Refilling the well, resetting: spending time cooking and fermenting is always where I return when I’m depleted, to fill myself back up. I made fire cider. I baked cardamom brioche cinnamon buns with buttermilk icing from The Good Bake, used the leftover buttermilk to make ricotta, varied the weekly sourdough by using 30% hydration from the whey from the cheesemaking. I pickled a jar of red onions, preserved a jar of meyer lemons in salt à la Tender Heart Supper Club, made a fresh jar of Momofuku’s soy sauce eggs. I roasted garlic cut in half like this, and roasted a huge pan of savoy cabbage and onions and carrots kind of like this. I made a giant frittata and have been eating big piles of vegetables with the eggs and pickles.
The studio report is slim pickings: The boiler in the building with the ANEMONE studio was broken for two weeks around the turn of the year—the darkroom thermometer in the jar on my desk said 40s inside. Too cold for doing work for very long, even bundled up our hands got really cold after an hour, so we delayed all the projects. I cooked and did apartment admin tasks, budget and financial spreadsheets, tidying and cleaning, mending, and napped.
Heat came back on and we finally printed the LONG CALENDAR, which I will show you more about later. (Edit: here!) A whole year, front and back, printed long-wise! Adam’s been adding a new imposition feature to Spectrolite which we might put in the next release, but we still need to finish QA on the new release and package it up.
Amy and I have been working on the publicity and marketing for the How To Sew Clothes book launch. Suddenly February 28th seems so soon (six weeks away?!) and there’s so much to do. Website pages to build, interviews, book events (mark your calendar for Monday March 6th at Elliott Bay!), promotional riso prints to make for the indie bookstore orders, a free digital thing to make for all the people who preorder. Treating the book release, like the rest of it, as an art project.
The author copies came in the mail, and we got to hold the book in our hands, unfold the pattern sheets from the envelope in back, see all those words and pictures and diagrams all together on the pages. A book! Soon in bookstores and libraries and sewing rooms and kitchen tables! It will help people learn how to sew clothes! (Follow the All Well newsletter or instagram if you want the full dose of book stuff!)
On my desk + what I’m reading
Above, on my desk: a lingering 2023 “MORE/in” list, Trader Joe’s hand salve, a notebook, Cooking with Mushrooms, a laminated tree identification field guide, a zine draft from Kit that I’m slowly working my way through.
Below, what I’ve been reading lately:
Pen and Eye comics
Amy and I have an interview about creative process and seasonal shifts in Lichen Issue 01; excited to get the print issue in the mail soon
On Domestic Writing (and from there I read The Joy of Breakfast)
“Helping to normalize knowledge of SMA is a political commitment” (print this article out! pass it around!)
Bright in the Gyre, a short story by Nadine Aurora Tabing
Demon Copperhead. Barbara Kingsolver!
I found Sanae Ishida’s Sewing Love on the Peak Picks shelf at the library and it’s so so good! Love the approach to sloper pattern drafting, I must get a copy and try it when I make some new personal slopers.
The Talking Mirror just switched to allow subscribing anytime, if you need some advice-column-by-mail. Highly recommend!
Also really loving reading the winter issue of the Floral Observer. Get yourself a beautiful seasonal riso newspaper subscription for 2023.
Send me reading recs, or just reply and say hello!
-Amelia
ANEMONE ~ zines ~ Spectrolite
P.S. — “We got caught Brian, just act normal” (a 15 second raccoon video which I have watched many many times recently. the poses!! )
P.P.S. — Seattle Art Book Fair has new dates! May 6–7, 2023 at Washington Hall. If you want to be an exhibitor or contribute programming, you have until Monday, February 6 to apply. See you there!