The Snowpocalypse

Living on the southern end of Central Ohio, I fortunately missed out on the worst of the massive snowstorm. We did get some ice and wind, and there's just a little snow flurrying down now. I haven't been out driving yet since I've been off of work for a couple of days, so tonight will be an adventure. Our power got knocked out a couple of times, but only for a few minutes each time, so luckily we didn't freeze to death. So looking forward to warmer weather! I've been working on some paintings since we haven't been able to really get out and do much, and I've tossed up a button over in the sidebar to my Etsy shop. Only it's mostly full of old stuff that's not so great right now, so don't look now, look back in like... a couple of days once I've got some stamps carved and paintings finished and things printed.

I have had so many projects on my plate, including helping out with a friend's comic project, getting started on my first comic. Hours have been cut at work, so while the time to just chill and do creative stuff has been nice, but as a result I've been stressing about finances and for the first time ever did my taxes just as soon as I got my W2. Can't have it all, I guess.

IT'S ALIVE

Sorry about the long silence, work sort of ate me alive for a few weeks, but that's what happens when most of your seasonal hires quit or do something to get themselves fired.. I'll be playing catch up here and my other personal sites in the coming week or so. I hope everyone had a great giftmas and is looking forward to a great new year!

Just a quick update, and a question!

First, I'd like to thank everyone for the comments on the cards I posted last time! I was especially happy to see some people describe them as exactly what I was going for. I've also acquired a little statcounter from AtlastQuest to put on the main page of this blog to keep track of my finds and whatnot.

We managed to wrangle a little time here and there to snag a couple more boxes, but over the weekend had the disappointing honor of not actually finding the box we were looking for. It was posted in a public park, so it's possible the box may have been found and removed by a nonletterboxer, or that it may have been washed out of its hiding spot by the heavy rain we had Thanksgiving weekend. In either event, I still need to contact the box's owner and see if it was a matter of the thing disappearing or a matter of us just not looking hard enough.

I tried to make use of the mobile blogging I mentioned in an earlier post to share some photos of the railway bridge that was one of our landmarks, but I couldn't get it to work; it just kept giving me an invalid number sort of message. I tried it as both text and numbers (bloggr/256447) but it wouldn't go through, so I ended up emailing them to share today. Any thoughts? I use an iPhone, and Blogspot's information page says that I should still be able to post with SMS instead of MMS; I certainly didn't have any trouble registering my phone.

 

Winter Holiday Cards

There was some small interest in seeing other random crap that I do, so until I hop back out in the field, here's some holiday-type cards I've been working on. These are all made with scrapbooking papers and cardstock, various paper punches and commercial stamps and it's really only my second venture into cardmaking. Three more after the jump!

The Kit and Mobile Blogging

Alright, I've got some clues scribbled up and I am going to go out and get those other two boxes I'd planned on getting the last excursion today. I snapped a couple of photos of the "kit" I've put together so far. You don't really need much to pursue letterboxing as a hobby, but there's a couple of things to make your hunts easier and more organized. As a side note, I signed up for Blogspot's mobile blogging, so now I can bring you notes from the field, as it were. It's pretty simple, you can simply send photos and messages via texts from your phone and it'll publish to either a special mobile blog or your existing blogspot account. I'll try it out to see how it goes later today.

Must Haves

• Letterboxing Clues: The most important thing. Most clue sites like Letterboxing.org and AtlasQuest let you print clues directly from their pages, you can write out the pertinent parts, or even carry your internet-enabled phone with you to look up clues without getting paper involved. In any event, you're not going to get far without these.
• Find Book: For recording your finds, obviously. The hemp and leather cover to the left is mine, the pages are unlined with a natural look to them, made from lokta paper. The one on the right is Red Wolf's, which is just a nice leather journal with lined pages and a brass clasp. You don't have to get fancy, any old sketchbook or journal will do, though I do recommend one with fairly smooth paper for optimum stamping results.
• Personal Stamp: Either handmade or commercial, whatever works for you to leave your mark. Something to keep your stamp safe in if it's unmounted like mine is a good idea, too--an empty CD jewel case is ideal. Some people don't even use a stamp, but leave their fingerprint instead!
• Inkpad: Apparently some people include inkpads for stamping in their boxes, but the vast majority don't. Why? Because it's generally a bad idea--many letterboxes spend years in their hiding spots, so between dramatic temperature shifts, moisture and time, even a quality inkpad could become useless pretty quickly. Some inks bleed more than others, some require a heat set depending on the paper you're stamping on, so experimenting to find out what's going to work best for the paper in your find book is a good idea. Personally, I'm a big fan of Ranger's Archival line. It's waterproof and extremely fade resistant, dries very quickly and generally leaves a nice impresion. The sepia pad you see in the photo above I've had for more than a decade for various light duty crafting, and it's still kicking.
•  Pen or Pencil: For recording details like dates and names in both your find book and the letterbox's log.

