Sapling Press is doing its bit to diminish the confusion about the perennially perplexing homonyms. Definitions on Sapling’s swag bag are directly from Webster’s. At the show, I carried stationery in it; if I rode a stationary bike, I could carry my gym gear in here.

Letterpress was here, there and everyware: cards and calendars, invitations and ephemera. I was delighted to see several letterpress collectives exhibiting for the first time. The Ladies of Letterpress had a corner booth, presenting the work of eight member printers. The let {her} press booth showcased the wares of five women-run letterpress companies from five different states. Both booths were generally abuzz.

As for Old Tom Foolery, note his typographic nose and moustache. Click here to be whisked to Old Tom’s new Field Guide to Typestaches poster. I also find Old Tom’s new Headlines Collection cards basically brilliant. They suit my funnybone to a tee — not a tee-hee, a full-fledged guffaw. Makes us wish the Old Tom Times were a real publication. We applaud the uncute visual humor.

Linda & Harriett scored a run to my home with their letterpress-printed 2011 calendar. When each month is over, you can cut off the picture part — a splendidly seasonal pattern — and send it as a postcard. The correspondence side looks vintage, and, if you are me, you will use a theme-y little postage stamp.

Graphically, I was mysteriously drawn to a big handful of designs at Maginating Letterpress + Design, the creation of former animation designer Brad Woods (he used to work for Pixar). Now he adds little legs, black button eyes and simple smiles to letters and numbers, packages and cakes, birds and flowers — and prints them himself. The results make me happy.

My personal favorite card of the show? the WORD UP card, from Greenwich Letterpress, which I plan to try hand-tinting with my colored pencils. (And here’s a heads-up about word up, in case you are non-loop or off-radar.) My runner-up faves include Hateful Pigeons from Whigby (in Toronto) and part-TAY from Prentiss Douthit (in Birmingham, Ala.).

I loved the low-key highly-recycle-y press kit from Wiley Valentine — including their alphabetically-adjacent WV monogram. And I hugely loved their new jumbo greetings.

For dessert, a trio of delicious detail photos: the Kamoi Kakoshi masking tape reference chart at the Sweet Bella booth, the bejewelled paper-stuffed mesh mannequin at Elements, and impeccable initial cards from Austin Press. Sigh and goodbye.

Alyson Kuhn thanks Debi Zeinert, guest calligrapher in the Smock booth, for penning my motto — or is it my mantra? — shown at the top of this post. Power to the Paper!