So gloriously, ridiculously blue.

It almost makes up for the fact that I had to take a couple of days off from papermaking. (Tomorrow I intend to go in and prep a nice neutral rag so I’ll have a book-appropriate paper.)

So very blue. An even more ridiculous shade than I expected, in pulp. The finished sheets should be excellent.

I could criticize the formation — it’s still pretty thready, and I was having a tiny bit of trouble getting even distribution. Whatever. It will be lovely anyway.

Two pounds of cotton: shredded mostly blue rag and one of the last batches of the purple stuff from a couple of years ago with a little leftover pink from the previous batch.

It was a collaborative effort, too: my studiomate J wandered over and helped with the second post. It was a good time, and she made a nice stack of very thin sheets.

I definitely need to get a different camera for this project. My phone died on Friday, and the backup I’m using is (as you can see) terrible (it’s not great as a phone, either). It may be time to start actually using a camera.

Today’s pulp is ridiculous.

Seriously.

I mean, not that you can tell from this photo. But it is awesome. AWESOME AND PINK. So pink. (Mostly linen, as I said, so the texture is actually magnificent.)

Almost entirely linen, a little overbeaten, and this photo doesn’t do it justice at all. It’s gloriously minty green until you look at it closely, and then there are blue threads … no, seriously, it’s great.

I really need to start using a camera with a decent color sensor.

Today’s paper was pink. So pink. About half linen, half cotton, a long beat and a long time clearing, so it should be crisp and not too knotty. We’ll see.

Sometimes that happens. I’m trying to learn to live with it. Even though it is very stressful.

Today’s paper was a horrifying minty green. (Actually, I think it will be pretty great when it’s dry because it has these crazy blue threads in it. We’ll see. Tomorrow.) It even seems to have survived being dropped. Everything is wonderful!

This is (most of) the paper so far:

(There’s more of that green at the bottom, and there’s an entire batch of sky blue that was on a different shelf. The stuff on the top is what I made Sunday. It is glorious and rattly in person.)

I swear it’s different from the previous days’ sheets. (It is very different in person, my phone camera is just terrible at colors especially when the light is not very good. And it hasn’t been, the last few days.)

This one is mostly blue jeans.

And so that tomorrow’s paper will stand out, I went for some ridiculous green. Which is in the beater right now, turning an unexpectedly mint ice cream sort of color…

Today: beat two pounds of rag, pulled sheets of the first pound. (Finished it, too.) It’s a linen/cotton blend; tomorrow’s batch is almost entirely blue jeans.

For the next two months, I am going to make as much paper as I can (given that I have a significant amount of printing to do at the same time). Today’s was dark blue, mostly cotton: