art, craft, the space between

In my last post, I was lamenting that the calendars have been slow going this week. I know you really can't tell, but the February paper white really was not printing well. You'll just have to trust me on this. The photo does not really show it clearly, but there is a 'halo' of ink on the root that is reaching down the right side of the page. This, to me, is just not okay. It's not good printing and it's not what I want to put out there with my name on it.

I received this comment from a so-far loyal reader who, bless her heart, I think is really just trying to say something nice. She wrote: You really need to stop being so nit-picky about the itty bitty details. Everyone will love it all the same. I truly appreciate the sentiment and the support, but here's the thing: I don't agree. Well, perhaps there are lots of people who will love it all the same, but that's not really what I want. What I want is to feel proud of the quality of work that I am creating. To me, with this aspect of my life, it is ALL in the nit-picky, itty bitty details. To me, this is what differentiates a so-so piece from one I think is the best work I can do. Why put so-so work out in the world? Why contribute in that way? Why settle for mediocrity? And while I'm first to admit that I am seriously nit-picky {to a fault at times}, I think I'll stand by that trait, annoying as it might be to others. Well, at least I think I'll stand by it with my printing; in other parts of my life, so true – perhaps I should wave good-bye to it.

So this all leads me to my art and craft and the space between pondering ... It must be said that I may not win any friends with this post. Or maybe I will. I've no idea. I've been mulling this over for a while now – what is the difference between art and craft and what is all the stuff that falls in between? And where, exactly, does Satsuma Press fall? Where do I want to be? I am all for experimenting and trying your hand here and there and finding a way to use your hands to create. But {don't say I didn't warn you, I know I'm going to rot in do-it-yourself hell} sometimes we are not always very good at what we want to be very good at! There, I said it. I mean, I would love to be a good seamstress. I'm not. I would love to be a good gardener. I'm not. It took me time to find the thing I really had an affinity with – letterpress – and I'm still learning. There is plenty to learn here. I know this well.

What I shy away from is the whole craft-y, I-like-that-it-looks-hand-made thing. I like that someone's hands have made something, that time and care and thought have been put into something, yes. I don't mind the imperfections that come from human interaction and creation. At all. But I do mind knowing that the work I do is less than what I COULD or SHOULD do and keeping on the same way, crouching behind the hey-it's-hand-made line. Printing – this is what I do, it's not a hobby, this is part of who I am. I want to do it well. And I know that we are our own worst critics but someone has to do it, right?


And now for something completely different. I was asked to join Trunkt! Here is the link to my Trunkt portfolio: www.trunkt.org/satsumapress

february is the cruelest month

Do you know this line from T.S. Eliot?

April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out off the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.

Well, for me, February is proving to be the cruelest month – at least as far as the calendar printing is concerned. I'm on my second go at printing the month of February. It's almost the end of my day in the studio now and, I have to say, it's not been going well. I've got the color spot on now – but that paperwhite bulb! It's troublesome. There's just this very faint bleed of color that is making me crazy. It's on the right hand side, that root that is reaching down the page. It's hard to see in this photo – but, believe me, it's there. I know I could let it go, keep on printing, but I can't. This won't be a surprise to those of you that have been reading my posts already.

So here is what I did: I cut 35 extra pieces and reprinted the ones that weren't just right. It was just one of those days, filled with interruptions. {I'm trying to finish up a layout for some wedding programs and work up an estimate for another client in between printing, too.} I'll reprint the text on those 35 pages. I have to ink the press in black one more time to print the back covers anyway so it works out fine.

Oh, and another thing about today. I met Jess Chamberlain from Sunset Magazine who wrote this lovely piece about Satsuma Press on the Sunset blog. She was in town for work and was able to come by the studio for an hour or so. It's fun to be able to finally put a face to someone I've been emailing with for a while. It's funny how much and yet so little you can find out about someone via email, isn't it? I like the face to face meetings best of all, though.

