Written on April 8, 1992 [Permalink]

April 1

Plugging away at the colour block carving. Two done in two days. There really isn't much more than a day's work in the whole lot of them, but with four kids running around the place ... (Ozawa-san's kids were over for a two day 'tomari-kai'). Ashida-san came over and picked up the name labels, and Shintani-san and her husband went in their car to pick up 200 sheets of cardboard (four month's supply) from Yamashita-san's place. Every time we do this, my room becomes jammed with the stuff, and it only gradually disappears over the next few months.

April 4

Thursday was pretty much gone with Himi's birthday party (10 kids for five hours), and we spent Friday afternoon down at the river taking in the cherry blossoms, but finally got the last block done late Friday night.

Saturday was lucky. For a change, the kids both spent most of the day out - Himi at somebody else's birthday party, and Fumi at Naoko-chan's place. Took advantage of the rare quiet and worked on mixing the colours for Ise. This is tough this time. Not only do I have to get away from the 'red hakama - yellow kimono' combination, but I also have to find colours for all the under kimonos that peek out around the edge. One problem is still not having enough brushes or bowls to 'go around' when there are this many colours. Trying to rinse brushes back and forth while trying a bunch of different colours gets to be a drag ...

'Settled' on a set of colours, and made a few samples on junk paper. I'll let them sit overnight and see what they look like with 'fresh' eyes in the morning. I've got an extra day for this, as I can't start the production printing until Tuesday anyway. (Monday morning is Fumi's school entrance ceremony, and then Ned Herperger is coming over in the afternoon).

Got a call from Hirano-san at the local Yomiuri office. He got the latest 'Hyakunin Issho' the other day and is apparently going to write something about it for the Tama page.

Three or four of the customers have called over the past couple of days asking about this print... If the printing goes well this week, the women will ship on Friday the 10th, just about exactly one month behind schedule. In order to get all 10 out before the year end now, we're going to have to ship a print in August this year rather than taking a 'month off' (assuming I don't fall behind even further ...)

April 5

The colours didn't look particularly exciting in the morning, so remixed a few of them, and tried some more samples on junk paper. These seemed like they might be OK, so moistened 70 sheets to get ready for the main printing. Used five of these in the afternoon doing a test run for registration and colours. (The junk paper expands and shrinks way more than the hosho, so I've learned not to even bother cutting the kento marks when doing trial printing with it. I just place the paper on top of the printed mark for a rough guide. When I do the first printing with Yamaguchi-san's paper, I cut and adjust the marks at that time.) The registration on this print is the most delicate I've tried yet, and I've really got to be careful when printing the sumi to get every sheet placed very carefully in the corner mark. Concentrating on careful placement when printing the colour blocks doesn't help when it turns out that the sumi was printed a little bit carelessly ...

After the kids went to sleep, checked the paper to see if it needed more water, and found it in perfect condition - so printed the 65 copies. No problems, but a bit tough on the legs - it's been five full weeks since I printed Akahito ...

April 7

Ned didn't stay long yesterday afternoon, so got started on the colour printing. (He wanted to let me know he was leaving Japan, and wouldn't be around to try any more prints ...) This kento is finicky. Some of the boundary lines between the colours are hair-thin, and there is absolutely no room for the slightest mis-registration. With fourteen impressions to do, there are going to be a lot of misprints this time. After two days now, I've got eight colours done, with six left to do, and I don't want to think about how many copies are slightly off ...

April 8

A long, long day ... and finished them off. I'm not sure how many are spoiled (I'll check after drying them in the morning), but I made a rough check while doing the 'katsuji' impression, and it seems like there might not be too many. Every month when I do this last step, I turn out the overhead lights and do it by the light of a bare bulb hanging down near the bench. The prints look great - smooth bright colours that all blend together beautifully. Of course, as soon as I turn on the overhead light, all the uneven printing and other defects jump right out, but for a few minutes there ...

There's no point in making paper wet for the second batch, as the weekend is coming up. I'll try and repeat this week's schedule again - sumi Sunday, colours following ...