i’m still finding squarespace difficult to blog on, though it’s true i blog less and less. it’s really hard to fight through to make posts that make sense as far as how time rolls. this long piece is just short of 18 inches, and is and inch and a quarter wide. roz hawker, amazing textile and silver artist sent me this once and said i would know what to do with it. it’s not finished, but the scroll i believe will work out. as with much of what i make, it sits in my smallish palm happily. and roz, thank you so much.

i’ve had a few little struggles this summer, a tenacious sinus infection (on my second antibiotic) that all the more gentle maintenance and therapies didn’t fix. there are, perhaps, some new allergens around. i started walking again regularly after sort of forgetting how much i like/need to walk daily. last week we had HOT HUMID HORRIBLE weather, just in time for the start of the new semester at st lawrence university where i adjunct. this fall’s class is sustainable papermaking and i’m co-teaching with the amazing melissa schulenberg. we sweated and sweated while cleaning out and readying the studio and have 12 masked persons in our class. i love the first day, when we all try to get to know one another. and we made paper, just reliable old abaca, but they worked hard and their hands became just a little more able and educated.

of more concern is the rising covid rates, the teenaged boy in the supermarket checking me out with his mask protecting his chin and his snarky response to me, the stupid man with three kids on my property and in the river moving the large rocks around (destroying ecosystems) and his bemused response to me when i asked him to leave (he could, i believe, read the many no trespassing signs). thoughtless, and he was teaching his three kids how to behave incorrectly in so many ways.

this arrived this week, it’s a note from michelle that accompanied a book she sent to me in march, right before her wee ursula arrived. this is not the original book which was apparently lost somewhere after making it from murry to rochester. but now i have yet another of her beautiful, sensitively designed and printed books.

i love having the moon’s company at night, and in my new house i can’t see much of her. i did, however, get a few photos of her last week.

while removing a woodpile from the meadow to the woodshed my partner found another cloud of tussock moth cocoons. more spinning after cleaning will occur.

fetish resting on another of michelle’s books

i used to read crow and weasel to my 5th and 6th graders. during the reading we would carve fetishes out of soapstone (from lee valley tools). listening and making. this was my being beast, wrapped and holding a few choice beads, ready to sit with the others. this one ended up on a beautiful rock my then assistant brought in, surrounded by the kid’s pieces. it stayed with me for years, and i just found this one unpacking (which is still ongoing) here. i liked it so much then, and still do!

i wrote this one morning when i first taught north country shifu at the morgan conservatory in cleveland. then i cut it prepping for shifu. i saved it for my students to see, then spun the mesage up into some pages. i love tim’s work, and as you all probably know his books aren’t all blank.

leaving here for now, it’s once again hot and humid, but there is relief coming down the pike. stay well and safe and for god’s sake wear your masks.