From the Compost Heap header. A pencil style illustration of a compost heap with flowers and plants growing around it. A bee buzzes by and a white rabbit hops by.

  • Time, Time, Time ⌛

    It feels like years since I’ve written.*

    Since then…

    the Wheel of Time Season 3 trailer dropped.

    Season 3 is airing in March – just in time for my birthday.

    If you love fantasy books like Lord of the Rings… I’d love for you to give this a watch next month and nerd out with me. Even if you haven’t read the books – the visual design and performances for this show are so stunning I’d really recommend watching first and then diving into the books.

    This season is based on my favorite book in the series!

    The Shadow Rising is when Wheel of Time steps away from Tolkien and starts being it’s own thing.

    Half the characters travel to the desert and meet a complex warrior culture. The others go hunting down some very dangerous women. The layers build from there! I can’t even mention my two favorite parts because they are too spoilerific, but check this image out:

    A misty location with two figures suspended within three silver rings

    Don’t you want to know what’s happening there?

    I’m dying to see this scene. It happens “off page” in the books. 👀

    [This Clip Contains Spoilers]

    If you’re a book reader (or just don’t care about spoilers) here is the first scene of Season 3. We are starting out with a bang!

    What else happened this month?

    Well… I completely redesigned my website. 😂

    It’s still “under construction” so pardon my dust (and broken links) as you’re poking around. I hope to “unveil” the new site properly next month.

    I wrote a few posts including this one about website design as worldmaking. My old website was a minimalist website (which lives on as a virtual art gallery.) But I’m letting the rest of my site be weirder and more me.

    I hope it will sprawl and grow into a proper labyrinth.

    I’ve been having a lot of fun with visuals and texture. But my favorite detail so far is this “page not found” design, which feels very me.

    Screencap of Sarahshotts.com 404 page. "You've fallen down a rabbit hole" and Tenniel illustration of White Knight from Alice in Wonderland stuck upside down with his legs poking out of the ground. "What you're looking for is no longer at this location."

    If you want to read the boring reasons about why I’m switching web & newsletter platforms I’ve written about my online ecosystem here.

    I’m leveling up my zines!

    This month I used a printing press to make the February zine.

    You can see the process (including a timelapse video) here. You can also see a mini Wheel of Time zine I made. I’m going to print them up and leave them around town as guerrilla fan marketing. (Let me know if you’d like to do the same and I’ll share the file.)

    READ ONLINE

    Now that I have a printing press I’ve added a $10 tier where you can subscribe for quarterly prints as well as zines.

    I’ve also realized that the time I’m spending on these zines has been growing each month. (Especially in contrast to the simple letters I started with.) So I’m phasing out pledges below $5. This means I have more freedom to play with color and multiple page zines if I’m so inspired.

    I’m also stepping away from Patreon and Substack to host subscriptions on my own website.†

    Everything in one spot. (Finally!)

    Works in Progress

    Here’s a peek at what else I’ve been working on this month.

    Soft sculpture of a brain made from baby clothes. One hemisphere is sewn from baby socks, onesies and washclothes. Scraps sit on a wooden table to the side.
    SOFT SCULPTURE BRAIN

    Nearly done with my soft sculpture brain sewn from baby clothes. I have two hemispheres complete and need to spend some time refining them and doing finishing work. (They’re a little unbalanced at the moment.)

    Nested rainbow hearts drawn with crayons. Rainbow sorted colored pencils and art supplies to the left.
    home education rhythm

    The transition from holiday chaos back to a normal routine is hard for neurodivergents. Here is how we’re finding our feet again and freedom within structure.

    Now that I’m integrating my various blogs into one location my archive is much larger than I realized.

    Here are a few highlights.

    This time in 2015

    Embracing my Inner Samwise

    This time in 2021

    Studio Tour

    This time in 2024

    From the kitchen table to NYC 🗽

    February seems to be a big month for me!

    It’s all that energy from surviving the holidays and getting back into a rhythm.

    (You can browse the February archive here.)

    I’m planning to move the archives month by month. Motivated in part by sharing this time hop with you. Which means (if all goes to plan) I’ll be done by next February. ‡

    The Compost Heap is handmade without the use of AI. 🐝

    Support doing things the old fashioned way by joining my Patrons ($5) and I’ll send paper copies of my zines with the coolest postage stamps I can find.

