stationery – Deborah Makarios

March 24, 2026March 24, 2026

Delectable Stationery Alert!

Behold:

A small book covered in a red fabric with quantities of stylized floral ornamentation in gold and silver. Next to it, a fountain pen in brown wood.

This delectable morsel of stationeryhood is a silk sari journal made by Love Calcutta Arts, a business which exists to provide women with the option of employment that isn’t the sex trade. A lot of LCA’s products involve what is popularly known as upcycling: turning old saris into kitchen trivets, quilted coverlets, or book upholstery.

The sari-covered journals come in two sizes (small: 11cm x 13.5cm x 40 leaves; large: 15cm x 18.5cm x 60 leaves) and a range of colour groups: red, green, purple, orange, black, and pink. And because they aren’t mass-produced in a factory, but instead made by carefully trained craftswomen in a workshop, they are all different.

My one (let’s be honest: my first one) is Small and Red.

A small fabric-covered book sitting slightly open on its open edge. The near part of the spine appears red, but the further part and the covers appear to be a mix of green tones.

OR IS IT??

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May 28, 2020May 28, 2020

7 Things My Desk Says

About me, that is. What it would probably say if given free rein is “help, I’m being buried alive!” Except, of course, for the trifling point that it is not alive, being neither made of sapient pearwood, nor belonging to someone who has refused hospitality to a French enchantress lately.

But what my desk says about me is Quite A Lot, and not all of it flattering. So here is the dirt the desk would dish: seven things one can deduce about me from my desk – or at least the top of it, because even I cannot give you a clear account of what exactly I have in the cupboard and drawers thereof (which tells you something about me all by itself).

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July 30, 2019

Grand Productivity Experiment: Phase Six… Manageable

Wombling, it turns out, is a great way to get things done when you’re tired, under the weather, or trying to fit things in around other, bigger things. Despite ongoing tiredness, I managed to get the bare necessities done and a few other things around them.

And yes, I did succumb to the temptation to browse an atlas, although I admit that I browsed the index rather than the map pages. (A quick eyes-closed stab at a random map page suggests the name Qoraqalpog’iston, which, if like me you didn’t know, is in Uzbekistan, near the border with Kazakhstan.)

Never stick a pin into an atlas. It’s a source of knowledge, not an international voodoo doll.

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