Patience. …patience. 

I snip and snip and snip at the fibers until they are reasonably small so that they won’t get caught in the blades of the blender. On and on until the blisters start to form at the base of my index finger where the handle of the scissors rub. Is it the arthritis or the carpal tunnel that is making my fingers swell? 

Then I have to measure it. …kind of. I’m not weighing it out, but a general eyeballed ratio of a handful of fresh fiber and a couple of handfuls of recycled fibers. Thankfully this set wasn’t any fibers that I had to cook down. And when the container is full we add the water and wait. 

It’s best to leave it all night, but sometimes I forget and I fill it when I make my morning cup of tea and let it soak until after the morning chores are done (feeding animals, my own breakfast, dishes, a bit of laundry and maybe a shower). 

The blender is finicky, so small batches of fiber with lots of water. And for the love of all that is holy I cannot forget the sizing. Will this batch be dyed or does it have enough color on its own? I guess we’ll see how it looks, maybe a touch of dye in with the sizing that gets splashed into each little batch in the blender. 

After a good spin around, when it doesn’t look too chunky anymore, into the bucket it goes. It wasn’t a full gallon to start with (3 maybe 3.5 quarts) but all the water has at least doubled that. Then we’ll fill the vat and put a bit of this slurry in so that we have a good cloudy water. 

Did I set up the felt? Did I clean my pellons after the last batch? Oh good, they’re all neatly stacked in the basket. Just need to double check that I have my mold and deckle put together the correct way and I’m holding it right side up. Double check again. Now I can dip it into the vat and catch a fine layer of fibers on the screen. 

I bring it up out of the water with a splash and watch the flood that escapes while the fine mesh holds onto the fibers that settle down into a fine layer. When it has dripped out the water the top frame can be opened up to reveal the sheet that’s sitting so neatly on the screen. Turning it over, it transfers neatly to the pellon where it waits for the stack to grow. 

Ever so slowly it grows, one page after the next, a neat pile with pellons spaced between. More of the slurry is added into the vat as the sheets are pulled and stacked. Once the stack is complete it goes into the press.

A squish to get more water out. Then we get to begin the tedious process of drying, another press, and then we’ll have some paper.