Recession Gardens. The new Victory Gardens. We signed up for a plot in a community garden near the bindery, but we’re still on the wait-list. If we get in, 16 square feet will be all ours for tomatoes, carrots, cucumbers, peas, squash and maybe a few herbs. It will be my first time growing edible plants. There’s a playground next to the garden, so we are already thinking about those summer days, tending our little plot while the kids run around the swings and slides. We’ve got our fingers crossed.

• Americans are turning to gardens as a way to reduce food bills amid recession
• Experts in garden industry say the trend is unlike anything in at least 30 years
• One seed company says a $200 garden saves a family $5,000 in food annually
• Gardening is up 19 percent in 2009, the National Gardening Association says

More here
And here

It’s April Fools today so we sent our daughter to school with a paper lunch. We even put the banana stickers on the paper banana. Can’t wait to see her after school!

{We gave her teacher her real lunch so she won’t go hungry today}

I think I’m a foodie because this made me really happy…

Ilira & I signed a petition that was going around suggesting to the Obama family that they plant a White House “victory” type vegetable garden. I think Michael Pollen was co-author of the petition. How cool would it be for the White House to plant a garden again, like Eleanor Roosevelt? I was hopeful, but didn’t think it would actually happen.

But it did! Wow! How cool are the Obamas? This is from the White House blog:

Bringing fresh food from the farm to the plate for a healthy dinner isn’t easy at the end of a busy day, but the Obama family has a plan. Foodies and environmentalists are thrilled about the Obamas’ plans to break ground today on a new White House vegetable garden in their yard. A garden like this is one of those small gestures that is powerfully symbolic,” Michael Pollan, author of “Omnivores Dilemma” and vocal advocate for agricultural reform, told ABC News.

More at the White House blog

Saw this recently, a flickr set of car emblems taken on a road trip from London to Brighton.

The funnest car I ever owned was a convertible Karmann Ghia. I loved to drive that car. A lot. But Ilira jokingly called it an Open Casket, which it was I suppose.

Once we had kids, the car went *away*… It was practically falling apart, the bad roads in New England were rattling it to pieces, but you didn’t see much of that. It was a beauty, unless you looked at the floorboards and under carriage, all you saw were curves, red paint and that iconic Ghia logo.

It once caught on fire outside the studio, and another time the engine blew while on the highway. I think I put my mechanics kids through college. But I loved that car nonetheless.

Bambooly Flickr
Via Belladora

We hosted a Lego Party in our loft last weekend. Our goal: To use every Lego in the house. We came pretty close, and us parents had just as much fun as the kids.

We left everything set-up on our dining room table and attempted to use all the Legos over the next few days with friends who came over, but still couldn’t do it. It was just as much fun destroying everything as it was building, just ask our two-year-old.

Legos & wine & kids & friends, it was a good time. Our invitation read “Party till 8:00″ but we had to kick everyone out at 11:00-ish, so I think everyone had fun and we should do it again.

Don’t go to bed with wet hair.

Faye & I took the train to NYC to attend Comic-Con last weekend. We’d never been, so were excited, but didn’t know what to expect really. The line to get in was the Biggest. Line. Ever. We attend three trade shows a year in the Javits, but I’ve never seen it so packed. I guess comic books & pop culture are more popular than Stationery goods… Maybe someone needs to create a letterpress comic. The adventures of Typeman! {”It’s a “P”, it’s a “Q” it’s Typeman! Fighting for clean typographic layout everywhere!}

Anyway, we went to visit the Uglydoll booth and meet David Horvath. We did both and wandered the rest of show - next time we’ll bring more money. Seriously, there were a bunch of independent toy designers and lots of stuff to buy. More money and an empty suitcase.

Anyway, here are a few photos from the day.

Breakfast in the city

Comicon is HUGE

We brought Babo, Wage & Spider Boom out for Pho

But Babo & Spider Boom had too much fun

Big Babo & Wedgehead {Babo’s head looks funny…}

That’s David in the middle {Even Wage looks a little nervous}

David illustrating Faye’s Uglydoll Photo Album. Wow!

Even Choco looks impressed

Faye’s super special Horvath illustrated photo album {with pictures of Uglydolls inside of course}

Faye held my hand on the way out and said it was the best day ever.

