I worked (except, maybe, the taxi I drove for a while), there was a Mac tucked in the corner, just to keep all options open, I guess -- these were the days before cross-platform compatibility -- and I quite liked the open, friendly layout of the Mac user manuals. Reading manuals and being prepared to press any button without fear of ex- or im-plosions means you become the Office Expert when something goes wrong. Putting 'Technical Adviser' on any CV helps a lot. I've started having to do this recently with PCs, because my workplace has lost their faith in Macs and are switching over to the Dark Side. Of course, being an Art School, they'll probably never totally get rid of the Macs, but I'm prepared to be prepared. At home, as a designer, I'm sticking to the (admittedly much larger than a Plus) fruity box I know and love so well. Even if it is increasingly hard to tell the difference.

Actually, I did make a Mac implode once. I used to have a small job teaching a nice letterpress printer how to use a Macintosh so that he could make the transition in technology from metal type to photopolymer plate. He died rather suddenly and I was asked to sort out his computer files for his computer-illiterate widow. I backed everything up, and then was cleaning up the desktop when I accidentally pressed a particular keystroke combination and heard an awful tolling sound. When I described this sound over the phone to the Apple fixit dude, he told me that I'd triggered the Apple Death Chimes, and that I'd killed the computer. It was honestly one of the most traumatic moments of my life, and believe me, I've had a few. Now, whenever I tell this story people look at me askance, like cranky chickens or Cate Blanchett in The Fellowship of the Rings. They insist there's no such thing as the Apple Death Chimes. Well. In the process of researching this post, I found this:

The Macintosh II was the first Macintosh to have the Chimes of Death accompany the Sad Mac logo whenever a serious hardware error occurred.

HA! Sigh. I would thumb my nose gleefully at those doubting people, but I'm too overcome by regurgitated guilt. Made worse by the fact that said widow forgave me utterly, having no idea what an expensive beast I'd macslaughtered.

Apparently Mac Plus and Classic models are now very cool as retro objects. They have fan sites, and support groups. There's a site which suggests ways to keep your old Mac alive and useful. The best idea, one I would be tempted to try if I still had an early Mac carapace, is a MacQuarium. I guess, if you wanted to recreate a retro Mac look, the fishtank screensaver is easier to do than the flying toasters.





Cross-posted at Sarsaparilla, along with the other Wunderkammer I didn't cross-post!

Wunderkammer: 2. The Typewriter

Wunderkammer: a series celebrating the almost lost...


Did you know that typewriters have their own unique 'fingerprint'? Apparently, during the Cold War in the Eastern Bloc, typewriters were a controlled technology, with secret police in charge of maintaining files of the typewriters and their owners.

I suspect everyone with writing aspirations has a typewriter, whether manual or electric, no matter what your age. Somewhere in a cupboard, under the bed, in the shed, there's an old typewriter. Maybe it was yours before you surrendered to the ease of a computer. Maybe it was passed down to you from a family member. Perhaps you saw it in a junk shop and couldn't resist, but then you discovered you couldn't get ribbons for it anymore. Or if you're lucky, you have one in full working order, with as stockpile of ribbons and other odd accessories (font 'golfballs'!).

I used to work for an elderly professor who was unable to use a typewriter, let alone a computer. It was in the early 1990s, when secretaries were being phased out and academics were expected to do their own typing (but not their own administration). More...Prof found any noise above the scratch of his biro distracting. He'd bought a typewriter once, used it for a day then abandoned it through sheer frustration at the noise of the keys. It's still in his garage, a brand new Remington, mint condition. I used to do his typing for him, on my brand-new Mac Classic. These days he still writes longhand, and pays someone else to type for him.




But it's that noise of the keys that seduces would-be writers into acquiring the typewriter. There's something about the effort of tapping the keys, the simultaneous 'clack' noise and the instant gratification of seeing the words appear -- printed -- on the sheet of paper in front of you. It's that magical combination that promises avant-guard success in writing.

But the promise is an empty one. Ours is a gear-orientated, materialistic culture, but unfortunately the bottom line is all the gear in the world won't buy you the talent you need. The typewriter is abandoned when you realise that using one does not make you a better writer. All those mental images of the lone writer hunched over their keyboard, cigarette in mouth, tapping away on their life's masterpiece, is just a hopeful fantasy. Truman Capote would have loved a laptop. Jack Kerouac would have adored internet cafes, and On the Road probably would have been a blog.

