Moving on up: My new attic studio

We recently had our attic insulated and sheet-rocked, without a clear plan for how best to use the space. The second floor of our story-and-a-half 1920s-era bungalow was about 2/3 (kind of) finished and 1/3 attic, and our main goal was to get the whole upstairs properly insulated, which has been accomplished. We certainly could have, at that point, just used the attic part for storage, as attics traditionally are.

The attic/future studio in January: insulated, sheetrocked, and painted a pale peachy beige. The window looks east; the light shining on the wall at left is from the skylight.

But we have a roomy dry basement with plenty of space for storage in addition to other uses, and the attic has an east-facing window overlooking our backyard, so we thought there must be something we could use the room for, taking advantage of the pleasant view. With that vague idea in mind, we had a skylight added on the south slant, to let in more natural light and provide a view of the southern sky at night.

But the door leading into this space is smaller than standard size, and because of the intersecting ceiling angles, there wasn't really a way to make it much larger. (For a thousand dollars or so, we could have had it made slightly larger, but still not standard.)

Above the doorway leading into the attic (before the new insulation and other work), viewed from inside the attic. Not much room to expand!

That isn't a problem for me at 5'4" tall, and hubby suggested that the room could become my office and studio, potentially replacing two separate spaces I was using, neither of which was quite working out for me. 

You may be surprised that it took a little persuading for me to agree to it. I actually thought the space was potentially too nice to be all mine. I got over it, though. 

We replaced the leaky double-hung window on the east with a slightly bigger casement from Marvin windows, with grillwork mimicking the original. 

Tres checks out the view from the new larger attic-studio window.

We splurged on hardwood floors made by Wood from the Hood from reclaimed elm trees that had been removed from our city boulevards. Once the finish was cured on the floors, Craig started moving my things up from the basement single-handedly, since my gimpy knees meant I would have posed more of a hazard than help. He was pretty stiff the next day!

Along the north wall it's an office, with my desk and two rather large printers. A wide low filing cabinet (not yet assembled in the photo below) doubles as a printer stand for the Canon laser printer, while the Epson sits atop a three-shelf bookcase that holds most of my printer paper and card stock. The ledge to the left, where the Canon sits in this photo, will eventually become my photo booth corner. 

Attic office taking shape. Filing cabinet/printer stand waiting to be assembled.

The mix of free-standing small storage units directly under the skylight divides that side of the room into two spaces, with lots of cubbies and shelves for keeping relevant supplies readily at hand. And, of course, a cat shelf on top, directly under the skylight. It wouldn't really be a good spot to keep anything prone to fading anyway.

The corner to the left has my work table, with a couple of lamps on the table top, for drawing, painting, and book and card making, with Phinney overseeing the operations. 

To the right of the skylight is my order fulfillment area, a kind of writing desk adapted from a small table. And shelves for  more paper, including tabloid size, and some mailing supplies. 

The tortie, Molly, is actually a very lightweight cat (we call her a cream puff); the shelf was already bowed in the middle.

A second small table facing this one holds my paper cutter and a few random old books to provide material for various projects. (That's a paper shredder  under the table, with a bag for the scraps, because you're not supposed to put shredded paper loose in the recycling bin.)

One of the cubbies, which is open at the back, will be left empty to accommodate cats who like to have their little secret passageways.

Molly demonstrates the cubby passageway ...

... and back through the other way

Of course, when I really want to get some work done, I usually have to shoo the cats out and shut the door.  

Out you go, Tres.

I still have a lot of organizing to do, figuring out where to put the rest of my stuff and moving (some) things around —small things, not furniture.  The card rack now sits on a different spot (where the red dictionary sits in this photo), and the photo corner will be painted a different color for a better background (a grayish green works well for many things, I have learned). 

But it's such a pleasure to be in this space that I don't mind taking my time organizing and setting up. And I have a nice amount of open floor space for my yoga and Feldenkrais practice, which I really need to get back to!

Letter writing month — April? February? Or how about whenever?

