I spent a great deal of time this week at the International Printing Museum. I was also busy this week printing my recipe card for the Letpress Cookbook. (Letpress is a web server for letterpress printers.) I had my type cast at the museum last Saturday, ingredients cast in Ludlow and directions on the Linotype. Unfortunately, the fonts I was thinking of in my head, they did not have at the museum, so I had to redesign on the fly. Once I got the type home, I realized it wouldn’t fit the layout. However, I had 350 recipe cards to get out, printed in 2 colors on the front, and 1 on the back, and had to get printing on at least part of it. I decided to keep the ludlow type, and try to recast the linotype text later in the week. Monday I printed the Ludlow cast “Mandate” font, along with my bird linocut, and hand set “Vaudeville” for the titles.

Tuesday I had a field trip to the museum with both of my classes. (Last semesters trip here) we had a super fun time this semester, printing wood type and cuts on 2 Vandercooks, an 1850’s parlor press, and a proof press.

The Linotype operator wouldn’t be in until Thursday though, so when Thursday rolled around, back to the museum I went. Thursday was also Veterans day, so I had the kids with me, and got them started making some decorations for the Museums’ upcoming Dickens Day event.
I finished printing the recipe card Thursday night and Friday, so now that project is at least done.

Saturday, back I was again at the museum, for the Book arts Guild meeting and lecture on Richard Hoffman.
Hoffman was a printer and teacher, known for his use of ornament, such as on this lavish cover

After the lecture we had hands on time printing with some of the museums ornaments,

and a viewing in the gallery of some of Hoffman’s printed works.
This cover was one of my favorites, with its inspired use of swashes.
Just when I was getting ready to leave, some fellow docents were printing a proof of these fabulous initial characters.
Stuff like this gives me chills, I like it so much! Here they are cleaned up a bit in photoshop, and alphabetized: Now we at the museum would like to find out where they originated from. If you have any ideas, please leave them in the comments below!

Happy Halloween 2010! I thought I would share with you some photos of little miss Sadie circa 1999:


And little miss Sadie this Halloween, she was sort of an evil fairy: The good news is I got out of sewing a costume this year, as even Theo went as something that required no sewing. (I’ll try to post a photo of him later, he was pretty awesome!)

The bad news is that kids grow up so fast it is scary!
Hope you all had a wonderful Halloween!