Truckee is a great little mountain town-charming and close to Lake Tahoe and so many wonderful trails and skiing spots.  When I first moved to the Tahoe area (living on Donner Lake) someone told me, "The winters bring people to Tahoe but the summers keep them here," and I believe it. Summer is just dreamy.

I visited Fort Worth not too long ago (first time in the lone star state) and it charmed me.  I'm a sucker for old buildings and downtown Fort Worth and the Stockyards had many a gem!  

Turns out there are quite a few talented letterpress printers there too.  Here is just one!

BLUE EYE BROWN EYE http://blueeyebrowneye.com/

These guys make some truly boss wedding invitations.  And killer calligraphy to boot!  Check their site for even more letterpress goodness.

 All of our maps are printed on heavy duty cotton paper.  Our favorite paper to work with is Crane's Lettra (www.crane.com).  The Crane's company is a very old paper company and actually is responsible for making the paper for US bill notes.  We love this paper but its luxury comes at a price.   In order to not waste any of it we reuse imperfect prints to test out registration and color before printing a big edition.  What we now have are some beautiful one of a kind prints that are collages of the work we've done.  Here's one we'd like to share.  

Living a pretty rural life in the mountains it is hard to believe I spent so many years in NYC.  After graduating I picked up an old Leica CL camera (a model known as the "Volkskamera"-maybe kind of like the Volkswagen!) at B & H and it became a real pal.  The light meter on the camera didn't really work and it had some other quirks, so I went through so many rolls of film.  But that was part of the fun I think... every now and then, after developing the photos, I discovered a good or moderately good shot.  Here are a few photos taken in the early 2000s.

When I was first starting out printing linocuts I made one of Emerald Bay.  At this time I didn't have a lot of money to buy paper and supplies so the edition I ended up making was very small.  I sold out of those prints and I regret (as was the case with many of my early prints) not even keeping one for myself.  Anyway,  I decided to return to this subject since I really think that it deserves a bigger edition this time! Chip and I printed this redcution linocut on the Vandercook over the weekend.