And one last thing ... The Good Morning America piece on Liam – postponed til NEXT week now. Keep checking here for updates, though. I will post whenever I hear a final air date.

where i'll be

Just a quick note to say that Satsuma Press and I {one and the same} will be participating in the brand-new Poppytalk Handmade {virtual} Street Market in October and Urban Craft Uprising in Seattle on December 1st and 2nd. Come by!

from start to finish

I don't know whether it's best to show all the pages of my calendar as I go or to save them up for a surprise at the end, when they're all done. Clearly, though, I can't stand waiting. Clearly, I'm the kind of person that shakes the box to see what the present is. So, in case you're that kind of person too – which I'm supposing you might be since you're here, snooping around for a behind-the-scenes look {not that it's all that exciting} – here's the cover to the calendar. You'll recognize the flowering rush in ochre. It's just that one design I really can't seem to stay away from. I know, I know – I've already posted about that here.

Yesterday I mixed up some ink that turned out not to be the right color for what I had in mind. I was looking for a warm brown that I could use for {here I am giving it away} the paperwhite bulb for February. What I ended up with was not that brown, but for some reason a much lighter and brighter color – a cheery yellow that I put to use for the narcissus for April.

This is what it looks like:


So, you see, sometimes things start out as one thing and finish up as another. And it's sometimes a really pleasant surprise. I had planned to be very systematic with the printing of these months – moving from January to February to March and so on and so forth – but instead April has followed January. I think I'll try again for February on Monday.

getting started

Some days, no matter how early I get up, it just seems to take a long time to get around to printing. There's the much-needed tea and breakfast, followed by getting Liam in his stander if he's with me, checking email, replying to emails ... Today was one of those days, but I didn't even have Liam with me. He's having a day with his papa. I was working on an estimate for a client, sending a million emails – some of you may have gotten one.

The news today is that the Good Morning America piece on Liam has been postponed, again. This time til sometime next week. I'll keep updating here, plus if you're on one of my mailing lists – I have two: Liam and Letterpress – you'll receive an email about it as I hear more. And, of course, if you're on one of those e-mail lists and you'd rather not be, just shoot me an email telling me so.

As for now, the press is inked and I'm getting November and December taken care of ...

update, i'm still here

The calendars, the calendars... They're coming along nicely. I got started last Friday after a delay in my paper shipment. I got everything all set up on Friday afternoon after a morning of finishing up blind stamping stationery -- set the plate, inked the press, turned it on and: clunk! grinding metal! Thankfully, it sounded worse than it really was. My press has an automatic wash up that I don't use and it had somehow gotten jostled to where it was in contact with the cylinder. Not good, but nothing Ben couldn't fix. Lucky me.

So. The black text is almost completed – just November, December and the front and back covers left. Though I usually blind stamp first, I decided to do the black ink first followed by the artwork. I'll finish up with the blind stamp – after all, there's no reason to blindstamp a piece that hasn't made the final cut. It's an awful lot of printing and my arm is a little sore from all that cranking. Let's see, I've printed 1500 calendar pages so far ... I begin to see why for long productions a motorized C + P might be a blessing!

Also – an update on the Good Morning America piece on Liam. It has, as of now, been postponed til Thursday. I will update as I hear more... Please tune in! If you're new to this blog, you can see the previous posts about Liam here and here.

Here are some pics of Liam and our cat, Loki. She's really not all that friendly, so it's pretty cute to see the two of them together.

liam on the telly

Forgive the completely non-letterpress post, but we've got some exciting news! It's not all just letterpress around here...

I wanted to let you know that there will be a story about Liam and our continuing battle with our insurance company, Assurant Health, airing on Good Morning America next week. Right now it is scheduled to run on Wednesday, September 19th somewhere between 7:30-8:00am. Please pass this on to anyone who might be interested. If you're like us, you'll need to get your TV down from the attic, dust it off and figure out what channel ABC is! We spent an entire day with a crew from GMA about two weeks ago and we are really hopeful about the influence this story might have — not just for our family, but for many other Americans who are similarly falsely insured.

