One of the fringe benefits of the pandemic has been that the School of Visual Concepts in Seattle has launched an ambitious program of remote workshops over Zoom. Which is how I came to be learning about daredevil printing this afternoon from 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. from the talented daredevil Jessica Spring, at Springtide Press in Tacoma.

This was only the second letterpress course I’ve taken since I started printing: the first one, in 2010 at The Arm in Brooklyn, set me on my way. Since that point there’s been a lot of figuring things out by myself, and making up names for things, and generally just futzing around. So, in addition to the value of learning how to print with my newly-acquired set of daredevil furniture, the great joy of the session today was simply being able to watch another printer–a much, much more experienced and talented printer–go about the trade.

Stay tuned for much round printing to follow.

Imani Perry, writing in The Paris Review:

I’m growing microgreens. Every couple of weeks they are sufficiently lush to be snipped and eaten. They sit on my nightstand, and there’s just enough light, coming from an adjacent window, to feed them. Outside that window, I can see a tree that is older than anyone I know. I photograph it frequently, watching it change with the seasons.

(via my mother).

I’ve updated my blogroll, the list of blogs that I subscribe to and read every day.

It’s simply an export out of the FreshRSS newsreader that I use for RSS reading, with the addition of a stylesheet to allow human beings to read it to.

My friend Brenda generously gifted us a hot pepper plant and a tomato plant, and I found a place for them in our back yard this morning. We have named them Fiero and Jackson, respectively (the tomato is of the Pollock variety).

The back garden was always completely Catherine’s domain, so this is a stretch for me, and starting out humbly with two plants seems the best approach.

Brenda was full of helpful advice, and I have the full power of The Old Farmer’s Almanac to deploy if needed (/plant/tomatoes has a whole new relevance in my life now!).

Four recommendations, all of which can be found on Crave in Canada (a Bell-owned mashup of HBO and Showtime):

• The Newsroom — The Aaron Sorkin one, not the Ken Finkleman one. Three seasons of Jeff Daniels and Emily Mortimer, with an excellent supporting cast that includes Sam Waterston, Jane Fonda, Dev Patel and Alison Pill. I just rewatched from the beginning and enjoyed it just as much as the first time.

• Homeland — Just wrapped up as a series after 8 seasons. Mandy Patinkin and Clare Danes never disappointed. Among my favourite series ever.

• Billions — Damian Lewis as a hedge fund billionaire vs. Paul Giamatti as district attorney. The fifth season just got underway and it’s not the strongest. But the first four were excellent, especially season four, which moved Asia Kate Dillon into a more prominent role.

• Picard — Star Trek continues, focusing on Patrick Stewart’s Jean Luc Picard. I could do without all the Romulan sub-plot, but I’d happily watch a Picard do nothing but tend his vineyard.

Crave is frustrating for its multiple subscription levels, meaning I often run into “you can only watch [this amazing new thing] if you have the + HBO + Movies extra package.”

(There’s also the danger of the entire Seinfeld back-catalogue, which can consume hours if you’re not careful).

But these four series are worth a month’s investment if you’ve exhausted Netflix.

When Oliver and I were on the beach at Wood Islands Provincial Park on Sunday, I recorded just under two minutes of the same of the water lapping against the rocks. You’ll hear birdsong in the background if you listen carefully.

An interesting project in these pandemic times would be to stick a permanent microphone at the shore to broadcast sounds of the PEI surf 24/7 to those unable to be on the beach in person.

Since Catherine died in January I’ve been lurking on her Instagram, drinking in the daily dose of heavily weaving, spinning, knitting and woodworking photos that she would have seen.

It’s been nice. I’m inspired to make more fetching outfits for myself (fetching outfits seem to be an Instagram staple).

But it was time to shut it down. So I did.

A reminder, though, that you can see Catherine’s Instagram photos in this archive I created earlier this year.

I have two text shortcuts set up on my Mac, px and pz, which, when I type them, automatically get replaced by Peter Rukavina and peter@rukavina.net respectively. Setting these up is easy: System Preferences > Keyboard > Text:

Given that I have to type my name and my email address dozens of times a day, this is a big timesaver.

The key here is to make sure you don’t use a key combination that occurs frequently in nature: on my first go I set pr as the shortcut for my name, and got really confused every time I typed probably or procrastinate.

From this month’s edition of The Craftsman Newsletter:

Second was the encounter with textile artist Rachael Matthews who introduced Noguchi to the use of darning mushrooms, a tool for mending and not a hallucinogenic substance. The view of a sweater that Matthews had patched up time and time again using colourful yarn challenged Hikaru’s understanding of repairs. Until then, she believed that you had to make the damage become invisible, the repaired object needed to look like brand new. Hikaru started darning her own clothes.

This seems like a way of maintaining clothes but also a way of maintaining oneself.

This is what happens when we allow Twitter to make editorial decisions.

Postscript: it turns out that this wasn’t an example of Twitter censorship at all; Barbara got in touch with me to tell me that she had accidentally ended up with her Twitter set to mark her tweets as “sensitive.” So it was accidental self-censorship.