Grey Moggie Press

Happy Halloween

I meant to blog yesterday but the hours just slipped away. And the kitties were just being so cute! I'll be back next week with photos of tonight's costume, a new shop for my letterpress goodies, and other exciting news. HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!

spooktacular

steph and i postponed our favor bag-making party last week and rescheduled for last night. we took a quick walk to get take out malaysian food and then camped out in her living room to cut tags, tie ribbons, and stamp the bags with spooky little halloween cats. then we stuffed the bags with candy and jelly bracelets and silly eye patches.

we tried to come up with a different halloween word or phrase for each tag, which was really hard but lots of fun. we laughed every time we saw the word “spooktacular” scrawled on one of the tags.

here's another hint about my costume. any guesses?

letterpress update

I’m hoping to reopen my etsy shop soon and when I do, I want it to be full of pretty letterpress goodness. I spent Monday working on that goal and printed lots of holiday cards and gift tags and some custom stationery.  Here’s a sneak peek at what’s coming. 

 

food today; paper tomorrow

the changing of seasons is an exciting time at the farmers market. for the last couple weeks we’ve picked up produce we hadn’t seen in months, but we haven’t been able to keep up with our purchases. so last night we had a “let’s find out what’s in the fridge and eat it” adventure. this is something i hated when i was in law school because i just wanted to eat comfort food all the time. eric was happy i was on board with the plan last night.

it was awesome. eric cooked rye berries and I made a salad from the berries, parsley, a couple crazy looking carrots, and sautéed onions. I shelled lima beans and eric cooked them in a bit of butter. we had steamed turnips and kohlrabi with dill bovre from keswick. 

letterpress update tomorrow!

pizza + kitties + a song

this weekend was filled with kitty love (they are so cute together now), new iphones for me and the mr., lots of coffee dates, and delicious pizza at seventh hill in eastern market. the pizza was fantastic (fresh artichokes!!!) and I loved the design of the logo and menu. you can watch the chef toss pizza dough in the open kitchen, and while the pies are baking he walks around the restaurant chatting with guests. it’s wonderful. 

oh, and passing the bar. I found out from a letter in the mailbox when we got home on friday night. I was so relieved. friends were already on their way to our place for a visit, so we chilled a bottle of champagne and opened it to celebrate with then. now i'm ready for the week, armed with this fabulous little song. i love everything about it!

weekend update

I passed the bar! 

And got an iphone! Yay!

friday favorites: the random edition

it's been a good week for us. a new kitten joined our family, i spent some time in the letterpress studio, and the rain finally stopped. here are some of my favorite things right now.

i can’t wait to turn this paper goodness into paper goodies. they will be gift tags soon.

letterpress. i  printed holiday cards and personalized stationery on a sunny day in the studio. it made my week.

my one canoe two calendar. my favorite months are december + june because i love those colors on the grey paper, september because bikes are awesome, and october because vintage chairs are spooky without being creepy.

handmade soap from union street soapworks. picked up at the clarendon farmers market on wednesday. toasted coconut + lavender oatmeal.

my kitty cats starting to get along. maybe.

happy weekend!

halloween anticipation

are you excited about halloween? i am! i am especially glad that holidays are not sneaking up on me this year. we already have christmas plans. we know where we’ll be for thanksgiving. and my halloween costume is almost ready. the photo below is a hint about the costume. can you guess who i'll be?

tonight i'm making favor bags with my friend, steph, for her upcoming halloween party. happy (belated) birthday, steph!

good mail day

today was an excellent mail day. my 1 canoe 2 calendar arrived (didn’t i say i would do some calendar shopping over the weekend?). and i got the neatest package from vero. vero is a friend from law school and similarly exploring the i-don’t-want-to-be-a-lawyer path. she is a brand new cheesemonger at the cellar in southern california and blogging about it. i love reading about her cheese adventures!

today, i got a package full of cheese stickers from her. i was thinking about what i could do with the stickers since they deserve an amazing project, and i was reminded of a passage i read earlier today. in her fearful symmetry, two of the main characters are twins who have used an old bird cage full of plastic crucifixes sitting on top of a table plastered with hello kitty stickers to decorate an otherwise entirely white room. isn’t that a striking picture to imagine? maybe i can do something similarly strange with the cheese stickers.

