Brothers is at the Beach 108th concession building and I’ll be there from 9am to 1pm selling baskets and brooms! They serve the best breakfast on the boardwalk, so come by and have a little beach / breakfast / shopping day on Sunday, June 14.

Did I mention we are moving to California from New York in one month? I’m clearing out all of my inventory and it’s on mega mega sale! Like 50-90% off, and if you come near the end of the day it will all be even cheaper because I’m not bringing it with me!

This process from Sonia Feldman caught my attention:

I revised Girl’s Girl the same way I revise poems. At the end of a draft, I would print out the full manuscript, mark it up, take notes. Then I would open a fresh, blank document on the computer. Every word from the old draft that I wanted to carry into the new draft, I had to type in by hand. No copy paste. This approach is part of why my book is so short. For the first few full drafts of the novel, somewhere between a third to half of the word count from the previous draft wouldn’t make the cut.

Read more on Mason Currey’s incredible newsletter, Subtle Maneuvers. And you can bet I’m going to try this method on an upcoming email!

Subtle Maneuvers

How to move from doubt to confidence

Welcome to the 187th issue of Subtle Maneuvers. Last time, I shared a magnificent pep talk from the artist Sol LeWitt to the perpetually self-doubting sculptor Eva Hesse. This week: Some further thoughts on doubt inspired by a recent interview with the filmmaker Ira Sachs…

Read more

a month ago · 28 likes · 2 comments

With my many-months hiatus I realize I haven’t posted any recent projects. Here is my completed seasonal calendar. The ring rotates through the year as the seasons change.

I was so disappointed with the original format of this piece; it took me a few months to be ready to revisit it. I gently disassembled it and took the part I loved the most (this circular seasons piece) and tried again with a different form factor. This second attempt is pleasing to me! Sometimes you just gotta persevere a little longer.

Below you can read my first attempt at the project.

That’s it for this week, I’m busy trying to use up every last scrap of rope to prepare for my pop-up. Truly I would love to meet you, so come on by!

See you next Sunday,
Bekka

I have attached myself to this very beautiful leather journal from Paper Republic. Their top notch marketing has me convinced that my life will completely change if I buy this product. I’ve clicked through every product page on their website, I have watched at least ten of their YouTube shorts, I have scrolled through their Instagram feed.

I believe that immediately upon having this item in my hands:

• I will be the type of person who carries her notebook everywhere.

• I will be the type of person to write in said notebook out in public, and those little bits of writing will be masterpieces.

• I will be the type of person that *gasp* draws in public (can you imagine?? What if someone sees my bad drawings??).

• This notebook will secure a book contract for me which will be lucrative enough to solve my financial problems for the rest of my life.

• This notebook will keep my life so organized, and my thoughts so well expressed that I will never feel stressed again.

You could say they got me hook, line and sinker. I have added multiple variations of this leather-bound journal to my shopping cart, and searched for discount codes and clicked “check out.” But I still have not actually clicked the “Pay Now” button.

Because I know myself and I know a little bit about marketing. There is no product I can buy that will do the hard work of changing my life (except orthopedic shoe insoles, I swear by those things).

The Root Cause

This winter I came down with a serious cough that had me laid-up for about five straight weeks. With it, came a serious case of the scrollsies. I became overwhelmed on all fronts: too much news, too many opinions of strangers on the internet, brain fog, slow and achy body. I was couch-bound for so long that I forgot how to do all of the things I love. Including writing and publishing. Over the past couple of weeks I took some steps to reduce the amount of time spent looking at my phone. To no one’s surprise: I have ideas again! And the will to write and even to hit publish once in a while.

My other problem is that writing has never felt the way I thought it would feel.

What I imagined writing to feel like:

• A whimsical day sitting in the park writing beautiful prose in my leather journal

• Making a boatload of money from writing (I’m talking Stephen King level wealth)

• For others to identify me as a writer, which is the craziest of them all because I know that I can’t control how others perceive me.

My process of writing and publishing weekly looks more like this

• Sitting down five mornings a week and opening the document

• Chipping away there for thirty minutes each day

• The first couple days are for word vomit

• Then a couple of editing sessions which I find challenging because that word vomit has to be shaped into something coherent

• A day to load it into Substack, add formatting, links, and some photos

This very unglamorous process works incredibly well for me. If I do it all five days in a row, something always comes out the other end. It might not be great, but it’s always done. For some reason (probably because my pop-culture references for “writer” are not this dull) I never took myself quite seriously enough to believe that that was a perfectly legitimate way to be a writer.

For two years I published this newsletter every Sunday. Early this year something made me question my process and I thought I could find another way. But waiting around for 5 months for a secret to reveal itself to me has netted absolutely zero published newsletters. So, back to the tried and true.

The Point of no Return

When I feel resistance towards any regular task, I think of Twyla Tharp’s morning ritual:

“I begin each day of my life with a ritual: I wake up at 5:30 a.m., put on my workout clothes, my leg warmers, my sweatshirts, and my hat. I walk outside my Manhattan home, hail a taxi, and tell the driver to take me to the Pumping Iron gym at 91st Street and First Avenue, where I work out for two hours. The ritual is not the stretching and weight training I put my body through each morning at the gym; the ritual is the cab. The moment I tell the driver where to go I have completed the ritual.”

-Twyla Tharp

In my head, I call it the point-of-no return. What’s the smallest step that must be taken in order to build momentum needed to finish the task? My strongest ritual is for swimming: I put one foot into my swimsuit. That’s it. Once one foot is in, the other will surely follow. I’m a weirdo and put my suit on at home instead of in the locker room. If I try to get out the door in my regular clothes, I dilly dally for hours and then never make it. Foot in suit.. That’s the key.

