Written on October 11, 1990 [Permalink]

October 7

This weekend totally spent on carving - the poem, border outlines, and general clearing. Finished. No trouble with the shoulder this time, and I suppose this is due to using the metal hammer instead of that little lightweight stick of wood. I'm not having to 'drive' the chisel, but just let the weight of the hammer do the work. It's only taken how many years to figure it out?

October 8

Made the transfers in the morning and pasted them down. Carving finished before it was time to head out for Japanese class in the evening. added one extra colour that wasn't in the original - a background colour in the areas of kimono pattern. I toyed with the idea of carving it just to fit the little fan-shaped areas of the design, but decided that I didn't want another two days of work...

October 9

Not enough time for a printing run before the week's classes, so started the carving on Sangi Hitoshi [2-10]. This is my last blank block - the cupboard is bare!. I don't even have any colour blocks left. I guess it's time to call Shimano-san again, although that is getting to be a real chore.

Prepared some strips for printing the name strips for Kotai Gogu no Daibu Shunzei [2-9]. I can only get two impressions of the name on each strip of paper cut from the washi sheet. I usually get four.

Printed the strips in the evening. Paper a bit on the wet side, but no problems.

October 10

Visit from Nona Hershey. I don't know if I mentioned it last week, but she had heard about us from Michael Metteer, one of the customers. She's an American printmaker, teaching here in Japan, and wants to learn something about using woodblocks. She was here for three hours, trying printing, taking notes about this and that, and getting addresses and stuff. I had given her the phone number of Yoshida studio last week when she phoned, and she has set up to go there for a while.

Carving on Sangi Hitoshi's 'rosettes'. Unlike the Dianagon Kinto print last year, I'm putting them on the same block as the black kimono this time. I think I'll be able to print both the thin lines - and a smooth black kimono. We'll see ...

I also spent some time checking over the 10 prints for next year. Last week, I made a few changes in the distribution, to try and avoid a kimono pattern conflict, and tonight I thought I would check the poems themselves. Perhaps I shouldn't have. It turns out that six of the 10 are autumn topics! There's no way I should have that many all together, so I guess it's back to the drawing board. I'll split up the little yellow sample strips that I made, and try a new arrangement, this time considering the poetry as well (I left that to random chance last time)

October 11

Sent off a letter to Usui-san in Niigata. I included a copy of the upcoming 'Hyakunin Issho' article on his work, and asked for corrections and/or comments. Shimano-san has remained totally silent about his article last issue. Maybe we got something wrong? Whenever we get write-ups in the newspaper, there's usually some kind of mistake involved, and I guess I should try and avoid doing the same thing to somebody else.

Ashida-san spent the day here wrapping Ise no Taifu [2-8] for shipping on Monday.