Missive Maven round-up: 2014 in review

Happy 2015, readers and letter writers! A lot of momentous stuff happened in Missive-Maven-land in 2014. I just had fun perusing through some old blog posts, and thought I'd share some of the year's highlights here. (The photo above shows some of the mail I wrote for the Letter Writers Alliance virtual social on December 13, which was an absolute blast!)



One of the most exciting events of 2014 was personal in our family, but I blogged about it a fair bit: the January 2014 publication of "Revolutionary," my best beloved Alex Myers' first novel. It is "a fascinating retelling of the story of America’s first female soldier, Deborah Samson Gannett, who ran away from home in 1782, successfully disguised herself as a man, and fought valiantly in the Revolutionary War." The novel does have a significant epistolary element, so it does fit into the letter-writing theme of my blog! After the release of the novel, Alex did quite a bit of speaking and book touring, and in a later blog post, I gave an update on some excellent press and thanked you all for your support. On another note, "Revolutionary" will be released in paperback later this month, on January 20, 2015.



There was much heartbreak in the summer of 2014, when we lost our deeply beloved 17-year-old cats, Soda and Magic, within roughly two weeks of each other.

In Memory of Soda: April 1997 - July 7, 2014

In Memory of Magic: March 1997 - July 25, 2014

The move from Rhode Island to DC was a very difficult one for them, but they lived good lives of joy and mostly good health, and I'm so thankful for all the years we shared.



We could not live without cats, and later that summer we adopted two kittens who we named Oberon and Stella. They brought us much joy in our grief, and it has been sweet beyond words to watch them grow up. The photo above was taken on New Year's Eve 2014, where Stella and Oberon and I spent a lot of time hanging out on the couch together. (Truthfully, Stella and Oberon spend a lot of time hanging out on the couch together in general, with or without me.) They are now 9 months old, but still very much acting like kittens!



And now back to more blog-appropriate news. I completed a project I'd been meaning to do for a long time: adding a page to my blog called Stationery Sources. I'm often asked where I buy my stationery, and this page lists links to all my favorite vendors, and each link has a little blurb about why I like their wares.



Another wonderful mail milestone in 2014: I finally went to a mail social! I wrote a huge blog post about The October Mail Social Club at the National Postal Museum, which took place on World Post Day! These Mail Social Club events are coordinated by Melissa of Craftgasm (pictured above, showing us how to make handmade envelopes), and she does a really fine job with these events. I hope to attend at least one more in 2015! If you are able to attend one of them, held monthly at the National Postal Museum, I highly recommend it.



Also in the department of "blog posts I meant to write for ages," I shared a post called Habits: How I keep my letter log, about my system for recording incoming and outgoing mail. That's one of my more popular posts, and I'm glad letter-writers have enjoyed reading it.



And finally, a round-up of some of my favorite posts of 2014:

Fabulous mail to kick off 2014

Legal tender sender

Postcard signed by Inge Löök

3D Dinosaur Stamp from South Africa

Essay by Alex Myers on Salon.com this week

Postcrossing stamp from Belarus

Meeting a pen pal + mobile Letterpress

Mozart stamp from the Czech Republic

October 11 is National Coming Out Day

Who's excited for Halloween?!?

Russian Rainbow Circus Stamp

Best Hanukkah Card EVER

Happy New Year, in a Russian winter postcard

One of my resolutions for 2015: more blog posts! My blogging was a bit more sparse than I'd like in 2014, and I hope to be more regular in 2015. Thanks to all my readers for your continued readership and comments, and Happy New Year!

Silver lining: kittens Oberon and Stella

In July I lost my two amazing and wonderful cats, Soda and Magic. Both were 17 years old and I had them since they were kittens. They were about a month apart in age, I got them both when they were somewhere between 6-10 weeks old, and they died two weeks apart.

July was a devastating month.