Turns out, my point-of-no-return for writing is simple: bring a cup of coffee into the studio, sit down in the desk chair, and open my laptop.

And look! It worked because here you are reading my newsletter once again.

I will admit I allowed myself $16 and a few hours to make a DIY version of the leather journal.

Honestly, I know nothing about working with leather and I picked up a piece that is way too soft and floppy. Functionally, this thing is not working well at all. But I tried! Through that process I learned that the dreamy notebook is not the magical key for me. All I need is coffee, chair, and laptop.

See you next Sunday,
Bekka

P.S. Get your life-changing shoe insoles at Power Step

P.P.S If someone from the marketing team at Paper Republic is reading this: I still want the green pocket sized leather journal. 

“But, of course, nobody ever has time or can ever afford to do poor work; that poor work is affordable is an illusion created by the industrial economy. If bad work is done, a high price must be paid for it; all “the economy” can do is forward the bill to a later generation—and, in the process make it payable in suffering.”

-Wendell Berry, Home Economics

Ooooooof, Wendell Berry’s thoughts and words hit hard. This is a thought that troubles me: our current desire for things to be quick, convenient, and cheap is going to haunt the next ten to a hundred generations (as if it’s not already haunting our own!).

I think about the world’s children now, how we expect them to fix all that we failed at. To me, seeing the children as our only hope is actually a dangerous thought. It’s a passing down of all of our guilt and greed, then washing our hands of it because we have raised children who want the world to be better. I think it’s our job to make the world better for all future children and model exactly what kinds of humans we hope for them to be!

Becoming a parent really turns a huge mirror in your face and forces you to confront all sorts of things that you thought you had locked away. Kids won’t let you hide any part of yourself. They reflect right back to you what you value and who you are.

I have a 2500 word rant typed up about plastic that emerged after reading Home Economics, but I think it needs another week or so to stew before it’s ready to publish. So, I’ll leave you with this: it’s a new year and a common time to reflect and plan for the year ahead. If you were to do one thing for the next generation this year, what would it be?

Housekeeping

I paused paid subscriptions for now. I’m publishing less often than ever, but enjoying it more when I do write it! So, we’ll see how the year shakes out.

See you next time!

Bekka

One

You may have noticed today is Saturday and I usually publish on Sundays. Well, I wanted to get this out a day early to say that I will be a vendor at the Rockaway Beach Makers Market tomorrow!

Sunday December 7, 2025 (tomorrow!)
10 am to 3 pm
97th Street concessions stand at the Rockaway Beach Boardwalk

If you are local to NYC come on out! The beach is actually quite magical in the cold weather. There will be delicious food and coffee and a lot of local vendors.

Below are some peeks at my new wares for the weekend.

Two

I have shipped a small box of goods (indigo baskets, brooms and some very special pocket altars pictured below) to San Francisco for the Golden Bridges School Winter Fair.

Saturday December 13, 2025 (next weekend!)
11 am to 3 pm
503 Cambridge St

If you are in the bay area this is a wonderful school fundraiser that I wish I could attend personally. I hear there will be music, food and even a puppet show! GO!

Three

A quick video from my studio to illustrate the chaos of the season!

That’s about all I can muster at the moment.

Hope to see you tomorrow, talk soon :)

Bekka

What I know right now is that when I walk through my neighborhood: people are mobilizing. We voted for Zohran Mamdani! The neighbors are doing massive food bank collections and distributions! The neighborhood group chats are filled with flyers and resources for all the places to get food right now. At least in my small corner of the world, we are saying, “I will not watch my neighbors starve.”

Maybe you have noticed a flurry of activity in your local neighborhood, too? While we have an actual monster living in the White House (and several more monsters in Congress). We have real people right next to us jumping in to build our own safety net.

Sharing a meal with your children, elders, friends and neighbors is the most human act in the world. Politicians withholding food benefits as a chess move in their grab for power is deeply depraved. I am so angry and disappointed that it’s hard to put into words. More than anything, though, I feel hope when I look around at the people nearest me.

I know that our current power structures can’t hold us down forever, there’s more of us than them. We need each other and we are here for each other.

Current and recently finished projects

Broom making

Last week I took a class broom making from Cynthia Main and wow! Sometimes a process just clicks right away. I ordered an additional ten pounds of broomcorn. The only thing stopping me from making ten or more a day is my sore arms. I need to build up some specific muscles and tendon strength (it feels like the early days of learning to rock climb).

What I’m loving about it: the tactile feel of the raw materials and how that feeling changes throughout the weaving process, the scent (it’s intoxicating), the fact that once you start you must see it through to completion because the whole thing relies on tension.

Other things I’m working on

• Blocks for my schoolhouse quilt

  

• Blocks for a project with no finish line in mind

  

• Cooking through Samin Nosrat’s Good Things book (check your public library for a copy!)

Finished

• Halloween costume

  

• Boatloads of baskets

• Almost getting scammed, but catching it just in time. Here’s the reddit thread that saved me! My gut was sending up red flags from my first interaction, so glad I listened to my intuition here.

• Voting for Zohran Mamdani!!

• The N.K. Jemison Broken Earth Trilogy on audiobook (not sure how to share Libby links, so that’s a link to buy the books if you want!)

That’s it for now!

