Don't Break the Chain!

I was recently browsing the House of Vintage in Portland, Oregon and came across this postcard:



It was sent from one man to another and reads:

Hi Boy!


You should have come along like I said. - Nice scenery - especially thru the mts. - Utah, Nevada & Wyoming - Plenty of time to see it as this truck isn't very fast.


P.S. A man should consider if he follows thru on this chain he might be worse off.

Suffice to say, I've never seen a chain letter quite like this before. It's dated Sept. 27, 1954 and the was 3 cents.

Haute Paper Couture

I saw this video on my dear friend David's Google Buzz feed (originally from scene 360), and it's just too awesome not to repost.


C'est l'amour!

Color + Packaging: Opinel Knives

Over the weekend I ventured across bridge and bay to check out a warehouse sale of products made in France and came home with these colorful knives by Opinel. They are sharp(!) in more ways than one.

Aside from a nice block of kitchen knives we received as a wedding gift, we were still using a very dull set of table knives I bought at a discount store about 15 years ago, and had only one paring knife in constant rotation. We hardly need more kitchenware, but in this case there was no danger of buyer's remorse. Luckily, my husband likes the knives too. He said, "You should put those on your blog." So, here they are, cute as a knife can be (if you like cute knives).

Joyeux Anniversaire

One last post from the vintage paper fair:

This poem appeared to be penned from husband to wife on their wedding anniversary, and I found it, months ago, in one of the .25 bins. It seemed like it was worth more than that.

Today is my 3rd wedding anniversary, somehow. I visited my grandparents last night, and they said that they'll have been married 58 years this fall, and together for 68 years. She's put up with me that long, my grandfather said, smiling.

Easter Greetings

A dear friend recently told me she thought of this time of year as a brighter kind of Thanksgiving. We were talking about Easter and Passover and, as it happens, this book I've been reading, about what it means to be lost, opened with a discussion of Passover:

"Leave the door open for the unknown, the door into the dark. That's where the most important things come from, where you yourself came from, and where you will go.... The important thing is not that Elijah might show up someday. The important thing is that the doors are left open to the dark every year."

I like this description too, very much. It's come up for me several times this week and last that sometimes questions are more significant than answers.

Photo by Jess Watson

This has little to do with letterpress, admittedly, but I am indeed feeling thankful this year, and open, I hope, to the dark.

Ladies of Letterpress

I had an atypical St. Patty's Day this year. Instead of challenging my husband to see who was most thirsty (because he's been traveling), I attended a talk and exhibition by the founding members of Ladies of Letterpress at the San Francisco Center for the Book. Port and specialty font-shaped chocolate, from La Forêt Chocolates of Napa, were a pretty good substitute for green beer.







The Ladies of Letterpress, of which I'm now a member (a little prematurely perhaps, but why not? Seize the day!), does accept lads, and is basically a social network of letterpress printers and suppliers (because I need another social network), and (in all seriousness) their site offers a wealth of information. It's always amazing to me how you can scratch the surface of some new fascination only to find a whole world exists there.

How the Light Gets In

This is lovely. But what I really love is the video.


Photo by danske

Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything,
that's how the light gets in.

~Leonard Cohen