Now where were we?

Oh, yes. One of us was subtly hiding the fact that she made a big boo boo on the current project, and was waiting until she found a solution before she said anything about it.

Before all the running around of the last week, you might recall there was a linocut, supposedly of oak leaves, underway. The last time you saw it, it had a mysterious mustard-colored smudge on it. Later that same day it had a mysterious orange-colored smudge applied, and then a tan leaf-like color over the entire block.

And there the trouble began. Smarty-pants me thought the tan color would cover parts of the orange and yellow smudges and obliterate the fact that lazy inking had occurred. Smarty-pants me was mistaken. Here's what you missed.


Oops. Houston, we have bleed-through. And the tan color is a little too dark for this step, too.

So you didn't see this shot... determined as I was to have a solution before admitting the error of my ways.

This afternoon (which I might mention has been cold, gray, rainy and even, yes, spitting something which might be identified in some locales as snow) I finally had some time to spend in damage control, so I decided to do a little selective stenciling. I SHOULD have done this for yellow and orange. The payback for my laziness is that have to do it anyway.


I made my stencil from a sheet of tracing paper placed over the block. A few choice shapes were cut out, and ink was applied. Worked like a charm. The most critical sections where bleed-through occurred have been covered, I avoided putting another complete layer of lighter ink on the print, and I can now go forward from here. I think. Whew.

The most fun part of this adventure, however, was getting to use my improved drying rack setup! I've been wanting to change the location and height of my snazzy clothespin and 1x2 print rack since... oh... about the time we moved in and installed it. On our way home from the Front Range last week we stopped by my brother's to claim another precious flat file that he had managed to acquire (for FREE), and had been storing in his garage. You know how this goes, right? You bring in one new piece of furniture and the entire room has to be rearranged.

Actually, we only had to rearrange one end of the room, because the only place to put the new file was on top of the old one. They weren't exactly the same size, so some tipping and sliding and smooshing had to take place. Once that was done, it was clear that the print rack had to go somewhere else. But WHERE? Space is definitely at a premium. The best spot to put it was right in front of the files, where I could reach it to use, but it would then be in the way of file access.

Good thing we bought those pulleys over a year ago and put them in the drawer to collect dust.

After a modicum of head-scratching and clothesline restringing, we finally installed my completely adjustable rack! Lower it to hang prints... raise it to access the files. Are we brilliant, or what? ;-)