Xmas Came Early This Year!

If you are anything like me, you’ve spent the last month in a haze of work and probably can’t even remember half of what you’ve done – at least that’s how I felt when I went to make this post and realised that a whole month has passed by since my last one!  Where has all the time gone?  All I know is that it must have been productive because there has been a lot happening around the house and studio to keep me occupied and I’m well and truly hanging out for a break over Xmas!

Speaking of which, I wanted to share a little of something extremely exciting that happened to me this year – Xmas came early!!  That’s right – my printmaking dreams came true earlier this year when I became the proud owner of a beautiful Heidelberg Windmill Letterpress .

Helga is her name and she was owned by a lovely lady in Victoria whose partner (a trade printer) had passed away.  Not wanting to see such a well maintained machine end up as scrap metal, the word was sent out that the press was in need of a good home.  Many thanks to everyone in the printmaking grapevine who led me to her door.  After a visit to see the press followed by the same from my partner (who called me up with the phrase ‘so, how do we move this monster?’) – we managed to get her shipped up to Brisbane – below is a bit of a photo-op of the events as they unfolded…

It was a rather interesting experience getting the press out of its old home, a shed which had had renovations made once the press was in and then had a garden put in in front of it…  Note to all future press owners – make sure you keep the access to your press’s home clear!  A wall had to be knocked down and a garden trampled through to get her out!

After lots of tugging and pushing up the garden path, she was all packed up on a pallet and ready to be shipped back to the studio.

Then came the hair-raising experience of craning her into the studio!

And then a little more manoeuvering to get her into her new home – at which point it started to bucket down with rain outside.

I think the correct phrase that sums me up at the moment is ‘tickled pink’ – I’m absolutely in love with this machine and have been reading the manuals cover to cover, getting online to find out about parts and figuring out exactly how to get the right impression (who would have thought that oils for presses could be so interesting?).  It’s been a bit of a learning curve but surprisingly, she is very easy to use as long as you set her up correctly – the Germans make beautiful machinery is all I can say!

So, a big thank you to everyone who has helped and assisted with getting her running/advice on her as I’m slowly but surely enjoying the benefits of creating work on her… but more on this in the future.  Have a great holiday season, don’t get too sunburned (or perhaps I should say too cocky crossing floodzones as this year we won’t really need to worry too much about the sun with the way the weather is currently)!  And I’ll be online again at the end of January in 2011!

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