Little Surprises

While getting ready to start the work day, our receptionist came over and handed me a package from Strand Books in New York. I wasn't expecting anything so I text messaged Karl that a book he had ordered came and he wrote back that it was a surprise for me! yay! I love love love toile de jouy fabric and michael ian black so this was a great start of my day :) karl rocks!

friday survey!

Lovely survey from danni hong :)

1. What did you do 10 years ago?
I was 15, yikes! So that puts me at sophomore year in high school and I think just learning my way around the interwebs.

2. Five items on your to-do list:

• Have a blast at Heidi's wedding tomorrow!
• Reupholster the seats of two chairs I just got for free
  
• Organize my designs/thoughts for letterpress design stuff
  
• Relax!
  
• Design new business cards! (I need to do this too, so I'll steal that one from danni)
  

3. Snacks I enjoy:
chips!

4. What would you do if you were a billionaire?
First I would write a big fat check to pay off my student loans!!!! Pay off my parents mortgage second. Travel. Buy a rad house where I could live off the land and then buy one of these:

5. Places I would live:

• Vermont
  
• London
  
• Scotland
  

6. Jobs I have had:

• Very first job was at The Body Shop (Brea Mall, and I'm still addicted to all their stuff)
  
• Server & Manager at Ho Sum Bistro on the Balboa Peninsula
• Intern at Baumvision (rad rad rad experience!)
  
• Graphic Designer at GMPC!
  

7. Bloggers I am tagging who you will enjoy getting to know better:
Brenda, Shannon & Stephanie

time flies...

I can't believe it's been a month since my last post!
It seems like a lot has gone on and at the same time like not much has.
Karl and I both had birthdays pass, which were spent with grilled cheese and sushi (the latter was my birthday pick of course.) I had a great night out with my family for my birthday in orange county, we went to a teppanyaki restaurant! Karl took me to my favorite vegan place on my actual birthday and then we stuffed ourselves with flourless chocolate cake when we got home.

We made a trip out to Hemet to visit with his great-grandma Adeline, better know as Ad. His grandma, Fran, flew in from Tennessee and his Dad, Step-Mom and Uncle drove down from the bay area. It was great spending time with everyone! We had done this two years ago but this was my first time meeting Karl's uncle Kevin. Here is the fam!
l-r: Sandi (step-mom), Neil (dad), Fran (grandma), Ad (great-grandma), Karl, Kevin (uncle)


A few weeks later Karl's Mom came down from the Bay Area to visit and bring down some bookshelves and a book case, so we have some work to do on putting those up. It was my first time meeting her as well! It was a quick trip but we showed her around some places we like to go to. That Sunday was Father's Day so I headed down to my grandma's in Brea and saw all my family and ate some delicious food!

This past weekend we took Friday off and drove up to Fremont (where he is from) to stay with his Dad and Step-Mom where I would be meeting his grandpa. I've now officially met all of his immediate family. The whole family is a crack up so there was lots of laughing and fun pictures! It was really nice to get away for a little bit. It was great not having to sleep through sirens and lights blaring through the windows from billboards nearby :)

One of our stops in Fremont was this thrift store he really likes called Thrift Town. There was this really neat Milk glass candy dish and I realized I've always really liked the way that stuff looks. I didn't have my wallet with me but Karl's parents surprised me and went back and got it for me when they got dinner. His step-mom also had an old vase/pitcher made out of it so she was nice enough to give me that as well! When I googled Milk glass today the wikipedia entry came up and they had this picture of some displayed and I fell in love with how they presented it. I think I would use teal instead of blue though...


Letterpress class starts next week! I just found out that I will be taking it with not one friend from college but two! It will be great to not only catch up with Brenda and Danni but to be taking an art class with them because they are both extremely talented.

Oh! I've stop driving to work! I'm bus only now to work and try to take it other places as much as possible. It's been fantastic to just zone out to music, read etc. and not worry about traffic. I live 8 miles from work which with LA traffic meant a 40 minutes commute in the morning and about an hour coming home! It hasn't really changed much with bussing either and I don't really notice much because I'm not doing the driving. My monthly metro pass will also let me take the train all the way to Pasadena for the class so that's going to be awesome.

Phew ok, all caught up!

The press is here!

