A Year Later!
Still making stuff amidst new digs and situations
I took some time “off”, unintentionally, I suppose. Stopped posting on social media and completely ignored this Substack. Such a strong affront to regularity that someone thought they had been removed from the mailing list because it had been so long since I posted anything. (Hey, again!)
It was a time of hibernation and rooting down in Lancaster County with Rob, the business, and family. That’s all, really. Life. Complicated living situations that demanded attention, a cleaned-out house, a garage emptied and now filled again, a few rooms scraped of 60 years of paint then repainted, a pottery studio completed, rooms arranged and rearranged again, a garden tended, the walkways shoveled. Feeling fortunate, strong, loved, and resilient all at once and consistently. I love our home and the time and effort we spend doing challenging work to make it our own. It’s like the dollhouses I used to paint and make curtains for as a kid. Life shifts in scale, not content.
There are a few plans in the works that I may write about at a later date (next year, maybe. LOLZ), but there’s one thing I’m considering bringing back so long as there’s interest and involvement.
ZINES!
In my 20’s I made a zine series called Tepid Mess Zines where I collected various literary and visual work from friends, family, and temporary strangers. Submissions rolled in quickly, and the variety of work included comics, drawings, paintings, collages, poetry, short fiction, riddles, puzzles, and more. It was fun for me to organize the submissions, make a layout, print, and then bind the zines. I published some solo work on my own under Tepid Mess but had the most fun going through submissions and creating a zine to share with everyone.
A day or so after I was thinking about how fun Tepid Mess was, I got mail from one of our customers. She sent a single page zine of “Walkaway Recipes” that you put on the stove to cook while you shower. A large amount of the recipes were things I already love to eat with some fun new combinations to try. Their name is also Helen. Perfect, or what?
Here’s the plan.
The topic: Favorite foods. Let’s keep it real, keep it quaint, keep it light. Recipes, odes, drawings, comics, scanned copies of noodles, your go-to dinner or food combo, short fiction, whatever.
How to submit: Email to hels8bells@gmail.com or respond to this newsletter.
Due date: March 10th.
Release date: Spring? March 27th, (my 33rd birthday!).
Distribution: The website below. Available for purchase the week of release.
Website: Tepid Mess Zines
Instagram: @tepidmesszines
Feel free to share this with someone you know that might enjoy submitting to this issue.
That is all! Enjoy the emergence of spring.