Amtrak: $180.00
Comicon: $40.00
Pho Lunch: $30.00
Day with your daughter: Priceless

Happy new year everyone. It’s been a while and I suppose I should write something meaningful about last year, looking forward to the new year and all that. Truth is, I’m so busy I haven’t even had a chance to think about blogging much. We’ve been booked solid since reopening on January 5th, and since then we’ve booked out the month and it’s looking like February is filling up too. We’re VERY happy, grateful and humbled, considering all the terrible economic news CNN and the mainstream media shouts about every day. We’re seeing our customers - stores that carry our books as well as our customers online here - return to buying products that are handmade with integrity. We still make everything by hand and care for our workers {we’re like a family, really} even with the pressures to “make it in China”. There were a few years when buyers would ask us where our books were made and when we said Rhode Island they would sigh and feel sorry for us. We don’t get that as much these days.

But this is not to say it’s easy out there making a handmade product. Every day it seems we receive yet another bankruptcy notice in the mail from a former retailer of ours. Our 2009 Catalogs are in the mail and we’re prepared to receive a fair number of them back with “return to sender” stamped on the back.

But if you yourself are making something handmade and are trying to make a go at creating a business and life for yourself around your art and craft - you can do it! Even with the scary economy. It’s a big world out there and if you make something beautiful with integrity, you’ll find your customers. We’re encouraged every day. Go for it!

We’re introducing three new books this year {watch our website} and eight new cover options. If you’re on our mailing list, you’ll get a notice as soon as these books and covers go live on the Rag & Bone store.

A big THANK YOU for everyone who enjoys using our books. We enjoy making them too! We hope you had a wonderful 2008. I look forward to a fun 2009: we joined a community garden {fresh veggies!} and plan on taking the kids on a road trip, Ian is now 2 1/2 so just about ready to handle a long car ride. We leave for the New York Gift Show in two weeks, then we head on into spring and another fun filled summer with adventurous kids. Hopefully we’ll get some air conditioning in our loft this summer, but I don’t need much more to be happy. Just fresh food, funny kids, our sunny neighborhood, books and paper and I’m good to go!

I’m writing a new book this year. We’re in the pitching phase, so it may come to nothing, but if it pans out I’ll let you know.

Thanks for listening so far and if you leave a comment, I’ll pick a few readers to receive one of our new books in the next week. Don’t forget to leave your email address or some way for me to contact you.

Jason

PS: We made mozzarella cheese with friends in our kitchen last weekend - took only 30 minutes and tasted like actual mozzarella cheese.

making cheese

making cheese

making cheese

making cheese

making cheese

Our friends Karen & Dave came over on a snowy day with boxes of fresh-baked cookies, a dozen squeeze bottles of frosting and enough sugary toppings to make a two-year-old faint. We decorated the cookies to deliver to local firemen. It’s Karen’s Holiday tradition, and we hope to make it ours. And everyone enjoys cookies, even heroes. Our little one, Ian, loves fire trucks, but when we get too close, he turns shy. Maybe a cookie will soften him up.

Happy holidays everyone. We’ll see you in January!

Jason, Ilira, Faye & Ian.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and we’ll have (most of) the family together - my parents are in Mexico this year. I’m thankful for my kids, they bring joy to me every day. My daughter reminds me to be creative, thoughtful and kind. My son reminds me to play and be loud and proud. I’m thankful for a wife who is my best friend - together we’re more than a marriage, we’re an enterprise - there’s nothing we can’t do as a team. I’m thankful for my health - more so than I care to admit. I’m thankful that I can do what I enjoy doing every day and that together our family carves out our own little place in the creative universe. I’m grateful to be here now and look forward to a happy holiday season with family & friends.

But tomorrow is all about food! We buy our vegetables at one of our local farms, Four Town Farms. They have a full range of veggies, an you can count on Asparagus in the spring, then leafy vegetables, then berries, then corn and tomatoes and peppers. Later on it’s root vegetables like rainbow carrots (love them!) and half a dozen potato varieties. Now we’re picking out different types of squash - that’s carnival squash I’m cooking above, it tastes a little like Butternut.

Over the summer Faye, Ilira, Ian & I picked wild blackberries. There are -secret- spots around Rhode Island we visit. We picked about 40 pounds this year and made lots of blackberry syrup - very yummy on Vanilla Ice Cream and whole wheat Pancakes!

This was the summer of food for our family - we made weekly trips to local farms and farmers’ markets. Our blog here is mostly about paper, so I didn’t post much about dinners and local food. We had a wonderful dinner party at our friend Rogers house - everyone was asked to bring food found within 50 miles of their house. That was an eye opener - there are so many different farms hidden around New England - so many we didn’t know about.