We thought we would want to wait before bringing new cats into our lives, but in fact Alex and I were both inconsolable without cats. An empty apartment, devoid of felines, was more grim than I could ever have imagined. I hope it is a tribute to the memory of the love we shared with Magic and Soda that we have brought two 4-month-old kittens into our family and our hearts.



Oberon is a deep and total glossy black...



...and Stella is a "Torbie," a tortoiseshell/tabby mix.

Both are about 4 months old. They are not littermates, Oberon is about one week older than Stella, but they were fostered together and are a deeply bonded pair. They adore each other, groom each other, and even eat and drink out of the same bowls (at the same time!).

It's too soon to say whether or not they'll be mail cats, but I suspect one if not both will be future members of the Feline Postal Brigade. You can count on me for updates on that front!

I haven't been doing much mail lately, in part because of grief over Magic and Soda, and in part because these two adorable kittens have kept my hands full. (Kittens! I'd forgotten how wonderful and time-consuming they are.)

Thanks to everyone for all the cards and words of comfort over the losses of dear Soda and Magic... I can't even express the grief so I will stop trying, but I appreciate the kind expression from animal lovers and caring souls from all corners of the world. I apologize if this sounds maudlin, but it's been a very intense time... and I am so grateful to the new kitten love that Oberon and Stella have brought into our lives.

A life without Magic

Magic P. Katt
March 1997 - July 25, 2014
Sweet stripey wonder-cat, kitty of my heart, rest in peace

We lost our dear, sweet cat Magic on Friday night. She had some seizures earlier in the week, and on Friday she seemed not to recover fully. After an evening of labored breathing when it was clear she was in pain, we once again made that awful final decision to end her suffering.



Her dear companion for 17 years, Soda, died just two and a half weeks earlier. I think Magic wasn't too interested in living life without Soda.

I am just devastated, without my two cat-babies who were with me for 17 years. This apartment without cats is grim indeed. I am still in shock, and can't believe they're both gone.

On grief, loss, and missing Soda

Last week I broke the news that Soda, the cat of my heart, was gone. (Today I lost the best cat who ever lived.) Above is one of the last decent photos of her I took, or at least one of the last ones I really love, from late May. Here on this blog I usually posted photos of her on my writing desk or with stationery, but of course she was all over the place so I'm going to share a few of those views now.

Friends, I am grieving very, very hard. I knew I would be devastated when I lost Soda - I have loved all my cats, but she was just that extra-special one, the one who followed me around like a puppy and was my closest furry companion - and indeed I am a wreck. I keep thinking she should be there. Why is she gone? I keep seeing her out of the corner of my eye. I miss her terribly, achingly, constantly. In less conscious moments, I forget she is gone and then I remember. I expect her to be at the door to greet me when I come home. I expect to see her sleeping in her favorite spots.



I expect to hear her meowing! She was an excessively vocal cat, and the apartment is so silent now without her (okay, occasionally very obnoxious) sounds.

One of the very hardest places for me is, in fact, my writing desk. Soda loved to be on my writing desk with me, sprawled out across whatever letter I was trying to read or write. As often as not, whenever I settled myself there, Soda would hop up and join me. I am so touched by the letters of condolence I have received from pen pals who didn't even know her, and I find tears running down my face as I read them at my writing desk and feel Soda's absence most poignantly.



Last week we had a very rough patch with our remaining beloved cat, Magic. Magic and Soda were not littermates, but I got them as kittens within weeks of one another. Magic came first, by just a couple of weeks. Other than those first weeks, Magic and Soda were together for their entire lives, 17 years. Although they didn't sleep together in their adult years, they would occasionally lick each others' heads; if not the best of buddies, at least the only other cat companions they had known (besides dear wonderful Memo, who was with them from 2001-2011). Who can say whether or not a cat grieves, but Magic did not show much interest in food, water, or the litterbox for a week or so, and was very mopey. She is coming back into herself and showing a bit more liveliness now, which cheers us greatly also.



