Day 2

I think Kate and everyone else is going to kill me. The milkweed plant has great fibers, but we have to pick out all these little bits of bark and pound the stuff to death. If anyone would have been voted off this island today, I would have gotten the sack. No one but me thinks this is going to work. I know we will end up with some kind of paper. It may not be pretty, but it will be paper. Oh ye of little faith…actually, their doubt has begun to make me have second thoughts…

So, kapok fiber it is. Mike has made alkali. The problem is we can’t tell how strong it is. We need a pH meter. We could guesstimate if we had red cabbage, but we don’t, so I greatly diluted the alkali and cooked the kapok fiber in it. After what seemed like forever in front of the kiln, nothing was happening to the fibers. I put the fibers in stronger alkali and boiled in some more. It was quite a relief when I did the "clumping test" and the fibers began to spread out evenly. Still, I can tell that the whole group, including Drew, the cameraman, and Paul, the soundman, were getting really nervous. They spent so much time helping Kate and me pull seeds out of fibers that they want this to work, too.

Finally, we all helped drag bucket after bucket of fresh water to fill an old copper kettle with water. We dumped the kapok fiber in the kettle. Then Mike B. jumped in! He is such a comic! I bet he was also burning up after standing in front of the kiln all day. So Mike B used a screen we found to collect and spread out the fibers. Next we pressed them in a flower press that Mike B made.

If the sun ever comes out the paper will dry. That is the scary part. We can’t force anything to dry.

It rained all night. The paper is as wet as it was yesterday. It turns out we made the paper really, really thick. That would be okay if it were sunny, but it isn’t. We set the press near the kiln, but not too close.

Actually the first thing I did this morning was sweep the water out of Mike B’s "laboratory". It was under about 10 centimeters of water - that’s about up to his knees! We then set to work making inks and dyes. I forgot to mention that I used a machete to slowly chip the logwood down to the heartwood and then boil the chips in a touch of water. I was able to sharpen my machete, but logwood is tough stuff. It took forever to chip even a little bit. It should be called "ironwood". It takes a long time to rot, too.

I then went out to collect flowers, fruits, leaves and bark with which to make colored inks. While we worried about the paper drying Mike B and I had a ball smashing up everything and making colors. It was really exciting. In the end we ended up with more than fifteen colors. It got funny. I would just dump stuff together to see what would happen. Mike B was much more precise. He ended up with some great hues. A couple of times we ended up with indigo colored indigo, but we could never figure out how we did it. I bet the indigo has to oxidize (set out in the air) for that fabulous blue color to occur.

In the end, with the paper dry and all the samples of ink, we were so pleased with ourselves. We made color test strips and paintbrushes. Mike B really likes bouquets, so I decorated the table with flowers in his honor. By the time Kathy and Mike L were ready to draw the map, time was short so they never got to use all of Mike B’s brilliant colors.

The map Kathy made was superb. This was a high-stress challenge that worked. The paper was strong. I need to remember to listen to my gut. I knew the paper should work. I lost my confidence for a while, that makes it hard on everyone.

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