Pocket Mail: August Issue! 🖌️

Hi everyone!

Happy August! We hope everyone’s had at LEAST one beach or lake day so far! Summer’s in full swing and coming to a close at the same time. The cicadas have been singing lately, too. 🎶

LPP News

This month’s newsletter is pretty short and sweet! We said we were taking a vacation in July while we recuperated from running two Kickstarter campaigns, but in the end we didn’t really rest and kept working so we’ve FINALLY been taking some sort of break from press stuff this month! Some major tasks we finished this past month are finally finishing the print file for Knapsack Volume 2, which we just sent to over to our printers. Plus we have almost all our rewards for fulfillment!

Next month we’re going to be at Small Press Expo in Bethesda, Maryland! SPX is our home show, no matter where we live or where we go, so we’re always really excited to come back and see everyone. We’ll have copies of Basket and Knapsack Volume 1 at table L5!

One of the reasons we’ve been feeling a lot of burnout recently is because we haven’t had enough time in between crowdfunding campaigns and book shows to make anything new of our own. We’re hoping to structure LPP with a little bit more of our own personal voices in the future :-) We’re excited to bring you whatever is next, we hope you’ll stay tuned!

July was an insanely busy month for us, so we didn’t get to spend as much time together as we usually do during the month! We did have a little cook-out during the beginning of the month, with some delicious veggies from the farm Sara works at!

We also tabled at SUNNYDAY Art Market in Brooklyn! Thank you everyone for stopping by and saying hi <3 We got so many sweet treats from friends, thank you Kelly and Ally and Aliza and Hyo and G 🥺 It was so nice to vibe out to the music while we tabled.

The last few days before Steph moved, they came up & stayed with Sara in RI! We spent our evenings walking around, having late night talks, eating yummy food, playing DDR at a very cool arcade, and eating literally the best ice cream we’ve ever had at a place in Providence. Sara was losing it over the “plum and tomato” flavor… We said bye at the gates of the airport knowing that we’d see each other within the next month, but still tearful😢

Steph’s Corner 🐟

Hi everyone, it’s Steph! This past July was extremely insane and also a perfect, bittersweet goodbye to New Jersey! I spent most of the month going to the pottery studio in the morning and packing at night, me and my partner’s apartment was in such a crazy state and I had to sleep on an air mattress I borrowed from Sara towards the end of the month. Even though packing and moving is always a crazy time, I’ve felt truly blessed to have so many amazing friends around me and it was such an amazing honor to work in a communal pottery studio. On the day before my final move out, I got into a car accident in an Uber and hurt my back pretty badly, and suddenly couldn’t lift any of my boxes or furniture, but my friends really showed up and literally saved my life, thank you Lianne, Pia and Conor 🥺!

I organized our studio’s first Seconds Sale event with one of our closest friends, Lianne! It was super fun to see old work find new and loving homes ❤️. Here’s the poster!

Sara’s Corner 🐌

Hi! Since July 1st I’ve been working on an organic no-till vegetable farm in the quiet corner of New England. Land stewardship is something I’ve been passionate about since my early 20s, I love growing things, using my body, and being outside so much ^_^ July and August are the busiest (and hottest!) times of the year, so the work has been hard, but SO rewarding. I wake up at 5 am to a lil rooster call from my neighbors’ farm, throw some tea in my thermos and spend all day harvesting, prepping, sowing and weeding in the summer sun. I love it!

Highlights include my biweekly cherry tomato harvest, tasting wild grapes, harvesting & processing indigo, picking aronia berries, spotting cool bugs in veggie beds, and taking swims in the most beautiful, native-flower-filled river I’ve ever seen! P.S. I keep picking twin veggies. What does it mean…

That’s all for this month. We’ll see you all next time! As always, we hope you’re keeping joyful and well.

Love,

Sara, Steph, & Pocket

Eating / Drinking:

Sara: Shiso juice, fresh okra, and a million cherry tomatoes.

Steph: There was this restaurant beside the studio called Sazon Latino that had the most delicious chicken dish for only $8, so I resolved the eat it as much as possible before moving. The guys that worked there thought it was hilarious I came basically every day.

Watching / Reading / Playing / Listening to:

Sara: Judee Sill's album Heart Food has graced my early morning drives to work and misty morning arugula harvests. Reading Wendell Berry's poetry, and finished The Nature of Oaks by Douglas Tallamy.

Steph: Tomo Serizawa's BL works, Star Trek TOS and listening to The Magnus Archives while packing. Indulgent summer entertainment!