Feeling hot to rearrange the printshop! Sketching out ideas for a new flow, better paper storage using a huge vintage school cabinet, and connecting the output of the collating machine to the input of the booklet maker. So far I’ve been resisting the urge (so many other projects, it’s climbing season, I still haven’t finished re-framing those prints, do I really need to be moving furniture and hundreds of pounds of paper this very instant?? etc)… but you know what, I’m gonna begin today. Follow the energy.

Adam and I spent a week with family in St. Louis recently, and I wanted to offer some highlights to note down, in case you have a trip coming up:

1. A brioche doughnut at Damn Fine Hand Pies. Just look at this beauty…

   

2. CITY MUSEUM!!!!!! Actually, I think it is worth planning a trip

   to St. Louis sometime in your life just for this. And if you don’t have kids to go with, then go to the late night hours on Friday or Saturday night (often open til 10 or even 11pm). Next time I go I want to bring kneepads and a headlamp and get serious about even more complete exploration of the tunnels and slides.

   

3. Cherokee St.: many great taco places, ‘ssippi (an extremely charming place to be), vintage shops, and the all-cookbooks-hallway-sized bookstore Anchovy. Plus the shops/community spaces of our riso friends Swan Meadow and Melon Press.

4. Wandering the museums and islands and waterfront in Forest Park, and visiting the many pergolas and bandstands and architectural-follies in Tower Grove Park. At the (free) art museum in Forest Park, I always visit Frank Stella’s Madinat as-Salam III, a monumental 10’ high by 25’ long painting. Being in its presence really does something for me, every time.

The rest of this newsletter is…

THINGS FROM US & PALS:
I have a little piece on independent food/cooking publications in Bear Bear’s new periodical, Meal Train.

Hot off the Press is July 11 at Fantagraphics in Seattle: keep an eye out for the new Trailer Blaze Residency anthology from Short Run… I have a comic about mold in it. :)

Also Seattle: Paper Pushers is downtown this summer, and very wonderful.

In Norway, the Climate Emergency Reading Room at Oplandia Samtidskunst.

Haunting Is Just a Reason by Elizabeth Case, in minor literature[s].

Kim Kent just opened A Tiny Literature Shop in Hudson, NY.

Rachel Hays just released Soup Library.

NO NEED TO FEEL ALONE IN YOUR WARINESS ABOUT AI:

The World’s Wide Web by Rachel Hays:

We’ve been trained by billionaires to value convenience over every other thing. And, in that way, are more isolated than ever. I’ll set aside how bad and ugly AI work is, how it’s sucking all of our water, wetlands and taxing our energy grid and instead point out that WE DON’T NEED IT. We are not meant to do every aspect of every project alone or answer every question instantly with an amalgam of boiled down half truths. Asking is part of learning. Connecting is part of the human experience. […] Don’t ask ChatGPT ask Real Fucking People. It’s a way we care about each other. […] When someone has a question about canning, dog nonsense, soil blocking, thrifty ways to hunt down equipment or hyper-specific travel recs like “where are the massage chairs in this airport I’m stuck in” I hope that you ask me! […] I’m sure that your circle of friends is as talented, multifaceted and knowledgeable as mine. Ask them questions! Tap into their skills and in that way strengthen your own. Use your lifelines. Stay behind with the rest of us, stay human. Feel at home in failure and growth alike as you live your one human life.

In that spirit, if you have questions for me or Adam, reply to this newsletter, and we’ll do our best to answer. AMA!

The AI-inflected crisis artists are facing, in 4 charts:

Artists really, really hate AI. In fact, one of the Carnegie paper’s most striking findings is the sheer extent to which artists are refusing and abstaining from the technology. Sure, it’s been easy enough to intuit from any glancing contact with artists on social media that they harbor a great disdain for generative AI. But the numbers are something else. According to the survey, 99% of artists “disliked” AI; for 92%, the dislike was “strong.” And that distaste translates into action, too. Per the survey, 85% of artists completely abstain from using AI at all. And 88% percent refusal use AI to generate images. That’s about as overwhelming a rejection of the technology as you’re likely to see in any field.

If people talked about other technologies the way they talk about AI: “Is it possible that my lawnmower is making me dumber? Let me ask it what it thinks.”

And some more reading recs: AI Doesn’t Work and We All Know it Doesn’t Work / You will never win at AI / Blood in the Machine / Ed Zitron

A friend who teaches computer science had 40 middle schoolers doing a project using software where an AI assistant was available, and asked them to reflect on if they used it or not, and why. None of them did. Commentary included: “I’m not a bot-licker!” “I don’t speak with the clankers.” “I can do it myself.” “I like to think for myself.”

CREATIVITY:
Artist and technologist Angie Fan on putting in the time and thought – The Creative Independent:

I feel like when I write, it’s an encapsulation of my own thought processes. It’s sort of my little mark to say, “Hey, I was here. I’m out here. If you see me, let me know.” I think that has to do with so much of my foundational creative come-up being on the internet. The old internet felt much more like a place where you could carve out your own little world. People would leave little treasure troves around that you could find. I love getting to see into other people’s minds, into other worlds that they’ve created. That always felt so special to me. I think that’s something I’m still reaching for in my own work, whether it’s my writing or websites. They are little transmissions I’m putting out there.