Still, it doesn’t stop the typewriter from being an object of beauty, worth having for the fun of playing with it. I admit to having two typewriters at the moment. One was given to my son by a friend in an attempt to get him interested in doing his homework. It didn't work, but it got me playing with typing again as part of my art practice – 'play' being the operative word. I can't type fast on it because the 'v' key falls off with annoying regularity and I spike my finger on the exposed stem. So I play with it. I type on foil, on toilet paper, on prints. Typewriter art isn't new, certainly isn't cutting edge, but it's damn good fun.

The other typewriter is in a drawer at my parents' house, and it's a strange and short-lived hybrid of typewriter and printer; you type into it, it stores your lines up for a while in its memory, then it prints out, supposedly trying to justify your lines and space your type in a more elegant way than a normal fixed-space typewriter. It was confusing to work with, because the delayed reaction eroded your concentration. It was quickly -- and thankfully -- overtaken by the computer and printer, and now I can't get any parts for it, so I guess it'll be landfill before too long. That's why the old, manual, portable typewriter will live a little longer: it satisfies the senses, and when the ribbon runs out, I can just use carbon paper to make it work in the traditional sense. But carbon paper is another post for another day.

BTW: For those nostalgic about their typewriters, it is possible to install a piece of software that simulates a typewriter 'clack' noise for your computer keyboard. But it's just not the same, is it?
Sites to Explore: The Virtual Typewriter Museum (which is where 2 of the images above come from),The Classic Typewriter Page, Chuck & Rich's Antique Typewriter Museum, Typewriter Wiki. Any other suggestions welcome!

[crossposted at Sarsaparilla]

Wunderkammer: 1. The Pencil

Wunderkammer: a series celebrating the almost lost…

Did you hear the one about the pencil?
Nah, it’s pointless.

These days lead pencils seem to be used mainly by school children and artists. Most writing by adults is done on computers, with a pen occasionally dragged out of the top drawer to sign the bottom of the page or make quick corrections before typing again.

But there’s a lot to be said for the humble pencil. Let’s stop to celebrate this small piece of basic technology:

-- Lead pencils aren’t actually made from lead, and haven’t been since the 16th century. They’re made from graphite.

-- The first mass-produced pencils were made in Nuremberg in Germany in 1662.

-- A pencil mark is archivally stable, and will last longer than the paper it is on.

-- A pencil can write in zero gravity, upside down and under water.

-- Your average pencil can write 45,000 words, or draw a line about 56 kms long.

-- You don’t need an instruction manual to use one.

Cheap, light, portable and easy to use… who could ask for more?

[Cross-posted at Sarsaparilla]

Postscript: Since posting this at Sars, I've been told of the most wonderful pencil sites: Pencil Revolution, Dave's Mechanical Pencils and Leadholder: The Drafting Pencil Museum. Worth visiting from time to time!

PPS: Yes, took the photo myself. Didn't want to sharpen it first because I like the smoothness of the virgin wood :)

The Quest for Type

And I thought going to Rowany was a unique extension of my blogging experience...

Late last week I found myself facing a small window of opportunity to drive to Melbourne and back in three days to pick up some letterpress equipment. Museum Victoria had decided to deaccession a stack of its letterpress paraphenalia and I was one of the lucky few whose tenders were considered worthy (I wrote mine on behalf of the BookStud, not for myself). They wanted to offload the pieces soon, my dad was heading to Canberra in his ute for the football, and I only had one day of work to swap thanks to Anzac Day. When I'd first heard about the successful application, I'd offered a fast & furious road trip to Zoe -- share the drive, hit Melbourne, catch up with as many bloggers as possible, zoom home -- SMOK-ING! But unfortunately things moved a bit too fast and Zoe had a scheduled holiday at the same time. I found that I had to do it alone, which is cool because I do a lot of things alone. I have no problems being a lone duck.

