Oh my, guys. Hi! How are you? I'm sorry I've been gone for so long! I've been so busy and life is changing! Our baby is growing up, and as she gets more independent, I am starting to change, too. I have been very focused on pivoting my career to work on making books more than making crafts. I'm not exactly sure how this has come about, but I think, so far, it's a very good change for me. It has, however, been all-consuming for the past few months. When I am not actually designing books, I am watching videos about how to design books, or reading about how to design books, or reading Reddit boards of freelancers who are designing books for other people. I am still working on my cookbook (and thank you so much to every single one of you who volunteered to test recipes for me—more on this below) but at some point around August, I realized: Um, holy shit, I really need to make some actual money. So I reworked my Upwork profile to reflect my new book-designing abilities (I'd started doing freelance copyediting and proofreading there a little bit in 2023, so I already had an Upwork profile), and I was lucky enough to get new work right away, and have been working pretty much full-time since. I've been doing some editing, some proofreading, a lot of book design, a little bit of fixing other peoples' book designs (wow—there are a lot of wild books that get published on Amazon KDP, with even wilder [read: crazily formatted] book designs), a little bit of cover layout for other peoples' books, a whooooole lot of InDesign-learning (wow, what an amazing program—I seriously love it), and a little bit of working on my own book. Zero crafting. Zero soapmaking, zero earring-wire twisting, zero sewing, still shipping Posie orders a few times a week, zero embroidery, zero quiltmaking, zero home-decorating, almost-zero knitting, even almost-zero cooking. Just—books. Headers and footers, heading styles, drop caps, aligned-to-grid text, font styles, paragraph styles, export settings, margins and bleeds. With a lot of Chicago Manual of Style thrown in (new 18th edition released on September 19th! Editors represent, what!).
I know. You're bored. I cannot help it. I am changing. I don't know what I will be. But bookmaking seems to fit me so perfectly right now. I'm excited and I'm learning so much, and I'm making some nice books, and helping some really nice people, and that makes me feel really good. So I'm giving myself a chance to grow (and pay my bills!).
Now. In June! June! A hundred thousand years ago! We went to Seattle.
It's impossible for me not to think about my life as it was when I first went to Seattle to visit my friend from college, Pam, who lived on Dexter Ave. and had a second-floor back porch where we would sit and drink beer and look out over Lake Union, and then again a few years later, after I'd moved to Portland, when I was working for Alaska Northwest Books and our main office was in Seattle and I used to travel from Portland to Seattle by train for work. I still remember what it felt like, how I felt, then. This was before my accident, when I was newly married and had just moved to Portland from Montana. My boss was the senior editor and she took me under her wing. She lived in a gorgeous A-frame on the water on the Kitsap Peninsula. When I would go to Seattle to work with her in the Seattle office sometimes I would stay at her house. In the morning, we would drive a little car she had from her house to the Kitsap ferry. Then we would take the ferry in the early morning with all of the other commuters to Seattle. At the ferry dock in Seattle, she had another little, old, beater car. Then we'd get in that and take it to the office. It was just so much fun. I loved Seattle so much and felt like such a big, grown-up girl, going to work on the ferry. The ferry! Across the Sound!
We took the train up with Amelia for the first time a few weeks after school got out. We only went for a few days but it was such a fun trip. We stayed at the Inn at the Market, which is such a nice, nice hotel with incredible views, literally across the alley from Pike Place Market. This is the hotel that Andy and I have always stayed at when we've visited Seattle together over the past twenty-five years. It's a splurge for us; we don't usually stay in such fancy places right on the water. But it was so worth it, even just to have access to their beautiful rooftop patio. We spent a lot of time out there, watching the sun rise and set, and watching the boats go back and forth (and the planes approach Sea-Tac—that was really cool).
The first day we got to Seattle at around noon and went straight to the Inn and checked in early. Then we went down to the market and had lunch at Lowell's. I had fish and chips and I can't remember what Andy and Amelia had. Then we walked around the market for a long time, and it was insanely crowded—much more crowded than I was expecting. But it was fun, and Amelia loves to go to shops so it was fun to see her enjoying everything there. Eventually we went back up to the hotel and spent the late afternoon-evening on the rooftop deck (and we wound up getting Thai food delivered for dinner). My foot doesn't really do that well on vacation, when I'm out of my routine, so we try to keep it pretty low-key. The next morning, Amelia really wanted to go up in the Space Needle but I didn't want to (I have done it before, but I really don't like heights). So Andy took her up there while I waited down below in the park. Later that day we went to the Seattle Aquarium (we are big fans of the show The Aquariam so it was really fun to be at an actual aquarium [though not the same one] in real life). Our Lyft driver was flabbergasted that we wouldn't just wait until the new aquarium is open to go, but as it wasn't opening that day, we didn't really have the choice and will have to save it for a future visit. It might be open by now. I'm not sure. The next day we took the ferry to Bainbridge Island to go to the yarn store. Again, the ferry was the best. Cities on the water are so cool.
It is just an absolute joy to watch Amelia discover Seattle. We didn't do anything off the beaten path by any means, but that was okay with us. Amelia still talks about Seattle every couple of days and says she's going to live there someday. I am all for that. Andy and I almost chose Seattle over Portland, way back in 1997 when we were deciding where we wanted to move when we left Montana. We both love it and love going there. I'd like to take Amelia back to see The Nutcracker at Christmastime, but she has so many of her own Nutcracker performances (she is a Dancing Doll this year, which is the part that she wanted and that she got, so she is thrilled) and rehearsals in December, it gets hard to figure that out! I'm sure all of you Nutcracker families can relate. But wouldn't it be fun? I need to think about how to do that.
Andy has a few weeks off starting today and I am so happy. He tends to take some time off around Amelia's birthday, coming up soon, so he is busy crocheting her a space shuttle and making stickers for her birthday-party gift bags and watching Only Murders in the Building with me. Amelia is taking the clarinet this year, and it is seriously loud and it is hard to listen to. He's more musical than I am so he's kind of taking the lead on getting her to practice. It's kind of hard to encourage her to practice when she prefers to practice while standing right next to us. :)
I hope you are all well! I miss you and hope everyone is safe and sound. My heart is so heavy seeing the news reports from North Carolina—the photos are just staggering, and I am just heartbroken hearing the stories. I wish you all warmth and safety and peace in your world right now, from all of us here, and I send you our love. Thank you for checking in here, and let me know what you are up to!
P.S.: THANK YOU very much to those of you who volunteered to be recipe testers! I WILL take you up on that as soon as I get myself organized. Thank you very much, and I will be in touch!!! XO, a