Talk soon,
Bekka

Perpetual Calendar

This was many months in the making and to be honest I’m a little disappointed in the outcome. The idea was to make a functional perpetual calendar for the cyclical timelines we experience regularly: seasons, moon cycles, sun cycles. I thought I would be able to turn these wheels day by day and month to month as the cycles well… cycled but this particular construction isn’t working great for that function.

Luckily, the actual act of sewing these pieces was a total pleasure. The time I spent on it does not feel wasted. I’m still interested in exploring the topic of cyclical time and trying to create another piece that functions the way I want it to. I learned a lot about constructing soft sculptures and plan to pursue this further. At least half of my tedious stitching is hidden by the very structure of this piece (photos below). I have some ideas for how to make this again and when I build up some motivation I will try again. After a long-term project fails like this, I need a little bit of project rinsing before beginning again. In the meantime I’m making some smaller projects and working on a couple of quilts while I build up gumption.

Portable Altar

I spent a few days making this portable altar, originally inspired by a Tatter class which I just could not afford this month. I did a little googling and found a digital zine download in which the author explains much about portable altars, their history and how to make them.

A small project is such a pleasure to me. The end was in sight as soon as I began. It’s just a little something for myself, no pressure. These seem like great potential gifts for friends who meditate or exhibit any level of witchiness.

LINKS:

• The Art of the Pocket Altar Zine

• Tatter Class Oratorios: Portable Altars

Bits and Pieces

I keep finding myself working on these small reverse appliqué / patchwork pieces. I have no plan in mind for them, but they are a great small win and something I can do in-between the million other things that must be done around here! I’m leaning into work that can be done in very small bursts… while the dinner is in the oven, or in the hour between my son’s bedtime and my own. The art work can fit inside the other work (the life work) if you choose something simple enough!

Talk soon,
Bekka

It’s been a while! Life has presented many changes over the past few months. We sent our young child off to school five days a week, and that’s been a gift but also a little source of sadness. I miss long lingering mornings by the beach and having the whole day in front of us with no plans, letting the days unfold magically. I don’t miss the days when we were bored and trapped in the house due to weather and wrangling a child who wanted to be doing literally anything else!

The beginning of school is a funny milestone. If you had asked me before having kids, I would have nodded in agreement, yes school, the first day ever! What an exciting moment. But now living it I’m like, “Oh.” We will never again in our entire lives together have several years to just be with each other. Ever again. That sort of breaks my heart a bit. The relationship between parents and children is always shifting, but this moment feels seismic.

I’m sort of desperate for another baby, but I know if I go back and look at my writing from when Baz was one or so, I was just desperate for more free time. I guess there’s no real winning here. You either want one thing or the other.

Now that he’s in school I feel like I have to make the most of my days. Work work work, make up for years of lost work! It feels great to work hard again; finally getting around to all sorts of ideas that have been brewing.

Facing a mountain of unrealized ideas is intimidating. If I really sit down and do the work I’m meant to do, I could fail at that. The fear of failure keeps me from diving deep, I suppose. Easier to do the things that can be checked off a list: laundry, dishes, child-minding, dinner.

Have you started the new Sally Mann book? I so appreciate the letter to her friend Ted where she describes having a total meltdown around Christmas from the overwhelm of having a house full of kids and many things to be done but still feeling that pull to make art work. A universal artist mother experience.

Mostly I wanted to say that there’s always a tension between making art and all of the other things that fill up a life. The only way I know to overcome this tension is to do both things everyday no matter how imperfectly or incompletely.

During the two full weeks of school I made several of these trash flags. I collected beach umbrellas from the trash throughout the summer, washed them, deconstructed them and put them back together as bunting. Not yet available on my website, but message me if you want one and I’ll get to putting them online ASAP. More colors and more on these soon!

That’s it for this week,
See you soon (sooner than I have been writing all summer!!)
Bekka

Books!

I like to read books, I like to listen to books, I love books!

My number one standout book from this year so far is Disoriental by Négar Djavadi.

Here’s some recents that I enjoyed and the children’s books that we read over and over and over again.

Audiobooks

• The entire Shetland series audiobooks by Ann Cleaves

• The Word is Murder, The Sentence is Death and A Line to Kill by Anthony Horowitz

• The Summer Book by Tove Jansson

• Anything by David Baldacci, I have nearly completed his entire catalog of audiobooks available at my library. It truly blows my mind that a human could write this many novels in a lifetime.

Books

• Idlewild: a novel by James Frankie Thomas

• The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai

• Homeseeking by Karissa Chen

• Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

• Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor

• Long Bright River by Liz Moore

• Small Rain by Garth Greenwell

• Liars by Sarah Manguso

• The Wilderness by Aysegül Savas

• The Summer Guests by Tess Gerritsen

• The Spy Coast by Tess Gerritsen

• Disoriental by Négar Djavadi

• Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor

• Time, Myth and Matter by LD Deutsch

• Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

• How Much of these Hills is Gold by C Pam Zhang

Art Books

• Making Things by Erin Boyle and Rose Pearlman

• Material Obsession by Kathy Doughty

• Curved Two Patch System: A Quilt Designer's Exciting Discovery for Creating Pieced Flowers, Foliage and Other Patterns by Joyce M. Schlotzhauer

• Daily Rituals: Women at Work by Mason Currey

• The Great Noank Quilt Factory;: How to Make Quilts & Quilted Things by Sharon McKain

• Encyclopedia of Classic Quilt Patterns edited by Patricia Wilens

• 838 Ways to Amuse a Child: Crafts, Hobbies and Creative Ideas for the Child from Six to Twelve by June Johnson

• Quilts of America by Erica Wilson

Children’s Books on repeat at our house

• The Pout Pout Fish by Deborah Diesen

• If I Had an Octopus by Gabby Dawnay

• Every Night is Pizza Night by J Kenji Lopez-Alt

• Go, Dog. Go by P.D. Eastman

• Du Iz Tak by Carson Ellis

• Richard Scarry's Cars and Trucks and Things That Go

• Richard Scarry’s Day at the Airport

• Richard Scarry’s Best Storybook Ever

• Two Little Trains by Margaret Wise Brown

Places I get book recommendations

• Books on GIF - a weekly email with a wide range book reviews mostly novels!

