Hello friends. Happy February! January felt long yet short at the same time. It’s Valentine’s day soon and I made another super easy DIY. These Heart Shaped Napkin Rings turned out so cute and were so simple to make.
I bought a wooden heart garland from the Dollar Store and removed it from the twine. I then glued the heart to a wooden ring and sprayed them with some gold spray paint and done!
You can paint these any c
Hello friends. Happy February! January felt long yet short at the same time. It’s Valentine’s day soon and I made another super easy DIY. These Heart Shaped Napkin Rings turned out so cute and were so simple to make.
I bought a wooden heart garland from the Dollar Store and removed it from the twine. I then glued the heart to a wooden ring and sprayed them with some gold spray paint and done!
You can paint these any color to coordinate with your table. I like the gold because I can use it throughout the year.
I think these heart shaped napkin rings turned out so cute!
Hello friends. I hope you’ve been keeping well. It’s been a little while since I posted. I’m not even sure if anyone is reading this blog anymore but regardless, here is a pretty Spring Mantel I put together a couple of weeks ago.
I used blue hydrangeas and these beautiful ferns. I bought these to make wreaths for our front doors and will still be using them…
But I just started to play with them on the mantel and thing led to the other a
Hello friends. I hope you’ve been keeping well. It’s been a little while since I posted. I’m not even sure if anyone is reading this blog anymore but regardless, here is a pretty Spring Mantel I put together a couple of weeks ago.
I used blue hydrangeas and these beautiful ferns. I bought these to make wreaths for our front doors and will still be using them…
But I just started to play with them on the mantel and thing led to the other and here we are.
It’s fun to play with decor and just see what turns out.
As usual, I took a lot of photos. I just enjoy taking photos and editing them.
I remember the good old days when photos and pretty pictures brought me so much joy. Nowadays, it seems like fast video is the thing,
Don’t get me wrong, I also enjoy creating videos but I miss the old blogging days so much.
Anyway, I hope you’re keeping well and hope to see you again soon.
A quick one to say I’ve been thinking a lot about the different subtitles they’ve slapped on Lewis Hyde’s The Gift through the years, mostly because it was only this year I learned that the original 1983 edition looked like this:
I LOVE IT. WHY DID THEY CHANGE IT. WHAT GIVES.
The whole thing is a far cry from 2019’s:
As well as the copy I first encountered (published in 2007), which features a third option:
Which is…fine? It’s fine.
BUT WHO BURIED THE LEDE ON THE E
A quick one to say I’ve been thinking a lot about the different subtitles they’ve slapped on Lewis Hyde’s The Gift through the years, mostly because it was only this year I learned that the original 1983 edition looked like this:
I LOVE IT. WHY DID THEY CHANGE IT. WHAT GIVES.
The whole thing is a far cry from 2019’s:
As well as the copy I first encountered (published in 2007), which features a third option:
Which is…fine? It’s fine.
BUT WHO BURIED THE LEDE ON THE EROTIC LIFE OF PROPERTY?!
Audre Lorde originally presented “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power” as a paper in 1978, but it wasn’t published in Sister Outsider until 1984—just one year after the first edition of The Gift came out.
(There’s a nice write-up of this design on Fonts in Use, if you’re into that sort of thing, *cough*ROBIN*cough*)
I wonder about this post-70s literary landscape, everything still reverberating with the energy of the 60s, the explosive visibility of sexuality in American youth culture, the rising tide of queer voices—but also the broader definition of eroticism.
I just re-read Katherine Angel’s Unmastered: a Book on Desire, Most Difficult to Tell, which I picked up after Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again. Her exploration of eroticism veers more towards the question of what to do with desire that resists being codified, named, and negotiated in explicit terms. How do we reckon with consent culture alongside the lure of the unknown? What of discovery? What of the secret third thing?
Kate Wagner coming in at the right moment here with this essay:
A situational eroticism is what is needed now, in our literalist times. […] Arousal is a matter of the self, which takes place within the body, a space no one can see into. It is often a mystery, a surprise, a discovery. It can happen at a small scale, say, the frisson of two sets of fingers in one’s hair at once. It is beautiful, unplanned and does not judge itself because it is an inert sensation, unimbued with premeditated meaning. This should liberate rather than frighten us. Maybe what it means doesn’t matter. Maybe we don’t have to justify it even to ourselves.