oh, and here’s a lovely pocketbook, also from vero. she found it in a vintage shop and gave it to me as a graduation present this spring. i love it! thank you, vero!

dead man's bones

for an early lunch on saturday, eric and i took a long walk in the cold rain to get some delicious french food at café parisien express. we both warmed up with some french onion soup and crepes a la reine. we took home some pain au chocolat to share with a pot of pressed coffee during our lazy afternoon. while i nibbled and sipped i caught up on google reader. i noticed that ryan gosling’s band dead man’s bones was playing that night at the historic sixth + i synagogue.  it wasn’t hard to convince two of my best girls to join me for the show. we had no idea what to expect, but: ryan gosling.

the show was fantastic. the music was haunting and beautiful. i had no idea gosling was so talented beyond the movie screen. his voice was deep and melodic and he played several instruments on stage. and he is just so handsome! the rest of the band was fantastic, too. to round out the spooky sound the howard gospel choir joined ryan and zach. the backdrop for the set was perfect with a haunted house and sparkling stars. it made me want a house big enough that i could have a halloween-themed room.

if they'll be in your city, go: tour schedule here. music here. better photos here and here.

oh hi. it's monday

what a weekend. there were lots of surprises. eric + i started off with a coffee date on friday that continued into dinner and then to a concert at the velvet lounge. the evening reminded me of one of those amazing weekends we used to spend when we were long-distance dating. we would try to cram hundreds of events into our two-day visits to one another, so we’d often have three back-to-back dates on a friday evening.

i had dinner plans on saturday with friends, but at the last minute we changed our plans and saw a concert instead. two concerts in one weekend. crazy!

the main event of our weekend was adopting a second cat. she's an eight-week old orange tabby who was adopted by friends of ours a week ago. due to a change in their living arrangements, they could no longer keep her. we didn’t want to see the kitty go back to a shelter, so she is now a part of our family. our grey moggie is not super pleased, but every hour is slightly better than the last, so we are hopeful they will be friendly to one another with some time. welcome to our home, pony!

friday favorites: calendars

this is the time of year when designers and artists start putting together calendars for the following year. it is a very exciting time of year for those of us who love paper. if you’re still looking for a 2010 calendar (or ten) check out the calendar round ups on oh so beautiful paper and paper crave. my favorites so far have been the letterpress and silkscreen calendar from ilee, the letterpressed hand drawings calendar from 1 canoe 2, the cheeky calendar from cats let nothing darken their roar, and the darling elsiecake calendar up at red velvet art.

have a happy weekend! we’re off to see the band impossible hair tonight and i have a dinner date with the girls on saturday. and maybe i'll do some calendar shopping…

the triumphant return of letterpress

oh? you thought this was a letterpress blog? it certainly had been a while since i printed anything. i’ve been volunteering at pyramid often but it’s difficult to share fun photos of me redistributing type or recount tales of cleaning a Vandercook with q-tips and a toothbrush.

yesterday? yesterday was different. i printed for the first time since june. and it was wonderful. several of the letterpress printers at pyramid are collaborating on a calendar to raise money for the studio. i taught myself how to use Illustrator and designed a calendar page for february. it was my first two-color job and all that quiet time in the studio with my design made for a fabulous day. also, did you know that the color combination of red + aqua is known as rockqua? (thanks, haley!)

yay! letterpress is back at grey moggie!

apple crisp chaos

did i mention there were also apples at the pumpkin patch? there were. on monday night i chopped up an apple, split the pieces between 2 ramekins, sprinkled some brown sugar and butter on the top and then: instant apple crisp. last night, i wanted more. despite a sagging shelf full of wonderful cookbooks and access to millions of internet recipes, I decided to wing it.

i think i'm going to try this approach to cooking more often. it was so rewarding to have a delicious apple crisp that was entirely my own creation. i can’t really remember amounts or steps followed but i know i used three apples, butter, cinnamon, brown sugar, dried cranberries, honey, a spoonful of apple cider (turned out to be unnecessary*), and some flour to hold the crisp together.

