Nice Things

Wildflowers, typewriters, and more.

Borage living its best life. That color!

In the shop: market vegetables, bracken fern, and a reminder to keep it wild.

Hello friends,

Remember when I said last weekend that I was craving more analog things? Good news: I finally got to sit down and use my mom’s typewriter.

My grandfather brought the typewriter over from Sweden in the 1970s (which I presume was to ensure that it was easy to use the letters å, ä, and ö). Recently repaired, I’ve been meaning to sit down and use it for months and this was the week.

Here’s part of what I ended typing out, which I realize will most likely be hard to read if you’re scrolling through this on your phone. But you know, such is the way of analog.

I’ve been scheming on a couple of analog projects lately, and hoping to incorporate the typewriter. More on that soon.

In the meantime, I thought I would share a few nice things that I have been enjoying lately.

1. Wildflowers

All of them. But very much this honeysuckle flower because of how intense that orange is. The foxgloves are coming out too, and their weird—slightly creepy—forms that take over the sides of roads and ditches is a welcome seasonal moment.

2. A book about chickens!

Tove Danovich’s book Under the Henfluence is a delight, and I don’t even have chickens. I’ve been trying to not read through the book too quickly and I have a chapter left.

3. A new magazine

I’ve eyed Mildew from afar, and the crew at Broccoli (which I discovered a couple years ago when I found their Seashell Oracle in a store) kindly sent me the latest issue. It’s a magazine all about secondhand fashion and creative reuse. You can find it here.

I know I don’t really need to tell you this, but it is so nice to flip through pages to discover interesting things as opposed to scrolling.

My favorite things from this issue were Madeleine Brummer’s Gestalten series, where she photographed people wearing all of the clothes that they own all at once, and a piece called “Mending Fences” featuring photos by Indrajit Khambe of farms in rural India using old saris as fences in order to scare off wild pigs. Who knew that wild pigs would not be fans of bold colors?

4. This jam

At a holiday market back in December, I had a booth next to Salma’s Natural Preserves, which meant that I went home with several jars. The owner Praxia mixes blends Middle Eastern and Pacific Northwest flavors in small-batch jams, and this is exactly the kind of thing I want more of in my kitchen. Tacoma friends: you can now snag them at Field Bar. And the rest of you? I guess just cross your fingers and hope there’s a cookbook someday.

5. Wool!

I got to card this wool this week. Next up: re-learning how to spin (it has been a very long time). A good reminder that if you need to take breaks during the kind of big creative projects that require a lot of thinking and screen time (I’m looking at you book manuscript), go do something with your hands.

I hope you gather a few nice things this weekend.

-Anna

Coffee Sunrise card.

• Take your coffee outside, watch the sunrise, listen to the birds.

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