This draft has been languishing because I don’t have a neat bow to slap on the end of this. If there’s anything I’m thinking of, though, it’s that Hyde (or his publisher) wasn’t wrong to foreground eroticism in that first edition of the book. Eroticism is creativity, and neither are as much work as they are play.
This has become one of my favourite Christmas traditions; a painting party. This year we had a Christmas nutcracker painting party and it was so much fun. I especially love how every person made it their own.
I bought these wooden nutcrackers and set them all throughout the table.
Candles and stickers to decorate …
I used these cute ‘felt icicles’ from Dollar tree to line the table. I think that is such a cute touch
This has become one of my favourite Christmas traditions; a painting party. This year we had a Christmas nutcracker painting party and it was so much fun. I especially love how every person made it their own.
I bought these wooden nutcrackers and set them all throughout the table.
Candles and stickers to decorate …
I used these cute ‘felt icicles’ from Dollar tree to line the table. I think that is such a cute touch and would be so cute for a
gingerbread decorating party. Maybe next year?
Line the table with kraft paper.
I used THESE as place cards and everyone loved them.
Roses and red berries as a runner…
You can visit my Instagram to see the final results…:) They were all soooo cute.
Another annual reading list I’m putting up without much commentary, but there were some bangers in 2025. “The point seems to be this,” Kate Briggs writes, “left to its own devices, the path of reading is very rarely chronologically ordered, thematically coherent, limited by language or respectful of borders. Books open out onto, they cross with and follow haphazardly on from one another. Left to its own devices, the path of reading strays all over the place.”
(Previously: 2024 in Reading, 202
Another annual reading list I’m putting up without much commentary, but there were some bangers in 2025. “The point seems to be this,” Kate Briggs writes, “left to its own devices, the path of reading is very rarely chronologically ordered, thematically coherent, limited by language or respectful of borders. Books open out onto, they cross with and follow haphazardly on from one another. Left to its own devices, the path of reading strays all over the place.”
Hello friends. I hope you’ve been well. We had a few days of warmer weather but we’re back to very cold days. During the warmer days I was inspired to create a few Spring crafts. Starting with this sweet ‘ceramic’ butterfly specimen display.
You won’t believe how easy it was to make. Let me show you.
You’re going to need a 3D butterfly; used for scrapping booking. I found several sizes at the Dollar
Hello friends. I hope you’ve been well. We had a few days of warmer weather but we’re back to very cold days. During the warmer days I was inspired to create a few Spring crafts. Starting with this sweet ‘ceramic’ butterfly specimen display.
You won’t believe how easy it was to make. Let me show you.
You’re going to need a 3D butterfly; used for scrapping booking. I found several sizes at the Dollar Store.
Paper napkin with a nice pattern. I love THIS one because it has various patterns and it looks like Chinoiserie.
-I spray painted the butterfly with white spray paint. You can also use acrylic paint.
You will allow it to dry completely.
-Take some Modpodge or Glue and spread it over the entire butterfly.
-Take the napkin and remove the bottom layer and discard. Place the napkin on top the glue and gently rub napkin until it
adheres onto the butterfly. Allow to dry.
Once it’s completely dry, spread layer of UV resin. I used THIS ONE. I’ve used it in another project you can see it HERE.
Once dry, I used some gold paint to paint the edges and the body of the butterfly.
I then used a little bit of double sided tape and placed it onto the frame. You can of course place it inside the frame but I needed to place it over the glass for better photos.
I love how this turned out and I can’t wait to make more specimens.
The resin make the butterflies look like ceramic and I just love them.
Look how pretty they look displayed on this arrangement.
What do you think? Would you try this?
Hello again friends. It’s been snowing and Spring does not seem to be anywhere near, but I’m taking matters into my own hands.
I made this pretty living spring wreath using pansies and some moss.
The day I made it, the sun was shining and I actually sat outside to make this wreath. But alas, it was just a little tease from Mother Nature.
I started by taking the pansies out of their pot…
Soaked some moss in water ….
Hello again friends. It’s been snowing and Spring does not seem to be anywhere near, but I’m taking matters into my own hands.
I made this pretty living spring wreath using pansies and some moss.
The day I made it, the sun was shining and I actually sat outside to make this wreath. But alas, it was just a little tease from Mother Nature.