Sobremesa with Kristen Pumphrey, founder of P.F. Candle Co.:

Do you have any secrets to overcome creative blocks? I physically reset my whole space. I think this works because you’re touching physical objects and dealing with very low-pressure decision-making. You’re making these really quick, rapid-fire decisions, but you’re also able to move through it in a bit of a creative flow state—like arranging books by subject or by height. The other thing I do is put timers on myself. Being aware of the clock, setting a timer for just five minutes and doing what I can in that window is usually enough to take that good flow energy and ‘rebound’ off of it back into a true creative state.

“There is no cultural production without financial support.”:

“It’s very hard to get permission to be an artist. No one’s going to give it to you. You have to decide for yourself. You have to make it up for yourself.”

The economics of self-publishing a book on Metalabel – I always appreciate posts with lots of good numbers.

GARDENING:
Adam and I are making a garden (and also learning about “psychological” fences for deer). Growing starts from seed under lights in the basement, using the seed blocker method. (Can there be “too many” tomatoes? No.) We’ve been letting the field grow to see what’s there: many daisies, poppies, cosmos, borage, yarrow, dandelions, mullein, and so many grasses and unknown plants. Serviceberry, thimbleberry, raspberry, wild roses, snowberry and lupine in the brambly areas. Doing a lot of observing. I notice myself feeling the urge to go faster or “do something” sometimes, and keep coming back to this quote from Dark Properties’ The irresistibility of a solar punk future:

The very first thing they taught us was the idea of “protracted and thoughtful observation,” i.e. don’t intervene until you know what you’re doing. As people socialized under capitalism who wanted to immediately dig in and get things done, that was important to hear. But we realized it was important to observe first, and get to know the land a little before we changed much.

As a leek-obsessed person, I liked this idea for turning leek greens into powder, and thought this article on Starting a Dye Garden from Seed was beautifully done.

GRIZZLY BEAR ADVICE:
Learned a lot from Bear Spray Is A Placebo, including:

According to Smith, the world’s foremost expert on human-bear conflict, simply going outdoors with another adult, and remaining close together, may be the simplest, most effective bear avoidance technique we have. “To the best of my knowledge, I have not seen an instance where two or more persons have remained grouped, whether standing their ground or backing from a bear, that the bear made contact,” he told me. Elsewhere in his research we can see that you’re twice as likely to be attacked by a bear in poor visibility terrain as you are when you can see a good distance. And that humans have a 90 percent success rate at terminating in-progress maulings by physically intervening, while those rescuers only have a 10 percent chance of being mauled themselves. Put all that together—travel in groups and remain tight together, avoid areas of dense brush or tree growth when in bear habitat, help a buddy if they do get attacked—and you have the simple, effective, easily communicated information you need to actually stay safe in bear country.

Some sort of metaphor in there for staying together and taking the risk of helping one another.

— Amelia (& Adam)

P.S. — Country fans: I’ve been cracking up at the Dry Spell lyrics on Kacy Musgraves’ new album. And the Southern ghost story in Luke Combs’ Seeing Someone… ooooh.

P.P.S. — Mystery fans: The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle was fun summer reading.

P.P.P.S. — Don’t forget, just reply to this email to AMA.

Wow, doing things (vs thinking of doing them, wanting to do them, but not doing them)… is great for creative energy!

I recently realized that taking an allergy medicine a doctor had recommended (Zyrtec) for a few months was making me feel quite anxious and brain-foggy, racing heartbeat, insomnia, and a few other things. (Searching on Reddit, it seems like this happens to some percentage of people.) I was really dragging there for a while but couldn’t quite figure out why. I stopped taking the medicine and I’m feeling a lot more myself, and I’ve been doing things.

Finishing up all the detailed edits to the next All Well pattern that I’d struggled to focus on for weeks. Making some cute branding and working on the color scheme for Layout Department. Organizing my studio and plotting a re-organize of the printshop. Doing the first workouts with the barbell: learning the deadlift, bench press, squat, overhead press and row. Adam and I have made progress on house projects — getting art hung up, which changes the way rooms feel so much, and seed blocking and potting up our starts. Baking cake and sourdough. Working in the sketchbook and collaging more, and testing out some art supplies I just thrifted:

I still have health things to work with, but already, the contrast of being able to do more of the creative work and household/cooking/logistical work I want to do is giving me so much more energy.

The noticeable increase in energy is making me think of how this 2023 essay by Mandy Brown, Energy Makes Time:

It turns out, not doing their art was costing them time, was draining it away, little by little, like a slow but steady leak. They had assumed, wrongly, that there wasn’t enough time in the day to do their art, because they assumed (because we’re conditioned to assume) that every thing we do costs time. But that math doesn’t take energy into account, doesn’t grok that doing things that energize you gives you time back. By doing their art, a whole lot of time suddenly returned. Their art didn’t need more time; their time needed their art.

I’m using art here, because in my experience, most people have something shaped like that in their lives—some thing that when neglected siphons time and energy away but when attended to delivers it in droves. But you can substitute art for whatever activity or habit leaves you more energized, gives you that time back: puzzle night with your BFFs, organizing your colleagues, working a shift at the community garden, baking cookies for the block party, going to the woods, touching grass and all that.

…and Kottke’s comments on it, re: getting into the flow state of creative work, “I had indeed been putting off doing this kind of work because I didn’t have the time and energy, but once I was able to make space for it in my day, it became clear that it was an essential thing that I need to do so that I can create time for everything else.”

I’m also thinking about that Nancy Rubins quote:

The only advice I could give any artist is just to make the work, and work will lead to more work, and you’ll figure things out for yourself through doing that work.

It’s always interesting with the ebbs and flows of chronic illness related stuff to see how much that work-making process is energizing and cyclical. And how there’s some minimum bar that my artist-self needs.

