At Last or Happy Bunnydom

There are two reasons for being a happy bunny this morning.

 

Firstly I had sprats for breakfast. I am very fond of sprats and they appear on the fish counter very rarely ( I am even fonder of whitebait but they never appear here at all). There is something which smacks of forbidden indulgence in having sprats for breakfast instead of Sultana Bran or whatever other cereal is around.

 

Secondly I spent yesterday afternoon at The PrintShed and printed out a lot of Sir Patrick Spens. My problems were that the local College has a roller press and that was not producing good results. Lino experts told me that roller presses are not suitable and you need a vertical press. So I tried my bookbinding press but that did not work either. Hence the trip to The PrintShed which is an hour's drive away. I took all the tools I had used with me to see if they were causing my problem. Diagnosis. The ink is fine, the lino cuts are fine, the roller was not good and my press was to blame. It is true that I cannot get the pressure on my press that you can with Victorian monster in The Printshed. I took four books printed out on Bockingford inkjet paper plus a load of spare paper. Each page has two verses on the right and a lino cut on the left.

 

Here is some of yesterday's printing laid out in my studio just to make sure they are dry.

And here are four samples.

 

Because it took some time to sort out what was wrong and set everything up, I only printed seven of the pages. I am going back on Friday to finish the rest.

 

And the Megado is slowly being sleyed up.