Earlier this year I got all jazzed about a letter writing challenge called a Month of Letters in February, promoted by Mary Robinette Kowal, encouraging people to send some correspondence every mailing day that month. She led a real cheerleading campaign via a Facebook page throughout the month, and has since taken an understandable break, with no new posts since March 1.

And I really got into it for a while, especially since Valentine's Day is a natural occasion for sending cards in the mail, right? I even got out some rubber stamps and washi tape I hadn't used in a long time, bought an assortment of postage stamps from USPS online,  embellished the envelopes, and had fun with it.

I did my mailing in clumps, skipping days and then sending several things at once. I didn't keep track of whether I achieved a one-to-one correspondence with mailing days, and in fact I kind of ran out of steam shortly after Valentine's Day. But I did mail a bunch of cards and ephemera, so I felt pretty good about that.

Then I came across something about April being National Letter Writing month, which the US Postal Service promoted last year, issuing some fun commemorative stamps while their collaborator, Scholastic, promoted a curriculum called It's a Delight to Write to encourage schools and families to teach letter writing.  

Last year's enthusiastic promotion, including a first-day-of-issue stamp kickoff, is followed this year by silence from the USPS, although plenty of others are taking up the cause, as a Google search reveals,  from those who just love to send and receive cards and letters in the mail to companies and makers wanting to sell you stuff for the purpose.

I confess I count myself among the latter. I am a card maker, so naturally I am eager to embrace any occasion for people to buy cards, whether they mail them or not. (The following shameless promotional photo clicks through to the card section of my Etsy shop, btw.)

But that whole mail-every-day-for-a-month thing just doesn't work out so well for me. Who really has the time and inclination for such an intense and sustained burst of postal activity?

So I've come up with my own alternative, which I have so far followed only sporadically, because it requires relearning a practice that our mothers and grandmothers followed as a matter of course. It has to do with birthdays and other occasions that once carried a certain expectation of postal correspondence.

For example, you could mail a birthday card with a personal note and maybe a little enclosure, if you are so inclined, on people's birthdays, instead of offering up the Facebook greeting that everyone knows you were prompted to do anyway. What a quaint notion, right?

You'd have to plan ahead for that, rather than rely on the Facebook prompt, and allow for the sad reality that US first class mail now takes 3 to 5 days. I've started by making a list of the birthdays I know, adding them to my calendar and setting up an alert for 5 days before.  

I've also found that I can view all the upcoming birthdays on Facebook, and add to my calendar the ones I'd like to acknowledge postally. Here's how: From your Facebook home page, click on "Events," then look in the upper right where it says "Birthdays this week," then click on "See all," and there you will find them all laid out before you. Add what you wish to your calendar to help you remember to mail a card. Nifty, huh?

So far I've mailed one birthday card. Hey, it's a start!

Yes, it's another sneaky attempt to get you to look at a card in my shop.

Then there are the once-obligatory thank-you notes. For those aspiring career-hopefuls, it's an excellent follow-up to a job interview, thanking the interviewers for their time and reiterating what you really like about that company you'd like to work for. 

But why not also send one to the friend you had lunch with? A little note sent through the mail, saying how nice it was to have lunch and catch up, and how you're looking forward to the next get-together. It gives you the opportunity to pause and reflect on how much you value the other person's friendship, and actually commit a few words to paper about it. 

My husband's friend Seth sends him a card in the mail on random occasions — a clipping he came across that he thinks Craig would like, or a photo he took a long time ago that he made into a card. He also sends photos of the two of them after they've had lunch together. These little notes are brief and unexpected and always a pleasure. 

Recent cards from Seth

There is something kind of luxurious — although it really takes little time and effort; and the cost is minimal — about committing a few friendly words to paper, putting it in an envelope and adding a stamp, and then taking a walk to the nearest mailbox.

I'm not going to challenge you to commit to mailing something every day for a month, or once a month, or for every birthday of everyone you know. Just try it once, and see if it doesn't give you a certain satisfaction. You may even want to do it again. Sometime. Randomly. Without obligation. A moment of slowing down, for both you and the recipient.