• Making it Work with Youngna Park - a newsletter about parenting but it also contains tons of book recommendations for adults and children!

• My Candle Burns by Amy Bornman - another newsletter with essays about motherhood and also many many books!

• The Center for Fiction email newsletter - if you love fiction and want to read recently released novels, this is the place to get them!

I didn’t add links to all the books because no one seems to click the links and it takes me a long time to add them all :) My best places to get books are the public library and thriftbooks.com. I would not be able to afford to read this much without them.

See you next time

Bekka 

I have been testing a method for doing personal work that both allows me to work on a variety of projects but also limits me to just three. This forces me to finish a few things before starting ten others, and it also gives me the space I need to switch gears when I’m stuck.

I’m great at starting new things. Not great at following through to the finish line. This has been a challenge I want to face this year.

The method: I keep a piece of 8.5 x 11 paper displayed prominently in my studio, I can’t miss it when I walk in the door. This paper contains two lists: one titled “Currently” with three spaces, and another titled “Wish List” with unlimited spaces. I’m only allowed to work on any of the three “Currently” projects. Anything else that my brain comes up with is relegated to “Wish List” for the time being.

Once I finish an item on the Currently list, I do not replace it until all three are complete. I must finish the ones I have written down before moving on. Finish it or quit the project completely, but no “saving it for another day.” Once I finish the three, I make a new sheet. I sit and decide which, if any, of my wish list items I actually want to work on. Often my wish list items are a whim and by the time I’m ready to commit to new projects I don’t want to do them anymore. Sitting down to write out the list gives me that moment of clarity about what I really want to be spending my time doing.

This method is working relatively well! My first sheet (I wish I had saved it!) I completed it in a few months without straying from the Currently list. Sometime halfway through my second sheet I found myself wandering into a few other projects along the way. This was just good old fashioned resistance coming up. One of these projects is an art piece that feels a little vulnerable and I had a little subconscious voice telling me that if I did not finish the project I would never have to show it to anyone and also never be rejected from show applications. After a small meander away from my list I have made my way back and am cruising along towards the finish line.

Resistance

One of my favorite forms of resistance is a good ole’ case of the “shoppy shoppies.” The urge to consume pulls me right in whenever I feel stress or anxiety. Like right before traveling I always want to buy a bunch of things because somehow that gives me the feeling that I can control all of the unknowns (such as a diverted flight).

But isn’t the whole point of travel to step out of routines, jump into unknown territory and face some new challenges? Probably, yes! But marketing has me convinced that I can buy my way out of these moments for a smooth and picturesque life.

Much like the anxiety of travel, the pending fall of an empire has me compelled to SHOP!

Things I want to buy right now, explained

• Time Timer - this little gadget will obviously solve my problem of “never enough time”

• Jesse Kamm jacket and pants - Oh, these will make me feel cool, which, according to Instagram, if you look cool, you are cool

• ABC beads - you know, so I can express myself like a teen

• New workout gear - The highest form of hope… the new gear will remove all resistance to exercise

• North Face carry on luggage - did you know that if you just find the most perfect suitcase then all travel woes disappear? Toddlers sit quietly for 5 hour flights, you never forget things, all flights are on time, etc, etc.

• More train tracks for my son’s wooden train set - because if I transfer my desire for consumption to my son then I’m off the hook because it’s not “for me” it’s for someone else!

In all seriousness, my existential angst is fueled by watching the systematic starvation of the people of Palestine. Instead of filling up my cart with useless items, I’ll put my money to something useful.

Michelle Pellizzon is doing a fundraiser for World Central Kitchen, one of the few groups that has been allowed to operate in Gaza. If you feed compelled to join me, please donate below and help her reach her goal of $10,000. In this moment, every dollar counts.

Donate here

That’s it for this week. See you again soon!

Bekka

And you know what else? All of the people on our flight were calm about it, too. There was a sense of communal commiseration, but not one person screamed at a flight attendant. We had a long wait in the terminal that night to get hotel rooms and two older boys became an instant hit with our toddler when they pulled an RC car out of their backpack. The gratitude I felt in that moment, that some strangers would entertain a very tired toddler for another hour, was immense.

The passengers and crew reunited the next morning to board our final flight and it felt like seeing old friends. One of the flight attendants greeted my son by name. The older children pulled the RC car out once again and played together for that interminable hour before boarding. Most people made eye contact with one another and asked, “How was your night, where did you end up staying?”

Our total travel time was extended by about 18 hours, even though the last leg was only a short 45 minute flight home.

At the baggage carousel I witnessed seatmates hugging their new friends before embarking on their rest of their journey. This group spent nearly 24 hours together and coming out the other end I felt a hope for humanity that has been severely missing for me lately. Perhaps we collectively do have the capacity to navigate tough terrain together and come out closer than we went in.

