The downside of printmaking for me is the added technicality. I love making images, but prints are more complicated than just brushing paint on canvas. I still struggle some with registration issues and occasional press maintenance, but sharpening my gouges is the hardest ongoing issue for me.

I'm incredibly lucky to be friends with John Kraus, a toolmaker, fiddler, and all around great guy. John teaches tool making at Country Workshops and John C. Campbell Folk School, among others. Once a year or so he's kind enough to put a fresh edge on my gouges that I then gradually fail to maintain until I need help again the next year.

This year he not only sharpened everything for me (photo above), but he tempered a couple of the blades that were too hard to sharpen well (below).

John's partner is Nancy Darrell, a fellow printmaker with a background in pottery. I got my Line-O-Scribe proof press from her a couple of years ago (which has changed my life), and we have a great time comparing work and talking shop.

This trip we also went out and sketched together, painting by the pond on the Countey Workshops campus next door. I did a couple of quick watercolors and enjoyed just sitting in the sunshine a while.

Afterwards I got to play music with John, and Nancy had been kind enough to invite Drew and Louise Langsner over from next door at CW, so we had a lovely dinner with all my friends up there at once. That pair of farms is a real haven for me, thanks to kind friends and a beautiful landscape. I feel lucky to be a regular visitor.

I'm doing one print a month for the First Presbyterian Church in Holley, NY. They are my longest running church patrons, and I love working with their minister Tom Gardner. For much of this year, I will create an "I am" statement for each month. This fall we'll continue the harvest series I began for them last year.

I'm playing with the positive/negative lettering for this series, which requires a fair amount of concentration, but thankfully I didn't make such a mistake on this one that I had to start over, like I did with the first one. Perhaps I'm getting into a groove with it.

I did forget that my proof press was full of type from another project, so I had to do the first proof the old fashioned way, by rubbing on the back of the paper with a flat wooden spoon. I did about three years' worth of prints like that, and it's a good reminder how fortunate I am to have a press now.

We currently have an ice storm in Memphis, so I'm still dreaming about being in Florida last week.

My sister and I visited our friend Heidi, who has moved to Tampa to be the animal nutritionist at Busch Gardens. (I'm pretty sure that's not her real title.) Heidi has bought an utterly charming house just across the road from this small park and river. It was peaceful hanging out at her place for a couple of days, and I loved lounging around in a tank top and bare feet.

I walked over to the park to do Heidi a watercolor of her river as a hostess present. (It was pretty cloudy for picture taking, so there's a bigger discrepancy than usual between the photo and the watercolor.)

I got in some great sister time with Marian, both at Heidi's, with her people climbing cat, and at the dance up in Gainesville. The blue lights were for the Saturday night black and white ball. We also saw our "Florida tribe", some of our extra sisters, and had great playtime with them.

I even got to hang out with my very favorite band, the Latter Day Lizards. We ate BBQ for lunch....

.....then Stuart Kinney, the bass and banjo player I want to be when I grow up, took me thrifting in his host's convertible. I'd never ridden in a convertible before. It was the perfect Florida weekend. BBQ and thrift stores are the normal activities with these guys, but the gorgeous weather made it especially sweet this time. Not to mention the black and white dress I found just in time for the dance. A great weekend away.

Cape Resorts is putting together its annual magazine that they hand out to their guests. They needed a surf board scene, and I'm in Florida dancing and visiting with sister and friends, so I got to so this one sitting at an outdoor table.

I'll fly home later today, but its been a lovely long weekend away.

I used this block for a previous letterpress poster print, "If you don't want my peaches, don't shake my tree." But the original image several years ago was born out of the Song of Solomon quote, "Let my beloved come to his garden and eat its choicest fruit." I thought it would be fun to do that text with the wood type as well.

First I laid it out on the block to get a sense of the placement.

Then I did some color tests in watercolor.

And once I settled on a green, I printed the backgrounds. Then I went dancing for the weekend and left them to dry....

Finally I set the type and locked it down into the press and printed on top of the background image.

Here's the final product.