Saving more bees: How and why I'm rethinking mulch in my garden

For years I have been a member of the chorus of natural gardening advocates who tout the benefits of using mulch liberally to suppress weeds, maintain soil moisture, control disease by keeping dirt from splashing onto plant leaves, and keep soil-dwelling pests at bay.

Even better, I have said, is to put down layers and layers of newspapers to form a solid—but natural! decomposable!—barrier to really suppress the weeds for a full season or longer. 

Between the boxwoods: lots of mulch, and emerging crocuses

Then I learned about ground-nesting solitary bees. These gentle hardworking pollinators include several genera of wild bees, sometimes called digger bees or mining bees, and they need access to bare soil to excavate their nest tunnels. 

This 5-minute video from the University of Minnesota condenses an hour of effort by one such bee (genus Colletes), diligently working to move a couple of small wood chips out of her way and then digging a tunnel in a sheltered spot next to a rock. Imagine that bee laboring to move several wood chips out of the way and then encountering a thick barrier of newspapers—or worse, black plastic. Game over, little hapless bee.

The widespread use of mulch is a matter of real concern to bee advocates, like those at the UC Berkeley Urban Bee Lab, who call it "mulch madness"—and the use of black plastic weed barriers they dub BPI  for "black plastic insanity." (If you click on the link, you'll see a photo of a beautiful little green sweat bee,  genus Agapostemon, emerging from her underground nest.)

There's no reason to fear these gentle bees; they don't have a hive to protect, and it is very unlikely they will ever sting you. While the Cornell Department of Entomology says these bees will not sting unless handled, many species will even tolerate gentle handling, as the children of Sabin Elementary School in Portland, Oregon, will testify. Their playground is home to thousands of Andrena bees—the kids call them "tickle bees" and have adopted them as the school mascot.

A little patch of bare soil to the left—the beginning of a more bee-friendly garden

So what's a conscientious gardener to do?

Mulch less, mulch sparingly, mulch lightly—and don't replenish those bare spots that emerge as our old mulch breaks down or gets moved around. Plant groundcovers for living mulches that leave space for the bees. Get into the zen of pulling weeds once in a while. When we don't have the time or inclination to weed, we can focus on edging to give the perception of a neatly contained garden.  (Trust me on this—I have gotten compliments on a very weedy garden with tidy edges.)

And no more laying down of layers of newspapers—unless we want to shred them first, as researchers at the University of Ohio did to encourage ground-nesting squash bees, which they found to be more effective than honeybees at pollinating squash, pumpkins, gourds, and other related crops. They determined that a mulch of shredded newspapers and grass clippings was best at both keeping weeds down and supporting these valuable pollinators.

Other loose, lightweight mulches, such as leaves and the hulls of various types of nuts, are also good alternatives to wood chips and barriers. These are not only easy for the bees to work around, but they also get blown about by the wind, exposing a bit of soil here and there in the process, as found by the Xerces Society in their test fields in California.

Ground covers make attractive natural airy mulches. In one of my gardens, I planted periwinkle (Vinca minor) amongst the bulbs and perennials and a chokeberry (Aronia) shrub.  The periwinkle has spread and interwoven itself throughout the garden so that I really couldn't spread woodchips without burying it, so I stopped trying to mulch it, and have found that I only need to pull a few weeds from time to time.

Tulips emerging amid a very loose mulch of leaves, plant debris, and perwinkle

This garden is lightly mulched by happenstance with the leaves that fall on it, the debris from previous years' ferns, astilbe and other plants, and the periwinkle sprawling everywhere. I have come to appreciate the aesthetics of the variety of textures and shapes in this mix of light mulches and plants. And by mid June, the perennials hide most everything else anyway. 

Most importantly—for the bees especially—here and there, patches of bare soil have become exposed. And that's where I first noticed little bees hovering over the ground last spring, shortly after learning about them.