    Not About TETRIS zine on a wooden table. The title is letterpress printed and three printed blocks in purple pink and yellow are arranged as if to pile up.

    Not into snail mail?

    Here are other ways you can support.

    • Share with a friend. (It’s free!)
    • Art swap! Let me know if you’d like to swap your art for a zine.
    • Buy a book or zine from my (new!) shop.
    • Link to me in your newsletter.
    • Send me a recommendation for something (book, blog post, movie, recipe, you name it!)
    Drawing of a tin can telephone and the words Let's chat

    I’d love to hear from you.

    Hit reply to email me directly.

    Let’s talk web design, printmaking, or Wheel of Time. 🥰

    Thanks for being here.

    I appreciate you.

    Sarah signed with a swoopy S

    Compost Heap Illustrations by

    Gracie Klumpp of Leave the Fingerprints. 🐞

    Footnotes

    * To share the Neuro Nest Retreat. The workshops were all recorded so you can still join in here. I’d love to have a weaving from you. (Yes, you!)

    † Substack supporters will continue to be charged through Stripe. Patreon has been shut down so anyone supporting there will need to resubscribe. (You should already have emails from those platforms, but if you have any questions at all just ask.)

    ‡ Something I’ve learned by moving blogging platforms a couple of times is that something always goes funky. Formatting is strange. Photos are hotlinked. Multimedia elements (audio, video, embeds) are missing or broken. And hardly anything has alt text. I’m using this chance to dust all the cobwebs before making posts public.

    Read more: Time, Time, Time ⌛

  • Refining my Online Ecosystem

    After trying out several different blogging and newsletter platforms here’s what I’ve settled on for 2025 (and hopefully beyond!)

    No affiliate links. Just sharing in case it’s helpful.

    Newsletter 💌

    This month I transitioned my monthly newsletter to Buttondown. It’s a paid service, but they do not take a percentage of paid subscriptions. The main reason I chose to move is that Buttondown offers RSS-to-email. Which means it can auto publish your blog posts as a newsletter! This is going to save me HOURS of formatting.

    Beehiiv almost solved this problem by doing the opposite. But the blog posts were always badly formatted with HTML garble-de-gook I had to delete. I did a quick test with Buttondown and the process is super clean.

    I’ve also been able to transition my paid subscribers who more than cover the cost. (I will say Substack’s AI Chat Bot made this as hard as possible, but Buttondown’s customer service is really helpful. Definitely a case of “you get what you pay for.”

    Blog ✏️

    After trying A LOT of blogging platforms I’m back on WordPress.org where I can have everything under one roof. I used WP years ago and wish I’d never moved away. There’s nothing like WordPress when it comes to robust blogging systems.

    I’ve set up a blog with multiple categories (Compost Heap, Zines, Photos, Scraps) and a tag system and I’ll be moving over archives one month at a time. I’m really excited to invest my time into my own website rather than pouring it out into social media.

    WordPress.org is free, but you have to pay for hosting. I’m using Hostinger and it’s too soon to recommend it, but I’ve found their platform easy to manage so far (versus others I’ve used and hated *cough* Bluehost *cough*.) I also love OnlyDomains for easy domain name registration and hosting.

    Podcast 🎧

    I’m also moving my podcast off Substack and back to Red Circle. Because I was an early adopter I was grandfathered in to a lifetime free plan so I may as well be using that.

    Moving the archives and show notes is a long term project.

    Which brings me to…

    Taking my TIme ⌛

    I confess that I haven’t made a clean break with Substack yet.

    At some point I might leave completely, but I may as well take my time with the transition. I’ve taken the nuclear option in the past and lots posts and regretted it.