We’ve still been having tons of fun making the Layout Department app. There’s a new Pages view where you can see all your pages/spreads (separate from the imposed-onto-sheets view) and resize the pages, and add trim marks and bleed.

You can edit sizes with the text areas, and also click the little dot drag handles on the document itself to resize the PDF, trim, and bleed with your mouse.Something about the interactivity of dragging to resize makes me extremely thrilled, like wow, this is a real app! (This is the first big feature for the paid license — free version has the pages view too, but more limited options for resizing.)

There is so much I want to write about related to Layout Department, that’s not quite a fit for the documentation, but also seems like it would be too much (volume-wise) for the ANEMONE newsletter. I want to share some studio process and the creative process of the app design/build itself. And more generally, I’ve been wanting to write so much more on book design and printing your own books, as a regular person / artist at a small to medium scale. I am, as always, so fascinated by the artistic and financial and logistical choices you get to make, when you make your own books / zines / booklets. Similar topics to Notes on Artist Publishing and Taking Care of Yourself as an Artist Publisher, but even more practical too.

Here’s what I’m thinking:

• Deep dives into book and zine design choices: trim size and page size, choosing the paper to print on, and which printer to use, and bleed and creep and layout software, and more

• Tutorials on how to use Layout Department to help make your book and zine projects (beyond the documentation) — with photos and examples of specific projects

• Interviews with artist publishers about their own book layout and imposition processes (reply and let me know if you’d like me to interview you!)

• Reviews and recs for book/zine layout and design books

It’s stuff I’m already writing about here, but I want to go super deep and write MORE, and I know not everyone is necessarily into that level of detail. So we’ve decided split the ANEMONE newsletter content into two parts and start sending everything that’s book design/layout and Layout Department related via a new URL.

Besides helping me with editorial clarity, a big benefit of splitting the content into parts is that you’ll be able to unsubscribe from just the layouts content if you’re finding it too much / you aren’t interested in that. :)

The first Layout Department newsletter arrives on Thursday, and if you’re subscribed here you’ll automatically get it, or if you use an RSS reader you can add this feed link.

So excited for Seattle Art Book Fair this weekend, May 9–10, 11am-5pm both Saturday and Sunday! Lots of great programming and exhibitors! (I think if you read this newsletter, you’d especially like the talk by our friend Rachel Hays of Taxonomy Press on nourishing a publishing ecosystem, that’s 2:30pm on Sunday.) Also, there’s a pre-party in Pioneer Square Friday May 8; RSVP here. All events are free.

Adam and I are not tabling (currently in the midst of taking a year off from events) and we’re really excited about just getting to go walking around and buying books and saying hey to people. You can find some of our work at the show In Circulation: An Exhibit on Artist Publishing in Seattle at Columbia City Gallery, which is open Wednesday - Sunday, 11am - 7pm. (A handful of our books will be there, and some art prints that aren’t available online.)

LOOK: Nightblooming / Cavernous body / banchan plates with images of 호랑이 horangi and haetae from historic Korean paintings / Angela Kirkwood (riso animation) / Chattahoochie / evaporating paint leftovers to keep them from going into the wastewater or septic system / a chart with fun ideas for condiments / Overall, the slime mold enjoyed this mushroom

READ: In praise of stairs + danger playgrounds \ Nothing is ever going back to normal \ It’s just that some projects open a portal. What kind of artist just sits in front of the portal instead of walking through? \ Reading about composting t-shirts to make microbe tie-dye like prints led me onto this “top ten compost piles” roundup

QUOTES: I keep thinking of Zohran Mamdani and Trevor Noah talking and Mamdani saying:

And as Democrats, we’re constructing an ever lowering ceiling of possibility. You know, and we are robbing ourselves of ambition and imagination, and we’re telling people that their choice is between settling or sacrifice. And neither of these are enough. You have to have an affirmative vision of how life can be better than this, because this life already is suffocating people.

And this detail from How South Korea plans to use the Iran crisis to spur a renewables revolution:

In Guyang-ri, a farming village of 70 households about 90 minutes south-east of Seoul, people gather for communal free lunches six days a week. The meals are funded by the village’s one-megawatt solar installation, which generates roughly 10m won ($6,800) in net profit each month. “Residents eat lunch together every day, so we see each other’s faces, talk together,” says Jeon Joo-young, the village chief. “Bonds and solidarity between residents become much stronger. Life becomes more enjoyable.” The shift has been dramatic. Before the solar project launched in 2022, the village of about 130 people had no restaurant, no easy way to move around, and little communal infrastructure. Now solar revenue pays for meals, a village “happiness bus” for elderly people, a table-tennis facility and cultural activities.

Imagine doing good and useful things like communal infrastructure with energy, instead of the grift they’re trying to do with data centers for AI (the actual financials of which don’t look even remotely like a viable business; read Ed Zitron and Blood in the Machine for the nerdy details), or endless wars. Or imagine living in Australia, which plans to start offering residents at least 3 hours of free solar power a day this year.

Always returning to Ursula K le Guin:

We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable – but then so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words.

I like artist publishing (and building tools to help make things easier for other artist publishers) because it’s fun, and also because it’s part of imagining and communicating about and collectively building a better world. What affirmative visions of how life can be better are you working on?

Sending care, thanks for reading,

Amelia (& Adam)

P.S. — In case you missed it: Spectrolite for Windows!

In the future we plan to spin out the Tools and Contact Sheets (for riso animation) that are currently in the Mac version into their own standalone Mac + Windows apps (and make them better/cuter/more fun too).

