Here we are: Saturday morning, coffee not 10 inches away, sun pouring in our front windows, and I am knee deep in wedding invitation schedules and designs, not to mention plate, paper and ink orders. By the end of this week I should have some very fun samples to share! No question about it: this is for real.

When I started doing letterpress work, I had it in the back of my head that I’d love to try out invitations at some point, I’m just not sure I realized it would be sooner than later! It turns out to be a very enjoyable process for me (which isn’t a huge surprise!), and I’m looking forward to seeing the finished results, rather than just various versions of Photoshop & Illustrator designs. With letterpress printing, the final product is so much different from a design on a screen, since it’s all about the impression, the texture, paper, ink color and feel at the end of the day. Somehow, monitors still can’t convey the softness and subtly textured surface of cotton paper. There are some things in the world you just have to hold in your hands to really sense.

I’ll likely be printing on a couple of different presses this week, as mine’s not quite here yet (although soon, soon!) and am looking forward to sharing results with you…just as soon as they exist!

In the meantime, I wanted to share a few breathtakingly beautiful words from Louise Erdrich’s newest novel, The Plague of Doves, which I am thoroughly enjoying on my train rides every day:

“As I look at the town now, dwindling without grace, I think how strange that lives were lost in its formation. It is the same with all desperate enterprises that involve boundaries we place upon the earth. By drawing a line and defending it, we seem to think we have mastered something. What? The earth swallows and absorbs even those who manage to form a country, a reservation. (Yet there is something to the love and knowledge of the land and its relationship to dreams - that’s what the old people had. That’s why as a tribe we exist to the present.)”