I started by taking the pansies out of their pot…
Soaked some moss in water ….
And wrapped the pansies with the moss…
I used black thread to hold it together….
I then just used the same string to wrap the pansy ‘moss balls’ to the wreath…
So easy and I love how beautiful it looks. To water it, I spray it everyday and because pansies are so hardy, it’s going to last a long time.
I love it.
I took a lot of photos because it was so nice outside and I was enjoying the little break of winter weather. Sadly, it’s been snowing
and cold so I brought the wreath inside. I can’t wait to display it outside and for Spring to finally show up.
Instantly delighted by the premise and format of Genderswap.fm, a classy little database made by Eva Decker that catalogues covers and original tracks sung by artists of different genders. (Particularly love getting to filter by tags like “more danceable” or “less acoustic”.)
Instantly delighted by the premise and format of Genderswap.fm, a classy little database made by Eva Decker that catalogues covers and original tracks sung by artists of different genders. (Particularly love getting to filter by tags like “more danceable” or “less acoustic”.)
“It is maybe not functionally possible to design social networked technology geared towards listening. I don’t know, I’m not that smart. But the fact that the internet doesn’t have a mechanism for listening means that we’ve invented these kludgy quantification mechanisms to try and detect attention, and it is easy, so incredibly easy there are multiple books written about this, to confuse the thing you’re measuring for the metric itself.
I want to know who is visiting my site and whether the
“It is maybe not functionally possible to design social networked technology geared towards listening. I don’t know, I’m not that smart. But the fact that the internet doesn’t have a mechanism for listening means that we’ve invented these kludgy quantification mechanisms to try and detect attention, and it is easy, so incredibly easy there are multiple books written about this, to confuse the thing you’re measuring for the metric itself.
I want to know who is visiting my site and whether they’re returning visitors and what pages they clicked through and for how long because it gives me the illusion of knowledge and control. Maybe I’ll know my project is connecting with people if I just hit some arbitrary threshold of pageviews, subscribers, conversion rate.
But none of that will tell me the thing I actually want to know, which is: am I making a difference?”
Hey I loved this. It also reminded me to go check up on the phone line and see if there were any messages that needed witnessing. I keep them close to the chest because that’s part of the project, but I will say that there were and they moved me to tears. Maybe that’s what it’s all about.
Last year I got an email from Tania Sammons, a curator at Ships of the Sea Maritime Museum in Savannah, Georgia who had previously licensed my guide to sailors’ tattoos for a show. Her pitch was irresistible: an exhibition of comics based on model ships from their collection. Four cartoonists would be hired, assigned a vessel, then given six months to produce a short comic for publication in an anthology alongside an accompanying museum display.
BELLWOOD CATNIP.
It’s still amazing to me wh
Last year I got an email from Tania Sammons, a curator at Ships of the Sea Maritime Museum in Savannah, Georgia who had previously licensed my guide to sailors’ tattoos for a show. Her pitch was irresistible: an exhibition of comics based on model ships from their collection. Four cartoonists would be hired, assigned a vessel, then given six months to produce a short comic for publication in an anthology alongside an accompanying museum display.
BELLWOOD CATNIP.
It’s still amazing to me when tailor-made opportunities like this land at my feet, even though I know there are only so many outspoken boat nuts in the comics world. I leapt at the chance and spent the second half of 2025 weaving together a variety of favorite themes (Le Guin’s Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction! Manguso’s cathedral architect! The Ship of Theseus!) to explore the legacy of the Anne, the vessel that carried the first colonists to Georgia in 1732. The story started in the realm of primary sources and historical nonfiction, but completely transformed in the aftermath of my dad’s death in July. By the time I was synthesizing all my notes in the fall of 2025, it had become a quest to give the extraordinary model maker behind most of the museum’s collection his due.
Drawn to the Sea, the exhibit collecting comics and process work by myself, Avery Hick, Rich King, and Sharon Norwood, finally opens this week! While I can’t attend the party in person, I’m very glad to be able to share my contribution online. The Scale of a Man took far more out of me than I expected, but in hindsight it makes perfect sense. I really hope you like it. (I’ve included some photos from the exhibit as well as my artist statement below. There’s also a brief essay about some the research here.)
