2024 Rocks

About this year’s design

I (and I suspect many of you) have a small drawer full of rocks that I picked up because they caught my eye when I was somewhere I really enjoyed being – a hike, or a seashore, or a special time and place. Each one at the moment seemed so remarkable and sharply in focus that I knew I would always remember the moment I got it whenever I picked it up again. Why blemish the experience with taking out my phone to get picture of it in its environment?

So, yeah, of course I don’t remember where most of these rocks are from. But I love them! I remember many places they could be from, and trying to remember is pretty fun.

I have added them to the paper cut so you too can imagine where this cool rock came from, remembering times you too might have seen a cool rock.

Some rocks I can account for, though. The rocks in the corner are smoky quartz, given to us by a friend’s mom (who also makes tinctures after our studio got broken into multiple times last year. She said we should put one in each corner of our new studio for protection. Not sure if it’s working, but no break-ins so far.

Otherwise, I’ve gone a little more traditional than usual with this cut. It’s based on the “woodland” style wycinanki. While researching it, I learned that one of the original ways wycinanki were displayed were to paste them up all over your cottage.

The two trees in the design are based off two amazing trees that, until recently, lived in our neighborhood. The snowstorm we just had in Portland had some high winds, and we lost a bunch of trees. One was an enormous tree that towered over Belmont Street, and another was a gorgeous willow in the Lone Fir Cemetery.

The two cats at the bottom are our two cats, Frankenstein and Elvira. Are they playing or fighting? Yes.

As ever, I hope to be better at correspondence this year. To that end I started a newsletter, Big Table. If you’re getting this, I have probably forcibly signed you up for it, but it goes to spam a lot so perhaps this is all news to you.

Here’s hoping this finds you well and that your year will, in fact, rock.

hearts for eyes emoji,

n