Edition #2
Potholders, last minute gift suggestions, and links
Thank you for the overwhelming encouragement I received after the first edition went out. Thanks for reading, sincerely.
I wanted to share this hot tip: whenever a newsletter (or any email) comes in, that I know I want to read but realistically can't get to, I first 'star' it and then I use the 'snooze' function in Gmail to have all my reading material delivered on the weekend. Then I have my own curated digital Sunday paper to savor!
As with last week, the below is divided into sensory subcategories so feel free to skip to what interests you. These are some things occupying my mind and that I would gush about if we met for coffee this week. The next edition will have more on scent, I promise. If you missed last week's newsletter you can read it here.
Touch
Looping you in
I could never have predicted that this potholder loom and the woven squares it brings forth would become a tactile obsession. And if I haven't lost you at the word 'potholder' or the idea of a homestead art project, then thank you, because this is actually about interests that assert themselves quite uninvited. But also about how fun it is to make lively potholders.
The kit essentially fell into my lap when a friend's mom (thanks Betsy!) swung by with her car on a terribly rainy day this past july to drop off two small looms (7", 10") for my daughter. She then hauled out two massive (art teacher-sized) bags of colored loops. I thought, why not give it a go, as rain pattered forcefully on our windows, see if it's age appropriate for Odessa (it was, with some practice). I didn't even have potholders in my kitchen so it all seemed a useful activity.
Unlike knitting or a traditional weaving loom, the potholder loom comes with elastic loops, so it's enormously easy to just get started. The loops themselves look like horizontal cuttings from socks and come in "bright" "pastel" or "designer" colors from Harrisville, the company that produces the loom. To make, simply stretch colored loops in a pattern of your choosing along the warp, rotate 90 degrees, and weave colored loops over-under to form the weft. While the kit comes with a metal rod to work faster, what I've found is the pure rhythmic pleasure of finger weaving has lodged into my psyche as stress relief.
I don't particularly want the fruits of this activity and yet our house is littered with them. Beyond using potholders in the kitchen, as trivets, and Christmas tree ornaments, the only larger vision I can muster for them is maybe a large quilt, a bath mat, or a purse. I wouldn't say any of these are my aesthetic either, though I have since invested in some black and white loops to up the chic factor.
I went from sort of chuckling at the folksy nature of the whole thing, to suddenly and legitimately proselytizing the joys of making potholders. And it happened fast.
No less than six adult people who have sat on our couch in the last few months have left with a potholder of their own making. My mother who is a fine artist and has plenty of beautiful things commanding her handiwork, has now been outfitted with her own kit and recently texted me that we need to start PHA (Pot Holders Anonymous). My friends in LA pointed me to the one book in the LA Library Libby about potholder patterns, and I have screenshot many, many pages.
There are the things you go after and make time for (a passion, a desire, a goal). And then there are the things you let into your life, reluctantly at first, that take you by surprise. A lark. Like the feeling of meeting someone special at a party you didn't want to go to; the power of something that didn't remotely interest you, yet was low-stakes enough to try, casts a spell of an entirely different nature. It's more than being 'bitten' — it's upending your own baseline assumptions. I've had a number of these moments, and I invite many more, that hold a mirror up to how seriously I've taken myself all these years, and realize I can be joyfully occupied by something very pleasingly cheesy.
Which is a relief, you know, to someone who was told to rigorously find their passion and maybe make money from doing it — to find so much pleasure in folly, in making something with your hands for no good reason, to be long on loops and short on ideas for what to do with them.
Taste
Spiced Nuts
This recipe from Maricela Vega is so easy and smart! I made this after we had an extra bag of pecans post-thanksgiving and now it's a habit: I turn on the oven, slather on the spices, and nosh all afternoon. The crushed fennel-garlic combo is the key to this recipe, which I would've never thought of, so I'm passing it along. I picked up some cashews and walnuts to see if i can give 'em the same treatment.
Gift Guide for the sensory-inclined
A few fun suggestions!
Touch: Harrisville Potholder Loom in 7" (and 10") and a bag of loops- See above.
Taste: Zu Zubrówka Bison Grass (Sweetgrass) Vodka - Intensely aromatic vodka, of which a few dabs on the wrist can double as a perfume. The quality of this sweetness comes from natural coumarin in sweetgrass, or bison grass.
See: Chirri and Chirra books (there are several) - They are astonishingly beautiful and detailed adventures in nature, complete with cooking and eating and having magical sensory experiences. Order them from Acorn Toy Shop
Smell: Hibi 10 Minute Aroma -This comes as an ingenious dual-matchbox incense system : one box contains eight incense matches (with a striker strip) and the other box has a fuzzy landing mat for you to lay the burning incense once it's lit. Small but mighty, these scents are refined and beautiful. By my account, the fragrance produced lingers beyond the promised 10 minutes.
Subscribe: Just when you thought you had enough digital subscriptions, The Cloud Appreciation Society offers indescribable daily goodness — gobsmacking cloud scenes delivered to your inbox.
Wild Card: These Grin brush + floss picks clean between teeth in a new-to-me way, and are surprisingly scintillating to use!
Links
NYT T Magazine - Miyazaki.
Aside from that fact that this is an absolutely beautiful profile on Hayao Miyazaki, a favorite filmmaker of mine and so many others, it is also a feat on the part of the writer Ligaya Mishan who only had one hour to sit down (on zoom) with Mr. Miyazaki. It is clear that she has spent days, if not a lifetime, engaged with his work on a soul-level. I read her descriptions with envy and awe as she finds the words to conjure his visual magic. Take in how she describes Miyazaki's distinct use of color in Studio Ghibli's (usually drawn by hand) animation:
[Miyazaki] deploys a palette of saturated colors, bright but never gaudy, standing out against cool grays and dun tones, and pays attention to quicksilver adjustments of light and shade, especially the shadows within shadows that give featheriness and depth to the night.
Jesse Raub's Good Ones- The Cultural Supremacy of Pizza
Jesse could've landed this fascinating piece in The New Yorker, I think. How did pizza become so synonymous with a good time? How did cinema contribute to pizza's cultural relevance? Read on.
Tracy Wan on Pepper
Nothing makes me happier and hungrier than Tracy Wan's substack (on food and scent). Subscribe, subscribe, subscribe. She is, specifically, one of the finest scent writers out there, which informs the utterly beguiling way she writes about food.
Richard Powers on Talk Easy
This podcast has been circulating among my book club, and it is indeed a whopper of a conversation that resonates in ways that surprise. Powers talks about the future of our world, our place in it, and our vital relationship with books. While all of that sounds like well-worn territory, every fragment of this conversation feels expressed in a new way.
Thank you for reading. More to come.
Stay safe, healthy, and attuned to the gifts in the world.
Signing off with my favorite pictures of my two potholder holders.
Loved every moment of this piece… those potholders are such a source of pride and accomplishment!