In October we harvested Honey at my parents house. They have one hive but were able to get 80 pounds of honey. No one wears protective gear, but their bees seem to be pretty cool with the harvesting, no stings.

Have a happy Thanksgiving everyone!

We’re leaving tomorrow morning, driving about an hour away for dinner at Ilira’s brothers house.

Where are YOU going tomorrow?

The annual Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair took place at the Hynes Convention Center in Downtown Boston this past weekend. I love going to this show and looking at all the rare books, but I left this year’s fair with the feeling that it’s not a great time to be a book dealer - “Atiquarian Book Dealer” might have another meaning these days - book dealers are themselves becoming antiquarian: rare and hard to find.

The 2008 fair was billed as having “…a record number of featured exhibitors … the ‘crème de la crème’ of items available on the international literary market…” true, but there were definitely less buyers. I collect Arctic and Antarctic books and met a friendly seller who recently purchased a collection from a {much more} serious arctic collector - he even had a copy of the “South Polar Times” on display for $20,000.00 {wow!}. But even he was willing to cut prices on two books I was looking at by $100.00 and $150.00. Another seller tracked me down in the aisle after locating other books he thought I might be interested in.

I’m not a dealer, just a casual collector & bookbinder, and I don’t have the kind of money some of the guys with the fancy shoes have. But this year, everyone was getting special attention.

We met Priscilla Juvelis, a dealer of book art & artist books - she had Laura Davidson books on display {pictures below}. It’s great to see book art displayed alongside antiquarian books, giving artists’ books relevance by proximity to such expensive bindings.

We also stopped by the North Bennet Street School booth and met Jeff Altepeter, who I’ve mentioned before from last years’ Brickbottom Open Studio. They offer the best bookbinding classes and teachers in New England.

After the show I took Faye to Newbury Comics to buy toys and we had lunch in the city. We stopped by Paper Source and saw our books and the new Amy Butler book. We narrowly made the train back - practically sliding down the escalator and jumping the train. This weekend it was Brickbottom Open Studio, I’ll post photos this week. Cheers!

Dealer Pricilla Juvelis’ booth

Dealer Pricilla Juvelis’ booth

Dealer Pricilla Juvelis’ booth

Dealer Pricilla Juvelis’ booth

Dealer Pricilla Juvelis’ booth

Dealer Pricilla Juvelis’ booth

North Bennet Street School

Lunch in Boston

Train ride home

Boston Book Fair
North Bennet Street School
Priscilla Juvelis

Congratulations President Elect Obama!

We’ve been following the election pretty closely in our house. Our seven year old knows too much about the electoral college and Obama’s “Ground Game”. She’s been to the Obama office and heard hours & hours of NPR in the car. Last night we had friends over and it was a very happy evening. The kids slept in their sleeping bags on the floor and we cheered and hugged and drank and I think there were a few tears.

It’s been so long. We’ve been through so much, and our future has been looking bleak and hopeless. Our economy is shrinking, not growing. We’re in two wars - one of which we were tricked into. Our respect around the world is gone. We don’t help our teachers and students enough. We’ve been building Walmarts instead of being responsible stewards to open spaces and the land. We’re growing fatter every year. It’s been tough. We keep our heads up because that’s what we do. But personally I’ve been cynical. Until this year.

I didn’t do enough. A little volunteering but there was so much to do. This was our election - even if you voted for McCain, this was America’s time. I took Faye to the voting booth with me. I admit, I was a little emotional with my little girl by my side. It was an important day for both of us, even if she didn’t vote - the volunteers gave her and her Ugly Doll “I Voted” stickers. I hope she’ll remember yesterday day for the rest of her life. This particular election was for her and the next generation. Power doesn’t concede - it took a lot to pull it off, but we’re the better for it.

I’m sounding preachy so here are the photos. It’s a happy day.

We ran into neighbors at the voting place

Look what I did yesterday. Rag & Bone has a new look. I’ve been learning CSS and designed our new horizontal and left-hand menus with CSS. They used to be images with image maps. The site is wider and has a new header & footer graphic. There are a few other tweaks as well. I didn’t work too much on content, just presentation.

I *think* the changes work in most browsers and OS’s, but if you find a bug please let me know. I used browsershots to check the look of the homepage on different browsers - I checked out 23 different browser & OS combinations and all but MSIE looked OK. I found some issues with the ecommerce style sheets {which I don’t have control over, we use monstercommerce / network solutions for hosting our store} but fixed a flow issue with a drop down menu just by shortening its list names. An easy solution.

