Housekeeping #20180111 and Field Notes Ranking

Happy New Year! Hope you are all doing well.

This is to announce that the following pages have been updated here at Three Staples:

• Field Notes by Theme
• Field Notes: Item Numbers

There were a lot of Field Notes that came out near the end of last year, so I tried to include as many details as I can. Let me if know if I missed anything.

Also, it’s been on the back of my mind for a while, but I finally decided to remove the Field Notes Ranking on My Field Notes page.

My reason is simple. It just doesn't feel fair anymore. Ranking has been a fun accompaniment to one of my original goals, of looking back on older quarterly editions of Field Notes and sharing my opinions. Now that I’m done with that phase, I think it’s better to give the much newer editions some “distance” (and time) before I can start comparing them to the older ones again. Plus, Field Notes is continuing to grow and experiment with different formats, so I suspect it’s only going to get more difficult (and unfair) to rank all of them , especially the “anomalies” (e.g. Byline and Dime Novel).

I’m already biased towards the older editions anyway, so this will have to do for now. Instead, I made a list of Top 5 Favorite Field Notes and a list of all the quarterly editions in chronological order, with links to respective posts I've written, so go take a look! :)

By the way, pictured at the top is all the Spring editions so far, except Utility from 2017. Are you ready for this year’s Spring release? Any guesses?

Updated Goal and Housekeeping #20161008

This post is to announce that I will be readjusting my goal here at Three Staples. I started this site more than 2 years ago with the goal of writing about every Field Notes COLORS edition in my possession. It sounded so simple. But what I didn’t realize then is that every season would bring a new edition that gets added to the to-do list, and that I wouldn’t write fast enough to reach that point where the only quarterly edition I’d have to cover is the newest one. I’ve been “catching up” by covering several old editions in between the newer ones, but I admit I’ve been feeling like I’m falling behind every quarter and guilty that I’m not “done” yet. That’s no fun. So I decided to draw the line somewhere.

That line is between Sweet Tooth (Spring 2016) and Byline (Summer 2016). My goal now will be to cover all COLORS editions that I have, up to and including Sweet Tooth, but excluding Expedition. I guess you can say Byline cemented my decision, as I simply couldn’t see myself writing about it any time soon, for lack of enthusiasm for it. While at it, I decided to throw in (out?) Expedition, too, for the same reason.

This doesn’t mean that I won’t be covering the newest quarterly editions. I enjoy writing about Field Notes, if you couldn’t tell by now, especially the ones I like. That’s why I set myself such a lofty goal in the first place. (Who knows, maybe one day I’ll change my mind and get to Byline and Expedition, too). But my first priority will be to finish everything up to Sweet Tooth. As it stands now, these editions are what's left: Just Below Zero, Mackinaw Autumn, Shelterwood, and Cold Horizon. Considering I wrote 7 FNC posts in 2015 and 5 so far this year (with a rough average of 18 hours per post), I project I'll be “done” some time early next year? 😅

Anyway, that’s what I'll be working on. In the meantime, here are some smaller updates to Three Staples:

• I updated my Field Notes rankings and added Lunacy to my collection gallery here. Byline isn’t ranked since I think it’s unfair to compare it to the rest of the COLORS editions. It’s in my gallery though, since that section is more of a visual reference and I’m being arbitrary.
• I’ve been updating the Field Notes by Theme page whenever I can, although it will be never be “complete”. Take a look in case you’ve never seen that corner of the site. I use it as a reference all the time.
• The FN item numbers post has also been updated with several new items, e.g. L.L. Bean, Chicago, Portland 3-packs, and Lunacy.

Hope you have a good and safe weekend, especially if you’re in the coastal areas.
♡ Jinnie