Category Archives: Book of Days Calendar

Nov 10 2019
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Autumn, Book of Days Calendar

Carriage House, or Your November Book of Days

November has thrown us for a loop this year, but here, finally, is your Convivio Book of Days calendar for the month. It’s autumn, and it has just today turned a bit cooler here in Lake Worth, and that may explain how we have finally gotten the calendar published for you. Things suddenly feel in sync. We are in the midst of the days when we remember those who have passed before us, making it a very beautiful time of year. Cover stars for the calendar: Carriage House and Maple Tree at the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Community in Maine. The Carriage House predates the Community itself, which was established in 1783. It’s a graceful old building that stands next to the grand barn, the barn that to stand in it makes you feel like you are in a cathedral of sorts.

If all goes as planned, I’ll be writing again to you tomorrow to remind you about Martinmas, also known as Hollantide. It’s a time important to winemakers, and it concludes our annual sojourn with the dead, and we turn our sights toward winter. Speaking of: before things get way too Christmasy out there, the Advent season will begin on the First of December. We’ve got traditional Advent calendars from Germany and handmade daily Advent candles from England to help you mark the season and keep things at your own pace. Now happens to be a great time to order. Free domestic shipping when you spend $50 at our catalog; if you don’t make it to $50, it’s a flat rate of $8.50, which is also not at all bad. Or come see us at these November events; there are more coming in December––I’ve included the first one here:

SANKTA LUCIA CELEBRATION
Saturday November 23 from 11 AM to 3 PM
at First United Methodist Church
625 NE Mizner Boulevard in Boca Raton
A traditional Swedish Christmas with dancing round the tree and Sankta Lucia in a crown of candlelit evergreen. We’ll be there with our traditional artisan made Christmas decorations from Germany and Mexico, plus our new Christmas collection from Sweden, as well as Shaker herbs & teas and my mom’s famous handmade candy wreaths, as well as German advent calendars and candles.

HARVEST MAKERS MARKETPLACE
Sunday November 24 from 10 AM to 4 PM
at Florida Atlantic University
777 Glades Road in Boca Raton
Follow the blue & white MAKERS MARKETPLACE signs on FAU campus roads to Historic Building T6. Free admission, free parking, live music with Rio Peterson and the Lubben Brothers, and lots of great local makers. Our boutique will include all our Christmas artisan items from Germany, Mexico, and Sweden, plus Shaker herbs & teas, German advent calendars and candles, and my mom’s famous handmade candy wreaths.

CHRISTKINDLMARKT
Saturday & Sunday December 7 & 8 (2 to 9 PM on Saturday; 1 to 8 PM on Sunday)
at the American German Club
5111 Lantana Road in Lake Worth
Convivio Bookworks will be part of this old time German Christmas market in suburban Lake Worth. At our booth you’ll find traditional handmade German Christmas items, and we’ll throw in some other handmade items from our Swedish and Mexican collections, too, as well as Shaker herbs & teas, some letterpress goods, and my mom’s famous handmade candy wreaths.

More markets to come beyond this, too!

 

 

Oct 01 2019
Autumn, Book of Days Calendar

Autumn, and Your October Book of Days

Welcome to October. Here’s your Book of Days Calendar for October. Cover star: a swamp maple in New Gloucester, Maine, with ruby red leaves, pure essence of autumn. This is something we just don’t get much of here in Lake Worth. So if you are in a place where this happens, enjoy fully.

Here in Lake Worth, the weather has taken a definite shift. It’s not so much cooler as it is less humid, and this is nice, this is our version of autumn. There are pumpkins in the market, not the ones that grow here, but the ones that have to be trucked in from the North. Our pumpkins are delicious but not much to look at; sometimes green, sometimes beige, they’re called “calabaza” and they taste a lot like a butternut. I’ve sent pictures of our calabazas to friends up north who grow pumpkins and typically the initial response is a gasp. “That’s a pumpkin?” We love them all the same, though it’s true, our calabazas cannot hold a candle to a big Connecticut Field jack o’lantern pumpkin or a red Rouge vif d’Etampes or a ghostly blue green Jarrahdale. And so a hearty thank you to all the farmers who send their beautiful cucurbitas here to South Florida. We appreciate it. Really. For while we don’t get your beautiful foliage, we do enjoy the pumpkins.

