Blog - Letterpress

The New Year’s water broke and after 24 hours of back-labor, vaginal-tearing, and a hemorrhage, a baby named Winefride Irene Statz blessed us with her presence. (Oh, my daughter had a baby.)

And because I am always vain, here is photo of ME holding her. IGNORE MY BRA STRAP.

After that holding-session and never one to SHIRK MY DUTIES, I made some cards: (Is January almost over??)

My favorite quote was yelled by my favorite English contractor.

“CAN YA’ SEE, CHILD??? CAN YA’ SEE???” My three-year-old daughter was RUNNING WITH SCISSORS and jammed them nearish her eyeball. Luckily, she COULD see.

That reminds me of the time in 9th grade when I thought it’d be helpful to shovel our walkway. Using proper shoveling-form, I scooped and filled my shovel full of heavy snow, threw the snow off the shovel, AND hit my four-year-old sister nearish her eyeball. Luckily, SHE could see and her snowsuit and a snowdrift broke her fall and her scar only shows up if she cries. PHEW!

Fast-forward to the present-day and she forced one of her kids to “play” with the Manger Magnets I generously bestowed upon my siblings.

Oh, ALSO and very unrelated… My son-in-law (I’M SORRY!!) has spent the last few months rebuilding my upstairs. It’s not like it’s a piece of heaven on earth or whatever.

   Oh, AND also very unrelated here are some new cards to kick off the New Year:

Didn’t we JUST release new cards?? Is it already October?? Was that blur-filled season actually Summer?? WHAT HAPPENED??

Jen, #oldestintern, and I have scheduled a meeting for tomorrow – I had a serious talk with the Franimals about not interrupting. I’m sure they will still interrupt though because they don’t seem to understand that I hold all of the power over their pathetic little lives. (Ugh, they know they’re in charge.)

If this whole letterpress thing stops being such a lucrative money-maker, I’m gonna invest all of my time and energy in creating dioramas like I did in the 5th grade. Who else could turn a Nike shoebox into an homage to fishing at Lake Calhoun, complete with construction-paper-created boys standing atop a construction-paper-created fishing dock, wielding cane-poles complete with real monofilament fishing line leading to construction-paper-created Carp that, like an illusion, float in the waterless interior of the Nike box??

NOBODY COULD. That’s probably why the older boys smashed it to smithereens. I’M NOT BITTER ABOUT IT AND BARELY REMEMBER THAT EVENT BECAUSE IT HAPPENED 37 YEARS AGO.

Oh, I almost forgot… Sally Struthers has a birthday message to share:

Independence day in Minneapolis is kind of ho-hum compared to Barnstable. Sure, there ARE fireworks to watch,

but there are zero parades followed by egg-tossing/potato-sack-racing/pie-eating contests.  And definitely no shimmying up poles greased with crisco.

Some call that boring. I call it unAmerican. We ended up buying our own patriotism this year from Menards. (FYI: $2/2 flags.) 

And I loudly wept as each flag was plunged into the lawn. Between my tears, I created a belated-birthday card for #oldestintern using an image from a VINTAGE newspaper she gave me.

I took German (DEUTSCH) in high school (why was I in the same class as my little brother and why did I quack like a duck with Tourette’s every time he spoke?? I’M SORRY, ANDY.) Our teacher was a Russian ballerina who hated being there as much as we did. I DID use my language-skills to translate a movie – here’s a scene:

Ohh, THAT’S what he was saying!!

ALLEGEDLY, 9.5″ of snow fell “Up North” but I was too selfish to care because it feels like Spring here in Minneapolis. It’s finally safe to peel off and burn my Smartwool™ socks! (Just in time for Mother’s Day!)

Speaking of Mother’s Day… I wrote a birthday card!

That balanced out a card about traveling via greyhound bus.

But here’s what I’m REALLY excited about/wondering why 217,912 people watched this before I had even heard of it:

Now, thanks to Carolyn Swiszcz, I know where I need to go.

