Paper making

Remember my awesome schedule this year? And how one of the classes that I'm taking is History of the Book? Well, it's awesome. We have class twice a week, and one of those days is a field trip. Last week, we went to visit this paper-making guy, and we got to make our own paper! For some reason, it sounds a lot cooler than it really is. Or is it that cool? I can't decide. Either way, here are some pictures I took of this guy's little garage-turned-paper-making shop

Papers hanging up to dry. 

A(n unoccupied) paper wasp nest:

These are so cool--this is the actual paper, it's not a drawing or anything. It has to do with the mold that they use to make the paper, so these are basically just really intricate watermarks. Crazy, huh?

Mr. Paper-maker explaining how it's done:

And then demonstrating. I don't know why he chose to make the paper yellow for us. Oh well.

Scooping up the liquid paper (a bin of warm water and paper particles that got stuck on our hands),

letting it drain, 

and then it stick to the little mold thing (I'm trying to think if there's a word for that... I'm sure there is. I don't know it).

And then you had to roll it so that it stuck to these cloth strips.

Here I am making my own paper:

And then after waiting about a week for them to dry, we all got our pieces of paper back! Ta-da! It's like magic! 

But really, it's not every day that you get to say that you made your own piece of paper! Now the question is what am I going to do with it?