Small things

As I try to inhabit the seasons, I’m learning that summer is not a time for big, engrossing projects. Instead what’s working is maintenance. Embracing small creative acts, or tiny pieces of a larger puzzle, but nothing that requires many days and many hours. Summer is a time for block parties, visitors, and vacations. I haven’t sat down regularly to do anything since late May.

Perhaps also, this is the season of my life with a small child in tow. I am accepting this fever dream summer and trying not to panic that my practice has dissolved for now. Summer is just a once a year diversion and my routines will click back into place when the first crisp breeze comes back to town.

Misatkes

I have these two baskets that have slight smudges on them. I tried to remove smaller stains and accidentally made them bigger. If the stains don’t bother you, they are both listed online for 50% off retail right now :)

BUY MISATKE BASKETS

Things I made lately

Azuma bag

Using instructions from The Green Wrapper on YouTube.

Emotional Support Tool Roll

Based on the plans from MAFIA, which can be purchased here.

Fabric book

This non-linear book which is a continuation from the fabric book class I took back in January at Tatter.

Future plans for making things

• Tool bag and tool roll from Monkey stuff

• Oratorios: Portable Alters class at Tatter in the fall

That’s it for now, see you soon :)

Bekka

I have been irrationally coveting the Trader Joe’s mini tote, but absolutely refuse to stand in line to get one. Found this pattern on Etsy instead. It took a few hours to make it and I’ve heard the lines for the Trader Joe’s ones also take a few hours :)

Finding new and joyful ways to fill my notebooks.

And finally, the conclusion to a project I started in January: my first fabric book! I took a six week virtual class with María José Durán Steinman at the beginning of the year and continued to work on this in fits and starts. Now that one book is done, I’m ready to start another.

The official book review from my 2-year-old son, “More!” Which I take as the highest compliment.

Recs

The Great Noank Quilt Factory book by Sharon McKain - This quilt book might be the all-in-one quilting tutorial you need (especially if like me, you are a little allergic to patterns and want to improvise).

The Wilderness by Aysegül Savas - A tender essay about the early days of postpartum, for anyone who felt alone during that time!

Stay Alive Studio - got a new cap from Stay Alive Studio, a local artist who makes very cool things!

That’s it for now! See you next time ;)

Bekka

“The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe; and I am beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this may be incapable of morality.”

―James Baldwin

This quote has been making its way around the internet since bombs dropped on Gaza. I can understand in my mind that we have failed the children of Gaza. I can feel it bodily in the microcosm of my own life that we are also failing the mothers.

At the library, a mom asks, “I really need a coffee, can you watch my kids for ten minutes?” She hustles out the door and hustles back again so as not to take too much of my time. I think, “You deserve so much more than ten minutes.”

At the playground, a girl falls with her scooter, unseen by her mother. I pick her up, brush her knees, set the scooter upright and off she rolls. Mothers are mothers to all.

A mom of two (a 3 year old and a 6 month old) said to me last week, “I know I'm not supposed to say this, but sometimes, I miss having just one.” Tiny confessions of an overloaded mother whispered in the library.

I’m sensing that many people are feeling pulled taut in too many directions right now. If you zoom out really far to witness the changes happening on an Earth level, it’s a point of stress. If you zoom in a little to the tensions between countries, it’s a point of stress. If you come a little closer in the United States and watch the tension between political parties, it’s a point of stress. And if you go all the way down into the daily grind of a mother caring for her children, or to an adult child caring for her parents after being laid off, it’s a point of stress. All of these stress points on every level of existence. It’s a lot to face every day.

I have no conclusion for any of this, but I’ll leave you with this quote from Andrea Gibson

I know most people try hard to do good and find out too late they should have tried softer.

―Andrea Gibson, You Better be Lightening

Related

How many lives has our children’s librarian saved? No matter what work she is engrossed in, if a child walks up to her with a book, she slowly sets her work down, moves to the floor and reads with the child. I know if I go to the library, she'll be there, taking just an ounce off my own load. It’s a place I know that I can find a bit of a break. I have a feeling our dear librarian has saved many mothers lives without ever knowing the depths that her kindness reaches.

A recently completed project

I must have started this well over a year ago, then it sat in a closet for 7 months before I picked it back up again. My brain / body gave up when it was 90% complete. This is a major pattern in my practice, and one I’m hoping to leave behind. I get close to the end and then for some reason just move along to the next thing before actually finishing things.

My three previous posts about being “close to the finish line” on this one. Oh boy, if you just look at the dates on those posts… it’s been over a year now.

So here’s to getting back to it and doing the thing! And a gentle reminder to myself to finish what I started.

In the glorious hour-and-a-half between the toddler’s bedtime and the time when I wind down I do my Night Sewing. My husband queues up a show and we sit on the couch and it’s Night Sewing time! Hundreds of stitches a night at least.

My Night Sewing has become a compulsion, something that I’m not willing to give up easily. If you invite me out for an evening activity, it had better be more exciting than my current sewing project.

This delightful hour is how I've been managing to complete an astonishing (astonishing, to me, at least) number of tedious sewing projects while also caring for a toddler during the day.

If you have done any sewing projects in your life, you will know that a lot of what we bucket into the term sewing actually means: pre-washing, patterning, measuring, cutting, pinning, ironing. During the day I take a little chunk of time, usually 15-20 minutes to prepare so that I have a large portion of actual hand-stitching to work on in the evening.

It’s a constant echo in my head, “Do I have something ready for Night Sewing tonight?”

My Night Sewing has paid dividends, here’s some of the fruits of my Night Sewing labor (some of these, you’ve seen before!)

