PAL groups & Letter Press

Monday was a chance to size up the 2nd years as we were introduced to them through our PAL session. Not sure who was more uncomfortable at first, us or them!

They had decided to use pass the parcel as an ice breaker to get to know us and for us to get to know us too!!! They had put a fair bit of effort in to the game and it was all relaxed and good fun. I had to show everyone my party trick...only problem being, I don't have one! None of it was taken serioulsy though. After I stayed behind to chat with Vicky, Luke and George and they were all happy to talk about the course and anythign really. It's useful to know them, handy for tips, advice and also nice to just know more people :-)

Letter Press...

On tuesday we were able to get our hands dirty using letter press for the first time. We were asked to look for a piece of litery text that describes or details a place of a sense of journey and to use some of the content for our letter press induction.

I trawled through pages of naff poetry on the net before turing to some Lonely Planet journals I have at home.

I wanted to use this Mark Twain quote but it's probably too long;

"Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't dothan the one's you did do. Throw off the bowlines, Sail from the safe harbour, catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."

I wrote this in the front of my diary when I was travelling just as a reminder to try everything when the oppertunity comes up.

So I think I'm going to use this Kenyan Proverb;

"Treat the earth well. It was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children".

Although knowing me, I will change my mind several times in the next hour alone!

I used a mixture of lower case and upper case in different typefaces to spell the words "Kenyan Proverb". It came out pretty much as I hoped. I put less ink on some parts to give a worn effect and used the letter "V" upside down for "A" and some letters back to front. I like it!

The process is pretty straight forward but it does give you an idea of how long it would have taken to produce a page or even a book using this method. But I find it quite therepuetic and I can't wait to get in the press room again and just experiment.