I guess this post doesn't have much to do with letters or mail, and I hope you can forgive me that -- and bear with me as I am pretty low on the mail output (and pretty low in general). I do still have a lot of photo stickers, and a few photo stamps, with Soda's image, and I'm using them in her memory now. I miss my best Feline Postal Brigadier, and grief is a slow and heavy process. Thanks for bearing with me as I share that with you.

Today I lost the best cat who ever lived

Soda P. Katt
April 1997-July 7, 2014
My best cat, kitty of my heart, rest in peace

I still cannot believe this has happened, but today we had to put down my most amazing, best beloved cat Soda. She was fine yesterday morning, but yesterday afternoon she started a very quick and heart-rending deterioration. It was most likely a blood clot or a tumor. Yesterday afternoon she could not move her hind legs, and by early this morning she could only move her head. She was also clearly suffering, so we made that awful, final decision to end her pain.

Soda was with me for all of her 17 years, since she was a tiny kitten. I cannot believe my constant feline companion is gone. Longtime blog readers will know that Soda was a mail cat extraordinare, charter member of the Feline Postal Brigade, and a frequent "helper" with my letter-writing. I wanted to share this news of her passing with you all, with a plea for understanding that I am absolutely devastated and may lay low from letters and blogging for a while.

A very kind relative asked about donations in Soda's name; I will say that she came to me from the Gifford Cat Shelter, which is a truly wonderful no-kill cat shelter (or, as they say, "sheltering home for cats") that I support wholeheartedly. If you are one of those wonderful souls who is moved to make a donation in her memory, that would be the place both she and I support.

We are down to one cat - the ever shy and retiring Magic, who, while not much of a mail cat, is still a wonderful kitty and a great comfort. (Here's the irony: Magic is the one with health problems; we expected to lose her long before Soda.) She is sad along with us today; while she and Soda were not littermates, they were they same age and spent all but their first weeks of life together. Now I am off to cuddle Magic... please love and appreciate your pets (and all loved ones!) while you have them. You never know when you may lose them.

Last mail art of 2012

A postcrosser who received one of my postcards asked me if I did any mail art. It occurred to me that I haven't posted about anything I've sent in absolute ages. It's long overdue! I had a tough fall for letter-writing, and my sent stats have been fairly paltry until December, when I really tried to plunge in again as best I could.

I wrote and decorated this letter on December 31, 2012. I had so much fun breaking out my washi tape, stickers, rubber stamps, postage stamps, and all the fixings... they had sat gathering dust for quite a while. My cats Soda and Memo (of blessed memory) adorn the photo stamps, and in fact that stamp of Memo with the fur wig is the last one I had.



The back of the envelope isn't quite so busy, just some red and black and of course a fine Red Tango cat sticker.



Happy New Year! My best wishes to all blog readers and postal enthusiasts for a fantastic mail year in 2013.

Show and mail? Snow and mail!

Last spring some folks at the National Postal Museum started a groovy Twitter hashtag, #showandmail. The concept was similar to "show and tell:" show us what you've mailed! I love seeing photos of mail, and it was a fun way to see quickly what other folks were sending and receiving. (Especially cool for those who don't have a mail blog to be able to share an instantaneous photo.) I did a blog post about it back in April when I first got into it, and all my posts that I subsequently tweeted about are tagged with #showandmail here on my blog. It was really hot Twitter hashtag for a while, but it's sort of died off lately.

The Letter Writers Alliance did a nice post recently about Show and Mail, with the intent of reviving that hashtag and mail show-and-tell. For an explanation, the LWA Management articulated it better than I could:

Why should we do this? Well, firstly, it will get us to write more letters. Secondly, it will inspire others to write more mail. Whenever I see a show and mail I get an itch to write someone. Why not spread that feeling to others?

I've been writing mail today, and our long-awaited snowstorm has finally arrived... so I thought I'd contribute a Show and Mail in the form of Snow and Mail. (Yes, I love puns, and I'm not ashamed.)



Of course, Soda had to help.

