Oh boy oh boy

Okay so you guys, what is the thing that always gets me back to blogging?  If your answer was Bookbinding Classes then dang you are sooooooo correct.  Next week I get to do another class (with that much beloved British gent, Don Etherington) on cloth and leather restoration!  And what is TRULY exclamation point-worthy is that it is going to be in San Francisco!  So I get to take BART into the city everyday and do fancy conservation shenanigans and return to the loving bosom of my family every night, TV watching schedule wholly un-messed with.  We have to be thankful for the really important things in life, right?  Right.

So, this morning found Mom and I going on a screwed-up-leather-book scavenger hunt throughout Berkeley, Oakland, and the East Bay.  Shocker of all shockers, the luckiest strike was a a random thrift store in Lafayette!   (wow seriously I need to lay off the exclamation points yeah? gosh) I bought um about a kajillion books that were sad and needed my tender attentions.  That sounded a little bit gross and creepy?  Maybe? Maybe I should be more professional to my books.  My clients.  My book clients.  Um.  Well now Dad is eating tagalongs and reading over my shoulder so I think that is my signal to skedaddle from the bloggin times.

school post

You guys I decided that if I were goin to get back in the bloggin' game it would be most fortuitous to do it from mom's kindergarten classroom, because I have had some real good luck blogging here before.  Also, because I am just sitting here right now so um why not?  Anyway. Some things:
1)I have a job now!  Well, I sort of have TWO jobs actually, but only one of them is above-board if you know what I mean.  Which is to say, I get to babysit some kids from church 2x a week, so that is a source of delight and also income. But in a more Jobby job job way, I am also currently employed by Mt Diable Unified friggin' School District!  I get to be the 1-to-1 aide for a little guy in Mom's class.  So, I come and sit by him and reiterate directions and keep him focused, and it is awesome.  We get to go to Speech, and Resource, and OT, and all the ladies in charge of those things are super nice and it's really fun and interesting.  To conclude: it is fun to have people give me monies, and it is fun when in return for that they only want me to do nice fun fulfilling things. 
2)Oh snap I actually gotta go now.  Because I am such a classy grown up lady-about-town that I am going to go MEET A FRIEND for LUNCH. ...I don't know why that sounds like such a grown up thing to me, is that weird?  It's like when you're really little and you feel like being an adult is typified by Going to the Bank, to me being a Classy Young Lady means Going To Lunch With Friend(s).  So.  In other words, I HAVE ARRIVED.

another attempt

So, upon consideration, I realized that my blog this morning was pretty bleak-sauce, amirite? Side bar: every time I say something is _____-sauce (which I swear is only like right there as a joke and then in the earlier post also as a joke...it is not something I just SAY, ok?  Please...please still respect me) it makes me think of the episode of Parks and Rec where April tells Andy she loves him and his response is "awesome sauce" and she's all mad, but by then end she forgives him and he's like, "I love you too--that's what makes the sauce so awesome!"  ...and it is funny.  So.  To sum up: the sauce this morning was pretty bleak, but that is not how I think I want to characterize my life right now, so I am CHANGING MY REALITY.

So I was just over on Goodreads setting my 2012 reading goal--I think I'm going to do the same as last year, which is 150 books (she casually mentioned so that you will be impressed and she can feel good about the one thing she does consistently and well), and they have this screen where you can see all the books you've read in the year, and it is funny to look at 2012 cuz I've read, like, 7 books so far, and the break down is pretty ridiculous: 2 are cheesy vampire novels, 3 are YA fantasy (all by Holly Black, who it turns out is actually a pretty legit author, so these stack up pretty well compared to other YA fantasy types I've been known to read, but still, you know...), 1 is a zombie comic book, and the other is The Capricorn Stone, by the immortal Madeline Brent, over whom I rhapsodized a couple months ago on this here blog. So, anyway....in case you maybe thought that I had a New Year's resolution to only read Great Literature of Recognized Worth and Merit, you should know that you are tragically mistaken.  That's just not how I like to do business.

Again I am foiled by my disinclination to blog without pictures.  I've been looking around for my camera but to no avail.  Although now that I think of it, the focus of my life right now is sort of on absences, so it makes sense that there are no pictures.  Ok, here are some ideas of things that you are not seeing pictures not of--don't worry these are not ALL going to be horrifically depressing...in fact, let's start with the sad voids, and then work our way to the happy ones. Ahem:

You are NOT seeing pictures of me watching Yo Gabba Gabba with Lucy, making Lydia fly over my head and drool in my mouth, or 'eating' Joycie's tummy until she grunt-laughs, because they are all in Utah now.  So, visualize a picture of like, bleak empty rooms and the toy corner of the living room cleared out (Dad did that while Mom and I were still in UT, it set us off on a weeping jag when we got home and saw it. which, in fairness, is not that hard to do these days).

There are no pictures of Ruby letting me just sit on the couch an hold her, although that did happen a few times when we were in UT because baby girl was sick and therefore willing to be cuddled.  Is it wrong that I kind of like it when kids are sick when it means they let you snuggle them?  I JUST WANT SNUGGLES.  If I were a Bond villain I would have like a missile of cold germs pointed at a group of children as my endgame.  DIABOLICAL.

