I'm Melting

I can barely stand to do anything in this weather. It's crazy Hot! I planned on making a little light box to take better photos for my Etsy site, but I realized quickly it was too hot to play with Hot lights. Our Fridge broke this weekend and our landlord replaced it while we were at work today. I lugged our items from the extra basement fridge to place in our used, much smaller fridge. ugh. Then had to put our hallway back together. It's mostly our storage area which we moved to the living room to make room for the swapping of fridges. Sigh, I'm soaked and my brain doesn't work anymore.

I did pull out lots of Letterpress items from my first prints in school 10 years ago. They will show up in posts to come. I came across this book as well. It should be a nice read on our road trip out of the city for the 4th of July!

Peas & Carrots

As I'm reading the manual for my Kelsey and other information out there, I keep seeing "Use no more ink than the size of a pea to start with." The manual was first published in 1952 and I'm wondering if a pea was the same size as it is in 2010. I've tried a few times to use less ink and it hasn't worked well. I'd say I use about 10 peas worth. I wonder if this only pertains to oil inks. I started out using oil ink, but couldn't stand to do the clean up. My print shop is in the middle room of our Brooklyn Railroad apartment and the first night I used the cleaning solution for oil inks, I woke up repeatedly all night. I was dreaming that I was slowly poisoning us and kept checking to see if my husband was still breathing. I immediately ordered water based inks from Faust Ink. They've been working lovely ever since. I do think I tend to over saturate the ink wheel when using metal type, but the polymer plates seem to require a little more.

I've been super entertained by this manual. Taken out of context, some phrases are kinda funny.
Type is "off its feet" made me smile.

All this pea talk gave me a craving for the little sweet veggies. Along with carrots, onions, and chicken, it made a delightful dinner.

Relearning what I already learned once or twice.

I'd really like to do what I love and I love printing little creations on my Kelsey Platen Press. I dream of owning a larger press to make larger creations. I purchased my own press in the summer of 2006 not knowing much more than what I learned my Senior year of college. It's been a fun experience. I've gone through phases of productivity and a year I barely touched ink. In an attempt to get better, I've gone back to basics. I'm re-reading the info I found 4 years ago online and in books, because I don't remember.

Today, my original frustrations and triumphs all came crashing back to me. I'm on the last leg of printing my dear friend's wedding invitations, but I didn't like the way the main invite came out. I don't know if I used too much ink, to much padding, not enough, how's my roller height? oh yeah, I am cheap and opted out of buying a roller gauge 4 years ago. Today, I shelled out the $22 and ordered one. I also found a great post about adding masking tape to the edges of the chase so the rollers only "kiss" the type. I like the idea of kissing my type. After a boring 8 hours at my day job, I visited the gym, showered, prepared a meal for my husband and myself, and dove into figuring out how to make this kiss happen so my Christina could have the most beautiful invitations possible. It went down like this... I reset up the type in the chase, replacing the o's that I borrowed for the Friday night invitation. I then applied about 6 layers of tape on each side of the chase to raise the rollers. And after reading the actual instruction manual to my press for the first time, I completely unscrewed the impression screws... deciding to start over. Big mistake! After having trouble getting a decent print, and adjusting the screws and padding for the 30th time, I remembered vowing to never touch those things again. Nothing ventured, nothing gained I guess. I plowed through 15 sheets of the paper I cut for the second time until finally... awe... a perfect print, but now I'd wasted so much ink that I had to mix up a little more. The results are totally worth it though. Held up to the prints I did last week, they are a million times better. yay! I will just have to remember to go back and read what I've wrote next time I have the same problem. I made those rollers kiss that type and now I want to kiss my little Kelsey.


"I love it when a plan comes together!" ~ John "Hannibal" Smith