Another part of the same garden, with coral bells, emerging star of Bethlehem (Ornithogalum), more periwinkle, and a little bare soil, which you can see in the lower right 

I didn't plan it that way, but now I'll be looking to replicate that happy mix elsewhere in my yard.

I Made My Own Card Scoring Board and You Can Too

For cards to fold neatly, it helps to score them first. That is, you make an indentation with a dull blade, such as a bone folder, on the outside fold line. But whenever I tried to measure and mark the exact center of my cards, I found it very difficult to be precise enough. And it was awfully fussy.

Then someone told me I could get a Martha Stewart brand card-scoring board at Michael's, a kind of template and guide, which this someone (also a card maker) found to be very helpful for getting that precise scoring line.

I'm no fan of Martha Stewart, nor, to be honest, of shopping at Michael's. But once I got the idea in my head that I could use a template to guide my scoring, instead of measuring and marking each card, I thought maybe I could make my own. 

Sure enough, a piece of cardboard, a Sharpie, and a couple of rulers are all that's needed. Why two rulers? That's the key to getting the card placed precisely before scoring: I hold the wooden ruler ("Women Rulers") on edge against the cardboard to guide the placement of my card, then line the metal one up with the line I drew with a fine point Sharpie on the cardboard, and score it with a bone folder.

Sometimes, especially in winter when the air is so very dry, I still get a less-than-ideal folded edge. When that happens, I rub beeswax along the fold, followed by my finger.

Make a Victorian Puzzle Purse for Valentine's Day

This is an excerpt from my chapbook 14 Things About Valentine's Day, pictured above.

This is the paper arts part mentioned in the subtitle. (From No. 14.)

How to Make a Puzzle Purse

This is a folded paper package, sometimes called an origami puzzle purse, that predates the Victorian era, but was popular enough at that time to be commonly called a Victorian puzzle purse nowadays. Here's an example of one I made last year. (More views appear at the end.)

Start with a square piece of paper. It will be easiest if its dimensions are divisible by three. I cut my paper to 8.25 inches (2.75 x 3), which I chose because it is equal to 21 cm, so it divides by three no matter which measuring system you use. 

(1) Fold and crease diagonally, open, rotate, then repeat across the opposite way to form an X.

(2) Keeping the same side up, fold in thirds like a letter, crease; then rotate the paper 90 degrees and fold in thirds again, making 9 squares. Here’s where it’s helpful if the dimensions are a multiple of three—if you are not expertly precise with your letter folding, you can measure, mark, and score the fold lines first. 

That little square in the middle is going to be the focal point, and it will remain flat, despite the diagonal folds that pass through it. For now, put an X there with a pencil to help you keep track of what will be the inside of the finished packet.

(3) Turn the paper over (the penciled X face down) and make a diagonal crease in each of the squares that doesn’t have one yet (the center one along each side), starting with the one on the right side, by bringing the top horizontal crease of that square to meet its left vertical crease, and then creasing the diagonal within that square only, then opening it up again. Rotate the paper and fold and crease each of those center side squares in the same manner. The new creases are shown as dashed lines.

(4) Now turn over again (X side up), and here’s the part I find a little bit tricky: You’re going to pinch the corner diagonals as valley folds and twist the whole contraption counterclockwise to fold it into a pinwheel. At this point you may find that it doesn’t quite lie flat like it’s supposed to, so adjust your creases a little as needed to make it nice and flat.

(5) Now take one point of the pinwheel and fold it in over the center, and then do the same with each point, working counterclockwise again, creasing as you go, and smooth it to make a nice flat square. 

(6) Tuck the last point into the first one.

And there you have it. You can draw pictures or rubber stamp images on it, and write messages (or a riddle) on the flaps to be read as it is opened.  Most people number the triangles (in a decorative way, of course) so that the recipient knows which one to pull open and read first. 

You might also add a little note on the last flap to be opened: “pull gently on opposite points to open fully.” Or something like that.

