<p>I&#8217;ve always loved contemplating life&#8217;s various doorways, and lingering to marvel whenever possible. A pregnant woman enters a hospital and leaves with a new baby and a new status. A couple on the eve of their wedding is simply engaged — but two become one once vows are exchanged. Overnight, renters become homeowners, students become graduates, while on the flip side, marriages dissolve and jobs are quit. For a few moments in every such evolution, everything (including our very identities) is in flux. </p>



<p>Meanwhile, we all walk through the seasons together and use them as a rough barometer of the passage of time. So while we are enjoying the summer&#8217;s last warm sigh right now, come the equinox of September 22, most of us will begin finding ourselves in chillier spaces.</p>



<p>Thus I was definitely intrigued to get an email from Richard W. Saunders, founder of <a href="https://foxandthistle.studio/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Fox &; Thistle Studio</a>, described as &#8220;a tangle of curiosity and creativity where I design graphics, upcycle discarded objects, collect vintage oddities, and try to tie it all together through my blog <a href="https://foxandthistle.studio/blogs/impetus-inaction" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">impetus inaction</a> [editor&#8217;s note: that literally translates from Latin as &#8216;attack of inaction&#8217;].&#8221; </p>



<p>Richard pitched a few products, the first of which is a calendar, and it reimagines time, or at least how we approach it. And this being planner season, how can I not share? The Fortnight Calendar is broken into two-week intervals. It aims to track time through natural rhythms, with an emphasis on lunar phases, celestial events, and solar symmetry. &#8220;The Fortnight Calendar invites us to slow down and notice the subtle changes happening all around us,&#8221; he wrote. &#8220;I think this aligns well with The Paper Nerd’s attention to thoughtful design and love for snail mail.&#8221;</p>



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<p>It absolutely does — and Richard&#8217;s range of greeting cards, called Offhand Cards for Common Situations take a similar cerebral approach I know this community will appreciate as well. So I pursued a Q&;A, which follows below.</p>



<p>SS: How long have you lived by the fortnight calendar? Even for those of us like me who cannot garden to save my life, does it seem to more closely echo human rhythms than the Gregorian calendar?</p>



<p>RWS: The calendar we use today was shaped centuries ago — built around festivals, spectacles, and taxation, to serve the needs of a very different society. It&#8217;s marked by deadlines, declarations, and fixed quarters. Efficient, but rigid. The Fortnight Calendar offers something different — a softer, more organic rhythm that invites us to slow down and reconnect with the cycles of light, lunar phases, and seasonal changes that have guided human life for millennia. It’s a reminder that time is not just something to be measured, but to be lived, observed, and experienced. For me, it’s a way of bridging the past with the future — by grounding our busy modern lives in the pulse of nature’s rhythms.</p>



<p>I’ve loosely followed some version of the fortnight calendar every year since my late twenties — mainly for gardening, but it’s also helped with travel planning and mapping out projects. </p>



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<p>SS: In <a href="https://foxandthistle.medium.com/a-year-in-light-23b4822d9ff2" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">a Medium post</a>, you describe the calendar itself well — but not how you originally came up with the idea. How did it come to you?</p>



<p>RWS: In 2009, I got a gig as caretaker for a lake house in North Carolina, and arrived just as the gardening season began. The property had these three overgrown terraces leading down to the lake — all rigged with irrigation, but wildly neglected. I cleared them and started planting, but the amount of space was overwhelming. I’d never had a garden that size, and I was constantly trying to keep track of what was going to be ready when — vegetable tags say things like “58 days to harvest.” So I scribbled out a simple garden calendar on poster board in two-week intervals, just to keep it all straight, and pinned it to the wall.</p>



<p>It was meant to be practical, but something about the rhythm stuck with me. Two weeks was long enough to slow down and notice incremental changes, but short enough to get a bird’s-eye view and look ahead. It grounded me. Every time I walked past it, I’d pencil in moon phases, or little trips we had planned, or guests coming to visit. I was even anticipating pesto salads based on when the first homegrown tomatoes would ripen — but not in a fussy or perfectionist kind of way, more in a messy, almost carefree way.</p>



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<p>SS: How has it affected your outlook on life? Your experience of life?</p>



<p>RWS: I’m a tactile person. I came up in an analog world — reading maps, writing down directions, learning things hands-on. That’s how I was taught to move through the world, and I try to help my daughter experience the world in that way too. Now, everything beeps: alerts, appointments, emails, turn-by-turn instructions to places I’ve been a hundred times. The world is noisier, <em>especially</em> in our heads. I used to give directions by landmarks — directions were a kind of storytelling. That’s how people shared information for tens of thousands of years, and it all changed in the blip of my lifetime.</p>