Okay, so to sum up in sadness:  All my nieces are gone and it is preeeeeetty lame sauce.

Okay but what is good about life?  I will tell you.
There is an almost complete absence of cluttery junk in my bedroom and studio, because with the total lack of distractions in the form of love or human relationships, I am dedicating myself to organizing and purging and being productive.  IT ALMOST FILLS THE VOID.  So, imagine to yourself a picture of an empty room, but this time instead of tragic violins in the back ground there is New-Age-y tranquility music playing and a pervasive sense of accomplishment and satisfaction.  Now, whether I ever actually sit down and get to work in my nice clean space is another matter.  We....will see.

sneaky blogging

pssst....don't tell Mom that I am up here blogging because I am supposed to be downstairs braising chicken and folding programs or something.  But AHA I had to come up to put some more stuff on my iPod (when Mom is in charge of ward parties, I get to be in charge of the music.  Let's just say I like to rock all the old ladies' minds, hearts, and worldviews.  THROUGH SONG)  Anyway.  It has been forever since I blogged so I thought I'd stop on by.  What I have been doing:

-mourning the imminent loss of Christy, Danny, Lucy, Joyce, and Lydia from my everyday life.  They are moving to Utah.  Boo.

-planning all the wild decadent things Mom and I will do to sooth our grief and longings.  I am thinking, movies every night and lots of expensive eatings out? Christy who?

-I took my cello Josef out for a date to play in the Messiah at Temple Hill, which was funny because it turns out they will let about ANYONE just walk up and play with them.  I tried to play soft so as not to ruin everything for everyone with ears.  

-I've been frantically bookbinding and doing other crafty things for Christmas presents. Bummer I can't post any pics cuz that would RUIN THE SURPRISES.  Let's just say, there will be many smiles and tears come Christmas morn.

-reading Christmas books with Lucy in front of the fire.  We have to sit pretty far away or she gets 'sunburned.'

-Go listen to the Annie Lennox Christmas CD.  Do it right now.  I mean it.  Get out of here.  

-Did you think I was joking?

cease your clamouring

Hey hey oh hey look it is me here blogging again. Weird!  I guess I only missed 2 days but I felt like quite the truant those 2 nights, going to sleep without plugging in my camera and whatnot! I know I had good excuses both nights... I can't remember what Wednesday's excuse was, but Thursday was our class party so the shindiggery kept us all out late.  Here are some pictures from the past couple missed days.

Oh so on Wednesday I went in to the studio about an hour early to meet with Renate and try a bleaching technique on my blue ink book and see what happened.  We did it early because a)we were using a chlorine-based chemical nonsense so it smelled and was maybe mildly dangerous and b)she doesn't really want to be teaching us bleaching techniques because it's a pretty extreme treatment and she was only doing it now because she couldn't stand to let that blue ink go and not at least TRY another way of getting it out.  I thought that was nice :)  It's cool when people you respect sort of geek out about the same things as you. So, we treated just one page of the blue ink book in a bath with like .5% chlorine something or other and the result is the top page below, with the ethanol wash below it, and on the bottom the original coloring:

Pretty wild, right?  I mean, obviously it is not all gone, but it's definitely a lot lighter, and also a weird greeny sort of color.  It's cool all the different things that you can make happen to paper when you mess with it the right way! She said that the chemical we were using wasn't really the right thing to deal with ink, but it is all they had at the school.  I'm thinking I will save this book unbound and if ever I take a class on bleaching techniques, I will have something perfect to test all the different chemicals on :)

Here is that delightful fire damage book that I finished dry cleaning on Thursday.  I thought to take a before and after picture of this one page that had some obvious smokey business on it so that you can see the difference that happens:

before:

 

after:

 So, obviously still really marked up and dirty, but a lot of the really dark dark smoke staining is gone! I feel like I really bonded with this book as I dry cleaned it.  Today I went back and started the looooooooong process of mending and guarding, which I am thinking will last me well through the winter, but it's kind of nice and okay to think of just always coming back to it and doing all the little fixes one page at a time. In a way, I think that is what makes me not a very good conservator, or at least a not very professional one--I come at all of this as a person who loves books originally at least because of their content--I think that makes it a much more emotional connection than if I came from say a primarily artistic or historical or technical background.  I wanna make friends with all the nice books and then fix them because I love them.  Which I obviously think is great, but I think it comes across as a bit quaint to the people who do this because it is their bread and butter.  I dunno.  I'm just saying words.

 This is a picture of Emilie looking furtive.

 So we were learning about pulp filling, which is when you basically make new paper to fill in for big losses in your original paper.  It's pretty amazing--you just squirt the new paper fibers right on there to the old paper and it all just sort of hangs together and is fabulous.  So, I didn't have any papers that needed pulp filling, but I've always been really interested in paper making and wanted to try it but never had the materials and whatnot, so yesterday afternoon I sort of dropped all the proper work I was doing and just played with paper pulp instead.

