Craft Pick of the Week: The Regional Assembly of Text

Welcome to Craft Pick of the Week, a weekly column where I choose something crafty to wax poetic about. It may be a project that you can make yourself, a workshop to take, or the work of a local craftsperson to check out. This week it's a new storefront on Main Street run by Brandy Fedoruk and Rebecca Dolan called The Regional Assembly of Text. The Regional Assembly of Text is the kind of store that alternatively makes you think, "that's so beautiful" and "I wish that I'd thought of that".

Entering the Regional Assembly of Text (3934 Main Street), the decor makes you think of your granddad's rec room with a small helping of 50's office kitsch on the side-if that is, his rec room were decorated by a punk rock quilting bee. Behind the register there's a long wall of vintage filing cabinets, which made me want to leap over the counter and open every drawer. The atmosphere of the store gives you the feeling of snooping in someone's house and discovering great treasures.

The Regional Assembly of Text sells a wide variety of handmade good. Among my favorites were silkscreen stationary sets and old school notebooks, which featured airplanes, little birds and bicycles. These designs are also carried over to their mix and match gallery of printed t-shirts. You can flip through large felt books of designs, and choose your own combination to have silkscreened on an American Apparel t-shirts. Alligators, days of the week, and architectural plans-that's enough to sell me.

I love the idea of Regional Assembly's Button of the Month Club. You join up by purchasing a felt collector's banner, and the Regional Assembly will mail you a mini button a month. Similarly, they also have a book of the month club, where recipients will get a handmade artist book a month for a year. And the store certainly is the place to get anything monogrammed-tiny glasses etched with initials, floral stickers, quilted letter blocks and greeting cards with diecut lace-inset letters.

If, like me, this store makes you want to create more than shop-workshops are forthcoming. There will be a Christmas card making parties throughout November and December, and the Regional Assembly will also be hosting a letter writing club on November 17th in-store. They supply the pencils and stationary for writing, you bring a stamp and the inspiration to write. Check out their website Assembly of Text for details.