A little background ... Assurant Health, to whom we have dutifully paid premiums for 7 years now, has denied and continues to deny benefits for Liam's power chair. After exhausting the avenues of appeal within Assurant, taking our case to the Oregon Insurance Board (where after an initially good response, our case was mysteriously closed one day), hounding the high-ups of Assurant (many thanks to my mom) – it comes down to trying to effect a change with media attention. Despite the fact that Liam's Snappie is both a medical necessity and durable medical equipment, Assurant has refused to pay out benefits. Their reasoning: they just don't cover power wheelchairs and, also, they cannot make exceptions to just one policy holder as that would be 'unfair'.' One employee at Assurant went so far as to suggest that perhaps we should have read our policy more carefully before having a child. Need I say that there is no way that we could have possibly known Liam would need a power chair? I don’t think it’s necessary to elaborate on how very wrong that statement is, in every way.

I’d like to point out that Assurant’s so-called code of ethics, as posted for anyone to read on their website, include the following excerpts — all of which are negated by their real actions and decisions.

The companies that survive longest are the ones that work out what they uniquely can give to the world-not just growth or money but their excellence, their respect for others, or their ability to make people happy. Some call those things a soul ... We offer products and services that touch people's lives, and our business depends on the trust and confidence we earn from our employees, customers and shareholders. In everything we do, we should remember that people count on us. At Assurant, we are proud of our long-standing commitment to operate according to our values-common sense, common decency, uncommon thinking and uncommon results. Everything we say and do is governed by the highest ethical standards and integrity.

One of Assurant’s CEOs. Raj Bal, sits on the board of directors for the Penfield Children’s Center in Milwaukie, Wisconsin. Their motto? "Never underestimate the capacity of the very young, and never, never let them down.” Well, let it be said — loud and clear and on national television ! — Liam has been let down.

I realize that we are very fortunate, in the face of all this, to have had the financial freedom to get Liam his Snappie over a year ago. We understand and appreciate that we are lucky in this regard. We also know that early childhood mobility is critical to the physical, social, emotional well-being of these young kids. I believe that Liam would not be the happy, outgoing, independent little boy he is today, at three and a half, if we had not gone to England when he was twenty months old. I believe that if we were still at the whim of Assurant, if we were still waiting and relying on them to come through for us, Liam would be a different child. Thank you to everyone who has made his Snappie a reality.

Please tune in next Wednesday and please let others know. We will let you know if the schedule changes. The bonus to watching it: seeing and hearing Liam sing his newest song to Assurant {totally unprompted and unplanned, I swear!} – bad boys, bad boys, what you gonna do when they come for you? So take that, Assurant.

proofs + plates + perfection

The plates for the calendar just arrived! Here's the proof for the text and below is a photopolymer plate, not yet cut up. I suppose I'm giving a little bit of what's to come away by showing you this, but it won't be the first time I've done it and it won't be the last. I just get so excited about new projects!


There was a little hiccup with the paper order for the calendars, but everything is in line now and I should be able to get started with the printing on Friday. I think I'll begin with the blind stamp that goes on each and every calendar page and then move on to printing all the text in black ink. That's 1200+ pieces of paper run through two times each for the main body of the calendar – and then I'll get to do the ink-mixing and artwork printing. And, really, what I'll end up doing is printing quite a few extras to start out with, to leave room for inevitable imperfections and mis-prints along the way. I've had more than one fellow-printer tell me I'm crazy for doing this, but I'm raring to go. Though time will tell – this may be the first and last calendar I print – only I don't think this will really be the case...

Speaking of imperfections and mis-prints, here's a little {perhaps slightly embarrasing} insight into the way I work. The thing is, if you couldn't tell already, I'm really picky. The nice way to put it is that I am 'detail-oriented' and there are much less-nice-more-crass ways to put it, too. I don't mind the subtle differences that come from hand-feeding the paper, hand-cranking the press, hand-mixing inks. I like those, a lot. What I can't stand are the ones that come from bad printing or rushed work. I've been known to {more than once!} print an entire stack of work and then re-do it at my own expense of time and material. The thing that kills me is that I usually spot the bad, bad seed of it all right away, just three or four or five prints in to the stack. But then {more than once!} I've just kept going, just told myself that I'm the only one that will notice ... only to go back in the end and do it the right way, after agonizing over it, obsessing over it, pestering my husband about it mercilessly. And the thing is, I might really be the only one who would ever notice, but when I see the same little tiny speck of something not right again and again, print after print – well, I can't take it. So, here's to me hoping I have finally learned my lesson – which is to spend the time at the start {rather than after a day of having a nagging feeling about it} to get everything just-so – and I'll be happier for it.

crafty crafty

All packed up and ready! Just a quick reminder for those of you in the Portland area ... I'll be at Crafty Wonderland tomorrow at the Doug Fir. It's free and goes from 11-4. The address is 830 E Burnside. Hope to see you there...

