Morning Minstrelsy

I took Baloo out for a longer than usual walk on a cooler than usual morning and as we were coming down the big hill on the last leg of our journey we heard sort of a sweet trilling song from high in a tree just a little way off the road. 

I had to zero in on this tiny minstrel by waiting for another verse of his distinctive melody, but I finally spotted him. He's an American redstart. 

I apologize for the grainy pictures - I had to use every bit of zoom my little camera had to offer to get a decent and recognizable picture of this shy songster. 

Up a Tree

This little charmer was way too cute to keep to myself. 

There's a serviceberry tree growing in my yard, sort of in a sheltered corner near the house. It blooms beautifully every spring and the birds always enjoy the ripening fruit.

One morning I looked out the window and spied a chipmunk fairly high in the tree, packing serviceberries into its cheeks just as fast as it could go. Since chipmunks are usually much more comfortable on the ground, it was a surprising and delightful departure from the usual winged visitors to the banquet. 

It looks pretty sweet and innocent for such a little pig, don't you think? 

Iris Really Busy!

I know - it's terribly corny. Forgive me, if you can. But the good news is that I survived the art fair again this year and now I have a few minutes to post something. 

A little while ago, Baloo and I took one of our favorite hot day walks in a wetlands conservation area and we enjoyed hearing frogs plopping and chipmunks chirping in alarm at the large, black dog and his person. 

We also saw some lovely wild iris growing right in the water and blooming amid the cattails and marsh grasses.  

They were very delicate, with long, thin petals that flared out at the ends. 

And they had  fine, purple veining in the flared part of the petals that I thought was a beautiful contrast with the pale lavender and yellow background. 

In the Meantime...

I did say to stay tuned, didn't I?

If you're running out of carving material and feeling a little bit anxious about it, I may have a short term solution for you. I had not planned to sell the second, larger gray test sheet I was sent along with the tan one (most of which went out to my intrepid testers).  I thought it would be better to wait until the actual tan material arrived, since some people had trouble with the gray color and image contrast and some people had a little trouble with the thinness of the test material. 

That being said, I just sliced it up and am making it available. Since I'm feeling a bit nutty, I called it Crazy Gray-Z and I don't expect it will be around for long, as there isn't very much of it. But, it may rescue a few of you from carving withdrawal syndrome! I sliced it into two different sizes: 10 x 6 and 4 x 6. 

They Say Patience is a Virtue.

I don't have a picture that adequately portrays the level of frustration I'm feeling at the moment. Baloo's look of eye-rolling, you've-got-to-be-kidding disbelief comes as close as I could find.

Delays. 

It seems that the extrusion machine at the Tan-Z Kut factory broke down and all production ceased - they neglected to communicate this little difficulty to me, so I didn't learn of it until I called to find out what in the world had happened to the shipment I was anxiously awaiting. 

What this means is that the shiny, new, tan material we've all been anticipating so enthusiastically will not be arriving until sometime around the middle of July. 

Yes, I know. 

I've said that.... 

.....and that, too. 

So, in the meantime, I'm going to try and get a little bit creative for those of you who are running out of material to carve with. 

Stay tuned.

I'm really sorry about the delays to the previously scheduled programming!

Besides, I always thought that Patience was a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta.
(Hmmmm.... maybe that's why Baloo is rolling his eyes.)

Tan Material Sample Results Round #4

Unless the two extra folks I sent samples to (who weren't in the official Merry Band of Testers) send back information and/or images, I think this is the last sample post you'll be subjected to for a while. 

Once again, thanks to nosox, Wise Wanderer and Open Space for their very helpful suggestions with respect to questions to help all the testers in their analysis and evaluation of this new material. It created a perfect springboard for thinking about material qualities and getting similar pieces of information from a wide variety of carvers. 

Also, even if you aren't interested in the actual results of the sample test, the carves are definitely worth an admiring look. 

What, if anything, did you to do prep the block before transferring your image?

One treated one side with acetone and left the other untreated on one of her carves (noted in the scans), one lightly sanded her text carving and did not prep the other, one did a very helpful side-by-side comparison of how sanding or not sanding the material affected the transfer outcome. 

What type of transfer did you use?

There was a wide variety: heat, wintergreen oil, acetone/laser jet print, and wax paper.

Did it take a transfer well?

Is the transfer clear and high contrast, showing detail well?

Does the transfer stay on the material without smearing or sliding?

All transfer methods worked reasonably well to very well, except for the wintergreen oil transfer onto one of the blocks that was not sanded. 

Many thanks to BaliWho for doing a test of prep and transfer methods. From the left, sanded with heat transfer, not sanded with heat transfer, sanded with wintergreen transfer and not sanded with wintergreen transfer. It's pretty obvious that the sanding really helps the transfer process with this side-by-side comparison. 

What tool(s) did you use?

Staedtler #1 V - modified and unmodified gouges, x-acto knives, unmodified Speedball #1, #2, #3 and #5 cutters, and a pinched .25 Speedball #1 cutter. 

Using properly sharpened tools, does the cut path have clean edges?
Is the consistency of the block smooth or grainy?

Edges were clean and the material was smooth for all three testers. 

