I made you cookies because I love you.

As I wandered the interwebs this morning, I came upon this wonderful collection of portraits by Dottie Angel.

I fell in love with each one of these aprons.  The pictures remind me of fall, of sweaters, a warm fire and hot cocoa...but most of all, they remind me of standing on a chair in the kitchen helping my mom bake cookies when I was little (and not so little.)  I would like to be this imaginary girl, in her bright colors and happy aprons baking heart shaped cookies for the ones I love.

Maybe my cravings/nostalgia were also triggered by seeing my mom for lunch today.   She always greets me with some love and a little something sweet.

This print will have to suffice for right now, but I have cookies on the brain...but what kind should I make? 

I've got the rainy afternoon....now I just need to get baking, batch after batch of buttery, sugary love.

Rain, rain, go away...please go somewhere else today.

Everyday I try to think of something fun, beautiful or uplifting to post and share...but I don't always feel like I have anything that important to add to the many voices of the interwebs.  In my face to face contacts, I try not to say anything when I don't really have anything to say, so the blog sometimes feels challenging.

Luckily, in my running around town today, there was a parting of the clouds and I was able to enjoy the gorgeous colors around me.  The season has changed in Portland, summer is a memory and autumn has gusted and poured into town.  I love the colors of the fall leaves and am always inspired by the shapes and shadows of the increasingly bare trees everywhere.

 

I hope that the blue sky that shows off all the lovely colors of fall will last...but I know better, it won't.  As a native Oregonian, I know I should welcome the rain, its the magic that makes this lovely state grow so beautiful and lush....but right about now I just want to huddle under an umbrella and pretend summer isn't so far away.

 

Wordle Monday

The computer scientist in my life doesn't think of himself as very creative....but I disagree.  He is a maker of things, so he is creative in his way...which is just slightly more rigid and ordered than my own creative spirit.  As far as I am concerned, no artistic expression is ever wrong...so once I was moved in to the new studio, he mentioned that he wanted to make a print.  For him to create the artwork for it, he had to throw in a little computer science to really make it his own.

There is a word optimization software...usually that name alone would have lost me...that can be found on the internet called Wordle.  He likes the algorithms it makes use of and the way it orders words.  We input the text of Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken.  The software then lays out the words horizontally, vertically or both.  You can adjust both the color and font to your liking.  We then took the image and made it into a plate for printing.  Here is a sample of our first attempt.

The boat

My dad is an amazing guy.  Not only does he do maintenance for my presses, he motorized both of them, he diagnoses/fixes my every ailment and issue, and for his latest project...he is building a boat.  He retired two years ago and has taken full advantage of his more open schedule.  When finished it will be a 19 foot replica of a 1950's Chriscraft mahogany runabout.  Its starting to look like a boat.  He has lovingly cut, sanded and assembled every piece.

He also just had a birthday.  He turned 72.  Because the boat consumes so much of his current time and energy, it was sort of a boat themed birthday.  Here is the birthday card I made for him.

Getting back to it....

I feel like the sentiment "getting back to it" is applying to more and more bits of my life these days.  I just moved my life, printing presses and all from Tacoma, Wa, back to my hometown of Portland, Or., and the process was exhausting.   It doesn't sound far, I realize.  But  after 3 Days, 2 presses at around 1800 lbs apiece, many hundred pounds of letterpress ephemera...most of which is made of lead, a 25 ft truck, a forklift and the kindness and patience of friends and loved ones....it has taken a little while to recover.

 

Now that I have finally landed and collected myself, I am finding those illusive moments to get back in touch with old friends, visit familiar haunts and work on so many of my started but then abandoned projects.  Lettuce Blog is one of those projects.  I love to peruse the blogs of other printers and get a look at what they are creating, where they are creating it and with what tools. and what inspires them.

It is my goal that this will be a place for me to dump ideas and pictures of things I am working on, links that inspire me from other artists out there, and a picture of life as a printer in Portland.  This will require some motivation that I have thus far been unable to muster...but I have finally found the time to get back to it.

Lettuce Press photo shoot with Agnes Ocularis Photography

I just moved back to Portland, and now that I am settled in, I am loving getting back in touch with old friends. One of those friends is Cydny Winslow, a friend from my college days in Eugene and a woman of many talents. To name just a few, she makes the beautiful jewels over at Agnes Crafts, and she takes splendid photographs when wearing her Agnes Ocularis Photography hat. She was kind enough to drop by the studio and share some of her mad photo skillz with Lettuce Press. Here is a look at our photo session...

Cards seen here are available on the Lettuce Press etsy page.

Cards seen here are available on the Lettuce Press etsy page.

A look at the Lettuce Press studio and beautiful presses.

Thats me, Allison Baer, printer, designer and lover of all things letterpress at Lettuce Press in Portland, Oregon.