Additional Considerations

• Tough Shoes: Even if you're doing most of your hunting in suburban parks and cemeteries like I am, not all boxes are conveniently located and you may find yourself having to take short hikes or go through treelines and shrubs. Box clues usually indicate how much walking or hiking you'll have to do beforehand, but it never hurts to keep your feet dry and safe. 
• Compass: Some letterboxers give very specific directions using compass points and paces as well as stating landmarks. Obviously the sun sets in the west and lichen grows on the north side of trees, but it couldn't hurt to carry a compass to orient yourself with, or a compass app on your phone, if you want to cut down on the amount of stuff you're carrying. I happen to own a very nice compass, and I enjoy any excuse to use it.
• Flashlight: I wouldn't recommend looking for anything in the dark of night, but a flashlight can be extremely useful if you're hunting in a wooded or shaded area, or for getting an eyeful of just what might be down that hole or in that bush before you go sticking your arm in there.
• Flushable or Baby Wipes: Great for cleaning ink off of stamps so that they don't stain, also great for cleaning up dirty hands. If that's all you use them for, a single pack will last you quite a while, so it's inexpensive in the long run. Also, if you're out hiking around in the woods away from a public restroom... well, that's handy, too. A note about these though, the labels on these things say flushable, but I looked up a number of consumer reports that say that they really don't break down and are not as sewer or septic safe as they claim. I'm going to keep looking for a more environmentally friendly alternative to replace this box once it runs out.
• Bag: To carry all the other crap in one convenient place! Any old backpack or messenger bag should do, mine is kind of big since I'm typically carrying the gear for two people. Before the basketweave one in my recent photos, which was a last-minute Barnes & Noble purchase, I used a beaten up messenger bag I'd had for ages. Check out your local military surplus or thrift store to find something sturdy, or go to Etsy and support an independent craftsperson! Chances are more than likely if you see something you like but want certain changes, or have an idea, you can find someone talented to make you the perfect bag. Inner pockets are great idea--the zippered mesh portions on the inside of my bag have perfectly sized slots for everything I carry and thensome.

Hitchhikers

I went out and hit another box this past week, I had planned for three, but the sun is setting so quickly these days and cemeteries and parks generally close at dark. We had a couple of mishaps that took a couple of big chunks out of our window of time, including the old messenger bag I've got my stuff thrown into falling apart in a very literal way. Not that stumbling around in the dark is a great way to find anything anyway, but I might be adding a flashlight to the kit.

In any event, we got an unexpected surprise in the box we did hunt up--our first hitchhiker! A hitchhiker is a sort of surprise letterbox find that travels around; a stamp and logbook to go with it that are sealed in a regular, stationary letterbox. Whoever finds it gets to stamp it with their personal stamp as normal, and then carry it from the location they found it to the next stationary letterbox they find. Ours started in Buffalo, NY, wound its way out in California and ended up here in central Ohio via Dayton and Yellow Springs. I'm not sure where to replant it yet, as I think the other two boxes I had lined out are a bit close, so I'm going to be looking into some boxes up in Union county and drop it off there next time I go visit my family, Thanksgiving probably. Including the hitchhiker, this brings my total number of finds up to four, which is not nearly enough! I'm probably going to send out notes to the planters I found tomorrow and then do some research on clues and really get some hunting done next trip.

Gold Medal hitchhiker by the Doctors B

There's a lengthier explanation of hitchhikers (also known as parasites) here for you to check out, along with links to the etiquette concerning them. I'd hoped to have more to share, but I spent a rare Saturday off tooling around Ohio's wine country and buying Amish cheese with people twenty to thirty years older than me. It was beautiful, we got a lot of great wine and cheese for fairly cheap, but being out in the countryside, all I could think about was how many letterboxes there must be planted all around the place.

With my bag having fallen apart though, I picked up a new one and so the next post will probably be showing of my shiny new bag and a discussion of just what should go into it.

Question!

Hey! I've got a really busy weekend lined out, but I'm planning on hitting up a couple of new boxes in the coming week and decided to leave a short list here as a quick note mostly to myself. I'm also curious to see what anybody would be interested in seeing me post on. The history and etiquette of letterboxing? Maybe related hobbies like geocaching, or sharing some of my stamped ATCs and cards and talking about the techniques I use with them? I work in retail, so I'm going to be super busy over a good part of the winter and won't have as much time to get bundled up and go out hunting, so I'm trying to plan out some other posts I can do while hiding from the snow and obnoxious customers.

I'm definitely going to be plotting out planting a box, or maybe a series of boxes myself, but I haven't decided on a theme and I want to find a good hiding spot that isn't treading on somebody else's plant site. I'd like to do something with a gothic theme which shouldn't really come as a shock to anyone, but I don't want it to be a lame card-store Halloween type look. I keep picturing this skull wrapped by an elaborately patterned bow, and I'm going to kick myself when it actually comes time to carve it. I am totally open to thoughts and suggestions.