Hi everyone,

Happy May! It’s finally springtime!! Everything bloomed so quickly, and the ephemerals are already gone… Both of us want to be outside in the sun as much as possible (even though we’re feeling the allergies). We’re writing this in the cozy indoors while it rains pretty steadily over here. We didn’t end up spotting a migrating American Woodcock though… we’ll try again next year.

LPP NEWS

This month has been really busy! Our biggest project was, as you might know, launching Knapsack Magazine Vol 2 on Kickstarter!

We always are really nervous before launching our Kickstarter projects because the goals we need are so high, but we’re constantly heartwarmed by how our community shows up to make these projects happen. We’re almost 90% to our goal, and we couldn’t be more grateful <3 Stick around for upcoming stretch goals!

More news! We suddenly got into TCAF off the waitlist :O!! So we will be there in Toronto on June 7 & 8, and it will be BASKET’s debut show!!! Def stop by and say hello if you’re in the area :-)

Lastly, our copies of Basket are expected to arrive any day now, and we’re gearing up to fulfill Kickstarter pledges! We’ll keep you all updated and we’ll share some photos soon!

This month we had the urge to play basketball (for obvious reasons!!!), but the first thing we needed before we could play was a literal basketball… it took us over two hours to find one lmao. Every store we called or went to was sold out of basketballs for some reason… maybe everyone had the urge to play all at once or maybe they all started reading Basket? 😳 After shooting some hoops and running around in the local park @ Steph’s house, we wanted to continue with the basketball theming, so we downloaded NBA 2k25 for the bit... We couldn’t understand how to even start. Look at this UI…

This month we threw our friend Christian an alien themed birthday party! Sara got some spirulina powder and we mixed it into all our food and drinks to make everything look more 👽 🛸. Afterwards, Sara had a whole bag of spirulina to use, so they kept making things that were blue throughout the week (we came down with alien disease…)

(At the party we made curry and made the rice blue. Also made blue jasmine milk tea and boba. Afterwards Sara’s breakfasts were infected with blue… Spirulina is flavorless BTW!!!)

Steph’s Corner 🐟

Hi, it’s Steph! In April I was able to travel to Baltimore to take a woodfire workshop for the very first time! I carefully packed all my pots I made for the firing and took them with me on the Amtrak, and on the first day of the workshop we worked all together to load both kilns. Essentially woodfiring requires a team of potters to consistently stoke a fire for a certain length of time, this kiln being around 20 hours. My partner and I were assigned the 12 am to 6 am shift, so it was a lot of fun to stoke the fire and watch the sun rise with the rest of the team. The peace and quiet and the warmth of the fire was very comforting.

I love pottery so much because it requires collaboration, and I love the sense of community and reciprocity connected to the craft. It feels so good to work with natural materials like clay and fire and wood, it made me very happy and I definitely slept well after lifting all those bricks and staying up all night :-). I hope I can fire an atmospheric kiln again soon! 🏺

Sara’s Corner 🐌

Hi! It’s Sara :-) This month I went to Arizona to visit an old high school friend on a hiking trip! I love hiking soo much, and it was really a beautiful time ^_^ Plus I saw these cool birds.

I’ve never been to the desert before & LOVED scrambling up these big red rocks… Aside from long reflective conversations and challenging hikes, my most treasured memory from the trip is and drinking some tea once I got to the top of this talllll mountain. Me and Steph have mentioned it before, but we both really love tea, and I have a little travel setup for hiking trips. I couldn’t have open flame in the desert so I couldn’t break out my kettle, but it was still really nice with a thermos! Outside of LPP and freelancing I also do some work for a tea supplier in NYC, and drank some really nice rock tea she gave me up here. It really was such a beautiful, reflective and restorative trip!!

That’s all for this month! We thought we didn’t do anything but we were both shocked with how long this one turned out, lol (thanks for reading all the way if you got to this point!!) We’re gonna keep working hard on our projects here at LPP HQ, but will make sure to make some time to get outside (and we hope you can too!) See you next month!

With love,

Sara, Steph, and Pocket

Eating / Drinking:

Sara: Marinated sweet & sour lentils. Also finally perfected my baked oatmeal breakfast cookie recipe for oatmeal breakfast on the go…

Steph: All my Baltimore favorites: Mera Kitchen Collective spicy garlic fries, ice cream from the Charmery, etc. I had some delicious dairy-free lavender chai tea and a biscuit at the Bmore farmers market and I can’t forget about it…

Watching / Reading / Playing / Listening to:

Sara: I’ve been on a classics kick. Continuing The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky, and just recently started Wuthering Heights (because my favorite author recommended it). Listening to 90’s hip hop while printing recently.

Steph: America is in the Heart by Carlos Bulosan, The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer & The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker. Picked up One Piece again (oh no…)!