You may (or may not) notice that a new category has been added to this here little blog. I added the "letterpress" category because folks, I intend to use it. I took my letterpress class at the San Francisco Center for the Book this past Friday and it was probably the most fun I've had in years. The class was nine hours long but went by so quickly because everything was so interesting and cool. Wehandset type, mixed ink, printed, cleaned up (which takes forever) and washed our hands about a hundred times. The process of letterpress, how the presses actually work, is much different than what I expected but is impressively intuitive. I kept thinking "These machines are genius, I can't believe they stopped making them!" At one point I became a complete and total dork because I just started giggling for no reason other than the fact that I was having a really good time and couldn't help it. I made some simple thank you cards and also printed The Red Wheelbarrow by William Carlos Williams
on a flat card.
So I think that I've found a new craft addiction. It's a funny thing. When I first began this blog it was in large part because I was so inspired by the blogging of people like Amy Karol and Hilary Lang. I loved the cool, clever and innovative sewing that they were doing and wanted to do a bit of it myself, while also sharing some of my adventures with a few other people if they were willing to read. And while I do love sewing (and have a fabric stash that I should actually be really embarrassed about), I think that the actual gift of throwing myself back into the world of stitch crafts has been that it has led me farther down other paths of crafting as well. I have always loved letterpress but I don't know that it ever would have occurred to me that I could actually learn how to do it if I hadn't happened upon the amazing (and infinite) community of crafty bloggers. So thanks all!
My next letterpress class isn't for a few weeks. I'm a little sad to have to wait so long to do it all again but I also really have some other things that I need to be working on right now, most especially a couple of items for swaps that I signed up for. More on that to come...
