new books at last and a pond of lotus

 Yesterday was a beautiful day and I had my first bookbinding class in Ringwood so went to visit my mother after the class. I had noticed the lotus pond last week when I was there and although many had finished flowering there were still some flowers and lots of the wonderful pods. Here are a few of my favourite photos.

Since I had the class happening and my sister had expressed interest in buying one of my books for a friend I thought I'd better make a few. I have been making quite a bit of this black and white paper, some for the book  I am making for the Bairnsdale exhibition and some for book covers. Thanks to Tricia for the black pulp which is recycled black card and the white is a mix of mount board and cotton fabric beaten in the valley beater out at Bundoora when I was on duty at the end of January. The red is some hanji which came from Korea for an IAPMA project involving making items to sell at the next Wonju Hanji festival, I will be sending one of these books plus a few smaller ones, I made as demos in yesterday's class(Oriental binding).

 I also made a leather bound book using the binding I'll be teaching on the 19th March. The button on the front is a beautiful ceramic button that I bought at the Geelong textile event last year from a Tasmanian artist, sorry I can't remember her name ( I found out it is Te Willans) but you can buy her buttons from 'Open Drawer' the new textile shop in Hartwell.

What did I say about Melbourne?

We had our own deluge on Friday night! Mike and I were at the movies and after the film were directed out the back door of the Rivoli, the foyer was flooded. The rain had stopped but we saw the evidence all the way home, flooded shops and water racing down the road etc. Then we got home to find that the carpet in our study/studio was saturated, I quickly picked up a couple of boxes of my artist books then started to assess the damage. Luckily most of my papers and books were either in plastic boxes or off the floor. However I lost some book board and maybe a Japanese book I use mostly for collage but also as an example of Oriental Binding in my bookbinding classes. Three small oriental bindings also got saturated. 

Mike and a friend pulled up the carpet on Sunday and here it is with the underlay drying outside on my very useful trampoline. The other picture shows all the towels we used in mopping up the wet carpet:-every towel in the house was put to work. 

I used up all the paper towel and serviettes in the house to dry off the pages then went through again with toilet paper. I am hoping these books don't go mouldy, I found some Chinese brush paintings in them that I quite like, I used them to work through a series of exercises.

My Country

My country certainly is "a land of drought and flooding rains" at the moment, firstly we had floods in Southern Queensland and Northern Victoria now we have a cyclone devasting the coast of North Queensland and a bushfire in Eastern Victoria. I am glad I live in Melbourne, we have been let off very easily.
I don't have anything to show of bookbinding or papermaking at the moment, though I have been dabbling in the vat this week I don't have any pictures yet. I am working on a book but am still only half way through the papermaking. Once again I have been spending a lot of time on the computer putting together the Women's Art Register Bulletin. I finished it yesterday so can now put my mind to other things, first on the list is packing up the two books that were accepted for the IAPMA travelling exhibition Fazination Papier which starts in Germany in April this year.