<p>The Fortnight Calendar helps me return to that analog mindset. It’s less about what’s next, and more about where I am — like finding myself inside a map of the year. This calendar offers directions, landmarks, and a narrative all at once. It reorients me, but gently — like noticing when the clover blooms, or the cicadas start chattering, or a meteor shower passes overhead. It’s a reminder to pause, to look up, to slow down. It’s practical in many ways, but it also quietly invites imagination, reflection, and reconnection.</p>



<p>SS: What kind of feedback have you received so far?</p>



<p>RWS: It’s been kind of all over the place — in a good way. I’ve heard from gardeners who love it, and my vegetable patch is very happy with me. I also know of someone using it to track when to add chemicals to their swimming pool. On the surface, it isn’t exactly a return to natural rhythms — but then again, is there anything more relaxing than drifting on a float, watching the trees sway?</p>



<p>I’ve also gotten suggestions for a school-year version, so I’m currently developing a &#8216;Cold Arc&#8217; edition that centers on the winter solstice and runs roughly from June through July the following year. It&#8217;s geared toward students, teachers, and researchers. My goal is to release two calendars each year. Now that I’ve lived with a printed version for a while, I’ve got a few design tweaks in mind for future editions, mostly to squeeze in every inch of writing space I can.</p>



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<p>SS: You describe your cards as Offhand Cards for Common Situations; For small mercies, emotional subpoenas, and full stops. So often, card senders have a hard time knowing exactly what to write — and these designs definitely help inspire a message! Which was the first card in the range to be born, and what were the circumstances?</p>



<p>RWS: The Cat’s Cradle Card was the first one I wrote. It came out of a long relationship that ended — not suddenly, but slowly, behind a facade of distractions. It’s a pattern many recognize: a particular kind of absence that hides behind being preoccupied. This card was my response to that.</p>



<p>The poem is how I closed the loop.</p>



<p>Originally, I thought the whole series would be breakup cards. But once I started designing them, it became clear that the themes behind breakups are often quieter than that — more complicated, less final. The series became an exploration of those hidden currents … when people fade, shift, stall, or drift.</p><div class="inline-post clearfix"><div class="see-also byline">See also</div><div id="block-wrap-72643" class="block-wrap-native block-wrap block-wrap-23 block-css-72643 block-wrap-classic columns__m--1 elements-design-3 block-ani block-skin-0 tipi-box block-wrap-thumbnail ppl-m-1 clearfix" data-id="72643" data-base="0"><div class="tipi-row-inner-style clearfix"><div class="tipi-row-inner-box contents sticky--wrap"><div class="block block-23 clearfix"><article class="tipi-xs-12 clearfix with-fi ani-base tipi-xs-typo split-1 split-design-1 loop-0 preview-thumbnail preview-23 elements-design-3 post-10019571 post type-post status-publish format-standard has-post-thumbnail hentry category-favorites tag-artists-to-watch tag-avenue-wrapping tag-barone-co tag-better-day-books tag-design tag-fun-folks tag-greeting-card-association tag-greeting-cards tag-paper-lady-denver tag-passion-on-paper tag-sarah-schwartz tag-sheryls-virtual-garden tag-stationery tag-stationery-blog tag-stationery-design tag-stationery-designer tag-the-paper-lady tag-the-paper-society tag-toute-petite tag-umlaut-brooklyn tag-willow-ivy" style="--animation-order:0"><div class="preview-mini-wrap clearfix"><div class="mask"><a href="https://thepapernerd.com/welcome-to-the-paper-society/" class="mask-img"><img width="100" height="100" src="https://i0.wp.com/thepapernerd.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/kicker.jpg?resize=100%2C100&;ssl=1" class="attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail wp-post-image" alt="" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/thepapernerd.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/kicker.jpg?resize=100%2C100&;ssl=1 100w, https://i0.wp.com/thepapernerd.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/kicker.jpg?resize=120%2C120&;ssl=1 120w, https://i0.wp.com/thepapernerd.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/kicker.jpg?resize=275%2C275&;ssl=1 275w, https://i0.wp.com/thepapernerd.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/kicker.jpg?resize=372%2C372&;ssl=1 372w, https://i0.wp.com/thepapernerd.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/kicker.jpg?resize=567%2C567&;ssl=1 567w, https://i0.wp.com/thepapernerd.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/kicker.jpg?resize=882%2C882&;ssl=1 882w, https://i0.wp.com/thepapernerd.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/kicker.jpg?resize=24%2C24&;ssl=1 24w, https://i0.wp.com/thepapernerd.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/kicker.jpg?resize=48%2C48&;ssl=1 48w, https://i0.wp.com/thepapernerd.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/kicker.jpg?resize=96%2C96&;ssl=1 96w, https://i0.wp.com/thepapernerd.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/kicker.jpg?resize=150%2C150&;ssl=1 150w, https://i0.wp.com/thepapernerd.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/kicker.jpg?resize=300%2C300&;ssl=1 300w, https://i0.wp.com/thepapernerd.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/kicker.jpg?resize=50%2C50&;ssl=1 50w, https://i0.wp.com/thepapernerd.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/kicker.jpg?zoom=2&;resize=100%2C100&;ssl=1 200w" sizes="(max-width: 100px) 100vw, 100px" /></a></div><div class="meta"><div class="byline byline-2 byline-cats-design-4"><div class="byline-part cats"><a href="https://thepapernerd.com/category/favorites/" style="color:#b79b0d" class="cat">Favorites</a></div></div><div class="title-wrap"><h3 class="title"><a href="https://thepapernerd.com/welcome-to-the-paper-society/">Welcome to The Paper Society</a></h3></div><div class="byline byline-3"><span class="byline-part date"><i class="tipi-i-calendar" aria-hidden="true"></i> <time class="entry-date published dateCreated flipboard-date" datetime="2025-09-25T17:58:02+00:00">September 25, 2025</time></span><span class="byline-part likes-count"><a href="#" class="tipi-like-count " data-pid="10019571"><span class="likes-heart"><i class="tipi-i-heart-o" aria-hidden="true"></i><i class="tipi-i-heart" aria-hidden="true"></i></span><span class="tipi-value">0</span></a></span></div></div></div></article></div></div></div></div></div></tipimidc>



