I like this poster a lot, and I’m not even sure why. It’s all over the streets and subway stations of Berlin right now, announcing the fiftieth anniversary edition of the Berliner Festspiele’s Berliner Theatertreffen, a forum for supporting and premiering new works from emerging playwrights.

The head designers for the Berliner Festspiele are Studio CRR in Zurich.

I bought this cookie, actually a package of six of these cookies, mostly for the packaging. And because I was only in Spain for a week, no time to hesitate! The blue lettering on the white waxy paper looks like it hasn’t been changed for decades. The cookie itself, powdery with confectioner’s sugar and crumbly with lard, would have been good had it not been for an artificial note of “lemon.” I think I would prefer the Christmas polvorones Anna described on her great Spanish food primer blog I love tortillas de patatas, or, if I felt like eating lard cookies again, I would make Anna’s mantecadas.

To photograph the blue and white packaging, I placed it on the yellow book I was reading, as the colors look smashing together. In fact, the bookmarker ribbon in the book is the same shade of blue. The book is Sand by Wolfgang Herrndorf. The color is great. I’m still working on the book itself.

Just spent a couple crazy days in Hasselt, a little Belgian town that my friends Pablo and Manon (among others) have decided to put on the map with their own international design festival. My personal highlights included experiencing giant printing by Letterproeftuin (made possible by a linoleum supplier’s stockpiled scraps and a rented steamroller) and finding out about the Risograph (a sort of copy machine that uses silkscreen technology) with the wonderfully nice people of Rosi…

…and hanging out with illustrator Ai Kohno (that’s her work above), in from Japan, and Tracy (Brutal Knitting), from the greater Vancouver Island watery area.

I also got a kick out of seeing presentations from I Like Birds (from Hamburg) and Hattie Newman (from London) who both showed images which they created by building three-dimensional things to be photographed. I got to chat with them a bit too, cool people.

THANK YOU to all the artists and to the organizers for a great “creative festival/nightmare.”

Today I talked of spring with Yuki, whose little café — down the street from my studio — seems kind of like a studio itself. Whenever I go in there she has invented a new treat to bake, like Möbius-strip cookies, or found a new ingredient to put in her tea sandwiches, like pea shoots.

I gave her the bell I’d promised for her maneki-neko, as I had noticed he’d lost his. It was promptly attached with a new ribbon.

And there were sandwiches with Bärlauch, or bear’s garlic, one of my favorite signs of spring (more at my Urban Plant Research blog). Spring in Berlin will be short and quick this year, we agreed, since it’s starting so late, and we’ll have to hurry to catch the wild garlic, rhubarb, asparagus, strawberries and elderflowers as they blur by… Here’s to finally getting started!

A small company called Photoautomat maintains a bunch of these old-fashioned, black-and-white photo booths with real dip-and-dunk photo chemicals inside. This one just appeared at this location in Berlin.

The Leipzig Book Fair (which just ended – it was March 14-17) overwhelms you with books. I spent most of Saturday there and left with my head spinning. Thus my failure to note the name and author of this one, or even which stand displayed it. I only know it was a limited, hand-bound edition of 20, each with a different patterned paper cover, and that it was a student project at one of the art school stands, possibly Fachhochschule Potsdam (?). I liked the illustrations and the ingenious flap, which opens to reveal the same recipe in other languages.

“Nett” (Nice) lettering with double-t ligature. In Berlin-Mitte last winter.

Photo courtesy of The Convivialist.

Newest addition to my studio, just installed today. Found at the Boxhagener Platz flea market by Anke, danke!