Where is everyone

Where is everyone...what is everyone doing...have you all defected to Facebook. Here is an update from Topeka. I'm currently watching a rerun of House on USA. It rained today. Been eating lettuce from the garden. Grilled a salmon which was good to eat on the salads. Still collecting seeds for the Seed Bank at Kew Gardens. Farmers market is consuming me on Saturdays. I got a new laptop and now have to buy upgrades for my software to run on vista. I'm not a big fan of change. Spent a bunch of money on my truck because of sensors needing replacing. Selling handmade paper products at the Tallgrass Preserve gift shop and working for the preserve collecting seeds for a bottomland restoration. Thats the excitement from Topeka.

Domain Name

Can all you creative geniuses help me come up with a name for my next website. I want to sell my handmade paper and offer workshops on making paper. All the paper is made from wild plants of the prairie. PrairiePaper.com is taken. Let me know what you think.

andmore

are u sick of the paper pictures yet?

more paper

another piece o paper

Proud of my paper

Since I have made some more paper, I thought I would take close ups of each sheet. And since boomer and greg acted interested, I decided to post them. I wish you could feel the paper too.

PAPER (handmade)

Okay, now I get how to post pictures...good grief. this goes with the article I posted.

Paper Made from Native Plants in Kansas

I took a picture of a sampling of some of the paper I have made. The top row is Thistle Fluff, common milkweed stem, Stinging nettle stem, River bulrush leaves, Dogbane stem, butterfly milkweed stem, osage orange bark, mulberry bark, whorled milkweed stem, smooth milkweed stem, and swamp milkweed stem.

Paper Making

Okay, so now that I'm an official reporter for the HIA news, I've got share my obsession with making paper from plant fibers. I'm sure you all know that paper comes from plants. Most paper is made from trees. Most asian paper is made from kozo ( a relative of the mulberry). You can make paper out of almost any plant but some plants have more fibers than others. I just finished a batch of osage orange paper. Its in the mulberry family but has thorns on it. First you boil the branches, and peel off the bark and underlying fiber. Then you cook it in soda ash for about an hour. That breaks down the non fiber part fo the plant. THe bark is peeled off at this time. Next you blend the fiber and you have pulp and can go ahead and make paper.

My favorite papers so far come from milkweed bast fiber. Bast fiber comes from the stem of the plant. I've made paper from 4 species of milkweed and its all so different looking. Its soft as cotton. pretty incredible.

Okay. the agony from my foot injury is really killing me. I want pity.