Remember September?

I'm not so sure about September 2024. I usually love September as a time for back-to-school vibes--fresh pencils and plaid skirts and rosy apples and crisp note-paper, stuff like that. This year had a little of that feeling, but mostly it felt like a rush. But here are a few things!

New 2025 Hobonichi Journal

September is Hobonichi season, when I order myself a new Japanese planner to use for the following year. For the past 4 years I have been using the "avec" style of Hobonichi journals to make small notes or drawings or collages each day--this style has two small planners that cover 6 months each. You can see this year's pair on the left of this photo. But I've also long wanted a Hobonichi cover, which is usually a fabric book-cover that you insert a journal into. This year I treated myself to a 2025 Hobonichi full-year journal, with an orange and blue cover and a plastic "cover on cover" over that. It has cute little pockets and ribbons (it's on the right below, and in the 2 photos below that).

Common Merganser

I love the pointy silhouettes of mergansers, which are water-birds I sometimes see when I'm out kayaking.

 

Brattleboro Museum & Art Center

I got to see the exhibits at our local museum this past month. They always have such neat stuff!

Harp by Benedict Scheuer, Hand-dyed silk

 

Coyote Imagery by Duane Slick

Raven sculpture by Susan Brearey

Spacemosque is an exhibition about a vessel from the future that grants one prayer per 24 hours and is infused with Islamic mysticism in a genre the artist, Saks Afridi, calls "Sci-fi Sufism." I love it so much.

Spacetime 2019, part of the Spacemosque installation by Saks Afridi

Breath of the Beast by Ilana Manolson, Acrylic on Yupo paper

Perfume Nerdery

I haven't ordered any more perfume samples (they can add up!) but I've started testing and organizing the samples and bottles that I do have. I got a little index card holder and am making one card for each fragrance. I print out the notes and accords and stick them on the back of each card. I'm writing notes on the cards about what I like/notice/dislike about each perfume.

Index card case on bottom right

Notes printed from Fragrantica.com

Fall begins!

Here's what I like to do when Autumn starts. Drink more tea. Play the game Wytchwood on the Nintendo Switch. And get out my "Mabon" Oracle deck and start pulling cards from it. This year I'm also adding in the deck I made myself that features my personal values and is decorated with copyright-free images (see my July post). In this spread I got the Wool card (which is about opportunities for coziness and self-care) and the No-Mind card. Lovely.