So excited about all this — the infrastructure rewrite to make it all possible has been a huge project for us through this winter, and it feels really spring-y to get to share new work. And have a foundation for building a lot of new things next.

In the studio, I’ve been working on the upcoming all well kids sewing patterns. Tiny tops, tiny pants! Exceedingly cute and very fast to sew.

Feeling lots of creative energy with sewing lately with just playing — sewing or altering clothes for myself to wear, and for our house. I am just so horrified and angry about what America is doing in the world, and I’m finding it works keep my motivation up to keep taking action politically by also taking action with small creative things and getting energy from those. To notice when I’m feeling the urge to make something simple, and then just making the thing, as quick as I can.

I sewed a little hammock thing to hold the cords under Adam’s standing desk. I cut up some webbing and sewed the ends so they don’t fray, for yoga/stretching straps. I just thrifted another tshirt to hack into a cropped tank top for yoga, learning from my first version. I finally washed and pressed the 8 yards (!!) of Kvadrat wool deadstock I got off of ebay to finish sewing the cushion covers for the window seat. Progress! Closing open loops, finishing things, taking that energy and applying it to the next thing.

Another energizing thing lately: I checked out a bunch of sewing books from the library, and loved The Handsewn Wardrobe so much I had to immediately order my own copy — such great pattern making and sewing diagrams. (Louisa also has a wonderful newsletter.)

The book has me excited to make patterns based off my favorite jeans, edited to my taste/height/proportions even more. And to draft some knit tshirt patterns — I just thrifted some knit fabric to practice with, too. Reading not everything needs to exist as a finished piece of work was the reminder I needed: to just buy the fabric even though it’s white and I don’t really wear white (too hard to keep clean for how I live my life). But I can just practice. It cost $2/yard. And if I make a usable piece of clothing out of the white fabric, I can wear it or dye it or figure it out then. Otherwise it’s just practice. And I actually probably do need to practice first!

I also thought this post about sourcing sustainable trims & notions was great. I have been thinking about buying cotton thread to sew my garments with white/natural yardage (like silks and cottons from Dharma Trading) and then garment dying them once they’re sewn. Polyester thread doesn’t take dye in the same way as natural fibers, so I’ll need to figure that out.

So many technical challenges to figure out, to make art projects. It’s funny to see the parallels between inventing UX/UI design for apps, drafting sewing patterns and writing instructions for the public, and sewing patterns and projects just for your own use. They all have different technical challenges and satisfactions and things that block forward progress until you figure them out.

COOKING & EATING: We’ve started some seeds (mostly tomatoes) and are planning garden beds. I’m eating lots radish and onion soy sauce pickles (Alex’s mom’s recipe) and was really into this crispy shredded tofu recipe. These super seed crackers turned out great (I replaced the water and some of the flour with sourdough discard). I also really enjoyed this fermented sourdough maple pecan granola, although I did a about half sweetener it called for and it was still a bit too sweet for my taste.

WATCH: oh, the tsunami’s going to be an amazing opportunity for us. / hey raytheon, give me your fattest rocket

LOOK: Night Into Day (genuinely encouraging) \ Solar Panels That Don’t Look Like Solar Panels (cool) \ God forgives but paper grain don’t (lol) \ meet me at the flat file combo day bed on Mas Espacio (scroll down the page to find it) \ Old photos of Seattle before the Denny Regrade (a new form of spite house I didn’t know about!)

READ: A Few Motifs of Teaching (Robert Baxter) \ The Sky Is Not Falling On The Forest Service (logging info I didn’t know) \ The Invisible Kingdom Meghan O’Rourke

Off to read in the hammock because it’s SPRING,

—Amelia

P.S. — A preview of the trim / bleed / resize stuff we’re working on for Layout Department… You can click on the elements themselves (trim, bleed, document) to drag to resize visually too, it’s really fun to use.

Still sorting out the UX/UI details, so it will look different than this prototype, but that will be the next thing we release! (Then custom sizes for the sheets you’re printing on, after that.)

I make little cards for just about any idea, and pin them up on a board. It could be a drawing of a garment I want to sew, a sketch of a book/zine cover I might want to publish. A phrase, or a squiggle of ink, a pairing of colors, or really any little snippet of desire. I move things around on the boards, group them, stack them, arrange them by theme or order them by time. I simply look at them to remind myself they exist, too. (If you’re an “out of sight, out of mind” and “if I can’t see it it doesn’t exist” person as well, highly recommend trying out a pinboard to see if you like it.)

After we moved to the mountains, in the midst of all the big changes and furniture arranging, it took me many months to put them up again. I could really feel their absence. My brain just felt more sluggish, with one of my long-time external systems missing. Finally, I finished the project of covering some thrifted cork boards with cotton drop cloth fabric, and getting them up on the walls of my studio/office. (Somehow the white/cream background helps me visually, versus the cork.)

It’s perhaps totally over the top, but I currently have three pinboards in my office/studio, split into topic areas. 1. general creative practice 2. sewing (personal and All Well), and 3. inspiration and collage bits. (And there’s a fourth board in the printshop with all the riso projects, haha.)

Here’s a (blurry) glimpse at the personal project board last week. Lots of fragments of ideas there, a Long Calendar with big things blocked off, many project ideas.

The “inspiration” board is mostly found objects: An image of a moss-covered snapping turtle cut out of a magazine, an enamel pin from my mom that says “BE REALISTIC DEMAND THE IMPOSSIBLE”, a polaroid of a lake, foam mesh that once protected a pear, a dried leaf, a necklace, scraps of fabric, a zine, some art prints, a business card, drawings from Chaos Pictionary, a Georgia O’Keeffe postcard...