Next up: Photography. I set up a new photo “studio”, essentially just a table with lights and diffusion screens I made from supplies at home depot. I took a few photographs of building the set-up, I’ll blog that next. Have a great day!

Ilira and I celebrated our 11th wedding anniversary Saturday. We spent the morning making 250 bagged lunches with Faye to deliver to Crossroads. It takes a long time to make that many lunches. Fortunately we have a manufacturing background to take advantage of and a fridge to hold them all. We dropped off the lunches in the morning, then went to the circus! The Big Apple Circus - they really do a great job. One of the performers almost got hurt, they keep-it-real at the Big Apple.

We had dinner at Julian’s and ran into former Rag & Bone production manager Mary. I am so bad with the camera. Dinner was delicious and photogenic, but I didn’t take a photo of Julian’s, our delicious dinner or Mary. I don’t know what my problem is.

After dinner, we checked into the Renaissance Masonic Temple Hotel. It was a “Staycation” Anniversary night. The view of the State House was pretty cool. The hotel was a little fussy, but beautiful. After check-in, we headed downtown to see our friends What Cheer? Brigade parading through downtown Providence. Again, I took a bunch of photos walking down the street, but when they stopped and put on the show at the Arcade, I was too busy dancing (is that what you call that??) to take photos.

Anniversary Journal
In the spirit of Anniversaries, we’re re-introducing the Rag & Bone Anniversary Journal for a limited time. We only made 100 or so of the printed insides, so they’re available in any cover option, but when they’re gone, they’re gone.

See the Anniversary Journal here.

Making Sandwiches

Lot’s of sandwiches

Faye Helps

View from the Hotel Room

What Cheer? Brigade

What Cheer? Brigade

Polite Police

Anniversary Journal

See the Anniversary Journal here.

We went to Tanglewood last weekend and stayed overnight in an old farm turned bed & breakfast. We planned to see Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion but mostly just watched the kids running around on the grass falling all over and on top of each other. We pitched a table & four chair, spread out the blanket under a big Maple tree and spent the evening drinking wine on our feet while running all over the grounds with Ian & Faye. We caught snippets here and there of Garrison Keillor in the background.

There’s a hedge maze on the property and I think I spent most of the evening lost in there with Faye. She found a way to climb inside one of the hedges a dozen feet up to get a look for the way out.

We wandered the little stores in Lenox, Mass.

Below is the barn we stayed in. This is where we had breakfast.

Today is my birthday. I hope someone gets me a smile.

{ black & white hides the grey… }

The Museum Of Hoaxes posted a list of their top 100 hoaxes of all time. Do you have an hour to waste today? Rread the list and laugh at how gullible some people are - though probably even you and I would be taken in by some of these. NPR always has an April Fool’s story they broadcast on April 1st. I wonder what it will be this year?

San Serriffe
In 1977 the British newspaper The Guardian published a special seven-page supplement devoted to San Serriffe, a small republic located in the Indian Ocean consisting of several semi-colon-shaped islands. A series of articles affectionately described the geography and culture of this obscure nation. Its two main islands were named Upper Caisse and Lower Caisse. Its capital was Bodoni, and its leader was General Pica. The Guardian’s phones rang all day as readers sought more information about the idyllic holiday spot. Few noticed that everything about the island was named after printer’s terminology. The success of this hoax is widely credited with launching the enthusiasm for April Foolery that gripped the British tabloids in subsequent decades.

The Predictions of Isaac Bickerstaff
In February 1708 a previously unknown London astrologer named Isaac Bickerstaff published an almanac in which he predicted the death by fever of the famous rival astrologer John Partridge. According to Bickerstaff, Partridge would die on March 29 of that year. Partridge indignantly denied the prediction, but on March 30 Bickerstaff released a pamphlet announcing that he had been correct: Partridge was dead. It took a day for the news to settle in, but soon everyone had heard of the astrologer’s demise. On April 1, April Fool’s Day, Partridge was woken by a sexton outside his window who wanted to know if there were any orders for his funeral sermon. Then, as Partridge walked down the street, people stared at him as if they were looking at a ghost or stopped to tell him that he looked exactly like someone they knew who was dead. As hard as he tried, Partridge couldn’t convince people that he wasn’t dead. Bickerstaff, it turned out, was a pseudonym for the great satirist Jonathan Swift. His prognosticatory practical joke upon Partridge worked so well that the astrologer finally was forced to stop publishing his almanacs, because he couldn’t shake his reputation as the man whose death had been foretold.

