I posted yesterday over on the Mokuhankan Conversations about our Xmas year-end party, but I left out part of the story. There has been a lot of flu going around these days, and although most of the kids in our group have already had their taste of it - catching it at school or the daycare center - with the adults, it is a different story ...

Over the 24 hours following our party - which was held down in our workshop, with all of us stuffed together in the small space - nearly all of the adults (myself included) went down for the count, one by one. And it was a pretty bad flu, too. I wasn't able to eat or drink even as much as a mouthful of water for more than two days, and my weight dropped from its usual 63kg down to just under 60. No blog updates during that time!

After I was able to stand up again, I wasn't ready for much active work, so spent the next few days on some programming. About a half-year ago, I opened up the Mokuhankan web shop to include some prints and books by 'partners' - people who have interesting woodblock items, and who I trust to maintain a good level of quality in their offerings. Young printer - and now print dealer - Shingo Ueda has some items there, as does the Takumi printmaking workshop. But none of them know much about HTML coding or other web preparation, so they have had to wait for me to make pages for them, and I just haven't got the time to do that sort of thing. So I spent a couple of days coding a 'back end' for the Mokuhankan catalogue, through which they themselves will be able to upload items.

It works in a similar fashion to the software one uses to upload to eBay - they put in the data, locate the images on their computer, and then send it off.

My software gets it all organized, makes thumbnails, popup enlargements, etc., puts all the data into the database, goes 'out' to find current currency exchange values based on their required price, and then codes the HTML pages automatically. When I get the email notifying me of this upload, I login, check it all over, approve (or not!) the item, and if I choose to 'turn it on', a single click activates it in the catalogue.

Ueda-san used it the other day to upload a few new Koitsu prints [alternate web link], which I checked over, and then quickly approved and activated. This is going to be a huge timesaver, and looks as though it will really help us move forward on this part of our business!

And speaking of the Takumi workshop, I'll be writing about them in my next newsletter, so once I was able to move around freely, I made a visit to chat with them. Their building is not much to look at, for sure!

But when you look closer, you can see things in the window ...

And inside - what a treasure house! More about this later ...

What else has been taking up time here ...? Well, one day was a visit from a young craftsman who has some interesting thoughts on the steel with which our carving knives are made, and he brought over some sample blades which we 'cooked up' on my kitchen stove, but as he is not ready to make his endeavours public yet, he has asked me to refrain from blogging about it. More about this later ... (I hope!)

And ... I spent most of yesterday afternoon 'gardening' up on my rooftop!

Long-time readers of this RoundTable may remember this sort of photo, which comes around in spring:

Pretty, right?

Well, yes ... but there is an obvious downside to having green stuff grow all over your house, and I have been procrastinating for a few years now. This past summer though, during a storm one day, the combined forces of wind and rain tossed that wisteria around pretty roughly, and now - six months later, with all the leaves down, and the view clear - this is what I see from my upstairs balcony:

I don't much care about the gutter, as the rain can fall freely from the edge of the roof onto the ground below, but what isn't showing in that photo are the tendrils/branches that have climbed up onto the top of the roof itself, and which are insinuating themselves into any tiny crack they can find. If I don't get this thing cut back before spring comes, it's going to destroy my roof.

Now I've got a long ladder, but there is no force on this planet that will get me up onto that roof, so I'm going to attack it in two stages. I picked up a long-handled branch trimmer the other day, and have started to trim off what I can reach from the balcony and windows. Once I've cut back as much as I can, I'm going to call neighbour Abe-san - who works as a roofer - and he'll hop up there to clear off the rest. And once we've got it to that stage, I'll trim annually to keep it from going up there again ...

Let's see ... what else has been keeping me 'out of view' these past couple of weeks ... Oh yes, we have another (big) problem with the Mystique print cases!

That series has been rolling along very well; there are now 173 names on the subscriber list for it, which means that there are less than 30 sets left. These remaining sets will make their way out to good homes bit by bit as 'back issue' subscriptions come in. But when I got a new order a couple of weeks ago, and went upstairs to the storeroom to get the case and first print ready for shipping, I found that a number of the cases still left here have developed a discolouration on the front panel:

I right away contacted a few of the collectors to see if their cases demonstrated the problem, and all the replies came back negative. And as I have never had any reports of such a thing from the 'field' it seems that the problem may be something caused by the local storage circumstances here (this place can be pretty damp in summer), although my own case, on display here in my 'living room' is completely normal.

There is no way I can send these out, but I certainly can't afford to get 30 more made (nor would the maker accept such a small order anyway). So, I don't see any other solution than to get out some sandpaper, sand them down to bare wood, and then re-varnish the front face of each one.

But as I'm afraid of the problem coming back, even under fresh varnish, it would be better to stain the front panel a deeper tone, so that such discolouration won't cause future problems. So I've started testing ...

Always something ...

And finally ... (finally!) ... work has begun on tracing the hanshita for carving Mystique #18, which will be the final print in the series:

So there's the update ... apologies that I haven't been very 'visible', but it's not like I've been basking on the beach somewhere! (Hah! Fat chance!)