Hi everyone!

Happy March! 🌼 We hope everyone’s been keeping safe and warm in the cold weather, it’s even “cold” in Hawaii with Steph… It’s 60 degrees (sometimes). The start of the year always feels somehow so slow, and then when it hits March it feels like everything is 2x speed! Do you guys feel that way too?? It’s officially been one year since we’ve started writing our Pocket Mail newsletter, yay!!! Thank you for reading along with us. We’ve mostly been staying put in our own lives and being quiet, but we have a few LPP updates! 

All rewards for our Knapsack Volume 2: Butter Kickstarter campaign have been sent out! After getting back from traveling, Sara shipped out the packages by hand, so it was a huge relief when the last books were finally shipped out…. We hope everyone’s been receiving their packages in the mail and enjoying their copies and rewards! Thank you so much for supporting our campaign, we’re so happy to have another volume of Knapsack out into the world! 

Speaking of which, copies of Knapsack Magazine Volume 2 are now available on our online shop! If you weren’t able to grab a copy during our Kickstarter campaign, you can grab one now! ^o^ 

We’ll be seeing you soon at MoCCAfest in NYC at the end of the month, on March 28-29th! We’ll be at table 19 this year. Steph can’t make it out to the event this year :-(, so everyone please stop by and give Sara some snacks and drinks! Knapsack 2 will make its debut, and we’ll have some Kickstarter extras for sale there too, so there’s gonna be some RARE items!! Make sure to stop by :)

We’re slowly but surely working on new projects that we can’t wait to share with you! Stay tuned for news on Knapsack Volume 3 (we’re already so excited to show you the really great stuff from this next volume!!) 🙈.

We’ve been trying to keep things light and silly during the winter cold (and spend as much time together as we can even though we’re far apart), so we’ve been watching and playing a lot of comfort media and silly stuff. 

We started rewatching Avatar the Last Airbender together, which has been so fun and funny… We’ve been watching maybe once or twice a week and it’s always the highlight of our days. Like we kind of peaked at atla, can we be honest… Who is everyone’s favorite? (Steph’s is Sokka, and Sara’s is Aang. What does this say about us….)

We’re also finally ALMOST done with Baldur’s Gate after playing 2 years… We’ve had this boss battle track stuck in our heads all week- we were simply shocked when this guy started singing during his battle… 😭

We also played this very short throwback game called Tender Love and Care: A Leorio Dating Sim…….. Does anyone remember this??? Please tell me you do… It’s from 2019 and was a hit on hxh twitter back then, we hope we inspire you to play it…

That’s all for now! We’ll keep you updated on our future silliness next time! Thank you for tuning in to our newsletter, we’re wishing everyone brighter days and blooming flowers ahead. 🌷 Happy year of the fire horse! 🔥🐎

Love, 

Sara & Steph

PS: Here’s a poem Sara sent to Steph, hoping it taps your heart the way it did ours.

This winter we’ve been really taking some time to ourselves to be a little more internal, so we’re gonna have a bit of an abbreviated Sara-and-Steph corner this time. Hopefully next month we’ll defrost along with the trees and grasses, and have some more to share with you :-)

Sara:
Been up to: fulfillment, then painting my new apartment and moving. I struggle with big transitions, so I’m trying to be kind to myself and spend a lot of time filling my well with media that’s meant a lot to me in my life (and calling with my beloved friends who are far away). I replayed Majora’s Mask- it was a seminal childhood game for me in its discussion of grief and time. Also reread The Dispossessed by (my all-time favorite) Ursula Leguin (another book which seems to be more and more appropriate each time I engage with it). Otherwise, it’s been a lot of snow shoveling, sewing, pondering and being quiet…

Playing / reading / watching: See above. Also ATLA with the boys, makes me want to write a story. We started a book club too! First we’re reading Shakespeare, will report back later…

Eating / drinking: My body is craving fermented foods. I’ve been trying to make a good plant-based yogurt for like a year now and each time I feel like I poison myself just a little bit (if you have any recommendations, let me know…) A new friend helped me start some miso which will be ready in July.

Steph:
Been up to: throwing pots with my wheel (it finally arrived!), lovingly tending to my small garden of herbs, which has now expanded to cilantro, dill, and yarrow. I’m enjoying the rainy season a lot, and savoring it as much as I can; chilly, cloudy weather is my favorite and comes very infrequently here in Maui. We celebrated LNY with some friends and made enough food for 10 people, even though there were only 4 of us. I’ve been learning how to fire a gas kiln, and it feels like heaven to sit for 9 hours together with friends and read and sew, and just quietly enjoy each other’s company. 

Playing / reading / watching: ATLA of course, and FF9! Adoring the Rennfaire vibe so far! I’ve been trying to watch more movies lately, including Ne Zha 1 and 2(🌈??) and Postmen in the Mountains, which I bawled during because I’ve been very sensitive to crying during movies lately. 

Eating / drinking: It’s not THAT cold here but I’m still consuming warming things anyway… I’ve been drinking a lot of he shou wu and astragalus, and lemonbalm from our garden. Lot’s of auspicious fish for the new year!