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finally swatched my three diamine forever inks today. not sure how I feel about them yet, but I already have bottles so 🤪 (but I already like them so much more than the bpc pigment inks I sampled)

I decided to get the blue instead of the aqua, because even though the aqua looked quite close to a cyan colour, it kinda looked “dirty” and I wasn’t convinced it would make for nice colour mixing

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Recently on Unhelpful File Labels in the Archives:

On-Going Project. Folders were empty.

Well Written Articles, 1999. There were no articles in this folder. There were a lot of budget reports though.

Stuff. You are killing me smalls.

Section 569-055 Knowingly burning or exploding. This was just papers shoved between files, I have a lot of questions and zero answers.

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Julie Cockburn. “The Conundrum” (2016), hand embroidery on found photograph, all images courtesy of Flowers Gallery London and New York

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mk, 4 aug 2025

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There is a standard media depiction of a "healed" person. Someone who has Gone To Therapy. I've noticed this in a few works recently. We often see them at the end of a story, maybe in a "ten years later" epilogue. They speak in a soft, serene voice. They have Accepted what they cannot change. They have let go of a lot, including most of what we see them actually care about in the story itself. They are Happy, At Peace, in some non-descript way. They bare little resemble to the person we were actually shown. They bare little resemblance to any person. We were shown, as we usually are in stories, an agent, a desirer, someone becoming. Now they have Become. And they look back on all that silly becoming as something childish that they have moved past. Fire, you know, fire is for children who don't know any better. To be Healed is to have your fire rightly extinguished; to not even miss it.

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oh man. oh jeez

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Typography Tuesday

Pelican Press Borders

The Pelican Press, founded in 1916 by British printer and activist Francis Meynell (1891-1975) -- who also founded the more well-known Nonesuch Press in 1922, used a wide range of typographic ornaments and borders. The press published this specimen book, Typography: Type Specimens . . . of the Pelican Press in London in the 1920s for the benefit of their customers "to assist the amateur to a right appreciation of type-forms. Furthermore,

. . . it shows what can be commanded into his service by any buyer of printing; and it attempts to demonstrate what a commercial press can do to enrich the craft by ransacking the treasure houses of the past and breathing into old bodies the living spirit of our day.

Here are a few specimen pages that serve as examples. Typography. . . . is a donation from our late friend Jerry Buff (1931-2025).

View another post from this publication.

View other type specimen books.

View more Typography Tuesday posts.

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all my shibori swatches so far. i still have one to finish up.

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“I don't know what's going to come out of me. It has to be perfect. It has to be irreproachable in every way.' 'Why?' 'To make up for it. To make up for the fact that it's me.”

― Suzanne Rivecca, Ugly, Bitter, and True (2018)

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april field notes is live on ko-fi!!!!

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perfume by samuel richardson, 2024, acrylic, colored pencil, ink, pull chain, & stain on framed canvas, 14.25 × 17.25 inches

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Double-Exposure Polaroid Portraits, 1991 © Joni Mitchell.

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Cashmere textile, 1800, Kashmir, India.

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You all need to hear this:

1. You probably dont suck at your craft as much as you think you do, I bet a lot of people are amazed at what you can make, and

2. If you actually are the Literal Worst In The Whole Wide World at your craft... who the fuck cares? What are they gonna do, call the police on you? Keep making your shitty little things, youre the boss of you, fuck the haters.

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Quote of the day