✷ greetings ✷

i hope everyone is hanging in there! i'm gonna try to set aside the tremendous amount of dread i'm feeling to write a positive intro here lol. dread cliff notes: snow bad, covid is scary/new cdc guideline is bummer, family is complicated/misgendering sucks, the holidays are such a mixed bag, etc etc etc ! i'm listening to "better luck next year vol 1" by cool original and buzzing after drinking too much coffee.

i'm not really into celebrating christmas, but i fucking love taking stock of my year and thinking about intentions for the coming year. i'm taking a "vacation" from january 1st-10th, which will include two days of true me-time, but that's it lol. the grind is real. luckily i've had a little downtime since the holiday rush has dwindled. i'm burned out, but so incredibly grateful to everyone who supported my shop over the holidays.

✷ craft or diy milestones ✷

this year i sold over 700 copies of how to support your nonbinary family member. this is possibly the most copies i've ever sold of any zine (anxiety & self care is maybe a close contender, but that was over a period of many years vs just one). folks tell me how thankful they are for the zine all the time and it truly never gets old. i'm very glad it's out there, doing the heavy lifting for my fellow nonbinary folks. it'd be cool if it helped it's original target audience (aka my own family), but i can chuckle about the irony. it's been translated into multiple languages, featured in one museum collection and found a home in various libraries and brick & mortar shops. many thanks to antiquated future distro in portland (who got my zines into powell's friggin bookstore among other places), bluestockings cooperative bookstore in ny, f12 collective in va, the tria prima in pa.

i made 5 new zines this year.

i celebrated my one year anniversary of being totally self-employed, and celebrated craft or diy's 10th birthday.

i mailed out 2,500+ orders, started a patreon, made a dedicated website and got etsy's godforsaken star seller badge.

✷ looking back on 2021 ✷

2021 year in review:

✷ met coby and fell the fuck in love!
✷ drove on i-5 for the first time in 7 years!
✷ drove to coby’s in tacoma on i-5 for the first time!
✷ brain good/heart good, healed a lot!
✷ wrote the nonbinary zine, came out to my parents with it 
✷ celebrated 8 years with kyle!
✷ had my 1 year self-employed-iversary
✷ went to like 4 gigs 
✷ did my first ever zine reading (and got paid for it)
✷ john visited, beach pizza ice cream day!
✷ saw my fam for the first time since 2019
✷ tabled mini ozf and mold to gold
✷ made some new friends
✷ got to see nick and bradley in pa and go to the deleware bay for the first time in 9 years
✷ got to hug my friends!
✷ bonded with my nibling
✷ fulfilled my wish of going to sauvie island (because of the kickball song) then went like 6 more times

✷ 2022 resolutions/hopes/whatevers ✷ 

✷ host a punk rock flea market 
✷ visit john/be visited by john
✷ take a trip w/ coby
✷ go see the tulips/take a trip w/ kyle
✷ pick fruit on sauvie island, hit the beach
✷ see babytooth live, dangit
✷ see any live music i hope
✷ solo portland trip to see friends
✷ drive to coby’s more often than i take the train
✷ more picnics, more brunches
✷ make more art just for me or loved ones
✷ write a song or two
✷ make a zine or a few
✷ develop some kind of exercise/stretching routine
✷ continue nurturing friendships & asking for what i want
✷ spring clean dodiy.org
✷ practice being soft and silly
✷ take more breaks/work smarter
✷ get the nonbinary zine into a local bookstore 
✷ table pzs if it’s a thing, and ozf obviously!

✷ project schedule ✷

my shop will be open again on january 11th, and i should have at least one new valentine available (and probably some new pins).

i have a pile of zines i contributed to, which i plan to finally scan for patrons in january/february. i also wanna send out some physical mail to patrons.

in january i have a plan to enlist some help spring cleaning the do diy website.

✷ fucking hooray ✷

i've been in kind of a creative slump (see also: seasonal depression) and yelling into the void for people to buy my wares over the holiday really made me feel icky. but then i set out to make some small presents for people i care about, and i realized that i was mostly just burned out on making things to turn into "products," you see. here's some stuff i made that reminded me i wanna make more are for just myself and my loved ones in 2022.

i made this mixtape and the fancy j-card for it for my friend andrew who makes me tapes all the time. i finally got a working cassette deck and i wanted to return the favor. i love the format of j-cards, so i decided to do something more complicated with this one. it's a two panel card and i stapled a booklet in it (does this count as a zine?) so i could write about the songs inside. i'm proud of the graphic design. i didn't have adhesive labels for the cassette, so instead i downloaded a cassette label template and printed it out on a sheet of address labels, then cut it to the right specifications with an x-acto knife. 

i drew this lil portrait of coby and i together and made an envelope for it (i wrote a mushy love letter in it but y'all don't get to see that lol). i broke out the wax seal for this one because it felt appropriate. ~did you know~ that if you put a wax seal on an envelope and mail it via usps, you have to use a non-machineable stamp instead of a forever stamp? otherwise i'd use them more often. ~the more you know~ lol

i'm super stoked on how this zine for my nibling came out. i found out they like bikini kill, so i decided to make him a playlist of riot grrrl bands and some contemporary bands that i felt fit on the mix. then i made a companion zine styled after the old riot grrrl zines, filled with pictures and background info on the movement. i'm planning on scanning this one for patrons to see. 


this is penelope, my friend nick's cat. i made penelope stickers for him a few years ago and he mentioned he was almost out. i couldn't find the original file, so i decided to do a new and improved digital portrait of her. i love how it turned out!

that's all folks! thanks for listening to me blab. love y'all, and i hope 2022 is surprisingly kinder to us than recent years have been. take care <3

love, alyssa

~ past perzine newsletters ~