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<p>SS: Do you have a favorite?</p>



<p>RWS: My personal favorite is the Stasis Encouragement Card. It came about midway through developing the series, and that’s when I realized these cards weren’t just about expression — they were about recognition. Sometimes the most meaningful thing one can do is communicate, “I see you.” Often we struggle to find the right words because it’s not <em>only</em> the words doing the lifting. Sometimes it’s the act of giving that carries most of the weight.</p>



<p>The caterpillar really resonates with me. There is always so much emphasis on transformation, but there’s also a critical period just before change happens, when one is still fattening up on all of the things that came before. A lot of people live in that spot — and it’s not always a bad thing. It&#8217;s necessary. There is a quote by Anaïs Nin: “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” That’s what this card is about. This card shifted the series’ focus to the giver’s recognition and reframed the exchange.</p>



<p>SS: What kind of feedback have you received so far?</p>



<p>RWS: I haven’t gotten a ton of feedback — yet. But the people who <em>get it</em> tend to get really excited. And that’s one of my favorite things: selling one card to someone who’s <em>all in</em> beats selling four met with a mild nod of indifference. This series isn’t meant to please everyone. These aren’t prepackaged sentiments looking for a Hallmark moment— they’re as messy and dynamic as the relationships we’re all trying to navigate.</p>



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<p>_______</p>



<p>Thank you so much Richard! Paper nerds in the wild, start your shop <a href="https://foxandthistle.studio/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">here</a>. Fox &; Thistle is also a physical studio in Hampton Roads, Virginia, offering a vintage bazaar and upcycled gallery of reclaimed objects. While you can purchase the 2025 Fortnight Calendar <a href="https://foxandthistle.studio/pages/2025-warm-arc-fortnight-calendar" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">here</a>, you can also scroll down and download it. It is even conveniently separately formatted for 8 1/2&#8243;x11&#8243; and 11&#8243;x17&#8243; sizes.</p>



<p>Just before Thanksgiving, Richard plans to release a 2026 Fortnight Calendar as well as the Cold Arc version he described above. In the meantime, you can subscribe to his free monthly newsletter, The Liminal, on his site, which releases each new moon. It features seasonal happenings like plants in bloom, animal activities, and celestial events, alongside inspirations behind his work, upcycling projects, and recent vintage highlights from auction. Richard describes it as a companion to his Fortnight Calendar and. asort of quilt patchwork of studio happenings. </p>



<p>Meanwhile, Richard is still setting up his wholesale system, so interested retailers, please email him directly at <a href="mailto:contact@foxandthistle.studio" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">contact@foxandthistle.studio</a>. </p>



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