If I decline an invitation to your party, it’s probably because I’m busy sewing :)

Resources

• If you are interested in learning to sew bojagi, Youngmin Lee has an excellent YouTube and / or you can get a copy of her book.

• The pattern I used to make my shorts was from Friday Pattern Co

• The pattern for my apron was from Hey June Handmade

• Always interesting sewing classes from Tatter

• Silk thread for the curtain from Brooklyn Haberdashery

That’s it for this week!

See you next Sunday.

Bekka

Things I love about publishing here:

• Getting comments and responses

• The feeling of documenting my process

• Being able to look back at a year of posts and feel accomplished, because the day-to-day work feels like a treadmill

• Having the opportunity to talk about things you can do to support me financially (aka marketing)

• Experimenting with weird things some weeks

• Writing through weird or difficult moments of my life

• Taking photos of my current projects for my own memory as much as for sharing

• Making lists of all of the things that are currently holding my interest (books, podcasts, articles, etc)

Things I don’t love about publishing weekly (or bi weekly as of late)

• Feeling like I have to sit down to write (and edit) something serious each week

• Coming up with something to say just for the sake of having something to say

• Deciding whether or not to put something behind a paywall

• Wondering if what I publish one week will cause people to unsubscribe

• Trying to be interesting

• Being serious

• The pressure to “create value” so people will pay for this content

The eternal struggle of an artist!

With that, things might get different or weird, or I might even.. Gasp! Skip weeks!

Thank you to everyone who has stayed subscribed for all this time and a special thank you to everyone who has upgraded to a paid subscription. If you want to go back to a free subscription, that’s fine (link to the manage subscription page)! I don’t see myself putting much behind a paywall from here one out because that decision exhausts me.

There are many ways to support me financially like purchasing a basket from Closed Mondays, or by purchasing original art (see below).

Without further ado, a selection of paintings that are currently available to purchase. Email me hello @ bekkapalmer dot com to get prices and shipping info.

Recommendation of the week

The Shetland series of audiobooks by Ann Cleeves (apparently now a BBC show!). Thanks to reader Megan for suggesting them to me. I am hooked! They are technically murder mystery novels, but Ann Cleeves has a special way of describing life in Shetland and Fair Isle that makes you want to move there immediately. They are probably available to you in the Libby app :)

That’s it for this Sunday. See you next week or maybe the week after that!

Bekka

Eventually tides will be the only calendar you believe in.

-A line from Mary Oliver’s poem: To Begin with, the Sweet Grass

They say that the days make a life. Many of us put effort into structuring our  individual days because we are members of a society that functions on synced schedules. Our lives require scheduling: meetings, exercise, social events, dates, playdates, school functions, even our free time gets a block on the calendar.

Since I gave birth I have become obsessed with time in a new way. Things came up that I never once gave a thought to: utilizing my limited “free time” well, tracking all of that breastfeeding time (there’s an app for that!), time left on this Earth (who knows?!), nap time, bed time, meal time, time to make art.

In a life where every second feels irreplaceable, the burden to utilize every second can be suffocating. I am frozen in decisions about what to do with my time, because no one thing feels big or important enough to fritter away a precious second doing. The pressure of limited time sends me into a panic; knowing that this could very well be my last day on this Earth.

Societal ways of understanding time often involve the Gregorian calendar. You know the one, you've got it on your phone. There’s 12 months divided into weeks (not nicely divided, either. Did a rabid raccoon choose the number of days in a month?! Oh yes, most months are 30 days long, but some are 31 and one is 28 except every fourth year when it’s 29 days).

Anyway, you know this calendar. You enter kindergarten and they upload this calendar to your consciousness. It’s the way the western human world functions.

This way of keeping time was invented by some men a very long time ago probably for efficiency and increased productivity. It is pretty convenient to set a date and know that your buddy will be waiting for you outside the restaurant at said time. For most of us though, it’s eating our souls. You’ve heard of the Sunday scaries? The Monday blues? Hump day? Thirsty Thursday?

We give nicknames to the days as a coping mechanism for surviving the weeks. I suppose I have spent much of my adult life trying to peel myself out of this cycle. At my first job out of college I negotiated a lower salary so I could have Wednesdays off work. I knew that going into an office and sitting behind a computer five days in a row was going to kill me. Then I started an entire business (hello, Closed Mondays) based on the idea that we all need and deserve three day weekends.

Now, I live in a phase where two things are true. There are some aspects of life in which the days are absolutely meaningless. I work for myself, my partner works for himself, our young child stays home with us all but one day per week. The days organized as weeks don’t matter too much in our small orbit.

Of course, we interact with the greater world around us, so we must weave this calendar into our lives. I rely heavily on certain institutions that have strict weekly schedules (story time on Wednesdays, day care on Fridays, the YMCA staff watches my child on Mondays and Saturdays).

But a toddler doesn’t really care about days of the week, our bodies do not naturally heed the cycle of a seven day week, making art does not happen only Monday-Friday.

I’m in the process of consciously re-imagining my relationship to time.

There are cosmic ways of organizing time that pull at me. Circadian rhythms, moon cycles, Earth’s seasons, and of course, the tides. The push and pull between my google calendar and the celestial calendar have been heavy on my mind and spirit. I have to oblige the weekly calendars to be member of our society, but the idea that a scheduled life is the only way to conceive of our time here is beginning to dissolve.

