A pile of links & a video of my patchwork process
More zines, plus things that aren't zines, books and a video that I'm pretty proud of!
Not a lot to say this week except I have a big pile of links to share!
Links
More zines!
A zine enthusiast!
That same zine enthusiast mentions Desert Island, a store I walked past 100 times when I lived in the neighborhood but somehow never stopped in?
It is a store very much aligned with things I care about. They will take any zine you publish on consignment and add it to their shelves. Gatekeeping be damned.
Visit their website to submit your zine to their shop!
Not zines
Election anxiety running high? Focus on a state election
The invention of the eyed sewing needle expanded human migration.
Looking forward to Youngmin Lee’s book, Bojagi: The Art of Korean Textiles
Really heartened by this episode of Commons on overconsumption.
Sometimes you just need to feel validated in your life choices! After listening I texted a few friends who potentially wanted some items I already own that I’m ready to let go of. Win win! I get to clean out and they get something they want.
I finally upgraded my subscription to Carson Ellis’s Substack and WOW! So many process videos of her working. I spent many baby naps this week watching the videos while I doodled.
From one of Carson’s posts I was reminded of the New York Public Library’s Digital Collections as a place to go for sources images for my drawings and paintings. This cyanotype collection in particular.. chef’s kiss.
Books I can’t shut up about
*Links to books may result in a small commission fee :)
Braiding Sweetgrass
We begin our lives, she says, walking the Way of the Daughter. This is the time for learning, for gathering experiences in the shelter of our parents. We move next to self-reliance, when the necessary task of the age is to learn who you are in the world. The path brings us next to the Way of the Mother. This, Gunn relates, is a time when “her spiritual knowledge and values are all called into service of her children.” Life unfolds in a growing spiral, as children begin their own paths and mothers, rich with knowledge and experience, have a new task set before them. Allen tells us that our strengths turn now to a circle wider than our own children, to the well-being of the community. The net stretches larger and larger. The circle bends round again and grandmothers walk the Way of the Teacher, becoming models for younger women to follow. And in the fullness of age, Allen reminds us, our work is not yet done. The spiral widens farther and farther, so that the sphere of a wise woman is beyond herself, beyond her family, beyond the human community, embracing the planet, mothering the earth.
An excerpt from Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer referring to Paula Gunn Allen’s work: Grandmothers of the Light.
Making Comics
Working through Lynda Barry’s Making Comics is truly a gift! The exercises are helping to free my mind of the voice that says “I can’t draw well” to just drawing. And gasp! Enjoying it! It’s fun, it’s freeing, it’s silly. It doesn’t matter if it’s “good” or “bad” you just get to draw, day in and day out. I can’t get enough of it.
For paid members (below), a video of me working on sewing an improvisational patchwork quilt top (plus links to my supplies). One tiny piece of fabric at a time.
