I’ve been moving furniture and presses around in the studio for the past month, trying to figure out a way to get the natural dye operation into the same space where the printmaking and bookbinding happen, because it’s the space with all the good lighting and the ventilation. It’s a big, exhausting job. But it’s starting to feel like it’s going to work out, and it’s shaping up to actually feel more spacious than before. If I can find somewhere for all the STUFF to go.

This is what the south wall looks like as of yesterday. I moved that gray table on the right, with the extremely heavy Nolan flatbed press on it that’s too heavy for Peter and I to lift together anymore, all the way over next to the doorway by shifting and scooching, shifting and scooching kind of like how the Easter Island heads were put in place. That was literally the only work I could do that day. Then the press table, which used to jut out into the middle of the room, got pivoted against the wall (with that Chandler & Price Pilot press on it, which is very heavy but not too heavy to lift), and the drying rack in the corner also pivoted 90°. And suddenly this whole space feels wide open, and for the first time in this studio all the letterpress furniture and spacing is on the same side of the room as the presses. Now I can’t wait to get back to printing in here, except for the chaos I’m not showing you over on the other side of the room.
That handpainted Tabor Metal Fabricators sign came from the business my Granddad came to Canada to operate. They made those truck trailers that carry cars, and when the business folded my tricycle, which my dad had taken into work to fix, got abandoned in the locked-up building and when I was a teenage I would regularly stop by that still shuttered building on my jaunts through the industrial park, peering through the murky windows trying to spot my trike in all the abandoned junk that was in there.
I use that sign to block the studio doorway, moving it into place every single time I leave the room so this very cute asshole won’t try to come in and poop on the floor. She has a thing for concrete.

Don’t let that sweet face fool you. This is an absolute monster.