The sewing board currently has the facings patterns for a tank top (more below), a cardboard kumihimo loom with 8” of cording sticking out of it, a ziplock bag containing the grease-stained pastry bag I brought back from Copenhagen a year ago that I want to use as a pattern reference (gross? I prefer dedicated to my craft!). There are a bunch of little drawings of things I want to sew… window seat cushion covers, Clyde Trench and Vest, Helene Jeans, Andy Trousers, Bel Skirt, ironing board cover, kindle cover, cover for electronics cords, bolster pillow cover…

In parallel with all this work on paper (pinboards, plus morning pages, bullet journal, sketchbooks, notebooks) I’ve been enjoying having structured weekly/monthly notes in Obsidian. I’m using templates and the Periodic Notes plugin to fill in checklists and pre-fill stuff I want to do, review, or think about repeatedly.

Collator: Thanks to Robin Sloan, who found it on an auction and gave us the heads up, we added a used 10-bin collator to the printshop! With it, collating will take about 1/10th the amount of time, and much less repetitive motion — imagine me picking up sheets of paper for 10 hours, versus me moving stacks of paper into bins and keeping an eye on the machine for 1 hour. (This is an idealized world with no jams or feed errors, of course.)

I’m already thinking of how we can make bigger editions, and potentially run remote residencies where we print for other artists again. And we’d been holding off on doing the reprints of our out-of-stock publications until we got a collator… I’m excited!

Layout Department: Adam and I have been working on many things in Layout Department, our new app for making print layouts for books and zines. And now you can use it on Windows!

We are also offering the option to upgrade to a paid license, which adds even more features, plus the warm feeling of supporting independent, artist-made software. :) I’m excited about playing with all the new fun and weird layouts we refer to as hot dogs, long dogs, and alligators. Like look at this 4x2 layout, perfect for some long comic strips…

And just look at the cute icons for the creep direction!! (Also, we added a “both” option for adjusting the creep, which Spectrolite didn’t have before. More here.)

Spectrolite: has new and improved halftones! More tones of grey, less compression in the darkest and lightest areas of an image, and it’s faster, to boot. Thanks to Martin of Risofort for the inspiration!

And from Layout Department, you can click a button to send imposed books/zines directly over Spectrolite — and Spectrolite knows how to handle the printer’s marks that you make in Layout Department for color separation.

Also…. if you are wondering, does this Windows stuff move us one step closer to Spectrolite for Windows? It does! EDIT: Spectrolite for Windows is here!

Recently I converted a thrifted t-shirt into a boxy cropped tank top; making armhole facings from fabric left over when I cut off the sleeves and bottom of the shirt. Wore it to yoga this week and it felt great.

I also wrote about sewing custom covers for my electric heating pads, another hack-y project that’s been very satisfying to use.

SOUTHEAST RISO CATALOG: Dyanne Horgan of Ripe Ink Press in Atlanta is organizing a Southeast USA regional catalog (a companion to the West Coast and Midwest versions). → Submit yourself or other riso-related things you think are cool.

ART BOOK FAIRS DOT COM: New website rounding up fairs and fests worldwide, plus a weekly newsletter that includes reminders of application dates. Thanks, Space Type!

SOME LINKS: I don’t want to be influenced by this unholy robotic patois. / The Pit / Lynda Barry on Sagittarian Matters podcast / It seems counterintuitive, but a small tree, planted well, will outgrow and outlive the large tree poorly transplanted.

PICKLES: The Times Literary Supplement interviewed Ursula K. Le Guin in 2017, asking… If you could make a change to anything you’ve written over the years, what would it be? The response:

In The Dispossessed, I would mention the communal pickle barrels at street corners in the big towns, restocked by whoever in the community has made or kept more pickles than they need. I knew about the free pickles all along, but never could fit them into the book.

I’ve been enjoying cooking from the book The Japanese Art of Pickling and Fermenting by Yoko Nakazawa — beautiful photos, great cartoony illustrations of step by step for cutting and pickling, and very very good pickles. For a taste, this Guardian interview features three recipes from the book, including yuzu daikon amazu zuke which I loved. (And the pink radish pickles in the article were great too, and super easy — just cut the radishes in quarters, add 2-3% of sugar by weight, and a bit of vinegar, and refrigerate 3 days.) My next pickles to make: plum syrup (the “100 days later” heading made me think of SpongeBob) from frozen plums Adam gleaned last summer. And Alex’s mom’s onion-radish soy pickles, and which I think about at least once a week. Finally, I will be able to make my own stash.

Peace, communal pickles, and sending care —

Amelia

Nobody gets bored, waiting while the other team is drawing…because at all times you are either drawing or guessing! An excellent game for big gatherings with friends and/or family. Play a few rounds after a meal!

Chaos Pictionary (Cousins House Rules)

What you need:

1. You only need the deck of cards from the box. (You don’t need the gameboard, the dice, the tokens, the timer.) (See notes later on ideas for how to play if you don’t have Pictionary handy.)

2. You need at least 4 people. Split into teams of 2-3 people, or more if you want.

3. You’ll need some sheets of paper, and one pencil or pen per team.

How to play:

1. Arrange yourselves in some way that people have a flat surface to draw on, and everyone on a team can see what’s being drawn. Around a table works best, but this is living room friendly if you get creative with flat surfaces to draw on.

