Friends doing good.

Our super-good friends at Remnant just had a bag featured in Southern Living. Really stoked for them.

And should you need a tote, ladies and gentlemen, I'd say there's none finer. Made by hard working hands down in Wilmington, NC.

At Home in Raleigh.

A Christmas gift for Marianna's mother.

She framed in up in a golden rule.

Because it pretty much is.

On the Game.

My January post for The Trot Line is up. Features Eli Manning and Super Mario. I'd say it's worth checking out before the SuperBowl.


Happy reading.

The Queen City

 

The last one to go. 

We caught a jet plane down and celebrated the marriage of the last of Marianna's college roommates. She lives in Charlotte and so does her husband and so then friends from all over made it to the little chapel that once belonged to an orphanage that is now a National Historic Landmark. Then we skipped over to the Mint museum to shake it.

We also made it to Forest Hills where my childhood friend is the worship leader. It was great to be back in a church that has their own building.

It was quick. Just 48 hours down and back. But I don't think if we were there two months that it would'a been long enough to spend with friends.

Building Manners.

We have two great friends who'd ordered a Manners print from us.

They took it to Framer's Workshop in Brookline, a DIY frame joint, and fired off some pictures in real time.

Course, we're delayed and at this point the print is looking great on their wall and the whole thing is finished. But the real time Twitter updates were fun while they lasted.

Beckel Canvas

 

I've wanted myself a log carrier for twenty years or more. But, living in the South, there wasn't as much need for one as: a) there were fewer stoves to need to fire up after moving away from home and b) see a. That's just about why.

Love After Love.

Love After Love

by Derek Walcott

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.        

The local paper.

In this age where you can make blogs all around the world, it really is something to make the local paper.



Our neighbors saved a paper copy and gave it to us, cause when it went live on the internet, I didn't even know we had a real printed paper in the town.

It was in a converted tobacco factory in North Carolina where advertising professionals Micah and Marianna Whitson first met — a fact that isn’t surprising when you survey their letterpress designs.

Micah currently works as a graphic designer and Marianna is an image librarian. Individually, the two have also worked as creative experts in London, done retail sales in Atlanta, led bike tours in Durango, Colo., and performed design work for folks from Kentucky to South Korea.

After resettling near Boston, the Whitsons began designing graphic prints, which draw inspiration from “books, experience, suggestions, Faulkner and memories” to invoke the ethos of the South.

The Whitsons moved to Somerville four years ago and recently relocated to Arlington. They operate an independent letterpress design studio, which is named Old Try, a reference both to the expression “the old college try” and their desire to revive a labor-intensive craft.

5 Napkins.

Fridays ago, we were craving a burger.

Which worked out well, as there's a new burger joint in town called 5 Napkin. We'd seen them in Miami (there are 3 in NYC and 1 in ATL) and had brunch there and I noticed Pappy Van Winkle and course I'm going to go back to a place that has bottle of Pappy (amazing story about PVW here).

Country Captain.

I'm a sucker for a good slow cooker meal. Last weekend, we were digging around our favorite cookbook (well, mine at least) and found a recipe for Country Captain. With a name like that, there's got to be a good story involved. Course there is, and it comes compliments of the spice trade and Savannah.

This and all the rest of the recipes we post are adapted Gluten-Free, as we live with celiac.


 

At Home in Raleigh.

Another set of parents who's not going to let their baby grow up disrespecting folks.

I happen to know this set well. And I can't wait to get back and meet the little guy.

At Home in Raleigh.

An amazing setup from a Raleigh based Tar Heel.

From her:

Just hung a framing project I've been working on for a while and wanted to send y'all pictures of the results. Received your Hark the Sound print from a fellow UNC alum friend around the same time my mom gave me a page she bought on eBay from an 1940s song book with college alma maters and fight songs... Obviously it had the lyrics to the UNC alma mater! Thought the two would go great together.

Yeah, I certainly think they do.

Caffeine from a mason.

I can't help but post this.

Several friends up here at Fringe have just released a hot new thing. Called Cuppow. You can turn a mason jar into a coffee cup.

Don't act like you ain't got a mason jar. I know you got twenty of em – grandmama gave you three this Christmas alone cause she does all that canning.

Only downside I see is that a mason jar of hot coffee is going to be hot. But come on. Life's all about tradeoffs. And if you're down in Mississippi do you really need hot coffee rather than cold?

Created by a guy I know, shot by a great guy I know well, packaging by the guy who did our cards. Bunch of good folks.

Cheers to them.

Working with William Lamb and Son

We're tickled to have teamed up with WM. Lamb & Son, of Tallahassee, FL on our newest batch of Manners prints. We packed them up and shipped them down yesterday and they will be selling them from their website in the near future.

They'd reached out to us a few months back, as we run in similar circles of Southern folks on the internet. I'd seen them when their patterns popped up on the back of a line of Brooks Brother's coats and ties by the Social Primer. Now, I know that's a lot of name dropping there, but that's just kinda how folks find out about new things.

They see things they like, reach out, and work together.

A collection of field goals.

A big thanks to those who trecked out to watch The Game with us on Monday night. It was awesome to meet some new folks, watch some defense (and special teams) and give away some prints.

We shall do it again.

Sugar.

Tomorrow night's the night.

All eyes on the South.


Come by Clery's. Watch LSU Bama with us. Grab a brew. A slider. An Old Try Koozie.

Southern Is.

Found this amazing little book called Southern Is in a vacation condo in North Carolina back in October.

Waiting.

 Waiting

by Raymond Carver

Left off the highway and
down the hill.  At the
bottom, hang another left.
Keep bearing left. The road
will make a Y. Left again.
There’s a creek on the left.
Keep going. Just before
the road ends, there’ll be
another road. Take it
and no other. Otherwise,
your life will be ruined
forever. There’s a log house
with a shake roof, on the left.
It’s not that house. It’s
the next house, just over
a rise. The house
where trees are laden with
fruit. Where phlox, forsythia,
and marigold grow. It’s
the house where the woman
stands in the doorway
wearing sun in her hair. The one
who’s been waiting
all this time.
The woman who loves you.
The one who can say,
“What’s kept you?”

I can hear em cheering!

A picture posted on Facebook from some Nashville Rebels on New Years Eve '11.

It made me smile a big one.

Old Try presents the National Championship

Don't forget to tell all your Southern friends up in Boston, or even in the whole of New England, not to forget to RSVP for the LSU / Bama game on the 9th.

We're going to foot the bill for some appetizers and give away a Louisiana and an Alabama print at the half. And we're going to convince the bartenders at Clery's to make Sazeracs in honor of the game's host city.

Ain't nothing to it but to do it.

Link to the event is right here: http://www.facebook.com/events/343943048953620/

Who you got? I got LSU on upset alert.

A Tewksbury Wedding.

Like most Southerners, we love us a good wedding. Love getting to see old family and make new friends and sweat the details of dress based on the time of the clock. Open bars, hearts, and kins going crazy on the dance floor and uncles drinking a little much and aunts telling them it's time to go.

And while we've been up here almost 5 years now, we've only gone to one other local wedding, which was down in Hingham. I mean, we've been to Ohio and Georgia and the Outer Banks and South Beach and California and everywhere in between, but we haven't gone just up the road.

Happy New Year.

Wishing you and yours the very best in 2012. Let's change the world this year, shall we?

-M. & M. Whitson