new shops and nice words

The summer has been a slow selling season, I can tell you that. But when followed up by a busy fall, I have no cause for complaint.
First of all, Montpelier finally has an indie-handcraft boutique. Super-crafter Emily moved to town only a few months ago, and got to work while the rest of us just kept talking. The result: Swingin' Sphere! It's a pretty little space, and the photos on the site don't do it justice. While they're officially open now, the grand opening is September 29, and Emily says to "make sure to stop by for a cupcake and a free gift with every purchase from our lovely consignor Melissa of Honey Bee Herbals."

Second is a double-whammy: my first wholesale order, and my first international shop. You heard me right! Arthur's Circus is a new shop opening next week in Melbourne, Australia. Natalie saw my Bingo Books on etsy, and emailed me straight away about having a few for her vintage-inspired shop. Read what she has to say on the shop's blog, and be sure to look at what she got in the mail this week! Thank goodness I'm nowhere near Melbourne, otherwise I'd need these and these right now.

And now for some nice words:


May Day Studio got a little bit o'love over the summer on Apartment Therapy: Chicago's regular Scavenger feature. Click here for the full post.

After delivering new books to new shops in Burlington, I found these lovely and flattering blog posts from Sara at Made Boutique and Amanda at Studio STK. If ever you find yourself in Burlington, I highly recommend checking out both places!

catching up part two

Here they are, the real reasons I've been offline for the last few weeks:

one: a custom portfolio for Boston designer Deborah Wieder.

Deborah wanted to give her client, a local synagogue, a book both tangible and meaningful to hold her design work. The logo is raspberry and ochre, so Deborah found a lovely deep pink bookcloth, and I used several colors of linen thread--white, tan, ochre, and maroon--as accent. The binding is a kind of modified Japanese 4-hole binding, with a separate spine-pleat and hinged covers. The four threads gather together at the top station, and are simply knotted to make eight strands, as a reference to the tzitzit on traditional Jewish prayer shawls.

two: a custom wedding album for an old friend

Courtney wanted to give her newlywed-friends a handmade gift, and so approached me about creating a one-of-a-kind album or scrapbook for them. I'm sure I overloaded her with ideas, but she was definitely excited about the process, so played along. She found the cover paper--an indigo, carrot leaf-print lokta--and we settled on the buttonhole stitch for binding and Stonehenge for the pages. The result is a huge book: 12" tall x 12-1/4" wide x 1-1/2" thick. And it weighs almost three pounds! The buttonhole stitch is unique in that there's a hole in the spine, where the folds of the signatures show through. I like it because the thread binding the book together draws the eye from top and bottom to the exposed folds. It's a book that will cry out to be taken off the shelf!

catching up on old times

It's been a killer couple of weeks, and I don't have much energy today, but I did want to catch up (as it were) on a few letterpress events from the summer.

one: the Printing Arts Fair at the Museum of Printing in North Andover, Mass. (I dare you to say that three times fast!)
That's Shelley (of Albertine Press), Mr. Benjamin Franklin, and I in front of my table. Mr. Franklin actually has a handpress, and in addition to being an 18th century historian, gives walking tours around the Boston area. (His real name is Gary, and he was amazing to talk with.) You can click on the picture to see more from the day, or click here to see Shelley's slightly more timely recap.

two: summertime workshops at Letterpress Things

On the left are Janet and Emily, testing out the Pilot. They spent the day working on thank-you notecards. Emily was a real trooper, working in a shop designed for folks a little bit taller and a little bit stronger. It was great to see a younger person get so excited about printing...and pick up techniques and terminology with such ease.

On the right are Tim and Erin, a carpenter and printmaker, respectively. We had a mostly quiet day, and they set a whole lot of type and printed pages pages for our little chapbooks. It was a nice to take it easy and focus on the process of printing...they left me with a lot of food for thought about the workshop. Click on the photos to see more, and click here to read about upcoming workshops.

three: the Letterpress Guild of New England's annual WayzgooseThis event was just last Saturday (my, how times flies!) at Firefly Press in Allston, MA. That's John Kristensen (Firefly's proprietor) demo-ing the Vandercook SP-20. Click on the picture to see more of the event. All told, it turned out to be a lovely day of talking, printing, and meeting new people!