The lovely Keep Calm and Send Postcards postcard is from MaxAndCoPost on etsy, and they have some other fine mail-related postcards in their shop. It's a great sentiment for any day, but especially a day like today when many of us on the east coast are getting quite a good bit of snow.



Soda and I intend to snuggle up and enjoy it.

Whatever your weather, if you're writing mail, pop a photo up on Twitter and use that great #showandmail hashtag, so we postal voyeurs can enjoy and be inspired. And thanks to the Letter Writers Alliance for the reminder!

I'm home!

I'm back from vacation, refreshed and relaxed, and have finished reading a week's worth of mail. I wrote a bunch of postcards on our cabin porch when I had some down time, and this adorable baby red squirrel kept hopping around me as I did so. Those of you that receive a postcard that references the squirrel, now you can see the culprit.



The cats were very happy to see us, and as usual, Soda claimed my suitcase as hers as soon as I walked in the door. (See the little brown mouse with pink ears on the floor to the left of the suitcase? That's hers, too.) Now I'm all unpacked, and I've finished the mountains of laundry, and my etsy shop is fully re-opened... but I've got house guests coming tomorrow, so diving into mail wholeheartedly will have to wait a little longer.

A candid glimpse of my writing desk in action

Last night I wrote a long-overdue response to a letter from blog reader The Real Miss Monogram. She asked me a lot of questions about my letter-writing and mail habits, and one of the last questions was about my writing desk. She thought the photos I posted of it looked "too nice," and wanted to know if it really looked like that.

I think what she was getting at was that it looked neat and organized. HA! Looks can be deceiving... but it is fairly organized. As I wrote to her in my letter, I need to have a clean writing surface beckoning to me in order to be encouraged and inspired to sit there and write. But I did admit that I usually take photos of it right after I've tidied it up - and the tidying process is a constant one, given my shifting supplies and moods. In any case, I told her I'd take a photo RIGHT THEN in the middle of the letter to show what a "candid," or at least unplanned, untidied glimpse of my writing desk would reveal.

This is it, Soda and all.

And now it's time to go back to that writing desk and get some mail going!

Soda, feline letter-writing taskmaster

Soda has been very helpful in my return to increased letter-writing this month.



Longtime blog readers know she loves to sit on my writing desk and "help" with mail.



Usually she gets up when I do - letter finished, time to drop it in the outgoing mail slot, etc - but lately she's been staying on the desk and giving me this look: "Are you really finished?" Nope. "Then get back here and write some more."

Okay.

Embroidered Missive Maven

My crafty and creative pen pal, Carla (of the Tiny Angry Crafter blog) is pretty darn handy with a needle and thread. Along with a recent letter, she included this fantastic embroidered gift, sewing a cute fountain pen and envelope icon, too.



Soda and I both love it!

By the way, Soda likes Halloween mail, too

Back in October, Soda was exceedingly helpful with Halloween mail.



She was particularly fond of all the goodies in the Halloween RSVP packages from the Letter Writers Alliance.

Silver Halloween letter

Yes yes, I am terribly behind in blog posts. I'm working my way through October letter photos now. So, here we have one of my more decorative and exciting Halloween letters! I do hope the metallic silver envelope went through with no problems, along with the day-glo green gel pen ink for the address. (That ink isn't totally waterproof, so I covered it with tape.) The envelope features some of my favorite Halloween stickers, and is being modeled by a cute bendy skeleton I got from one of the Letter Writers Alliance RSVP Halloween packages.



Naturally, Soda had to get in on the photographic action. I took a bunch of her with this letter - she seemed really to like this one especially - but in an effort not to barrage you with a million Soda pictures, I just picked my favorite.



And ta-daa! - the back. I love those stickers that make a play on words with favorite alcoholic beverages and spooky imagery... skin and tonic! Eyeball highball! HA!

More spooky Halloween letters and postcards to come in future posts... because I know a lot of you readers, just like me, love Halloween year 'round.