I did drop Lucy Tartan a quick email suggesting maybe we catch a cuppa together... but she was heading to Sydney at the same time. Bummer. Then, in an astonishing act of trust and generosity (for this day and age, don't you think?), she offered me her house to stay in while she was gone! I guess I come across as pretty respectable on this blog, don't I? Heh. Actually, yes. I am as decent and trustworthy as they come. It was a good call.

Normally I would stay with a couple of friends, one very close to the city and one quite far away from the city, but I couldn't resist this chance to have a couple of nights to myself... anyone with a partner and/or kids will know why. So I worked out meetings with the lovelies and first thing Sunday headed down the Hume to Sills Bend.

Now, it's one thing to meet a fellow blogger, quite another to be in their house without them. Especially one like L, who writes so articulately about her environment. I arrived just on dark, found the house, found the key, opened the door, and there was Baz. He greeted me like a long-lost friend, then dashed between my legs, under the ute, and across the road. I picked up the welcoming note beside the door and read 'Don't let the cat out'. Crap. I walked carefully after him and watched him do a wee in the neighbour's tan bark. I bend to grab him and off he scarpered. Crap. My dad rang to see how the ute went. I explained my predicament and he hung up chortling. Pig. As I have explained before, I am quite relaxed about my cats' escapades, and always believe they will return for meals. So I applied the same philosophy here. Sure enough, 20 minutes later Baz returned meowing for a meal. He got one, but he didn't get outside again for the rest of my stay.

Inside everything was eerily familiar... I can't actively remember ever reading about the layout of the house, but L must have written something about it because my dream back in February had got the sunken loungeroom bit right! Love a sunken room. Of course, there was the couch, and the recently-framed poster, and the books shelved by colour! Everywhere I turned there was something that made me think of her blog. I felt like a stalking fan.


I'm very inspired by this bookshelf. I, too have a visual memory, and it's a refreshing break from the need to alphabetise.

I guess all you can do in these situations is embrace them. I roamed Banyule (another fun thing was that I've only ever been to one supermarket in Melbourne, and it happens to be L's local)
and got a hot box of yummy stirfry and an excellent slice of cake, then sat on the couch and watched... what else? Tommy. I really enjoyed it, but was a bit confused by the last 20 minutes. I don't understand why Tommy seemed suddenly to do things his parents' way rather than break away, as he'd almost done on the beach, tearing his mother's jewellery off.

Anyway, I used Baz as my antenna throughout the stay. Other people's houses always make odd noises, and you never really relax until you've experienced the entire range. I decided that if the cat looked alarmed, so would I. So every time I heard a noise, I would look at Baz. Nearly every time, he was supremely oblivious. And I could just relax. Mind you, Baz wasn't calm by any means. He wanted out.


Baz wants out.

Baz wants out.

Baz REALLY wants out, and will jump up to that window and gnaw the rope if you don't let Baz out. Then Baz will ambush you in the dark and attack your ankles if you don't let Baz out. Baz wants out.

I tried to close the bathroom door to stop the leaping and gnawing, but Baz can open doors too! He's a lovely cat with a mild case of cabin fever. Apparently leaping at my ankles means he likes me. I'm very glad. My cats do it too, and I know they like me.

My dad's ute is an old Nissan Navara that used to be a gleaming and proud beast when he first bought it years ago, but it has seen a lot of days and moved a lot of letterpress equipment, among other things. My family probably wish I had a lighter obsession. This time I loaded it up with about 500kg of galley trays, type trays and wood type, plus an old roller cabinet filled with rubber rollers.


Then Rod, the good guy at the Coburg warehouse, and I spent a long time covering it all up carefully with tarps and ropes (because it just had to be raining, didn't it?! Only lightly, thankfully, and not for very long). Neither of us are artful with ropes, so the whole setup was a bit dodgy, but it got the stuff home.

I did two things on my one day in Melbourne, other than pickup huge amounts of metal: I saw the marvellous book exhibition at the State Library of Victoria called Mirror of the World: Books and Ideas. It's a permanent exhibition, and REALLY worth going to if you have any love of books in any sense. It's magnificent, and I will go every time I'm in Melbourne. Apparently every so often they will turn pages of some of the older books. But the more modern books in the gallery are wonderful, lots to see for the letterpress/ bookarts lover.

The other thing was (and this may have been overly ambitious) to drive out to Monash University to visit the Ancora Press.