* i did, however, take a giant gulp of cider from the half-gallon jug, which was a totally essential step.

pumpkin weekend

yay for a three-day weekend! ours was filled with lots of double dates. we had pizza at red rocks with kara & dan on friday night. after my day at the studio for the letterpress workshop on saturday, eric and I caught up with jeff & jonine for college basketball, the office wedding, and pizza & gelato. 

sunday was a drive to pumpkin patches and vineyards in virginia with tim & annabel for some frolicking and wine tasting.

on monday, it was just the two of us, carving pumpkins. It got pretty chilly out so we converted our living room into a carving workshop. i found a few free patterns online from pumpkin glow, including a unicorn. eric used a pattern from the carving tool kits we picked up at the drug store. it was so much fun to have a silly project that we could work on together.

now it’s already tuesday. time to plan next weekend’s festivities!

happy weekend

i'm looking forward to this weekend. i asked eric for a pumpkin carving apple cider date soon so i’m hoping that’s part of our weekend. eric doesn’t have to work on monday. yay! and we have a pizza double date with good friends tonight.

camping in west virginia a few weeks ago

i'm helping with a letterpress workshop at pyramid tomorrow. i think this one is more than full, but if you’re interested in a workshop there’s another one coming up in november.

what's your weekend agenda? i hope it’s full of fall fantastic-ness!

the real grey moggie

she didn’t like it when I was studying for the bar. I think the stress level in our house really affected her. and she really didn’t like it when we took off for nyc and maine for 10 days or france for 7 days. so summer wasn’t really her favorite time of this year. now that’s it’s fall and we’re settling into a more normal routine, she’s back to her old lovable ways.  I find it so interesting that pets, even an independent animal like a cat, are so affected by what is going on in their people’s lives.

love & marriage

 

we’ve been on the dc wedding circuit. two weekends, two weddings, two historical mansions. it's been lovely. this past weekend our friends, tim & annabel, tied the knot. lots of our friends came to town for the occasion and it was great fun to have them all in our city.

i was a reader in their wedding, and as a thank you (though i was so honored to be a part of the wedding and had so much fun, i should be thanking them) they gave me this book. which has been on my wish list since it was published last december. did i mention that they’re very dear friends and know me very well?

also, i'm on flickr now. check it out!

welcome fall

the temperatures have dropped and there is a distinct smell of crisp. crisp air, crisp new sweaters, apple crisp. and with a new season, comes new music. here's my latest mix cd, fall in dc 2009.

{fall in dc 2009}

YOUR ARMS AROUND ME jens lekman

SEAWEED SONG passion pit

TOWERS amy millan

DUST ME OFF tilly & the wall

THE MAJOR LIFT years

DOORWAYS/WHY BOTHER smile smile

CONTENDER the pains of being pure at heart

DON’T WAIT UP the takeover uk

ROSE CITY viva voce

ACTION/REACTION choir of young believers

CHAMELEON brendan canning

ACTOR OUT OF WORK st. vincent

TWO WEEKS grizzly bear

HELLO SUNSHINE langhorne slim

TWO DOVES dirty projectors

RED AND PURPLE the dodos

books on books

If you are serious, or mildly curious, about bookbinding, you should take a peek at Esther Smith’s How To Make Books from Purgatory Pie Press. I checked this book out of the library over spring break, but I was unable to crack it open before I had to be back at school. Then I saw it on my friend, Jenny’s, bookshelf a few months ago and remembered that I really wanted to read it. I’ve had it from the library for about a week now and it’s definitely one I will purchase when my book budget bounces back.

It starts off with ideas for simple books like accordion books, pamphlets, and books you can make from a single sheet of paper. Later, it gets into beautiful stab binding and long stitch books. I haven’t even tried any of the techniques yet but have been completely captivated. I read it in bed before I fall asleep and I’ve even read it on Metro. It’s that’s good.

 
A little birdie I embroidered with supplies from a Sublime Stitching kit and an RVA pattern.

Speaking of what to do on Metro, I’ve also been embroidering while riding public transit.  And on airplanes. It’s wonderful to have a new hobby I can take (almost) anywhere. I’ve got Not Your Mama’s Stitching up next after How To Make Books and all the Sublime Stitching books on my wishlist. Along with hundreds of colors of embroidery floss. And many, many patterns from Sublime Stitching and Red Velvet Art.

Do you have a favorite How-To book or a new hobby?