I've been slow working lately and am likely to continue to be so for a bit. I've been out of town a little, had a cold, and been stymied in my carving by a very dull gouge, the one I most rely on. I'm way overdue for my yearly tune up with all my gouges done by my toolmaking friend in North Carolina, and my most used one just got away from my ability to sharpen it. I'm still trying to learn to be better at that.

So I took a break from carving the moon (above) for my next letterpress poster. I finally got back to it today and got to proof it (on the right). I'll thin out those lines a bit more, and then it will be ready to be a background for some more wood type text.

I did some book-keeping, emails, packaging, and other uninspiring work during my break. I also went ahead and started a different letterpress poster (below). I had the block already carved, but I want to try it with a different color scheme and with different text. I've got the backgrounds printed now and just need to set the type, hopefully when I get back in town next week.

First, though, I'm going dancing this weekend with my sisters and assorted old and marvelous friends!

I got my beloved Chandler and Price press just on four years ago, and the very first block I carved was a valentine. Really it was a valentine for the press itself. The next year I created a letterpress valentine from old metal type and and a vintage bee ornament. Last year I was in a bit of turmoil and more or less skipped that holiday, but this year I'm celebrating printmaking and life in general, so here is the new one.

I'm still playing around with inking two different colors. This time I used warm red and a warm purple. It worked for a little while, but the colors were similar enough that pretty soon they flattened out into one solid for most of the run. Mixing yellow and blue to make green is a more lasting contrasting effect. These two colors were just a little too close, I think. I got some nice mixed ones like the one on top, but mostly they looked like this:

Here are the previous years' valentines.

And here I am with my valentine press. And my beloved dog Merlin. Thanks to Kelly Cox for the photo, from back in 2011.

First Presbyterian Church in Holley, NY, is commissioning me to do another series of liturgical prints. I'm going to do a series of "I am" statements from John for their spring bulletins.

I started drawing the first one free hand, but using one of my type books as a guide for the lettering.

Then I got it transferred onto the block, outlined the letters with an exacto knife (to try to keep the edges sharp and keep me from cutting on through a line), and started carving. Things were going along great on the left, but then I started listening too hard to the Sunday morning puzzle on NPR and got distracted. The A in BREAD was supposed to be dark, to show up in the white of the bread, and I cut right into the letter. These positive/negative ones are especially tricky brainteasers for me. And that was in spite of the shading I did to try to keep myself straight.

Fortunately I wasn't too far along, so I started over, kept it straight, and managed to finish the print. Below is the first proof. I cleaned up the letters and edges a bit before pulling the final version at the top of the post.

I'm continuing both my January freedom to play with different kinds of projects and also my run of feminist letterpress posters with this offering. It's another bluegrass one, to go with my Little Maggie poster. The quote is a quite old verse that has floated around into a lot of songs, but I know it from "Sitting on Top of the World", a standard in both blues and bluegrass.

Above is the finished product. I did an edition of 20, about as many as I want to hand ink at one sitting, especially since I'm still playing around with grading the ink through several colors.

I've been having fun with my wood type lately, and I wanted to try combining it with a carved image. My first step was to carve the block and print it.

The next day I typeset the words I wanted.

Then I printed them and realized I had the words on the left by mistake instead of on the right. I was looking at a proof of the print as I laid things out. Next time I'll use the actual block instead, since it's also in the mirror image state. But I was a little sleep deprived that day, and this is all still a learning process for me.

I had done a couple of proofs to play with instead of using the good paper right off, so after printing the one below and realizing it was wrong, I moved things around and printed the actual prints.

If I'm not careful I'll end up with a wood type letterpress show somewhere. I'm really having fun with these.

Opera Memphis has been inviting our Memphis Urban Sketchers group to sketch at their dress rehearsals. I love how they are so inclusive of a broad variety of arts in the community. I couldn't make the dress rehearsal this time, but my family went on Tuesday night, and I sketched then instead. I started with the pre-opera sideboard, and then did a watercolor of the set before the performance started.

It was dark to draw, and I was thoroughly enjoying the performance, so I only did a quick one actually during the opera. My figures are challenged enough when I have good light to see by. But I love that the modern setting they gave this show and the fact that the prince, disguised as a wandering minstrel, is dressed as an Elvis impersonator. Perfect.