it's time for the reckoning, or in modern americanese: inventory.

i've taken a totally arbitrary approach here,
picking photos from my desktop:

1. copper pipe marked by goldenrod leaves from a workshop years ago

with india flint at long ridge farm.

it's resting on one of the stump looms.
the right kind of alchemy.

2. linda marshall of washi arts is an amazing advocate for japanese paper

a fine friend
and host who took care of me in vancouver last fall.

she's a terrific guide for me,

and provides all kinds of

help for artists wanting to use

really good papers.

3. this book,

Indigo Patterns

was purchased this year by Owen D Young Library at St Lawrence University.

it's a book i loved making,

the cover is "shifu" with dyed pattern paper,

linen paper,

and slippery elm bark weft, linen paper warp.

pages are indigo dyed pattern papers,

tacketed binding.

4. my little Flax Notion edition sold out!

i loved making this one.
all flax.

5. fern dust:

i'm in a conversation with mari newell who also works with it.

and yes, it IS a thing.

6. rocks.

i love rocks,

these are from jasper beach
and i love how shanna wraps lake michigan rocks.

7. milkweed.

as ever my favorite ever paper that i've made,

my fist edition done so long ago that my children

(now 33 and 36) were in grade school while i made it.

it's a generous and strong plant.

8. we lost gwen this year,

shown here in the foreground.

unusually behind her pack

9. raw flax paper.

absolutely nothing like it.

10. i think this book,
12 Moons,
sold this year to Baylor University by Alicia Bailey

(but maybe it was last year, sigh)

shifu cover, silk endpapers, pages all botanical contact printed.

double pamphlet stitch binding.

11. still contact printing mostly on paper,

occasionally on shifu
(which IS paper).

mostly.

12. my papermaking class.

only one student in the bunch was an art major.

the four adult students and i meet every so often to talk
and make books.

it's nifty.

this group was such a blessing to me,

keeping me thinking about papermaking.

all autumn.

i started a post today and meant to go way elsewhere,

but here we are instead.

you all who read are blessings, too.

thank you, you are a joy.

please feel free to contact me through the website,

blogger seems to be ignoring me here and out on others' sites, too.
as for from now until february 2 when hannah and i get on planes for california,

i will be working on

inventory
for CODEX .

all the things.

the first time i heard this phrase

was in michelle moode's beautiful letterpress book

PARTICULAR.

it was index item #1.

the first thing was all the things.

i handle this book,

handle, the touch or the feel of something held in the hands

this book

haptic knowledge

anyway, it has delights and puzzles quietly presented.

The whole world is a series of miracles,
but we’re so used to them we call them ordinary things.
Hans Christian Anderson

I've been thinking about the intelligence of
our hands, how they become smarter with practice, like our brains do.

unmoored, by shanna leino
i've read over and over.
it's a small poem, not many words,
but about big things.
the care she took as she stitched this exquisite spine