2. Pull a stack of cards out of the box, and make a pile in the center to choose from.

3. Start by someone picking a card, and choosing the word to draw (from the options on the card). It doesn’t matter who picks, the first round. Once someone chooses the word, they announce the letter/color to everyone at the table, and pass the card (keeping it hidden from the guessers) to the “drawer(s)” on other team(s) for that round.

4. Once all the drawing people have seen the word, put the card face down in a discard pile, and someone says “Go!” — each team’s drawer starts drawing and everyone else starts guessing.

5. All teams draw the same word, at the same time. Everyone else watches their team’s drawing person, and says their guesses out loud. The team that guesses the word first wins the round.

6. If you’re the next person to draw on the team that just won the round, pull a new card, and pick the word for the next round of drawing. This is fun, because you can be strategic and try to pick a word you think will be easiest for your team to guess, or easiest for you to draw, or you can pick what you think will result in the funniest or hardest round.

7. There’s no timer, just go until one team guesses the word. If everyone is stumped and there’s general agreement that further drawing is fruitless, then nobody won that round. (The person who picked the word draws a new card and picks again.)

8. We usually play until the group feels like stopping, but you could pick a set number of rounds or a set time, e.g. “let’s play for half an hour”…

9. If you’re competitive and need more reward for winning a round than your team getting to pick the next word to draw, you can of course keep score with tallies.

Extra gameplay notes

• At the beginning, go over the Categories on the cards with all the players. Knowing the category of the word you’re guessing can be a helpful hint if you’re in category P (Person, place animal), O (Object), or A (Action). For Difficult and All Play (the only time in regular pictionary rules where all teams get to draw at once), who knows…

• Decide amongst yourselves what counts as correct. For example, if the word is “golfing” and someone says “golf”, you have to keep drawing until they guess “golfing”… Generally it needs to be exact, but maybe if you have younger people playing, and you make different rules.

• As in regular Pictionary: NO letters/symbols, writing allowed. You can draw two lines if what you’re drawing is two words.

• It’s not cheating to sneak a peek at other team’s drawings. (Unless you decide your house rules don’t allow that.)

• Draw on the same sheet, until the page feels “too full” to draw more - then flip it over and draw on the back. So you could incorporate your past drawings and circle them or add onto them. No going back to previous pages though. Just your current sheet. Paper can be whatever size you have handy.

• If you have younger players, make sure there’s agreement that the words chosen are ones that the kids can read and/or will know what they are. (The official game says it’s for ages 8+, for reference. But very young players who don’t totally know how to read yet can be included if they love to draw — they might need the word whispered to them or explained by the drawer from a different team — just quickly sneak off into a different room to help them if needed before their turn to draw. Spread out the youngest players onto different teams and maybe have the youngest ones all be “drawers” at the same time so they’re not competing to draw quickly against an adult.

• If a card you draw has only boring words and none of them would be fun for the group to draw, declare “too boring!” and put it in the discard pile, and draw a new card. Don’t use this to your advantage though — only for the purposes of fun.

How to play if you don’t have Pictionary

First of all, if you don’t have Pictionary at home, may I recommend aiming for a vintage deck because the cards from the 80s are the best in terms of design, and they can $2-4 at a thrift store. (You might have to be patient and go a few times, but I promise, vintage Pictionary is abundantly available. It’s the navy/dark blue box with white borders, like in my photos above. Searching “Vintage 1985 Pictionary” will give you more photos.) If you like playing by these rules you can go ahead and get rid of everything but the little box of cards so it doesn’t take up much space.

Don’t have Pictionary handy and want to play, today or this weekend? Some ideas:

• Ask your neighbors/family/anyone who is coming over if they have Pictionary you can borrow.

• Give everyone a bunch of slips of paper and let people write words, put them in a bowl, and draw words from that.

• Search “pictionary word generator” online and there are a number of free apps/websites that could work, maybe like this one? (But involving electronics is of course less fun than drawing cards, I highly recommend aiming to thrift a vintage pictionary deck at some point.)

After the game, people might want to take home their favorite drawings to put up on the fridge for a little bit. Our latest fridge decor was “monsters” by Adam… Many monsters, because everyone was stumped for a while. Wow what a masterpiece. I cannot believe I didn’t guess it.

I really love pictionary because it is so fun to draw, and to see what everyone else draws. It’s just so fun to be challenged to draw fast and think of inventive ways to communicate the essence of something, to get out of your head about what drawing is or trying to make a “good” drawing and into just ~~~playing~~~ and working as a team and being silly. Anyways, highly recommend Pictionary with the Cousins House Rules.

Have fun! And if you play this weekend, and any amazing drawings occur, feel free to reply to this email and share them so I can get a kick out of them too.

—Amelia

P.S. — Do you play any drawing games? I’ve collecting descriptions of drawing games for the last few years — like Sentence-Picture, Exquisite Corpse, Draw-in-the-Dark! I would love to hear about yours. (Just write back and tell me about it, and if I put it in the zine I plan to make someday, I’ll send you a copy.)

P.P.S. — If you’re looking for another fun-chaos group game to play, there’s multi-player Solitaire where everyone plays their aces into the middle and from there, anyone else can play on them. So it’s a bit of a race to get all your cards out into the center, and not always possible, sometimes the game ends when everyone is stuck. You need a big enough table, and you need to have a different color/design deck for each person who wants to play, so you can re-sort the decks back to each player between rounds. (Thrift stores are great for this — lots of variety, and the cards are already worn in and easy to handle. Just count the deck before you buy it, to make sure they’re all there.)

