it's just another random friday...

This week's back in time round up is all over the place. Why? Well, maybe because we're a little drunk...or maybe because we're not sure what else to do. Which is true? Check 'em:
-Beast
-Heart
-Poem
-Manly
-List

paper musings

the papermuse made some star books last week and also shared some good advice that we think applies to crafting, as well as writing letters (if you're the self conscious type): always practice on scraps so you don't risk wasting your good supplies. though we think that her books look pretty perfect, anyway.

we love your bacon

we adore poppytalk and we're super excited to be their first ever cool blog of the week. if you're not familiar with poppytalk, you need to check it out immediately. from the site: poppy talk is a canadian design blog collecting inspiration and promoting emerging design talent. brilliant and canadian? what's not to love!

go back in time

Even we can't remember everything we've written about, so here's your new weekly round up of old Jotter posts. Let's re-live the love together in one word:

Birthday

Daddy

Butt

Mouse

Fabu

blog love part deux

Our original blog love post led to the discovery of paper crave, so we're reaching out to you once again. There are so many damn great blogs out there. Tell us who you're reading and why. We're never satisfied... [Photo via Kyknoord, thanks.]

chicken butts!

We finally got around to checking out the new stuff from modishoppe, and guest what?? CHICKEN BUTT!!!! Ah ha ha ha ha. If there was only one piece of stationery we were allowed to buy for this year (God forbid the thought) this might just have to be it. You can choose from chicken butt cards ($3.50) or chicken butt stationery ($7). For us, the choice is clear: both.

technical difficulties

UPDATE: Both www.thejotterblog.com and thejotterblog.com work now. YAY. Sorry, we've been having weird domain problems with Go Daddy and Blogger. For some reason, we can't have the URL sans the "www" and the URL with the "www" redirect to jotterblog.blogspot.com. We can only choose one, so we've chosen "www.thejotterblog.com" for now. Hopefully, we'll be able to figure out how to make "thejotteblog.com" work too. We weren't really able to choose--we think thejotterblog.com is working because it's forwarding to jotterblog.blogspot.com but we have NO IDEA how to make the "www" work. ACKKK. If anyone has any idea, PLEASE let us know. We've tried calling Go Daddy, they're not very helpful. [Picture from The Sampler, thanks.]

required reading

We read a post we loved recently by Kathy Zadrozny at Behind the Curtain. In an ode to all things letterish, she pointed us in the direction of some great epistolary opportunities. First comes a challenge from Felicia Sullivan, urging everyone to write as many letters as possible this month, some to be displayed in her comments section. But why not share the love? Submit your writings to our call for letters as well! Are there any books that inspire you to write letters? The second item to win our admiration is this recommended reading list from Letter Lover: Letter Insights and Anthologies:

- Epistolary Practices: Letter Writing in America before Telecommunications by William Merrill Decker (University of North Carolina Press, 1998) - Hell Hath No Fury: Women’s Letters from the End of the Affair by, Anna Holmes (Caroll & Graf Publishers, 2002) - The Book of Love: Writer’s and Their Love Letters Edited by Cathy N. Davidson (Penguin Group, 1992) - The 50 Greatest Love Letters of All Time Edited by David H. Lowenherz (Crown Publishers, 2002) - Famous Letters: Messages and Thoughts That Shaped Our World Edited by Frank McLynn, (A Reader’s Digest Book, 1993)

A Lifetime of Letters. . . - Thomas Jefferson on Leadership: Executive Lessons from His Life and Letters Edited by Coy Barefoot (Plume, 2002) - Mary Todd Lincoln—Her Life and Letters Edited by Justin G. Turner and Linda Levitt Turner (Knopf, 1972) - The Love Letters of Mark Twain (Harper, 1949) - The Letters of Emily Dickenson Edited by Thomas H. Johnson and Theodora Ward (Belknap Press of Harvard, 1958) - The Selected Letters of James Joyce Edited by Ellmann, Richard (The Viking Press, 1966, 1975) - Letters of E.B. White Edited by (Harper & Row, 1976) - Letters home by Sylvia Plath: Correspondence 1950-1963 Edited by Aurelia Schober Plath (Harper & Row, 1975) - Dear Pussycat: Mash Notes and Missives from the Desk of Cosmopolitan’s Legendary Editor by Helen Gurley Brown (St. Martin’s Press, 2004)

Letters Between Lovers - The Letters of John and Abigail Adams (Penguin Classics, 2003) - Henry James and Edith Wharton: Letters: 1900-1915 Edited by Lyall Harris Powers (Scribner, 1990) - Katherine Mansfield’s Letters to John Middleton Murry 1913-1922 (Knopf, 1951) - Winston and Clementine: The Personal Letters of the Churchills (Mariner Books, 2001) Edited by Mary Soames - Witness to My Life: The Letters of Jean-Paul Sartre to Simone De Beauvoir, 1926-1939 (Scribner, 1992) - A Transatlantic Love Affair: Letters to Nelson Algren by Simone de Beauvoir, (New Press, 1999) - A Literate Passion: Letters of Anaïs Nin & Henry Miller, 1932-1953 (Harvest/HBJ Book, 1989) - I Love You, Ronnie: The Letters of Ronald Reagan to Nancy Reagan (Random House, 2002)

[Photo by v.max1978]

we crave paper crave

Can't thank Heidi enough for recommending paper crave to us. We've only spent 5 seconds on the site and we already see tons of things we love. For example, these beautiful journals from Five and a Half ($22). Uh-oh, this is gonna be trouble...shopping trouble.

blog love

When we first decided to start this blog (you know, like last week) we did a quick google blog search to see if there was anything else like it. Obviously there are tons of blogs about design, hand made goods, stuff to buy, etc, but we wanted to see if there was anything that specifically dealt with stationery, letter writing, handwriting in general...but we couldn't really find one. So now we turn to you, attentive blog readers. Do you have any blogs you'd like to recommend? We want to make friends, meet people, add more links to our blog roll... Most of all, we want to know what you love to read and what we can add that you haven't been able to find. [TRS 80 photo provided by berangberang]