Last weekend I went to visit my favorite stationery store, Lunalux, because my friend and its manager, Jenni, was producing customized stationery to promote her new Stationery Saturdays event. For $29 I got six pocket notebooks with my wife's name printed on them (I kept one for myself but gifted her with the rest), having selected the cover and the paper within. Very nice stuff, and then I hung around for conversation.
Jenni asked me if I'd heard about the Letter Writers Alliance and I had not. I had just finished telling her about my standby, Postcrossing, and that's why she mentioned this group. Part DIY store, part pen pal group, and more than those, LWA is a branch of 16 Sparrows which has a broad range of interests in crafting, retro aesthetic, photography, just a lot of very creative stuff. Not the highest, cutting-edge creativity because that's too inaccessible: this place is a study of how people can bring creativity into their own lives, how they can compel it out of themselves. That's what makes it dear and sweet: it encourages everyone to do their best and assures them that it will be great.
But the LWA! I'm excited about this. I got my brown-paper-and-string package in the mail, broke into it to check out my stationery, immediately put my LWA pin on my label, filled out my membership card, logged onto the members-only area of their Web site, and dwelt in a geeked-out haze for a while. I'm trying to think of any other discrete event in recent past that has made my writing-hand itch so badly to begin reaching out to my friends. This afternoon I've written two notes on this paper and will write more. I'm going to write to the people who have been most important in supporting my need and custom for correspondence (e-mail inclusive), so I had to get a photo of this paper before I sent it all out.
Now I want to do more with Postalatry, dress this place up and try to appear a little more relevant just in case anyone from LWA happens to swing their eyes my way. I'm just thrilled to be part of this very nice-looking creative group, excited to be writing letters again (I never stopped writing postcards, but it's easier to do that when you do not expect anyone to write back, as per Postcrossing), and feeling more than a little validated in my interests. Some of my friends like to poke fun at the antiquity of some of my pastimes, the... I lost the word, I had a great word that specifically centered around the interest in things that are old, specifically for its oldness. And that's not me, but it's useful when representing the crap I take from people whose values lie with the latest technological breaking news.
So I'm glad to be part of the Letter Writers Alliance.
2 comments:
I saw this, too. Thought about joining, but then just forgot about it.
After seeing this post, have to go check them out--again.
A month and some weeks later, I can't say I've done much with my "membership" there. I looked with envy through their online store and got some ideas for creative projects of my own, but I have not tapped into their pen pal network. I'm kind of wary of that because I tend to drop the ball on latter-day pen pal excursions, for some reason.
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