REVOLUTIONARY LETTER #59

What we need to know is laws of time & space
they never dream of. Seek out
the ancient texts: alchemy
homeopathy, secret charts
of early Rosicrucians (Giordanisti).
Grok synchronicity Jung barely
scratched the surface of.
LOOK TO THE “HERESIES” OF EUROPE FOR BLOODROOTS
(remnants of pre-colonized pre-Roman Europe)
Insistent, hopeful resurgence of communards
free love & joy; “in god all things are common”
secret celebration of ancient season feasts & moons.
Rewrite the calendar.

Head-on war is the mistake we make
time after time
There is a way around it, way to outflank
technology, short circuit
“energy crisis”: retreat & silence
cunning
courage & love

-Diane di Prima

Available to read at The Anarchist Library

Links

• Mitchell Volk with the zine making resources

Mitchell's Newsletter

Bouncing around

I’ve had a lot of half-baked ideas bouncing around my head recently. Fragments of projects or possible starting points. Things to pursue. Maybe putting them out into the world will a) get rid of them or b) let them flourish…

Read more

a year ago · 48 likes · 34 comments · Mitchell Volk

• Friday Pattern Co - Wow! The pattern company of dreams, great size range, you can order physical patterns or print at home. Wow wow wow. I have downloaded the sport short pattern and am going to get going on it this week.

• Forever Ruth Asawa, truly can never get enough photos of this woman’s extraordinary life.

Art Dogs

Ruth Asawa

Art Dogs is a monthly-ish dispatch introducing the pets—dogs, yes!, but also cats, lizards, marmosets, and more—that were kept by our favorite artists. Subscribe to receive these ~monthly posts to your email inbox…

Read more

2 years ago · 92 likes · 18 comments · Bailey Richardson

That’s it for this week, see you next time.

Bekka

That’s it for this round. Being sick preventing my brain from functioning so I’ll be back next time with something coherent. :)

Bekka

A couple of things from around the studio. I was on vacation most of the time between my last newsletter and today, but jumped right back in! A huge pile of baskets going out next week and some updates to my fabric books.

Joann Fabrics is closing their stores. I don’t personally have a Joann’s near me so on the one hand the closures aren’t going to affect my ability to get supplies. On the other hand, I know it’s a place that’s easily accessible for many Americans and without it, access to fabrics and notions is going to be made more difficult. That’s a huge bummer to me, I think we all deserve hobbies and a way to express ourselves. I know sewing fills that space for many people. However, there are loads of mom-and-pop fabric stores in the country, and this is a great moment to find your local shop and divert all of your fabric shopping energy into a small business.

I’m updating The Rolodex, my massive spreadsheet of artist resources, to include as many local sewing shops as I can in the next few weeks. Leave a comment or send me a message with your favorites!

Below are a few of the sewing shops I’ve found so far, plus a few cool classes that I’ve listed in The Rolodex.

The Rolodex is the one of the perks of a paid subscription to Studio Sundays, it’s got hundreds of listings for stores, classes, YouTube channels and more!

As always, if you cannot afford a subscription, please reach out and I will comp it, no questions asked. If you are in a position to pay for a month or year, that support means I can continue to find ways to support living artists, dig up even more resources and create my own art.

Subscribe now

Sewing Stores!

Sew-ciety Castle Rock, CO

Sew-ciety is my mom’s favorite quilting store. They have serious stock of fabric and quilting notions, and they offer sewing machine repair which is harder and harder to find!

M&L Fabrics Discount Store Anaheim, CA

I love these mega warehouse fabric discount stores, you have to go in ready to hunt for stuff, but the hunt is so exciting! M & L Fabrics

Main Street Quilting Bozeman, MT

Main Street Quilting Company is a full service quilt shop, located in the heart of historic downtown Bozeman, and it’s the largest quilting store in southwest Montana

Robin’s Sewing Shoppe Birmingham, AL

Robin’s Sewing Shoppe is a local sewing shop with special expertise in Bernina machines.

Your favorite store here

Send me your recs! I want to know all the great small sewing and art supply stores in America (and beyond!).

Ken Burns on Quilts

“I’ve spent my entire professional life asking the essentially simple question: Who are we? Who are those strange and complicated people who like to call themselves Americans? And all of my films are attempting not so much to answer that question, but to deepen it. So as an avocation, as a hobby, I have pursued collecting what I think is the cleanest, simplest, and most authentic expression of who we are as a people.”

-Ken Burns

This ten minute short of Ken Burns and his quilt collection made my day last week. A great reminder that something as simple as a quilt can create a connection between multiple generations or between people across the country.

Cool Classes coming up

Kelli Anderson on Paper Engineering

If I had the time and extra cash, I would sign up for this in a heartbeat. Kelli is one of the greatest artists I know and this class would expand any creative practice. You have no idea what paper is capable of until you see what Kelli can do! Sign up here.

Gee’s Bend Quilting Retreats

Join the legendary Pettway family of Gee's Bend Quilting Collective at a week long retreat for any level of quilter. You work on your own project and receive one-on-one guidance from China and Mary Ann Pettway.

“Retreats have historically served as spaces for renewal, learning, and reflection. Rooted in religious and creative traditions, they offer time away from daily routines to focus on artistic expression. Whether fostering contemplation or creativity, retreats provide valuable opportunities for personal exploration and community connection.”

Sign me up!

One more way to get the supplies you need!

My last suggestion for getting some new-to-you supplies is to host a fabric (or any art supply) swap. It’s a win-win-win. You and your friends get to clean out your stash, everyone gets something to take home, and no new resources are used in the process. Oh, and you get to hang out with people who have similar hobbies.

See this article on Curiously Conscious for their tips on a clothing swap that could be easily adapted for other types of swaps.