We’re shifting into high gear here preparing for Dia de Muertos, beefing up stock and adding new artisan goods from Mexico, too. We have lots more to add to the website, but if you’re ready to start shopping, know that we offer free domestic shipping when you spend $50, and even if you don’t, our flat rate shipping is only $8.50, and that’s not so bad, either. Here’s a quick link to our catalog. Enjoy!

 

Sep 08 2019
Book of Days Calendar, Nativity of Mary

Drive Down Day, or Your September Book of Days

Hurricane Dorian kicked us a bit out of sync as we transitioned from August to September, but here, finally, is your printable Convivio Book of Days calendar for September. We are fine here in Lake Worth, though that is not the case with our neighbors in the Bahamas. Just 75 miles east of us is the western point of Grand Bahama Island, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve scanned the horizon at the coast when I was a boy, looking for the Bahamas because they’re right there, but 75 miles is a distance sometimes. Enough of a distance to see no sign of land from here, and enough of a distance for us to emerge unharmed by Dorian’s course.

That’s how I got to Maine the first time I went to that fair state. I was going to Penland, North Carolina, but I had some artwork to bring to a gallery in Vermont––my first non-academic art show––and, on the map, at least, Vermont seemed to be just a little further away. Why not bring the artwork there myself? And if I was going to Vermont, I figured, certainly I should go to Maine. This is the way my mind works. You can see how someone like me would be looking out over the Atlantic, hoping to see Grand Bahama from my tiny strand of sand.

Way over in Switzerland, it’s the time of year the cows come home from the Alpine meadows. They were there last July when Seth and I were driving along the Splügen Pass on the way from Austria to Italy, high in Alps, their bells ringing through the mountain air as we drove, and now that winter is setting in, it’s time for them to come down to the valleys. Typically this happens now, in early September, and especially on the 8th of September, which is the day we celebrate the Nativity of Mary, which is known as Drive Down Day in some parts of Switzerland. The return of the cows is not without some pomp and ceremony: they’re dressed up and decorated and so are their human companions. It’s a sight, I’m sure, but it’s the bells I love best. If you’ve never heard them, well… it’s the most peaceful sound. One of those bell-wearing Swiss bovines is the cover star of your September Book of Days… and while we’re at it, here’s a video we took when we were in Switzerland of the cows and their bells, not long before we reached the top of the Splügen Pass:

Across the border in Italy the folks like to eat blueberries today: blue, the color of Mary’s cloak, at least in Italian Renaissance paintings. Lights are illuminated in windows, and bonfires blaze. In France, Mary is celebrated today, in the midst of the grapes ripening on the vine, as Our Lady of the Grape Harvest. Bunches of grapes are brought to churches for the priests to bless and you’ll find lots of grapes this day in the hands of statues of Mary, placed there by Marian devotees and by lovers of wine and by traditionalists like me. This is September, the first of the “Ember” months. Seth and I, we wish you a fine one.

 

COME SEE US!
We’re popping up at Hatch 1121 in Lake Worth on Saturday for the big “Catrinas: The Festival” event and I’m teaching a workshop at the Armory later this month.

CATRINAS: THE FESTIVAL
Saturday September 14 from 4 to 9 PM
Hatch 1121 (the old Lake Worth Shuffle Board Courts)
at 1121 Lucerne Ave in Downtown Lake Worth’s West Village
Our favorite time of year is fast approaching! Here, to kick things off, Lake Worth meets L.A. in a unique festival that revolves around an exhibition featuring works by Lake Worth artist José R. Mendez and Los Angeles photographer Gus Mejia. Admission is free and plentiful parking is nearby. In the Hatch courtyard, live mariachi, food, crafts, and low riders… and we’ll be there in our usual spot with a preview of this year’s Convivio Bookworks Dia de Muertos collection. You’ll find your old favorites plus lots of new items not yet in our online catalog, all of them made by hand by artisans in Mexico. It’s all about authenticity.

WORKSHOP: INTRO TO BOOK ARTS
Saturday September 21 from 9:30 AM to 4:30 PM
The Armory
at 811 Park Place in West Palm Beach
Printing and bookbinding are at the core of the Book Arts, and in this one day workshop, you’ll get a foundation in both. Learn a bit of letterpress plus the techniques behind a range of handmade book structures that you can create anywhere on your own without special bindery equipment. We’ll print one of our book covers from handset type, and you won’t just leave with blank books: one of the books you’ll bind is a letterpress limited edition story that was printed by your Convivio Bookworks boys in years past, and you’ll get to bind your very own copy.

 

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