I had an etsy customer ask if I could gift wrap some stationery to send to a friend. Here's what the package looked like. I have drawers full of Japanese washi and I love to use it when I can. Just ask me if you'd like a gift wrapped – I love putting together pretty packages!

flowering rush mixed sets

I've put together a mixed set of the flowering rush cards that have one of each of these colors: ochre, spring green, thistle, raspberry. They're available here.

I've been giving some thought lately to why it is I've made the technological leap to blogging. I couldn't stress enough that I never would have thought I'd be here – typing to an unknown audience. But here's the thing, here's why I think it makes so much sense these days, maybe even why it's necessary. I used to have a shop about six years ago. A real brick and mortar shop called Sakura in NE Portland where I sold Japanese pottery and textiles and tea ware. When you have a shop, there is the day to day interaction with your customers that is lacking in these internet based shops. So I think that blogging takes the place of that. I think it provides the chit-chat, the this-is-who-I-am of those little interactions. It gives background and depth to what otherwise be a cut and dry business transaction. At least that's what I hope.

When I had my shop, I would often make oolong tea for my customers while they looked around. I might offer them a sample of fine tea to take home. I used to spend an inordinate amount of time making these mailings to send out to my customers – collages cut from scraps of washi paper. Well, I can't do that anymore because my mailing list has become an e-mailing list instead. So what I can do is blog. It's what I have to offer for the behind the scenes goodies.

I can tell you things like the great dinner I made the other night. It's chicken with roasted fennel, cherry tomatoes and oil-cured black olives. It's really tasty and perfect as the weather cools down. I'll have to warn you, though, that my recipes can tend to be on the vague side...

Cut two chicken breasts up into chunks. Season liberally with salt and fresh ground pepper and toss with a little white flour. Sauté in good olive oil until nicely browned. Deglaze with a little white wine, then add some chicken broth to cover. Add a rind of Parmesan cheese if you've got one lying around. Meanwhile cut up two to three bulbs of fennel into wedges, toss with salt, pepper, olive oil and a little water . Pop it in a pre-heated oven (maybe 385 degrees). Roast until soft and caramelized and then slip it all in with the chicken. Add a jar of oil-cured olives (the really wrinkly intense kind with pits). Let this simmer for, oh, a half hour or so. About five minutes before you're going to serve this, throw in a cup or two of cherry tomatoes and some chopped Italian parsley. Eat it with egg noodles or soft polenta. I've been known to give it a glug of really good olive oil just before digging in, too.

Enjoy!

colors

I think of all my designs thus far, the flowering rush is my favorite. I originally printed this in a warm ochre color, followed by a spring green – but today I printed it in two new colors: a thistle-y purple and a raspberry pink. Very girly. I guess why I like this design in particular is that it seems so able to take on different colors. Maybe it's a lack of imagination on my part, but a lot of my other designs just seem to have one, maybe two, colors that will work with them. They just seem so grounded in reality. This one, though, the choices are wide open.

The thistle-purple was just what I wanted. It's the color of one of my favorite dresses, though purple isn't actually up there with my favorite colors. But THIS purple I like – it has a hint of the rainy weather that is coming our Portland way soon enough. The raspberry, well, it was a bit tricky. The Pantone guide called for red, just red. I don't have red, though. I have rubine red and warm red, so I made do. It's a bit brighter than I started out planning for, but in this small burst of color, I think it works.

I'm planning to put these up in my etsy shop tomorrow, as soon as I get a chance to take a few more photos. I might even split them up into 3-or-4-packs for a mix and match of the colors: ochre, spring green, thistle, raspberry.