That’s it for the week. See you soon :)

Bekka

• Sauna time, wow! My treat for going to the gym. I especially enjoy it when I end up in the sauna at the moment that the water aerobics class gets out and we cram eight to ten bodies into the tiny wood-lined room. Every one of us breaks the rule “no drying off in the sauna.” I sit quietly listening to the chatter of older (wiser) women there. It feels like a secret space, it’s dark, warm, and when it’s crowded there’s a special buzz.

• Getting more creative for at-home play time since home is where we are spending the bulk of our days with a toddler. We get less playground time when the temperature feels like 2 degrees Fahrenheit for weeks on end. Playdough, real dough, cooking, drawing, cars, cars cars, puzzles, Duplos, cars. Have to dig deep into the well of my own inner child to find more ways to keep a toddler busy in this season.

• A side effect of not buying things is leaning into DIY versions of everything I want. I look at all sorts of garbage and recycling with a new lens. That bread crumb packaging would make a perfect structure for a circular cardboard car ramp.

  

• Making big plans for future projects, and clearing out some old projects from my studio to make space for the next one. How many times have I written about how hard it is to finish things? Once I hit the fourth quarter of any project I’m bound to set it aside for the newest thing. And instead of spending just a few more hours or days (or weeks depending on the scale) I just shove it in the back of a closet until inspiration strikes again. The problem is that inspiration doesn’t always come back for projects that are already 90% done. That’s where discipline is needed. I’m using this winter to pick up stale projects and finish them.

• Gaining confidence in hand-sewing techniques, leaving behind my reliance on a sewing machine

• Finding joy when the temp goes above 32 and we get bundled up and be out in the fresh air. Particularly snow days! When all of the kids from the block go out in their snow gear! One magical day when a neighbor kid invited us to his front yard to play. Another neighbor child, a mere 1.5 years older than my son, pulled my son around on her sled and he had a huge smile plastered on his lips the whole time. Watching the big kids use their boogie boards on a homemade snow ramp.

• Befriending more mothers (and some dads) and joining forces to entertain the kiddos inside.

Links

• Power Up: Resources for the Road Ahead Doing my very best to stay engaged and also stay the course of community building that I began even before the Inauguration, this list has some helpful items for me.

• Notes on Artist Publishing a zine by Amelia Greenhall that’s been in my cart for weeks as a person who is interested in getting started publishing as an artist.

After the paywall, many more links and two projects that I finally finished!

Special thanks to paid members who are all a part of my vast support network. Living as an artist takes a village! I could not do this without you.

Read more

That’s what they want, I think, for me to turn away from overwhelm and disgust. A phrase that came up several times in my morning pages this week: see with your own eyes. The media giants can’t be trusted with tender hearts. One way to combat being utterly frozen by the blast of executive orders is to walk out the front door and see what’s happening directly in front of me.

Some additional that are working for me right now:

• Leave the house, there’s always someone at the library or community center

• Go to the beach (or public park, or whatever is nearby). It has people and dogs despite the ripping winds and 30 degree days!

• Talk to a new neighbor

• Take a trip to the grocery store, gotta see real people every damn day

• Have a party or four

• Go to the parties I am invited to

• Make a plan with a friend in the next four weeks and have something to look forward to

• Subscribe to News, Not, Noise and turn down media sources with twenty-four hour coverage. Try to get the news 2-3 days after it happens, many times the action was reversed or abandoned in that timeframe.

• Read books by wise people, I’m listening to Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer once again. Her traditional knowledge sows seeds for future action.

• Seeking out traditional knowledge from my own cultural heritage (Northern European). When I first started this quest many years ago, I was looking for authoritative history books. Turns out, the old stories are just that, stories. So reading books like Mists of Avalon and The End of Drum Time are the some of the ones that have little keyholes that allow me to see what it was like before Roman colonization of northern Europe.

• Also picking up Diane Di Prima’s Revolutionary Letters (more below) and picking a page a day to read.

• Embrace that winter can be a little boring, and boredom gives you time to dream!

• Write down my daydreams of utopia

Making things has been my most fruitful method for combatting anxiety and for seeking ways to record my own experience here in case someone ever wants to read my stories.

Get your own copy of Folkweaver: Germinating Dreams of Community (I received this as a gift in December) and work your way through the year together.

REVOLUTIONARY LETTER #22

what do you want
your kids to learn, do you care
if they know factoring, chemical formulae, theory
of numbers, equations, philosophy, semantics
symbolic logic, latin, history, socalled, which is
merely history of mind of western man, least interesting
of numberless manifestations on this planet?
//
do you care
if he learns to eat off the woods, to set
a broken arm, to mend
his own clothes, cook simple food, deliver
a calf or baby? if there are cars should he not
be able to keep his running?
how will he learn these things, will he learn them
cut off in a plaster box, encased
in a larger cement box called ‘school’ dealing with paper
from morning till night, grinding no clay or mortar, no
pigment, setting no seedlings in black earth
come spring, how will he
know to trap a rabbit, build a raft,
to navigate by stars, or find safe ground
to sleep on? what is he doing all his learning years
inside, as if the planet were no more than a vehicle
for carrying our plastic constructs around the sun

Diane Di Prima

Available at the Anarchist Library

Mutual Aid Distribution

This round of Mutual Aid for artists went to a family in Los Angeles who lost their home. Lucy’s sister is a neighbor of mine here in New York. If you want to send a donation to Lucy and Kevin you can do so at their gofundme.

That’s is for this one, see you in two weeks.

Bekka