Swimming.

The book I have been wishing existed for years kinda just showed up. It happened 2 weeks ago. I was browsing the staff picks at a Portland bookstore and came across A swim in the pond in the rain by George Saunders. It's still hard for me to believe it is real. The book is based on a class Saunders teaches on Russian short stories at Syracuse University. Saunders doesn't consider the stories selected and analyzed as "the best", but as "seven fastidiously constructed scale models of the world". Wherein looking at them, he takes us through the sort of "physics of the form".

Unlike the experience of other types of art, reading asks a lot from an audience. Reading can be hard. It takes time, effort. And as we've all experienced, often the books that are supposedly "the best" are the most grueling to get through. Among so many other things in this book, Saunders talks about a reader's tolerance for discomfort. And how an author may intentionally (or not) walk that line, cultivating a nuanced set of feelings, meander around a thing, maybe even bore the heck out of you. All those things matter, in relation to the heart of the story. So when you get to it, you're primed, ready in a way that makes you most fully able to accept whatever transformation is on offer.

Last night I finished the second story in the book. It's a story called The Singers by Ivan Turgenev, about two men who enter a singing competition at a dreary rustic bar.

The stories in this book feel quiet. They invite you to pay attention, take interest in people, not because they are fascinating, or important, or exciting, but just because they are people. And that feels important.

Gonna take my sweet sweet time with this one.

New and old but back in shop.

We just received a run of Pen Type-B fancy cases. These are machined aluminum, anodized black with an embedded magnet.

Fancy case

We also just launched some gridfinity compatible organizers customized for our products. Gridfinity is a modular, open-source grid storage system for your workshop. We print these in-house, and have a small stockpile ready to ship right now.

CW&T x Gridfinity

We've been trying to stock up on some anodized Pen Type-Cs. Colin made these this morning in the shop.

blue gold ombré

Weird Side Projects.

I posted about April Soetarman's project when it first launched years ago. April's doing another small run of weird side projects. Site is live until the end of September. Ours [pictured below] still issuing multiple smiles daily.