Hello, I’m Maya.

A desk, of sorts

I live in Portland, where my worktable is also our dinner table and everything has to fit into two shallow boxes by six o’clock. That small constraint has been useful. I can make a notebook with a needle, a ruler, a cutting mat, and a modest pile of paper. A separate studio would mostly give me more places to lose the ruler.

My paper habit began with my grandmother’s recipe cards. She wrote additions in the margins rather than replacing a card, so every recipe became a record of changing tastes. There was a crossed-out quantity of sugar, a note about a neighbor’s oven, and one very firm instruction to buy better lemons.

I am interested in objects that show their use. A cover polished by a coat pocket is more persuasive to me than a perfectly untouched journal. I keep my own experiments simple: a folded cover, a few signatures, a thread color that makes the sewing easy to find when something goes wrong.

Away from the table, I walk along the river and read short essays. I write down street names I like and draw window boxes with more confidence than accuracy. This site gives those small pursuits somewhere to sit together. It is a personal notebook, written by an enthusiastic amateur with paper on her sleeves.