My press arrived yesterday! Luckily my work is awesome and let me use their shipping account with UPS. I only had to pay $30 to ship my 108lbs press all the way from Florida! I couldn’t wait for Karl to get home to help me get it out of my car and up the stairs. He was super boyfriend and got out the press from the box & crate it was in in no time AND even took pictures for me (because I’m no good with his camera.) It’s been in storage for the past 35 years!

This weekend I’m attacking it with vinegar, lemon juice & a scotch brite sponge to get rid of the rust. It all looks to be surface rust so it should be fairly easy to get off. Enjoy the photos! (excuse the messy apartment background)




This type was already set up in the center, so I have my first few pieces of metal type!

one year at GMPC

Tons of Barbie projects later... today marks my one year anniversary at my job!
I've photographed a lot of the stuff I've done that we've either produced or gotten production samples of and they are going to be put up my website sometime!

Craftsmen Letterpress

Exciting news... I got a letterpress!

I got it off of Briar Press, which is an enthusiast's #1 stop for buying, selling & learning all things letterpress. Every day I would sift through the classifieds section, Karl would even help me out looking on ebay, and finally I took a shot in the dark and responded to this ad:

Craftsmen Table Top Platen Letterpress - My father gave me this Letterpress over 45 Years ago. It’s been in Storage off and on for the last 35 Years. It is similar to the Chandler & Price Pilot Letterpress. I have included a Picture for your review

I'd pretty much written this off because a) it had been posted 5 days before I saw it (similar to seeing something for Free on craigslist and responding 5 days later...) and b) the guy selling it lives in Florida. I wrote a quick note asking if this press was still available and would shipping to Los Angeles be an option. A few days later I got: yes & YES. We spoke on the phone the other day to iron out the details of shipping and payment. He was so nice and told me that if once I get it I needed any help to call him and ask anything I might need to know. He ran a printing business himself and was more than happy to give me some great business advice like P.O.D (pay on delivery!) which I learned all about in my freelance business class :)

I'm so excited about finding one! I have to be honest I was starting to feel like I would NEVER get one. Being a fan of and reading some of the blogs I have in my links section, Adventures in Letterpress, Joie Studio and Cake & Pie it seemed like they all got their first presses almost two years so my lack of responses and the prices I was seeing on ebay were really discouraging. They stopped being produced in the '80s with the invention of desktop publishing taking over. Most of the ones being used though (at Paper Source for example) are anywhere from 30-100 years old!

My press is a Craftsmen 5x8 which means the maximum printing area is little less than 5x8. According to The Introduction to Letterpress article mine is known as a High-end Lever Press/Tabletop Platen. It's the perfect size to be in my apartment! Some of the larger printing models weigh into the tons!

Here are the photos that were in the Ad (in the top one you can even see some type set in the middle waiting to be printed!) I'll take more when I actually get it! YAY!





Happy weekend everyone! Karl and I are seeing The Kids in the Hall perform in downtown tonight!

God bless you, Mr. Torgan

If I'm not checking out movies from Memorial Library then I'm here at The New Beverly theater.
It's about 1.5 miles from our place but I would drive from just about any place to see something here. This revival theater is celebrating its 30th anniversary today! It's a steal at $7/double feature, but Karl and I go here so often we get a pass that makes the movies $4.50/double feature, so cheap! We've seen some really great double bills here, from Metropolis & Dark City (my first time there!) to The Monkee's movies Head & Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. The New Beverly is really special to us. This is a little blurb from their calendar this month...

This May 5th will mark the start of the New Beverly Cinema's 30th year in business! To celebrate this occasion, our May 2008 calendar will be a show-for-show replication of our May 1978 debut calendar. The only deviations from May 1978 will be the Grindhouse Film Festival shows, the midnight shows, and a substitute for LOGAN'S RUN on May 4-6 (no studio prints of that title exist at the moment). In keeping with the spirit of the 30th anniversary, all of these shows will be from 1978 or earlier.

RESERVOIR DOGS, one of the New Beverly's most successful midnight shows, and one of the longest running (every Saturday at midnight for most of the early to mid 90s), will also return to the New Beverly Fridays at midnight starting May 9!

The May 2008 is lovingly dedicated to my dad Sherman, who was the main driving force behind the New Beverly from its founding in '78 until his sudden and untimely passing this past July. The New Beverly would have never made it this far without him, and we'll never forget him.

- Michael Torgan


image above: The late Sherman Torgan