Chaya tries Papermaking

At the start of the pandemic, I ordered some handmade paper from "The Paper Trail" in New Dundee, Ontario  (west of Toronto, south of Kitchener).  They also teach papermaking and I was planning to entice Devora out to take a papermaking workshop.  Devora gave me her mould and deckle, leftover either from her OCAD days or something.  Needless to say, Covid put the kibosh on the workshop idea.

A few month ago, Menachem and I went for a drive in the country.   When we stopped at Tim Horton's in Lindsay for coffee, I went into the Mission Thrift Store for a look-see.  I wasn't really looking for anything but when I saw a blender for $7.99, the light bulb over my head said "papermaking" and I couldn't resist the idea. This blender is now dedicated to art only, no food!!

I still wanted to pay. I mentioned the blender and papermaking on one of the POM Lunch and Shmooze meetings.  Shirley asked me yesterday when I would share my papermaking journey with the group.  Since today is my day off work, I decided to get organized and see what I could do.

I started yesterday by watching a whole bunch of youtube papermaking videos.  I am not following one particular video but looking for the fastest and easiest method.  Funny how I have patience to spend hours stitching but am impatient for other techniques.  And, I don't like to get my hands dirty (i.e. repeatedly dipping my hands into deep water with paper pulp, or for that matter with clay, or sand, or messy dyeing, not to mention ground meat...)

OK. So here we go.  These are the materials needed:

A blender. 👍

Paper for recycling 👍

Anything you want to add to the paper.  👍 I am going to add cut off threads, cut into lengths short enough so they don't wrap around the blades and cause the blender's motor to blow.

A mould and deckle. 👎 Devora's is too big and clunky.  I am going to try to make one from styrofoam, duct tape, and screening. 👍  OK, not my best attempt but it may work.

A basin to hold water into which the mould and deckle fit. 👍 This tray is leftover from my snow dyeing days.

Old towels. 👍

Paper towel, or fabric (cut up old sheets) or craft felt.👍

Step 1:  Soak paper, torn into approx. 1" squares in warm water, for several hours.  It is now 10:30 am.  I will revisit in about 4 hours.  Notice how I am using the blender cup to soak the paper.  Not sure if this is a good idea but I am also queen of using as few dishes as possible to lessen clean-up.😁

in the meantime I am turning this pile of threads into shortened lengths.

 So four hours later, I blended the pulp.

Added the threads, blended some more, and poured the pulp onto the screen which was submerged in a bigger container than I had thought to use.  Note to self, next time use a wooden frame - the styrofoam floats...

I ended up with three "sheets" of paper, tinged pink from the red threads.

They now have to dry.  I thought of ironing them dry (actually I tried but did not succeed).  I also saw that you can use a hair dryer or if you have a dryer with a shelf for shoes, sweaters, that you can dry them on a low heat.

Frankly, at this point, I have lost interest so I'm just going to let them air dry.

So the question is, will I continue papermaking?  I'm not saying yes, but I'm also not emphatically saying no.  So I guess that's a maybe?