Oh, and ANOTHER thing/how I know it’s Spring: Our Spring cards are being RELEASED as I write this! I created a supplement sheet for our reps  and because I am so dedicated, I even learned how to make drop shadows in Adobe InDesign:

YOU’RE WELCOME.

The original Aunt Fran 

sounded just like Katherine Hepburn.

And my older sister told me I sounded just like a banana with hair. (Don’t act like you don’t know what that sounds like.)

DESPITE that voice, and (let’s be real) a face that only a mother could

use to test bathwater temperature and was also later mutilated with a nose-ring and surrounded by a bad perm and self-cut bangs, I have somehow prevailed! My evidence of this is best expressed through Lifetime Movie monologues

OR our latest release!

BEHOLD! (Here is a teaser/1 of 12 soon to be added to the shop!)

I know Winter is almost over because I’ve watched everything on Netflix and am now forced to look at my neighbor’s roof because their house is so close that when windows are open on quiet Summer nights, I’ve heard a stream of urine meeting a toilet-bowl full of water.

Oh, and another reason I know Winter is almost over is that Jen and I (and #oldestintern) are picking cards for the Spring release! It only took me two hours of meditation and four Xanax to kill my darlings! And by darlings, I don’t mean house pets or 4th trimester babies. I mean designs that I have birthed and cherished as if they were a sliver of my soul. As the kids say, #NBD. Maybe someday, my little friend.

Oh, this one DID make the cut!

Remember that Winter when I dipped my ice-cold hands in 25¢ Tom Thumb coffee? WELL, I DO BECAUSE MY ICE-PICK LOBOTOMY DIDN’T WIPE OUT ALL OF MY MEMORIES/WHY DIDN’T I JUST HAVE THE ELECTROSHOCK THERAPY LIKE THE DOCTOR SUGGESTED?? #regrets

THIS Winter

I won’t dip my hands in 25¢ coffee (OR WILL I???) because I need dry hands for clickity-clacking away at my keyboard. I tried googling “craftsman bungalow second-floor remodel” and realized I need more expert advice. Sorry, Google.

AND just because I love a challenge, and because I love WWII-era technology, AND because I believe pencils should express their pithiness via hot foil, I tested my fire-extinguisher and will try my hand at this: (I @#!$-ing <3 Zeichen Press.)

List of things Millie has peed in or on:

• – Shoes
• – Coats
• – Rugs
• – The bathroom floor
• – Towels left on the bathroom floor
• – Backpacks
• – Dirty laundry
• – Clean laundry
• – Stack of paper for a Room & Board project

Oh, yeah! Jen’s shoes! Silly Jen, doesn’t she know that is one of Millie’s 9 favorite places to empty her bladder??

Millie told me later that she does this to remind humans about overcoming adversity… It actually makes sense because she’s been totally into Brené Brown lately!

Why were Jen’s shoes off anyway?? BECAUSE she prints a sample of a new card, marches from the shop to the house, takes her shoes off by the back door so we can pick the perfect envelope and paper color, THEN slips her shoes back on so she can march back out to print. BUT while we were busy picking the perfect envelope and paper color, Millie was busy filling Jen’s Dansko clogs with a liquid surprise… Oh, Millie! One card down, only 17 more to go!

DAMN, that’s a lot of pinkish ink on the press… Don’t worry, we expressed our gratitude for Millie via organic beef treats (SHE DIDN’T SHARE.) Oh, and Jen prints barefoot now.

Here’s a teaser:

There were no coats to push aside, no snow, no Mr. Tumnus, no White Witch… Just a regular bedroom door, a heated terrazzo floor, twin sinks, and His and Hers glass cups ready for dentures. My Grandparent’s bedroom was entered by Invitation Only and was filled with so many curiosities… I remember asking my Grandma if she loved raspberries as much as I did and she told me she couldn’t eat them because the tiny seeds got stuck in her dentures… I felt like that was the saddest thing I had ever heard and that she was truly a martyr.

Here she is with all her own teeth:

It’s a good thing my Grandpa had his pens with him because you just never know.

The old newspapers the Intern gave me are a treasure-trove of graphics

and full of hard-hitting local stories…

Whaaat?? Mr. Therien never used his sick leave??