On the center square (where you penciled the X) you can write a message, or the end of your riddle (or a pictorial clue?), or create a mini collage, or place a square card or a smaller puzzle purse—just make sure that anything that you place or glue in the center is slightly smaller than the center square so that it will all fold flat. 

A basic search  for "victorian puzzle purse" via Google or on Pinterest will reveal lots of clever and beautiful ways people have embellished these over the years (as well as different instructions and tutorials, in case mine aren't working for you), from easy and simple to quite intricate, which are sure to give you some ideas for what to do with yours.

Crafting a small portfolio to hold a set of cards, by the nerdy artist method

In order to live up to its name, my Useful Calendar has to be both informative and have a pleasing form. That means I spend about as much time researching and fact-checking it as I do on designing and creating it. And being the nerdy artist that I am, I enjoy both of these functions equally.

The 2016 Useful Calendar : a lot of info in a small format

This year I gave myself the design challenge to create a new holder for the calendar cards, because I changed the dimensions from trading card size (2.5" x 3.5" — 64 mm x 89 mm), to 1/8 US letter size (2.75" x 4.25" — 70 mm x 108 mm). This allows a wee bit more room for information and design, and also reduces the fussy trimming and waste, since the strips I cut away were too small to use for any other purpose.

This change required a new pocket to hold them. I used to make the pockets from assorted scrapbooking paper reinforced with packing tape. It made for a durable and reusable pocket, if a little funky looking: you could see the tape overlaps and serrated edges. But I wasn't interested in just making a larger version of the same thing. 

I decided to make something of a portfolio-style holder. I am not a professional package designer and I have no idea how they would go about designing this. So I drew instead upon my experience as a tailor and occasional dressmaker many years ago. 

When designing a dress, I would begin by draping the fabric on the client (I made a wedding dress modeled after a photo in a magazine this way once). If I wanted to make multiples of the design (I did not, in that case), I would then measure everything and transfer that information to a pattern.

"Draping" the cards with scratch paper to make a packet for them

So I began by "draping" my stack of calendar cards with a piece of scrap paper. I creased all the edges and then measured everything. I used those measurements to create a pattern in the Adobe software called InDesign.

A screenshot of my InDesign file of the card holders.  The light blue lines are guides based on the measurements of the folded scratch paper.

From there it's printing, scoring, cutting, creasing and folding; using an Exacto blade to cut a (curved) slit for tucking in the flap, and a corner rounding punch to, well, round the corners. 

The paper packets in various stages of production.

Since I decided to use a light gray 67 lb cover stock (a bit lighter weight than the cards, which are printed on 80 lb cover stock), I designed a cover to print on white labels. The label size that worked best for this was made for name badges, and, much to my delight, I managed to find a version from Avery that's entirely recycled and chlorine free. 

You can see more views of the cards (also printed on recycled cover stock, btw), and even buy them with their nifty paper packet, from my Etsy shop here.

You may have noticed a few bees in the photos above. The theme of the 2016 Useful Calendar is 12 wild bees. More information about that is provided on this page: About the Bees.  (Which you can also find in the upper right corner of any page on my blog.)

Everything looks better with a little snow on it

Even a much-neglected garden takes on new charm when graced with a coating of snow.

Like the red-twigged dogwood, which was made for this time of year. I love how the switchgrass, behind it, looks in winter too. I have seen juncos when there was lots of snow, hopping up to peck at those grass seeds, shaking many of them free in the process, and then eating them off of the surface of the snow.

I've also seen chickadees eating the seeds from old-fashioned garden phlox, which I never would have thought of as a wildlife-friendly plant.

Here's my one lone rose hip. A few had formed, but I only spotted one now.

And the crabapples, which will dwindle over the winter, as they feed the squirrels and robins and even, if we're lucky again this year, a flock of cedar waxwings.

I planted the dogwood in part so that I could gather my own twigs for decorative displays, and it is now plentiful enough to need pruning in the fall anyway. The crabapple also needs pruning, so I combined cuttings from those, plus a few sprigs of juniper and some black-eyed Susan, and took advantage of the recent thaw to push them into the two urns in the front. I wrapped the still-green ivy and other trailing plants around the bottom. I don't know how those will look when it gets cold enough to finish them off, but for now, anyway, I like it.