Content Warning: this comic deals with suicide and parental mortality. Readers with trypophobia may want to skip pages 14 and 15.
Exhibition Preview:
Artist Statement:
I joined the crew of my first tall ship at seventeen. I know more than most the temptation to cast a vessel as the hero of the story, but it’s a lie. We name them, adorn them, and rely on them, but ultimately ships are tools enlivened by the people who use them. They encompass exploration and cultural exchange, escape and immigration, enslavement and genocide. Rather than flattening the ship into a hero, I want to examine the ship as a vessel in every sense of the word, one brimming with discoveries and losses alike.
In her essay The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, Ursula K. Le Guin invites us to explore the implication of the container as the oldest human invention. What would it mean to acknowledge that we have carried sustenance and stories in baskets, nets, and bottles for far longer than we have centered narratives around a Hero’s Journey built on aggression and conquest? “It’s hard,” she admits, “to tell a really gripping tale of how I wrested a wild-oat seed from its husk, and then another, and then another, and then another, and then another—” but the essay encourages us to try.
Whether framing the hull of a ship or the panels of a story, we delineate the things we love. It is an affection that cannot be rushed. I was lucky enough to learn from many model ship builders in the course of creating this piece. Their generosity, enthusiasm, and expertise helped me appreciate what’s poured into each miniature vessel, and to recall something I need to keep close in my own practice: there is value in doing things that defy efficiency. These are fields where monotony walks hand in hand with craft. Some people throw their hands up and bemoan the death of such practices in the age of AI, but I believe we’re headed toward a resurgence in valuing the things machines cannot do.
There is nothing more human than dying. Steeped in my own grief at the loss of my father, I found my way into a story that took me places I couldn’t have foreseen. Early in the research process, I read that the colonists aboard the Anne slept below decks in suspended wooden cots—their similarity to coffins a reminder of how often such voyages become a passage to the underworld. Every journey requires a type of death. We leave behind our former selves, hoping to meet some new incarnation on the farther shore, but the past always comes with us in one guise or another.
We don’t know what became of the Anne in the end; her own death, whatever that means for a vessel, went undocumented. Sometimes such losses are inevitable. But the containers we build, whether they be ships, comics, or museums, offer us a chance to see ourselves woven into the minutiae of the past. It is a form of immortality, one that relies on engagement, imagination, and tenderness, and it is always worth reaching for.
Drawn to the Sea opens at Ships of the Sea Maritime Museum in Savannah, Georgia on Friday, May 1st and runs through January 31st, 2027. Learn more about the exhibit and related programming here.
One week from today (Tuesday, December 16th at 6pm) I’ll be at my beloved local outdoor bookstore, Bart’s Books, for an interactive evening with fellow Ojaian and powerhouse cartoonist Shay Mirk.
We’re celebrating the publication of Making Nonfiction Comics, a comprehensive illustrated guide for everyone who’s ever wanted to tell stories about the world around us in words and pictures. (If you can’t make the event, that link takes you to bookshop.org where you can buy the book online.)
One week from today (Tuesday, December 16th at 6pm) I’ll be at my beloved local outdoor bookstore, Bart’s Books, for an interactive evening with fellow Ojaian and powerhouse cartoonist Shay Mirk.
We’re celebrating the publication of Making Nonfiction Comics, a comprehensive illustrated guide for everyone who’s ever wanted to tell stories about the world around us in words and pictures. (If you can’t make the event, that link takes you to bookshop.org where you can buy the book online.)
Look at this chonker!
This beast is a collaboration between Shay and fellow cartoonist Eleri Harris and it is so!! good!!! In addition to Eleri and Shay’s hard-won expertise, there are also interviews and tips from so many big names in the field. You can learn about crafting everything from on-the-ground protest reportage to deep dive historical research to authentic personal narrative. This book is going to be the gold standard for years to come.
I feel lucky to have a brief cameo talking about running a community drawing night in Portland for several years in the twenty teens. Here’s a look at that:
This baby can fit so many cartoonists in it! (2013)
If you’re in the area, do come by. I’m gonna show off some kelp farming comics, Shay’s gonna talk about making the book, it’s gonna be very fun. Ojai may be 80º during the day right now, but it gets chilly after dark, so bundle up! We’ll have zine templates for folks to fill out and fun slides to share and, knowing Shay, killer snacks.
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