Hi everyone,

Happy holidays! We hope everyone has been feeling warmth and joy this season. Our favorite thing about winter is seeing the warm lights from houses amongst the cold landscape. It feels so sweet and inviting… We hope everyone’s had their share of wonder for this beautiful season. We’ve been taking things slowly this month, we know it’s been a while since we’ve sent a newsletter out! Since the new year is just around the corner, we thought we’d round up a little retrospective of 2025 for Lucky Pocket Press. We actually wrote up a list of yearly goals for this year:

We actually achieved a good amount of our list!!! And we’re very proud of some of the things we’ve achieved this year, even if there’s some things we couldn’t get to! We’ve also learned a lot too, like running Kickstarter campaigns back-to-back is brutal, and really, the importance of taking our time. This has always been important to us, but we’re always battling the expectations we set for ourselves. There’s definitely so much room to learn to not be disappointed at ourselves for changing and rearranging.

As for our year in retrospect, here’s a little timeline:

Thank you so much for an amazing year, we are so thankful for your support, always! 🥺 We really wanted to try to turn LPP into a more active job that could support us financially in some capacity, and we learned that actually, attaching monetary value to the work we did made us not want to do it (who’d have thought?). We’ve both always been staunchly anti-capitalist, so we’ve been coming up with ways in which we could make LPP work for us in a way that lets it sustain itself without becoming a real “Job.” One of those things is keeping it priceless, a passion project. We’re adjusting our timelines in the coming year, trying to be discerning with what we take on, and taking on cool, new and exciting new projects in the meantime! We hope you’ll stick around for the ride, we don’t know where it’s taking us but we’ll be here together!

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Some updates:

Knapsack 2 books have finally arrived! We’re so happy with them, the book really feels like it leveled up from Volume 1 and we’re so excited for you to see them. We’ll be shipping them out starting January 10th, so please get your surveys in if you haven’t already!!

That’s all for now! We’re taking it slow during the winter…

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Sara’s Corner🐌

Hello from far away 🍃 I’m writing this update from Japan! I hope it finds you well and warm! Just two days ago, it really started feeling like the new year approaches all of a sudden. I’m reflecting a lot, wrapping up my 2025 hobonichi, and pondering by candlelight…

I had a really full, blissful November. My older brother got married!!!!! I cried like a baby. I also finished up a huge job, signed a lease on a new apartment, and set out to Japan! I’ve been here since the middle of November and I’m leaving in about a week. I’ve been coming here and helping out on a tea farm in the countryside near the Kyoto area since 2023. It feels like a second home to me now; and I’m really enjoying seeing old friends, working in the fields, waking up with the sun and drinking a lot of tea.

One of the greatest joys of the past season for me are persimmons- they are my favorite fruit, and I only am able to find fresh ones here (I pick them straight off the tree!!) Also has been so fun&cute to compare persimmons I’m eating with the ones Steph is eating over in Hawaii, it makes me feel close to them <3 I’ve been sewing a lot recently- it grounds me to work with my hands. Also picked up some simple wood carving to try to make gifts for friends back home (don’t tell Steph!!!) Here’s a totebag I dyed and embroidered, plus a little bag I dyed and sewed for a gift. Also, a little wrapping paper design I did for a friend’s mochi shop.

Steph’s Corner 🏺

November and December has been slow and introspective, even though it’s not very cold over here in Hawaii! I got a new part-time job and I’ve mostly been getting used to my new routine, making glazes, and finding time for myself and my loved ones in-between. My partner, Olioli’s birthday was on November 20th, so we celebrated together with friends at our favorite restaurant and I baked a suprise upside-down persimmon cake! You’ve all seen him before, Oli is always helping us with Lucky Pocket stuff (and making a TikTok for us when we absolutely refuse to), we’re always so thankful for his warming presence and giving spirit. Everyone say happy birthday Oli!! 🥳💗

Like Sara mentioned, we’ve been trading persimmon pics; there’s a few family owned persimmon farms on our island and December is prime season, so we’ve been driving up the mountain and playing chicken with all the other cars on the road to secure our fresh persimmons! We’ve gone through 2.5 bags, at this point.🍅(This is the closest I can get to a persimmon emoji…)

I’ve been slowly investing my paychecks into building a home studio setup for myself, and I just bought a pottery wheel!! It’s a huge step for me and I’m very excited to receive it! It has many, many miles over the ocean to journey before it gets here, but I’ve been happy to take things slow. After a couple years that have felt so fast paced, I feel like things have finally slowed down for me. Here’s what my tiny studio looks like so far, my little piece of heaven!

I want to sew some tapestries and I’ve been practicing with small fabric strips to make a pojagi curtain for the windows! I’m excited to make Sara a new dinnerware set for their brand new apartment 🙈!

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That’s all for now! Please have a restorative, reflecting time during your new years’ celebrations. We’re wishing the best for you for 2026!! 🌟

All our love,

Sara, Steph, and Pocket

Eating / Drinking:
Sara: Persimmons, chestnuts, grilled sweet potato, amazake, soy milk, and a lot of broiled vegetables….

Steph: Lots of mung beans in soup, especially chicken tinola. It’s bean season baby! 

Watching / Reading / Playing / Listening to:
Sara: On Steph’s recommendation I started Les Miserables. I’m enjoying it so much. It feels like War and Peace again, so I’m really happy. Also, whenever I travel and need to unwind I try to watch classic movies from the place I’m in, so I’ve been watching Japanese cinema. I really enjoyed Harakiri.

Steph: I really should be re-reading Les Miserables too but I’ve accidentally veered into reading ANOTHER Victor Hugo book, Notre-Dame de Paris (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame; Hugo hated this translated title and I agree with him so I’m not using it!). And watching… obviously…Heated Rivalry…