I also took the extra chance that Mother Nature gave me to get my 40 tulips and 40 daffodils all planted. With a generous mulch of leaves to cover them, they should be able to get in a little root growth before the ground freezes. Even more to look forward to in the spring!

Early October Garden Tour

Mums with licorice vine (Dichondra) and English ivy

I could say that I've been neglecting this blog because I've been busy taking care of my garden. But I haven't. Fortunately, my garden mostly thrives on benign neglect. Unfortunately, so do the weeds. (Blogs, on the other hand, don't seem to care one way or the other.)

Despite that, I've got some lovely things happening all around my neglected garden. Here are a few highlights, starting with the front.

The yellow-orange mums in the little concrete urn that sits atop the steps at the sidewalk have perked up nicely a day after I discovered them all droopy because I hadn't been watering them. (A hazard when you've had abundant rainfall all season -- you forget to water things when it stops!)

And now that the coralberry is starting to change color, I see that the leaves are a perfect match for the potted mum. I may have to move the pot to the other side so they don't get lost in the matching background, but I do rather like the hints of harmonious color at this stage.

Native coralberry (Symphoricarpos), with potted mums in the background

My hardy mums, planted in the ground near a dwarf Korean spruce, are a handsome bold red. Now there's some contrast for you.

Hardy mums in front of a dwarf spruce

Meanwhile in the backyard, the Prairie Fire crabapple is looking fabulous, and a few of the leaves are starting to turn, offering a hint of the show to come. The fruit generally lasts through the winter, depending on how hungry the squirrels are. A couple of years ago I had a delightful surprise when a flock of cedar waxwings filled the branches one spring afternoon and pretty much picked it clean. What a show that was! 

Prairie Fire flowering crabapple

Under this tree is a fairly large concrete birdbath, next to which I planted annual white salvia, which the bees have been enjoying this summer. 

Annual salvia, with lady's mantle in the upper left and the base of my birdbath in the upper right

And over in the corner by the garage and a "rocket" juniper, is the English lavender that has proven to be quite hardy in Minneapolis (USDA zone 4a). 

It even survived the polar vortex winter of a couple of years ago. We rake leaves on top of all the gardens but otherwise don't do anything extra to protect it. 

I've found that it's best to cut it back pretty severely in the spring and it'll send up lots of new growth. It starts blooming about midsummer and keeps going into fall. 


 This is Lavandula angustifolia, I'm pretty sure.





Over by the "kitchen garden," which is enclosed by a blue picket fence, are some bright marigolds mingling with the yarrow I transplanted to this spot after removing a diseased aster. I kind of figured that the disease, which looked like some sort of bacterial leaf spot, was in the soil in that spot, so I figured the yarrow and the marigold are unrelated enough to not be susceptible to the same disease. Neither appears to have been affected.

And when I was photographing the marigolds, I made the happy discovery of what I believe to be a sunflower bee (Svastra obliqua) -- it looks much like a large honeybee or small bumblebee, and is often mistaken for one or the other. But its size is in between those two, and its abdomen is more distinctly striped than the bumblebees that frequent my yard (Bombus impatiens, which have mostly black abdomens without stripes).

A closer look at the bee on the marigold

And just beyond that, the cosmos tumbling over the fence is hosting a Bombus impatiens.

Oh, and I mustn't forget the Henry Hudson roses, which are loving the cool fall weather. In fact, they retain a little more of the hint of pink now that the sun isn't shining so intensely on them.

And since I stopped deadheading it after early August, it has started to form the cherry red hips that Rugosa roses are known for. 

So there's your garden tour for early October. I'll take you on a little tour again later this fall  after the leaves are showier. 

And in the meantime, I'll have to get out and do some weeding, and planting --  I've got bulbs to plant! I ordered a whole bunch of them from John Scheeper's and they just arrived a few days ago. Time to get busy.