Lost Blog Post: Introduction to Letterpress at The Arm

Last month, I took a letterpressing class at The Arm.  I came home afterwards and wrote a blog post, but I suppose in all of my excitement, I apparently forgot to press "POST"... so this poor little neglected blog post has been sitting in the "DRAFTS" section of my blog.

Anyhow, here it is, from June 13th, 2010:

Today I fulfilled one of the items from my "Expanding My Horizons" list that I created about a month ago. I attended an Introduction to Letterpress class at The Arm in Williamsburg.

There are several studios in the New York City area which offer workshops and classes on letterpressing, but I decided to go with The Arm for several reasons.  A) It's easy to get to.  B) It's got a great reputation and C) Once you take the intro class, then you're allowed to book time to print there if you've been given the a-ok.

I thought it was funny that all of the students in my class were girls.  I guess us gals just love stationary!  The instructor, Dan, was awesome.  He comes from a long line of printers, which is really cool.  He was a very good and very patient teacher.  While in the class, we learned basics of printing, from the parts of the press to how to operate it. We were then allowed to play around with wood lettering, metal lettering and two different types of presses.

Overall, it was an amazing class and I really enjoyed it. I definitely need to get back and practice once I have some more free time and eventually take the advanced class. One other thing I learned: I really enjoy operating heavy machinery!