Well caught a bug the first part of April and was laid out cold for two weeks..then had to get ready for my friend Theresa's visit-- she arrived the first of May and stayed for two weeks!! We had a good time-- went to Key West and swam with the dolphins at the Dolphin Research Center located in Grassy Key... amazing experience. Highly recommend it...there are several programs to choose from in all different price ranges so if you are planning a trip to the Keys-- be sure to go to the Center...

Theresa and I decided to make paper while she was here but we totally overestimated the amount of pulp we needed and decided to use all the abaca I had--- long story short is i have been making paper every day all day and all night practically since she left.
Here are a couple examples--



this is a sea grape leaf and tree bark in bedded in the paper.

this has coffee grounds, and chrysanthemum tea that i bought in China (it is little round balls of the flowers and smells wonderful)when it reacted with the abaca it stained the paper brown splotches of dyed abaca.


I took some roots and dipped them in the pulp... pretty cool effect I think


this is simply torn dyed coffee filters and splotches of dyed abaca.

Making paper is quite an ordeal -- messy -- with water everywhere but it is really fun to do and its always a surprise to see what develops!

I have made over 150 sheets of paper along with bowls, string papers, and collages..i have even used dryer lint in some of the sheets-- will get some more pics and post them...

Life continues to be super great-- I am back to drumming -- haven't played my drum in over a month and its hard to start over again -- my hands hurt!

If you have Firefox as a browser I highly recommend getting the add-on STUMBLE
it is really cool-- there are several categories you choose and then STUMBLE simply randomly selects web pages to view ..check it out -- but be prepared to spend a lot of time just browsing all the neat sites that come up..There is a bookmark available to save the sites that you like...

ok its almost 2am..gotta hit the hay!! more later....

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