This is Brian, who runs the press in a basement room of the university, showing off one of his presses, a custom-made thing of which there are only 15 or so in the world. Brian is very old school, and thinks (respectfully) that using a cylinder proofing press such as mine is tantamount to cheating, but I think he thoroughly enjoying talking to someone who knows what he's talking about. We have a bond now in that he got half of Museum Victoria's wood type, and I got the other half.

It was a lot of driving there and back to Sill's Bend, but I managed it and also to have a scrummy Indian dinner catch-up with my Monash/Diamond Creek girlfriend, and then got back in time to collapse into bed with Baz and await the 5am possum dance.

The possums encouraged me to lie in (the ultra-comfy) bed and read Ghost World until I felt able to start the slow trek back up the Hume Highway at 80kms an hour on Anzac Day.

Here are some highlights of the trip (L has already done the landmarks in her post):


Dad's home-installed car stereo has had its face plate removed too many times, and occasionally you have to hold it on whilst driving. I rigged up this clarsy solution, improvised from some gaff tape and a couple of erasers (all I could find at the service station). It worked most of the way, and I got to listen to the audio book of Tomorrow when the War Began for a couple of cds (such a good story for driving on Anzac Day!) but then the whole thing died at Albury and I had to listen to the radio the rest of the way, which involved too much Radio National gumph about the meaning and appropriation of AD.


Found at Holbrook in the ladies public loo: 'S----W---- roots her father'. Charming use of texture and colour. Extra points for veRnacular.


"Stop. Move Away from the Cookie Jar." Anyone who loves The Office will find this at your local discount Warehouse. I regret not buying one now.


A view of the Hume Highway. Nothing else to look at. In fact, this is all the visibility I had -- no view in the rear vision window. I couldn't reverse, so it was forwards all the way!


What every ute needs -- a work dog.

I spent a lot of the time whilst driving worrying about how to get the stuff off the ute at the other end. What I'd forgotten was that I married someone who acts small and meek but is actually well over 6ft and covered with muscles. I got home, he got in the ute, and we went to the art school and offloaded everything and got it up to the BookStud with the help of a lithography stone trolley and a supermarket trolley. He's astounding.

I can't seem to stop driving. I haven't used my bicycle in a week or so. I'm hoping I can ride tomorrow, because I've had enough of steering wheels and rude bastards who cut in. Big thanks to everyone who made that trip happen. I'm still in awe of what I managed to do. And big thanks to Lucy T and Dorian, who are getting a big dinner when they come to Canberra next.

Touch type

I've just taught my first letterpress workshop, and it was deeply satisfying. I feel akin to a preacher who has managed to convert a room full of doubters.

It was small class, because it is review time here at the art school, and I suspect I was given this particular class time to keep the students happy while their normal teacher was busy assessing. But! The letterpress equipment has been in the workshop a long time, and no-one has shown students how to use it, so my class numbers fluctuated wildly as keen and interested students tried to attend then had to dash to their assessments then dash back to see what was happening.

They laughed when I confessed to being a letterpress geek (they thought it was a joke!), but as soon as I heard the collective sigh at printing the first page, I knew they had started to understand.

There is a thrill to a newly-printed page of text that you have painstakingly set yourself that a computer and inkjet printer just cannot match. It's a tactile thing. It smells great, and the words glisten as you hold it up in front of you. The black text on white paper (I kept it simple) is a deeply ingrained visual stimulant in our culture. It never fails to impress.

3 hours is not enough time to teach the finer points of printing (hell, I've been doing this for a few years now and I'm still learning something new every day), and I asked them all to lobby the head of workshop if they wanted more time. In that short time I taught them how to keep themselves safe, set type, clamp up a chase, work the press, tie up their type, and clean up. I also fielded questions about typography and design, subjects you can base a three-year degree upon... it was frustrating to give the precis version. I'll be happy if they retain half of what I told them today, and hopefully it's all the stuff I actually made them do themselves.


{a messy drawer of letterpress bits & bobs: a quoin key, spanners, allen keys, a roller gauge, scissors, sandpaper, a type pad, lino cutting tools (for adjusting polymer plates), screwdrivers... and many unidentifiable objects left over from years of people dumping stuff in the drawer.}