The Sydney Iceberg
On April 1, 1978 a barge appeared in Sydney Harbor towing a giant iceberg. Sydneysiders were expecting it. Dick Smith, a local adventurer and millionaire businessman (owner of Dick Smith’s Foods), had been loudly promoting his scheme to tow an iceberg from Antarctica for quite some time. Now he had apparently succeeded. He said that he was going to carve the berg into small ice cubes, which he would sell to the public for ten cents each. These well-traveled cubes, fresh from the pure waters of Antarctica, were promised to improve the flavor of any drink they cooled. Slowly the iceberg made its way into the harbor. Local radio stations provided excited blow-by-blow coverage of the scene. Only when the berg was well into the harbor was its secret revealed. It started to rain, and the firefighting foam and shaving cream that the berg was really made of washed away, uncovering the white plastic sheets beneath.

Nat Tate
A lavish party was held at Jeff Koons’s New York studio in 1998 to honor the memory of the late, great American artist Nat Tate, that troubled abstract expressionist who destroyed 99 percent of his own work before leaping to his death from the Staten Island ferry. At the party superstar David Bowie read aloud selections from William Boyd’s soon-to-be released biography of Tate, “Nat Tate: An American Artist, 1928-1960.” Critics in the crowd murmured appreciative comments about Tate’s work as they sipped their drinks. The only catch was that Tate had never existed. He was the satirical creation of William Boyd. Bowie, Boyd, and Boyd’s publisher were the only ones in on the joke.

Read the rest at www.museumofhoaxes.com

Our friends Roger and Cristina held their annual Job Lot Pot Luck party Sunday night.

The “Ocean State Job Lot” stores are kind of like a dollar store. Merchandise is marked down with no frills, a lot of it still in corrugated boxes. But for some reason, even though it’s supposed to be super-bargain-shopping, everyone just loves Job Lot. There’s something charming about the place. Maybe it’s because sometimes you’ll find the same brands as you will at Whole Foods, but for a fraction of the price. And right next to that will be the most unusual food item you’ve ever seen - think Burger-in-a-can. You never know what they’ll have, it’s always an experience. The sign on the door reads: “Home Of Adventurous Shopping”.

This is our second year attending Rogers Job Lot Pot Luck. The guidlines are simple: any food you bring to the party must contain 90% Job Lot ingredients by weight. With points for creativity. There were even categories this year with voting and prizes.

In lieu of making a dish this year, I brought a coptic bound album (with photos from last years’ party) and a bouquet of paper crafted flowers. The book covers were made from a box of cookies we bought at Job Lot and the bouquet from Job Lot circulars. Much help with the flowers to Ilira. And to Faye too for the inspiration. Here are photos in-progress.

We had a wonderful time. Roger and Cris are wonderful hosts. An eclectic mix of friends. Even a chef - so you know who won the “most creative” award.

I’ll post pictures from the party tomorrow.

Visit Job Lot Online

We’re back up and running.

We have a new home here on Wordpress. We had to manually move the posts from Blogger over to Wordpress. We lost all the comments - sad - so it looks a little desolate around here. Like we’ve been blogging to ourselves for the last year. But all 500-ish posts from Blogger are here - take a look at the archives to the right. I’m excited to have categories, and a admin panel that works. Oh, and blog posts that actually POST, instead of staying in draft mode. I don’t know what’s up with blogger, but for free, it was fine while it worked.

We have a new look, which I hope to bring over to the Rag & Bone Website as well. Thanks to Doug for convincing me this was the way to go.

I’ll be working on the Website for a few days, then new Blog posts.

I also have to figure out how to move the RSS feed over to the old location so you guys don’t have to resubscribe. I won’t make permanent changes until I figure this one out - we want to save our Google ranking as well as make this as seemless & painless as we can. In the meantime, the old blog will stay where it is. Probably indefinitely for all the outside links.

Thanks for your patience.

Jason

We’re back from the Atlanta Gift Show. Before we left however, I switched ISP’s over to NetworkSolutions. And now we’re having trouble writing files to our new FTP site. First there was the issue of new posts taking more than a day to appear on the site. But now, if you click on the archives (right-hand side of the page) you’ll see that from October 2007 and beyond, the archive pages are missing - the dreaded 404 “Missing Page”. So we’re working on it. We’ve got lots to post, and it’s been a long time away from posting. Hopefully NetworkSolutions will have a solution. Hey, it’s in their name, right? Thanks!