You can play with two people, three people. Four to six is exciting and fast moving. We’ve gotten up to 12 people at once. I’ll never forget the family gatherings around my grandma’s extendable oval table, laughing so much, but that sometimes got very wild, since people further out have to stand and almost leap to reach to play their cards. (Also, watch out for your competitive family members with this game. Blood has been drawn, accidentally, but still! One of my uncles always cheated. My mom, sister and a cousin have been battling for the crown of multi-sol dominance for two decades.)

Gameplay goes until someone goes out, or everyone is stuck. First person to go out, or end with the least cards, wins the round. If you want to keep track of a total for the night, count the number of cards each person has left after each round - lowest number wins, or first to a number loses and ends the session. I’m not great at this game but really love it.

P.P.P.S. — Thank you so much for the enthusiastic response to the Layout Department news yesterday! And for everyone who wrote back to us, we’ll get back to you soon. :) What if someone used the Layout Department to make a little mini-zine of drawings from chaos pictionary! Now I want to do that this weekend………

First snowfall at our home in the mountains. A paper star lamp, glowing in the window. The sketchbook collage in progress at the desk, after being inspired to return to my practice by a hangout with my friend Callie Little. (I need a gluestick!) Potato leek soup. Broccoli cheddar soup. Rancho Gordo beans. Wisps of cloud on the pines. Hot tub time with friends, in the cold air. Learning CAD in OnShape with my dad. Learning how to use new types of saws, beginning the process of learning the skills to build things with wood. Designing a little shelf to go on top of the risograph, so the lightbox we use for registration has a place to sit. Feeling scared, but almost ready to cut the wood. My dad sending me encouraging texts and being ready to video chat with me.

Reflecting on my creative process in a really generative way. Reviving tired sweaters with the sweater shaver. Joining my local hot yoga studio and going three times a week. Pictionary with friends, playing by the Cousins house rules. (See newsletter tomorrow for said rules; this is a GREAT activity for if you’re gathering with friends/family this week.)

Since late summer, Adam and I have been working on a new app for Mac and Windows, that you can use to make PDFs into the print files for books and zines. We’ve named it… Layout Department!

You pick what size sheet you’re printing on, how many pages you want to have on each side of the sheet (ie; the final size of your book/zine), and drag and drop your PDF in. Then, export the layout file, print it double sided, cut the pages apart if you’ve got a layout with more than 2 pages per side of the sheet, and assemble your book/zine/artist publication by folding and binding with thread, staples, etc.

Find it at layoutdepartment.com!

Also, this is the free version of the app… we’re also working on a paid version with even more features! If you’d like to test + give feedback on the paid version (in return for a complimentary license and early access to new features), just reply to this email.

Eating + cooking: Planning to make some Popping Corn and maybe watch Lynda Barry’s documentary Comic Book Confidential (our library has it on Kanopy). I want to make a grid salad with feta and Castelvetrano olives. Salad quilts! Making sourdough each week per-usual, but experimenting with different Cairnspring Mills flours. I remembered about my recipe for these chocolate chip cookies and made a batch using only 3oz bar of chocolate cut into tiny pieces (because I didn’t have any chips on hand), and they were great.

Reading: Paging through a big pile cookbooks and gardening books from the library. And lots of good articles, including: Some people don’t have children because they don’t want to. » Gathering Stardust » The Sky and Leaves as They Fall

For artist publishers: To Go Big or Come Home? & The Publishing Industry Has a Gambling Problem. And I’m still thinking about this from our friend Gerald: “There is work that I have come to love making, and there is work that I no longer want to make. What I think this points at is I want to work more privately.”

Looking: I’m doing a pickle fountain | 3d printed moulds to shape gourds into vessels | how to make objects with mycelium zine | daily drawings 2023-2025 | Bush Modern | myog embroidered (!) bike frame bag

Building this world:

• what if conservation started with berry picking

• a singular source of joy

• “Most consumer environmental policy boils down to tax rebates & impotent scolding. I think we should have more fun with it.” (←please read this comic!)

• It’s hard to drone a solar panel (Real life making me think of novels Ministry for the Future, The Deluge, The Peripheral.)

• 35+ Ways America is Resisting ICE

• The Magic of Showing Up

Sewing: Looking forward to making pants from the book The Act of Sewing with my friend Rachel (as part of her 12 Makes of Christmas) — we’re going to hang out on video chat. And I’m also going make some Elizabeth Suzann patterns this winter; the Andy Pants and a Bel Skirt. (I typically only wear pants, but somehow I feel like a skirt is calling to me for winter layering?) And the Clyde Vest, since I need a warm layer to wear over my sweaters, in the studio. Something that’s not like a coat, exactly, I think it will be nice to have my arms free, but that adds a lot of warmth to my core.

Sending care, everyone, especially this week.

— Amelia

P.S. — Behind the scenes Layout Department app design… lots more book formats coming, including “hot dog” and “alligator” ;)

So here’s a FREE ZINE to teach you:

• How to make a PDF with your pages using Google Docs.

• How to lay out the pages for printing double-sided (this is called imposition) using Layout Department, a free or paid Mac and Windows app that we make as ANEMONE. (You just pick what paper size you’re printing on, and drag and drop your PDF.)

  

• Tips for printing on a regular printer or copier.

Then, if you want (very optional!) you can read about how risograph machines work, how to lay out your PDF to get it ready to print on a risograph machine. This includes prepping the grayscale files the riso needs (this is called color separation) and printing on bigger paper. With instructions for how to use Spectrolite, a free Mac and Windows app, for that.

Make some zines with Google Docs!