A clean desk encourages letter writing

It seems like everything has been a mess in my life lately. The last two weeks of October were just incredibly rough, with mostly unexpected things... the latter of which was that I've gotten a nasty flu and have been sick for nearly two weeks, sicker than I've been in years. So things piled up, including letters and mail, and I barely had the energy to get anything done. My desk got messier than it's been in ages! I'm not a neat freak, but I firmly believe that a clean and organized desktop makes for a more inviting workspace... and it was such a mess before that I didn't even want to look at it, let alone write letters at it!



Tonight I sort of started to get my energy back, and I cheered myself up considerably by cleaning my desk. The piles are still daunting, but at least the writing space is cleared and all my tools are organized.



Naturally, moments after I settled into writing a Postcrossing postcard to Japan, Soda had to jump on up to be a part of the action.



She appreciates the clean desk, too - now there's room for her to stretch out there again!

Sorry for my lack of posts, and my severe lack of mail output... it's been a bad month, but I think I am on the upswing. I did manage a lot of postcards in October - 50! - but only wrote 12 letters. I'm hoping to do a little better in November.

More from the Feline Postal Brigade: Soda guards my postcards

I usually sit on the couch with my laptop when I register postcards - from Swap-bot, Postcrossing, etc.

Soda usually sits next to me and keeps my postcards warm.

If she's still on them when I get up, I let her keep them for a while... hence there are usually postcards on the couch.

See more excellent mail cats in the Feline Postal Brigade Flickr photo group... and please submit your own!

Literary postcard swap sent

I sent my postcards for my Literary Postcard swap, and really enjoyed the process.

It helps that I am entirely in love with the "Postcards from Penguin: One Hundred Book Covers in One Box" by Chronicle Books. They take fountain pen ink so nicely, and the designs are wonderful - lots of variety.



The book that I raved about, not coincidentally, involved a tiger: The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht.



Even Soda liked it!

Happy summer reading and writing... I think I'll go write a letter now.

Yet another post featuring Soda on my writing desk

I can't resist. I know I'm biased, but she's so cute... and ever so helpful with my letter writing.



And hey, it's a snapshot of my desk in action, without being cleaned up all nice for a planned photo shoot.



Write the letter, or pet the belly? Tough decision. I usually have to do both.

Sleepy Soda drawing

I frequently claim that I can't draw, which I still think is pretty true, but I'm trying to be more creative and free up that inner critic. I want to draw, and sometimes I like to draw, so... yeah. Trying to just practice for fun.

The fantastic International Girl aerogrammes (I've blogged about them quite a lot) have a little box that says "draw picture here." Ever one to follow instructions, I usually give it some kind of try. So one night I had Soda sleeping at the edge of my letter, and I drew her. It doesn't really look all that much like her, but it is fairly apparent that it is a cat, and for that I am proud of myself.

She's sleeping on the couch near me now, actually, but all curled up this time. Awww.

Soda on my writing desk, AGAIN

Soda is on my writing desk a lot lately. She knows she will get an occasional pet there, and it seems my writing lamp is a low-grade heat lamp. She's so cute, and I'm so over-indulgent, that I take a lot of pictures of her there. And then share them incessantly with you.



But part of my motivation is that I really love photos of other people's writing spaces, especially when they're in action, and not just recently cleaned-up and pretty (although those are nice, too). I only got a dedicated writing desk late last summer, so it's still sort of new to me, and I really, really love it. At first I thought I would dislike the white lattice (a permanent fixture in our house) around it, but actually I love it. The cats can poke their faces through and say hi (there are stairs and a platform behind it, so the cats are eye-level with me if they meow through the lattice), and now I've discovered that it's a great place from which to hang things! I have a few cute little pen pal gifts hanging there, as well as an Edward Gorey calendar. There's more now than when this photo was taken a number of weeks ago, but as I glance up at my writing desk now, I realize that everything up there is something someone else has sent to me. Cool - I had a theme and I didn't even know it!

Soda says hi. If I wrote you a letter or postcard recently, she probably helped.