Many thanks to Baliwho for some very helpful side-by-side comparisons. She carved what she calls the "Vampire Zombie Clown Molly", even though the transfer was problematic for her, just to test the inking qualities after the carve (above and beyond the call!). Clearly, sanded worked way better. And, by the way, I loved the Euchre carving - I used to play that game with my family when I was a child. Lots of memories there. The largest carving in this group is Rachael Ray at about 1.5 x 2 inches. 

Does the gouge or knife slip during shallow cuts or when ending cuts?

One said she slipped a little using extra pressure on cleanup cuts and thought that it was a matter of adjusting to the fact that it doesn't take as much pressure as the material she's been using, one slipped a few times, but also felt it could be adjusted to, one had some trouble with slipping as she felt her tools got duller and she needed to use more pressure on her cuts.

Does the material release easily from the block as you finish each cut?
One had a few straggling pieces, but thought it was more her carving style than the material, one thought it released easily, one had a lot of trouble at the end of cuts, especially with her x-acto knife. 

How would you rate the level of pressure it takes to move the tool through the material? 

One said it was soft and easy to carve, requiring very little pressure to move the tool through the block, noting it was much easier on the hands when working on a large, detailed image or doing a lot of carves in a row. One thought that pressure was not an issue and that the material was firmer than Speedy Carve and about the same as OZ. One said it feels just as firm as OZ but takes far less pressure to carve. 

Many thanks to The V's who carved with Staedtler modified and unmodified #1 V gouges, an x-acto knife and Speedball unmodified #2 and #3 gouges and thought this material dulled her tools more rapidly than OZ or PZ Kut. (I think it's very cool her new signature is carved on this stuff!) The larger "Insomnia" image had acetone preparation on the left of the block. "Insomnia" is about 2.5 x 3.5 inches and the new signature carve is about 1.25 x 2 inches.

Rate the ability to make fine straight lines.

One said it was a "dream" compared to Speedy Carve and easy to shave along the second side of a line to get nice, thin detail. One said it was easy to get fine lines and details. One said "very good". 

Can you imagine this block at about .25 inches thick? If so, do you think it would be firm enough to hold fine details, or squishy such that stray background marks would show if the stamp were not mounted?

This group had no concern about the squish factor.

Did you try tools with different levels of sharpness and did it make a difference if you did? 

One said the material seemed to dull her tools and it became harder to carve as they lost their edge. One didn't try different levels of sharpness. One said her tools were at all different levels of sharpness and she noticed no difference. 

What type of ink(s) did you try?

All three of these testers tried lots of different inks. 

Many thanks to kudichan who tested the limits on fine lines and text with a modified Staedtler #1 V gouge, modified Speedball #1 and a pinched (.25) Speedball cutter. She thought the material was smooth and easy to carve and that ink transferred better if the image was thoroughly sanded before carving. The reclining woman is about 1.75 x 3 inches and the text carving is about 1 x 2.5 inches.  

Does the carving hold the ink smoothly and evenly?
Do large positive spaces hold and transfer ink well?

One was very pleased with inking results, saying that it was the best she'd experienced since PZ Kut, especially if the carving was cold - she even froze one of her images and it worked well with all inks except one that was frozen, itself. One said that inking went pretty well on both sanded and unsanded material, with dye ink being a little less evenly distributed and that sanding made more of a difference in image transfer than in inking and printing. One had some issues with printing partly due to the slight curvature of the sample block and she also thought that sanding really helped for good coverage. 

Other observations and comments: 

One noted that black StazOn ink didn't seem to dry as quickly on this material after printing. 

One said that the surface was smooth - like butter, but that it needed more pressure to carve deeply. She rated it as, "Just like OZ, without the pain", saying that she got quickly fatigued while carving OZ and didn't experience that at all with this new material. 

One held high hopes of this becoming her new and everlasting favorite material, but wondered a little about the drier consistency holding up in the wild. 

One really liked the material overall and would use it over Speedball pink, with some concern with respect to blade carving and the dulling of tools. 

Finally, I just really want to thank all the intrepid testers for the amazing work they did, the fast turnaround times and the willingness to answer any other questions I had about their experiences with this material. It's been great to get such excellent feedback and have so much helpful information to move this quest for the perfect carving medium a little further down the road. 

Well, okay, maybe not finally. I do have one more thing to say. I pulled the trigger today and ordered a great big pile of this stuff and will be spending the next few weeks reorganizing and cleaning out my garage. I've got to find someplace for all the pallets to land, once it gets here. Yikes!

Ice Islands

As the spring thaw continues along the shore, large, angular chunks of ice break off (this gives a pretty good idea of how those big blocks of ice get piled up on the shore - all we'd need now is a good wind and some waves). 

Currents pull these free-floating ice slabs out into the bay, where they float in long lines, like nomadic archipelagoes. 

Depending on the wind direction and water currents, groups of ice chunks can be on the east shore one day and on the west the next, once they're free from the main mass of ice. 

Along the way, ducks and seagulls take advantage of the moving islands as roosting and resting places.

In the center right of the picture above, you can see a gull taking off from the ice island. 

Here, on the far left of the picture, another is coming in for a landing on a different, and still well populated isle. 

So, the gulls are back, the ducks are migrating, I saw the first meadowlark in the field and the goldfinches are getting their patchy harlequin look. It may not feel much like spring has arrived to the human contingent, but nature's denizens know the changing of the seasons, in spite of what the thermometer says. Take heart! Warmth is on the way.