First off, for everyone looking for our publications, they’re in the RISO Bookstore now! New this year: Lichens of the Pacific Crest, the RISO Pacific Northwest catalog, and Long Calendars for Three Years: 2024-2025-2026, and also just for 2024. If you order before Thursday at 10am Pacific time, yours will go in the mail this week.
We are just coming off of the whirlwind of making two new publications, printing the long calendar, tabling at Short Run, and a studio move. (!!) A very non-stop few weeks.
If you’ve never heard of it, Short Run is a Seattle-based festival, focused on alternative comix and self-published, small press, and handmade books of all kinds. Artist-publishers from the Pacific Northwest and around the world come to exhibit and sell their work. Here is a journal of the last two weeks:


We finished making Lichens of the Pacific Crest by Wednesday, cutting it close. On Thursday we helped Alex collate and bind Sun Cell 2, and on Friday we helped Jackson collate Snakes in the Records Room before we went to the riso meetup at Paper Press Punch. After starting the Short Run day with Honoré and Fuji Bakery (what can I say?) we tabled nonstop from 11am-6pm, selling 240 books, including 67 copies of Lichens of the Pacific Crest. We also gave away about 200 copies of RISO Pacific Northwest to people who purchased a zine, since that was our “in person special thing” this year. (We always do a special thing when we table at a fest.) Then the after party, where it only rained a little bit.
On Sunday we spent most of the day at a brunch hangout with riso printers who were in town, and ended with a walk in Lincoln Park in the dusky rain. It was so good to meet a bunch of riso people IRL for the first time, like BearBear and S.A.R.A., and talk about what everyone is doing and thinking about, and get inspired by incredible small press work. Just seeing what everyone is putting out, and how creative and inventive the work is, the community around it — it’s really good. We got to host our friend Rachel of Taxonomy Press in Detroit, who took the photo of us above — she had her gorgeous Floral Observer newspaper at the table next to us. It was so energizing, getting to see so many friends and meet so many people who came to the fest. It’s really all about the people, what we can do together.




This week, we did some final packing and moved the studio — more on that later, exciting! Big changes! I spent as much time resting as I could, that level of socializing means lots of sensitive introvert recovery time. We got to go Myrna’s shop-warming open house at the new Expedition Press shop, and pulled an ALLOW THE TIME THAT IT TAKES print on the Vandercook and admired the built in set of tools and the secret drawer in the Heidelberg windmill. And closed out the night with a dance party. (You might like Expedition’s poetry & letterpress mailing list.)
The last few days we’ve been building the very early beginnings of RISO Bookstore with Alex, and making soups.
If you’d like copies of our new publications and Long Calendar in the mail, here are the links:
Lichens of the Pacific Crest. Colorful RISO printed photos of lichen, paired with stories of the people we met while hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. Thoughts on growth, community, being out of the usual routine, and walking 20+ miles a day for months.
RISO Pacific Northwest. A catalog of risograph focused printshops, community spaces, publishers, events, zine libraries and shops across the PNW.
Long Calendars for Three Years: 2024-2025-2026. Three months at a time in a tall, vertical format. “I love it so much. I feel like it’s made me visualize time on a bigger scale.” The calendars include phases of the moon, meteor showers, and US holidays. Each 5.5 x 17 inch page is three months, printed single sided with the each year on four pieces of paper. Comes folded in half.
Long Calendar 2024. Just one year, and printed front and back on two sheets of paper.
Also, we’re out of print of a handful of titles, but if you want How to Pizza Night, Bike Rambles around Seattle, or our Reading Recs series, they’re here too. And you can get the books and zines from other friends in the same envelope and pay just the same flat rate shipping. If you order before Thursday at 10am Pacific time, yours will go in the mail this week. We’d love to mail you some zines.
LOOKING: Popeye Magazine bookshelf and quilt design and card wall. And the archive of all the Whole Earth Catalogs — when I was looking through a print copy of the 1971 edition last year, I really appreciated the “how to do a whole earth catalog” section (pages 435-438) where they talk through the production process, and even provide a detailed balance sheet. This interiors account and also this meditation on the poo-ification of the domestic colorscape.
READING:
Making your resistance skills inventory.
“When someone, especially a woman, says, “I don’t think parenthood is for me,” we need to honor and respect them in the same way we would an aspiring parent. Both choices are equally natural, equally potent and equally rich with possibility.”
The role everyday objects play in a good death. “I’m so happy you’re my daughter,” she said, the bell resting in the deep hollow of her lap. “I’m so happy I know you.”
MOVING: On Peloton app, this 5 minute core, this 10 min arms and light weights, this 20 min standing poses. Taking walks when the sun is out.
COOKING: tamago-donburi, chocolate chip cookies, Marcella Hazan’s minestrone (minus the green beans), kale and cauliflower soup (plus celery and a can of beans)
Sending care,
—Amelia
(Adam says hi too!)