sometimes you buy a babushka portrait of your cat and then you have to a buy a frame for it which comes with a unnecessary matte and then you go to throw said matte away and think 'huh.' then a zine is born!

a fun little photography zine of our neighborhood and the things we thought were frame-worthy.

emma actually had the idea to do an accordion fold for this one, which I think turned out very fun! the zine can be flipped through in two directions, or elongated like a beautiful mozzarella cheese string pull.

the zines are thick enough that I had to do an extra fold to give each one a little spine! cute.

i was thinking about multidirectionality with the accordion fold, and therefore thinking about palindromes (a great thing to think about!!!) which is how we landed on a title. i think my pitch to emma on it was "it's apt, if you squint."

if you're not a member of the zine club, you can be!

a new month in late 2023, a new zine!

i love being married to @dumplingsquid for like... a lot of reasons, but being able to demand ocean poetry is high on the list. I've seen some really cool scanner art on IG lately and wanted an excuse to scan some of the many, many shells we've acquired in california, so here we all are.

i was originally thinking truly unreasonable thoughts about having the poem on a single strip of paper that you pulled through a slit in a vellum cover in order to read, and then realized that was going to be a nightmare to produce at any sort of volume.

I really like the asymmetric cover on this one, and I'm obsessed with the sewn binding!!!!! It was honestly the most fun step, and I will definitely be using thread (and stranger materials?!?!) to bind zines in the future.

if you're not a member of the zine club, you could be!

it's a rare Leo-written zine for this, the current month of October 2023.

I've had 'crossword game?' written in our zine ideas document for a few months, but the idea really jumped out and grabbed me this week! love when you're able to ride an idea to completion in a very short time, which almost never happens to me.

emma made some really tidy edits to this, and i had a lot of fun making an example grid with her. she's so good at being menacing!

i really debated spending $14 on a 'confidential' stamp at office depot for this one and showed some restraint. ultimately, i do not think the zine is lacking for that but you may disagree. i'm still having a lot of fun making zines physically and scanning/recreating them as opposed to starting with the digital file, which I think is leading me to different looks/feels. i did individually, artfully tear the grids for the covers so please enjoy that.

the body paper is from a ream of fancy recycled paper i have been carrying around since my literal freshman year of college that yellowed beautifully and is perfect for the old-timey dossier look i wanted. that's why you never throw out paper!!!!!!!!

if you are a zine club member and play this one, please please please send me a pic of your grid!!!!!

if you're not a zine club member, you could be!

we all accept that it's still september 2023, right?

this one has been in the tank for a while. it was really special to get to immerse myself in biz lore and looking through our favorite pictures of her for this zine, but also (obviously) bittersweet. we miss her terribly, and probably always will.

i've had this mockup for a stairstep zine in my Paper Pile™️ for ages, and it seemed like a really natural fit for this concept!

my favorite detail is the cutout on this picture of biz doing her best 'old uncle anime legs.' she would be very pleased to know how much time i spent cutting out each individual page with her little leggie hanging out. it's the most important thing about the zine.

I'm glad that our zine club is small and bespoke enough that cutting out individual copies of a photo of biz's leg is a realistic way to spend my time, and not at all a fool's errand.

many thanks to @nattery who made this wizard squiz emoji for the @rudedetectives streams.

squiz forever.