Note: Photos below are from an earlier version of the process, where layouts were in Spectrolite instead of Layout Department.

Pacific Northwest people, SHORT RUN is this Saturday, Nov 1!! Adam and I are teaching a free 40 minute talk/workshop at 2pm. We will demo all the skills: make a google doc, download it in PDF form, use Spectrolite to make the print files! AND THEN! To finish, you get to collate, fold and staple yourself a copy of this zine to take home.

Here’s a picture of the risograph printing-in-progress of the copies that we’re bringing to Short Run for the workshop. We printed 4-up on 11x17” paper, then cut the stacks in half before collating. (What’s 4-up? What’s collating? Read the zine or come to the workshop to find out!!)

Even if you miss the 2pm talk, sneak up stairs to the Anemone Zine Production Tables in the hallway and make yourself a (free) copy of the zine. That will be open from 3-6pm (or whenever they run out - we made 150 copies which will hopefully be plenty).

Also new at Short Run: prints of collages I made with Elizabeth Case when we made Crossing the ice among chasms together last spring.

Two different collages, printed on four colors of sure-to-fade-in-the-sun construction paper I found at a creative reuse store.

Short Run is 11am - 6pm at the Seattle Design Center in Georgetown. (New location!) Also, the new zines we just made will be in the swag bags for the first 50 people through the doors on Saturday morning.

Find us at Table 87 in the bottom left of the map, awash in the “sea of riso” with dear print pals including Taxonomy Press (who has a NEW TOMATO DIARY BOOK OMG!!!), Living Room Press, Zine Hug, BearBear, Secret Room, National Monument, Issue Press, Yewon Kwon, Paper Press Punch. That’s just the corner near us, the rest of the exhibitor list is also awesome.

Seattle / Pacific Northwest crew, hope to see you there!

—Amelia

This newsletter is mostly links and recs and notes on what I’ve been reading and eating lately. Lots of interesting things to think about.

FIRST: Please consider Everything for Everyone for the top of your to-read list! Put it on your library holds! It’s speculative fiction set in the 2050s-2060s framed as an oral history of the New York Commune — so many ideas for an imaginative future, just what I needed right now. Dark but liberating! (I thought the first chapter started slow — press on.)

Eating: We made two batches of muhammara this summer, lots of peppers! Peach cobbler, plum cobbler; here’s the recipe we’ve been making for years. We had a few pizza nights at friends houses, and I’m still thinking about the combo of gleaned Italian plums and pears, gorgonzola, parmesan, olive oil and some basil. (Our How to Pizza Night zine is all about how to have your own pizza nights with friends.) Adam turned 20lbs of farmers market tomatoes into sauce for the freezer, and made a lot of applesauce. We have ambitions to can some whole tomatoes, and hopefully some make some jam too. Lots of projects before the fall turns cold.

There’s a batch of labneh in the fridge, from the new Good Things cookbook. I want to make a batch of Momofuku Soy Sauce or Tamari Eggs, and a fresh jar of red onion pickles. In August we went to a fancy restaurant for our anniversary dinner and had rye crackers that were so incredible that I got inspired to make sourdough crackers for the first time; I got the recipe and will report back.

Some instagram selects: rolling curtain | a pond made of plastic totes buried in the garden | a plunge pool pond for swimming with frogs by habitat-tuinen.nl | how is your detox from the moving image going?

Re: detox from the moving images; the phrase made me realize that haven’t really watched many shows or movies in 2025? I went to a matinee alone on a 100°F weekday to watch Mission Impossible 8 Part 2. (Unfortunately I must indulge my passion for the spy/heist genre.) But maybe only one or two others this year? I love reading so much that I typically don’t want to watch anything unless I’m too sick to read. Or sometimes if I’m doing a repetitive physical task (collating zine pages, feeding them the booklet maker, or ironing fabric for sewing are the main qualifiers) I can watch something. But it’s been an unusually long time since any of those were the case, and it feels weird to have not noticed it until now. I wonder what’s happening to my brain to have relatively few moving images this year? Like in the comic linked above, I have been really into lichens……….

Re: instagram, did you know that if you use an ad-blocking browser (like Brave, for example; there are others too) you don’t have to see ads on IG on the web, or elsewhere online? Potentially relevant links: Awesome adblockers + Digital hygiene: Passwords

Reading books and articles: A string of beads. I can’t tell you what’s coming. This Auntie Bulletin newsletter. So many moving pieces. We Give Us Our Roses. “I do believe a great library is both a practical asset and a personal achievement.” How much do electric car batteries degrade?

I’ve been helping my friend Rachel Hays edit the writing for Tomato Diary — so wonderful!

Department of independent publishing-related interviews: these are just for my fellow print-publishing nerds. You know who you are.

• 'It can be lazy and gross, but when it works, it feels good': NYC Small Press with Alexander Laird and Andrew Alexander

• The process of bringing The Butch Manual back into print

• Writer, publisher, and podcaster Elly Blue on following a nontraditional path

• Indie comics publisher Zach Clemente on sustaining a life-long project

Sending care,
Amelia

P.S — I accidentally took August off from newsletter writing, and I’ve missed corresponding with everyone. Have any projects you’ve been working on? What are you cooking? Any reading recs? Any spy/heist genre recs? Should I send a roundup of my favorite spy/heist content? Have any questions for me? Etc. Write back if you want!

P.P.S — 25 in 2025 subscribers — a newsletter’s coming for you next week. I’ve also obtained the supplies for mailing y’all a physical riso-printed newsletter, stay tuned… :)