Hi, hello. It turns out that making direct eye contact with The Horrors for a sustained period of time infects you with The Despair, and so for this reason I have been, uh… pretty offline for the past few months. This has been good for my brain! I want to keep doing it!! But unfortunately for you, it does mean that this newsletter space is likely to remain relatively quiet for a spell, while I focus on just being present in my own life, without the pressure of putting it on the internet (aka The Place of Horrors).
To hold you over until I am Making Comics etc. For Public Consumption again, here is a smattering of bits and pieces from the past few months that I happened to take a photo about.
I spent most of October living my best hobbit life foraging for mushrooms in the Pacific NorthwestHere are a few species of edible mushrooms I foraged (L-R, top row then bottom row): white chanterelle, matsutake, pigs ear, golden chanterelle, admirable bolete, lobster. Other species found and eaten in October: king bolete, puffball, chicken of the woods, angelwings, cauliflower, bear’s head, and shaggy mane! So many!!look at this flush of (kind of past their prime) chicken of the woods!!I carved like three or four pumpkins for Halloween this year, this one was my favoriteI impulse-bought a one thousand pack of googley eyes for our household and it has possibly been the best impulse purchase of my entire lifemy house handed out rock friends (and candy) to trick-or-treaters this year, they were a big hitWe had a housewarming party in September and made a scavenger hunt for our guests! Everyone who completed our Little Guys scavenger hunt zine got to pick a little guy of their own to take home :3here’s one of the interior pages of the scavenger hunt zine! It was a collaboration with my housemate Iris, who did the drawings. Yes our trash and recycling bins all have names and we are emotionally attached to them 😭everything I learned in cartooning school I poured into these secondhand sticker sheets
I have been cooking and baking almost nonstop. I love food 😭
I invented a recipe for pasta and roasted butternut squash in a brown butter & lemon-sage sauce and it’s SO GOOD I’ve made it three times in a month
Our household Baked Goods counter currently clocks in at 52 dozen muffins, 8 dozen scones, 8 dozen cookies, and an assortment of pies, cakes, cobblers, and tarts. All baked and consumed since the end of August. As a house of four ravenous teenage boys cartoonists, on average we eat about three dozen muffins a week. I have had to start buying the BIG bag of flour 😭
I spilled tea on the floor and naturally had to make a sign for it when I cleaned it up
Knitting!! I have been knitting sweaters, and my 2026 knitting goals include ten specific projects already, pray 4 me 🥲
I finished knitting my oversized rainbow sweater! Pattern is a modified version of this one and yarn is DROPS baby merino.it’s not washed and blocked yet, but I JUST finished knitting this sweater! Pattern is Iloq, and the yarn is Berroco Ultra Alpaca (charcoal) for the main color and a limited edition colorway called Dragon Rider from Junction Fiber Mill for the colorworkRemember my new year’s post from last year about my plan to record my 2025 reading in knitted snake form? Here he is! He’s done! Ft. my housemate’s aesthetic bookshelf (because nearly every book I read this year was from the library)LeVar is 40 books long! Each color of stripe corresponds to a different genre. You can see where I marathoned the Murderbot Diaries series towards the end of the year, haha
I’ve been doing little watercolor paintings, but in an effort to not convert Every Little Thing I Make into Content(TM) (for the Brain Reasons), I haven’t actually documented most of them. Bring back making things just for fun and just for you!! So all you get to see are these ones, haha.
two of my housemates received these little paintings for Christmas as placeholders for the knitted items I owe each of them 😅
In biggest news, we have acquired a cat!! He came to us via the Universal Cat Distribution System, and he is already hard at work emotionally supporting our household.
He is an absolute menace and a scallywag and we love him<3We had a whole naming ceremony for him and I made him a teeny crown, he’s got a theme song and everything
My housemates have challenged me to make a zine documenting Quincy’s crimes, of which there are many, so you’ve got that to look forward to in a future newsletter installment 😤
Last thing I’ll leave you with:
One of the very small ways I am fighting fascism in my corner of the world is through organizing an ongoing community skillshare at our local creative reuse center. Because what’s more punk rock than meeting your neighbors and teaching each other how to darn socks and mend pants and knit hats to disrupt our reliance on a global fast fashion industry that exploits workers and ravages the environment??? If you’re in the Upper Valley area, you’re invited 😤
Look I made a flyer and everything!!
Until the next newsletter dump 😘~
💜Maia
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