The stuff they were using for actual repairs was like the lighter colored circle in the center--pretty regular paper color and fiber and everything.  Since I was in full play time mode I blended up my own pulp using this nasty brown cardboard that we'd been using for something else. So, I have a lot of little samples of brown paper now.  Everyone was sort of grossed out--it smelled nasty (we'd been boiling the old cardboard to then take the dirty water, boil THAT down, and have a nasty molasses-y gunk that you then use like a watercolor to paint over your repair paper so it matches the tone of the original paper you are repairing) and you know, brown paper pulp....it's not the most delicate looking of things.  But I had a lot of fun playing around and experimenting with it.

Well gang, class is OVER now and I have to say, I am so glad!  3 weeks is really the threshold--I am totally ready to go back to real life!  Tomorrow Becca and Kyle are driving down from Springville to pick me up and drive me back--hopefully the snow storm a-comin' isn't too treacherous and doesn't strand us in the wilderness.  Then I get to spend all next week with them and RUBY and have funtimes Thanksgivingtimes, Becca's house style.  Which is to say, awesome-style.  The times, they will be good.   

what I've been doing

Oh man it's only been 2 days and I am already exhausted.  For some reason paper conservation is so much more draining than other kinds of conservationy stuff.  Maybe it's just that it's a lot more brain-oriented less intuitive.  With general book issues, I'm to a point where I basically sort of know what to do, or at least I have some idea, and it's just sort of natural.  Paper is still challenging because even though I know all the chemicals and materials a lot better this time around, I still have to pause and think for a while before I say Oh yeah, maybe blah blah blah will do the trick.   Anyway, that is what teachers and friends are for, I guess!  I flatter myself I'm doing a pretty good job with my non-intimidation goal; I am better at volunteering what I know and asking questions then ever before!

Okay so what I've been doing so far is mostly boring stuff, but this afternoon I started on a cool thing!  One of the books I brought (one I found in the SLC bookstore) is this book of Tennyson with a crazy huge blue ink stain throughout the entire thing.  It's like it was sitting on the edge of a shelf and someone tipped over an ink bottle and it spilled all the way down.  Anyway, I bought and brought it almost as a joke, because it is so intense a staining I thought it would just be fun to see what we could do and what would happen. So, this afternoon I started washing it.  I'm only doing one signature to start with (a gathering of 4 papers) so that we can do tests and see what works.  So, what I tried today was a lot of total immersion washing in a mixture of water and ethanol alcohol.  After doing that a lot I did a few washings in really hot water--like, straight from the  electric kettle hot.  Here is the final comparison:

I hope it is obvious that the one on top is the one that's been washed to death and the one on bottom that is all pretty and bright blue is what the rest of the book looks like.  I'm kind of sad--I've looked at the bright blue so much that I kind of like it by now, and the washed out color is weird and ugly!  But I'm going to go in early tomorrow and Renate and I are going to try treating it with another kind of chemical thing that is kind of fume-y and extreme, so we will see what results that produces!

This is a picture I snapped of Emilie, holding a jar of used wash water/alcohol from my book.  It came out such a pretty blue!  I tried dipping scrap paper into it to dye it blue but it didn't work :(

Okay so here are pictures of what Emilie has been doing.  She has this big poster woodblock print on fragile handmade paper, and all along the edges it had these horrible tape stains from where it had been taped to picture mats and frames.  Exhibit A is a picture of one such stain:

 Exhibit B is a picture of the exact same spot after doing some totally miraculous and magical tape-shiz removal proceedings:

 !!!!!  It's a miracle!!  The dark orangey stain of old tape is totally gone!!!  You guys do you get how amazing that is?!  It is CRAZY TOWN.  It was done by putting acetone-saturated blotter paper on top of the stains, letting it sit and soak in for a while, and then putting it on a SUCTION table (which is a table with a porous top and a shop vac attached so you turn on the shop vac and everything on the table top is sucked down--it's like a reverse air-hocky table.)  So the suction from the suction table sucks the acetone solvent-i-ness down THROUGH the paper and draws the stainy gross stuff down with it!  I don't know if that makes sense at all but just BELIEVE IT okay? 

The other thing I did today was start dry cleaning that awesome etiquette book I posted pictures of before I came here.  It went through a fire so the cover is all burninated and there's lots of smoke damage to the pages.  The cool thing was that the chemical sponges we use for dry cleaning (which is basically just sweeping the dust and nonsense off the surface of the paper) totally worked to reduce the smoke marking!  It was the first time that dry cleaning has made a totally visible difference for me, so that was fun and exciting! I tried to take a picture to show how well it worked but I don't know if it'll show up very well to the untrained  eye:

Can you see how there is a hard line in the middle of that dark smoky patch?  That is where I swiped with the sponge!  There was still a sort of rust-colored marking under all the darker smokiness, but it's a lot less noticeable than the sooty looking dark stuff.  So. Anyway.  It is fun when you feel like you are making a difference in the life of a book.  I, I guess that is the whole point.