My mood was so dark yesterday that this morning my shadow had a shadow.

I feel better for the rant, though, and that the weekend is here. Here’s another photo from my walk to work:

Sounds like Irma might take a path to the west, but of course, nobody can accurately predict a hurricane’s path this far out.

If we get high winds, I feel sorry for my neighbor across the street. Look at all the black walnuts on his tree, hanging over his house. It’s gonna sound like hail on his roof. Of course if the wind is high enough some of them might make it over here too. I’ve been collecting some. There are lots of black walnut trees around here. Almost every part of the tree makes good fast dye.

On Labor Day, I cooked all the corn shucks I’ve been saving in my freezer with soda ash so that I can break down the fiber for paper pulp. I’m going to try to make some very rough textured paper this weekend, but there is SO MUCH going on around here!

I pulled this book that I made in 2013 off the shelf and decided to work it some more for an exhibit with the Triangle Book Arts group this coming winter. It’s called “First the Seed,” and the cover has a seed catalog print gel transferred onto handmade paper, with some dried “whippoorwill” field peas in a mica window on the front. The pages are handmade paper from both recycled green office papers and recycled handmade papers with different plant materials in them. I decided to use it to showcase the seed packets that I have hoarded for years. I feel like they need to be framed, either with this rough corn shuck paper I’m about to make or with drawing frames in ink around them. I can’t add too much more paper to it or it won’t shut. I’m not satisfied with the front cover either.