    There are a few reasons:

    1. I have 172 posts that need to be moved. Many of them are multimedia and have elements that do not export and import easily. If you export Substack files and import to WordPress the photos don’t move and you have to do it manually. (It looks like they are there, but they are loading the photos from Substack’s servers.) It doesn’t even try to move audio files, transcripts, etc. So Self Pub 101 and Crowdfunding 101 will remain there for now.
    2. Anyone who has linked to Substack posts I’ve written will be looking for them there. As I transition out I can leave a breadcrumb for people to find the post on my website, but there’s no quick and easy way to do this.
    3. Since I’m staying for the reasons above I’m also going to take advantage of the “network effects” while they last. Maintaining Substack (my own and Neurokind) as a quarterly newsletter for my publishing imprint.
    4. Keeping a portion of my list on Substack keeps me under the 900 subscriber threshold (when Buttondown when the prices triple.) Anyone who hasn’t opened an email since moving off Substack was moved back into that ecosystem.

    Read more: Refining my Online Ecosystem

  • I remember the moment I discovered kening zhu’s website.

    I was taking a break from Substack and discovered are.na.

    It followed a warren of rabbit holes chasing one link after another until I landed on kening’s homepage.

    I won’t spoil the surprise for anyone who hasn’t been there, but I was filled with delight and curiosity and wonder.

    When I set about to move webhosts I started recreating my minimalist artist’s gallery. But it didn’t feel right.

    Serendipity (or magic) kening’s podcast episode Website as Cocoon waited in my podcast reader and was just what I needed to hear.

    I pulled out my journal and started scribbling lists of places I wanted in my online world. I could still have an art gallery, but the rest of my site would expand to hold the whole of me. And, perhaps, the whole of you.

    Vintage blue constellation map including Lupus the rabbit and other zodiac signs

    I followed links to a constellation of other podcasts and blog posts from kening about websites and creative process.

    It felt like connecting with kindred spirit over an endless pot of tea.

    So grateful for the invitation to inhabit a dreaming space while I recreated my website.

    Click here to tumble into kening’s world.

    Read more: untitled post 156077992

  • This month I’ve undertaken a HUGE task of bringing all of my chickens home to roost on my own website. It’s going to take time to move all of the archives, but now everything (blog, newsletter, shop, portfolio, microblog) all live under sarahshotts.com

    I’m also taking this opportunity to make my website more me. It was previously very minimalist in the fine art style. I’ve retained that for my gallery / portfolio, but bringing in more texture and personality to the rest of my site.

    For example. My broken link page:

    Screencap of Sarahshotts.com 404 page. "You've fallen down a rabbit hole" and Tenniel illustration of White Knight from Alice in Wonderland stuck upside down with his legs poking out of the ground. "What you're looking for is no longer at this location."

    I’m also working really hard on alt text for accessibility and moving posts one at a time because trying to import them was (and always is) a big mess.

    I’ve spent SO MUCH time on it this month, but moving forward I’ll try to archive March posts in March and then I’ll be done by this time next year.

    I wrote a bit about the process (and 90’s nostalgia) here.

    Read more: untitled post 156077746

  • Back in the 90’s when we built websites we would often put “under construction” banners and GIFS on pages we were still building. This Lemmings one was one of my favorites. (Tai’shar to whomever archived these from Geocities.)

    Lemmings was also one of my favorite computer games growing up. Little characters (more like Fraggles than real life lemmings) would pour out of a trap door and you’d try to usher as many as possible safely to the exit. Each Lemming could have a job like digging or building or blocking unsafe areas.

    Screenshot of 90s Lemmings game. A row of blue and green figures walk across an indoor cave.

    So this little banner of Lemmings building a Coming Soon sign is super nostalgic.

    Over the last week my website has been “under construction” as I move from Squarespace to WordPress. By the time you’re seeing this the dust may have settled, but right now my domain name is in limbo. My site is kind of working, but my email is not. My shop is down. And I haven’t worked out all the design details the way I want.

    Last year I orbited closer and closer to old school blogging. I started a digital garden with Obsidian and tried the micro.blog platform. They were an easy entry, but I realized more and more I wanted my own blog and I wanted more control than any of those platforms gave me.

    So here I am.

    Bringing my various dragons home to roost.

    My intention is to carve out a space here to share the types of things that I used to post on social media.

    To own my archive.

    And do my best to future proof what I’m creating.

    If you’re doing the same I’d love to hear from you.

    Shoutout to GifCities of Internet Archive for the 90s style gifs.

    Read more: untitled post 636