pikas, dying glaciers, our process for planning new publications
plus eating / watching / looking / reading recs
I’m starting to learn how to draw pika anatomy from photo references. So far I’ve mostly confirmed that they are very cute. Drawing them carrying plants to their hay pile makes me happy.
I drew this at Sketchers, a new drawing + craft meetup that Jackson Barnes of Living Room Press is organizing on Tuesday nights in north Seattle. If you’re in Seattle and want project time and creative community, check it out!
We climbed Mount Forgotten and Kyes Peak recently, and got to hear some little pika in the rock piles and talus. Eeeeep!
The Columbia Glacier below Columbia / Monte Christo / Kyes cirque is not in good shape, lots of bare ice:
Adam and I have been mountaineering together in the Pacific Northwest for fifteen years, and in that time we’ve really watched the glaciers and permanent snowfields disappear, shrink, or turn into new lakes or naked rock where the 1970s USGS topo rocks show ice. Distressing.
Fall/ winter is coming, and we are starting to think about what our new additions to Spectrolite for the season will be. More than 4 inks for color separation? Trapping? Picking a key color for line work, or “snap-to” color matching? Dithering? Allowing custom ink colors for the screenprinters and offset printers who are using the app for non-riso purposes? An option for Halftone/Screen Covered to only apply to certain ink layers, like just the Key layer, or all colors except yellow? Duotoning? Lots of possibilities.
We made the first version of the app in 2020, so we're in the fifth year working on it seasonally. It’s great to have a big, seasonal, long-running project. Highly recommend trying this format — intentionally only working on a project some of the year, putting it on autopilot the rest of the time — for big efforts of your own.
We’ve started thinking of of potential plans for Short Run in 2024. (Saturday November 2nd, 11am-6pm!) I like doing little sketches like these to start planning a season’s work:
What’s on my mind? What seems interesting? What is logistically possible? What feels good?
I am very close to done with the writing for Taking Care of Yourself as an Artist Publisher, a companion to Notes on Artist Publishing, so I’m pretty sure I want get that printed. I am working on a small, short (8-16 page?) pika comic (hence drawings above). And I’m considering if I want to pull together my Pacific Crest Trail flower journal this fall, with collaged photos and maybe writing, or if I want to wait until we’ve totally finished the PCT. (We’ve hiked about 2,200 miles so far, 400 to go… we wanted to totally finish this summer but got stymied by wildfires and fire closures! Again!)
I think it would be fun to have a fresh bookmark to go with the Climate Emergency Reading Recs zine, with a list of some of the books that have been published since we made it. And practically, we need more ANEMONE business cards and Spectrolite takeaways. And more double-sided Long Calendars for 2025.
Adam took a bunch of new lichen photos on our 600 miles on the Sierra section of the PCT this summer, so we’re thinking of an art print set to accompany Lichens of the Pacific Crest. Or maybe postcards?
Reprints! Since we’ve been traveling so much, right now we only have five publications still in print. (Of about 60 ANEMONE publications to date; not all of which are intended to stay in print indefinitely.) We’ve been talking about reprinting Sensitive, Getting Started with Making Electronic Music, and the Rivers of the Northwest map. (I’m a maybe on the Seattle Adventure Map, because it’s not just a simple reprint… I’m not sure if I want to do all the updating of locations that have opened and closed at the moment.) It seems like about 500 copies is the right edition size for most of those reprints.
But we would probably be wise to to make 1,000 copies of the fourth printing of Bike Rambles Around Seattle. Trying to find a number that won’t sell out sooner than 2-3 years from now, but also won’t take up too much storage space or so much production time that it starts to feel exhausting. Starting to make spreadsheets to sort out paper orders and costs, and update prices since paper and ink costs have gone up a lot. And then dialing how many to print based on the number of pages in the publication, the trim size and resulting number of pages per sheet, and how many sheets of paper are in a ream to create less leftover paper. And taking stock of what paper we have on hand to use.
I love the math and planning and business bits of planning publications too. All the possibilities, but what will we choose?
A favor to ask: Are you working with riso on the West Coast, or do you know someone who is? Send us info to be included in a new RISO West Coast print catalog! Here’s more about the project, or just submit the form right here!
Watching + Listening
lol at We Ride at Dawn comedy special, so glad feminine raunch is being platformed more now, thank you Netflix
This 10 min core on Peloton app
Eating
Crescent made corn ice cream for a party and now I have cron brain. There are also corn popsicles at H Mart… plus, regular reminder that Soon Du Bu packets from H Mart are awesome. AND! A friend made us a box-pancake-mix-into-cake hack and it was extremely delicious, what a mochi texture: Trader Joe's Hawaiian Ube Butter Mochi Recipe. Heidi Swanson's Black Sesame Otsu on my mind. Adam and I went to San Fermo for our wedding anniversary and had a burrata on grilled Sea Wolf baguette with peaches, stone fruit, mint, tarragon, and salt and pepper on top — an overdose of satisfaction.
Looking
bookmaking handouts by Olivia Fredricks (who also has Cowboy Ezra the outlaw riso)
Reading
I've been on a big climate fiction rereading kick the past few months and really enjoyed revisiting The Year of the Flood and Madd Addam from Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake trilogy. They well paired with The Peripheral by William Gibson, and The Deluge by Stephen Markley. Contemplating rereads of The Fifth Sacred Thing by Starhawk, The Water Knife and The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi, and Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness. (More book ideas in Climate Emergency Reading Recs!)
The biggest reading success recently: after several read-throughs of the classic children's book Everyone Poops by Taro Gomi with a two year old friend this week, I just got an exciting text from their parents: "— pooped in the potty!!!" Books are powerful! Speaking of children's books, now I want to read some Chirri & Chirra.
Here are some other reads, all online:
How Heather Lanier balances motherhood with her career as a writer
the revolution starts by building with poor folks in your own backyard
I’m looking for fun sci-fi or detective novels for some page turning fun reading this winter, or writing/books/blogs or videos about building houses. OR music to dance to! If you want to share a recommendation, or otherwise say hello, just hit reply.
Hope you are well,
—Amelia