Common Reed Phragmites australis

What I first believed to be Pampas Grass turned out to actually be the Common Reed. This was a delightful and very easy paper to make. I harvested quite a bit of the green plant and used just the leaves. The reed itself was too tough for my blender and I didn't have a Baby Critter on the way at the time, so I tossed the stems away. I cooked the leaves, after cutting them into 1" lengths or less, for two hours with washing soda (1Tbsp per quart water). The resulting blendered pulp was a nice crisp paper that stayed green. The paper I pulled was fairly thick as I have yet to learn how to judge pulling thinner paper. This paper will be nice decorative paper and will need some kind of surface sealant as it sops up water most willingly!

	On the left is a picture of the first few pulls I did lit from the front. The right is lit from behind the paper. Click on the thumbnails for a closer look.
	On the left is a picture of the paper with stinkweed seeds and seed hulls lit from the front. The right is lit from behind the paper.

During the months of September/October 2002, I cobbled up a few packets of cooked plant fibers into home papermaking kits and offered them for sale at my booth in the local Farmer's Market. I took with me the sample papers I had drawn from all the papermaking experiments. I found these papers lost their lovely color when exposed to the sun.

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Copyright 1998-2006 Colleen D. Bergeron.
Last revised: DEC 3 2006