Along came a bumble bee...

So the other morning, I wake up for the day, go downstairs to the basement bathroom and begin my morning preparations for the day. With my glasses off, feeling around trying to find my contacts case, I suddenly see in the mirror this enormous black entity start crawling across the carpet behind me.  The cat was watching it bemusedly.

I lunge for my glasses (scared, of course, that it was some sort of spider on some homicidal mission to take control of my home in a baby-step effort to one day take over the world) and slipping them on stared, puzzled, at one of the largest bumble bees I've seen crawling over the carpet in my basement.

Unhappy bumble bee waiting to be released...

Why was she there? How did she get in? Is there a bumble nest somewhere in my finished basement? Why is my cat so entertained by bugs?

I love bees dearly, bumble bees and squash bees in particular, so I grabbed a notebook and a tupperware container, lifted the lady up, and took her on outside to greet the day.  She wasn't entirely happy with this turn of events, but happily flew off to visit some flowers in the garden.

So, it might be a sign; I picked Bumble* as my trail name for a reason, but I nevertheless proceeded to carve a cute bumble bee series that I hope to plant soon...

Runway clear; ready for take off.

Tomorrow, I'm off to the Remember the Railroads mini meet in St. Thomas, hosted by Big Blue Team.  I'm excited and looking very forward to it - the pasta salad is made and ready to go.

*Actually, it was BumbleAlong until recently.  But that was only because AtlasQuest wouldn't let me register Bumble as my trail name at the time, apparently because it was too close to some existing name.  On a whim, I tried to change it and it let me.  So there you go.

Happy Victoria Day long weekend!

There's nothing quite like a long weekend to get away from work and get back to important things. Like letterboxing.  This weekend, I went with a good friend of mine up to Milton to try our hands at the Ancient Greek Revellers series. We were successful and the carves and locations were fantastic.  We got a beautiful tour of the Mt. Nemo conservation area, as well as feasted upon by hungry black flies.  My ankles are still itching, but it was well worth it!

We were going to try some of the other Ancient Greek series, but it took us a lot longer than expected to ferret out these three boxes.  We had a great time though and were given some beautiful views as compensation for our time ;)

I'm now only two boxes away from having found 100 - the mini-meet scheduled for this coming weekend in St. Thomas should cure that.

However, the rain has started back up once again, so it's back to stamp carving yet again.  This means, however, that I have a whole stack of carves just waiting to be planted, so it's time for making the boxes and logbooks... I've tried my hand at making some log books as I have a terrible time finding any worth buying that are the right size. I'm trying to make the logbook part a little more enjoyable, and it's going well so far.  Luckily, I find a place before I begin to create a new box, so all these guys have homes, I just need some time to get out there.

Shouldn't have made that left turn at Albuquerque

Hello letterbox land!

So, the week is over, four day long weekend full of letterboxing planned.  Now, the weather is trying once again to thwart such activities, but I will not be swayed.  Even if I am soaked to the bone, so long as I can somehow figure out how to keep logbooks dry, I'm going.  Perhaps there should be rain safe icon on AtlasQuest...

This past weekend, I was fortunate enough to see the Bugs Bunny Symphony at the Sony Centre in Toronto (fantastic, flawless performance - loved the integration with the classic cartoons - if you have the opportunity to see it, GO!).  The performance along with it being Easter weekend has inspired me to carve a hitchhiking Bugs which I'll hopefully be able to plant this weekend in my travels, along with my other two ready-to-plant traditional boxes.

Since I don't really think there is any real spoiler in showing the hitchhiker image (which you'll probably never see in real life), here is the progress of the of the image and carve.  The top two left pics are the printed Bugs - I used both to create a Bugs that had his thumb out like a hitchhiker.  You then to the right of that see a part-way carve, then along the bottom, finishing and cleaning the waskawy wabbit up. 

 

Happy long weekend!

To love and hate logbooks

Disclaimer: As I am currently under the influence of heavy medications due to some recent significant dental work that involved drilling into my jaw bone, please note that none of the following comments reflect the opinions of either myself or anyone in the letterboxing community, but rather are the official view of the voices in my head.

The weather is killing me.  Yesterday it rained, and today it is raining and snowing. It has no business snowing on April 17th!  I have had a great letterboxing trek planned that has been thwarted two weekends in a row by weather.  I also have two boxes that are ready for planting, also thwarted by the rain.  And to make matters worse, my work has decided to replace all its photocopiers to these shiny new ones that, you guessed it, do not lend to transfers.  The Hamilton library system, also brand new non-boxy photocopiers. I've been all over town - all shiny new copiers. Aren't we just coming out of a recession??? Either the recession was a lie, or there is some huge conspiracy involving the big three photocopy machine makers, the banks, and the Harper government. It's the only logical answer.

Anyways, logbooks.  I hate 'em.  I love to carve, and the logbook always ends up as the last-minute what-the-heck-am-I-gonna-use-oh-shoot.  And if I have some little books, they are never compatible with whatever size lock and lock I'm going to use.  I'm also not that big on making them, except for those for my microboxes.

But on the other hand, I love finding boxing with logbooks containing multiple entries. There's nothing like coming to a relatively older box that has many entries that you can sit and peruse at your leisure. That's why I never understood why people want to be first finders... You end up stamping into an essentially blank log book.  I love books that are filled with stamps and fingerprints and short messages with stories of how the last few people found the box.

Unfortunately, there aren't many older boxes in my area.  Well, in fact, in my immediate area, all the boxes are mine so the issue is moot.  But thanks to the hard work of some of the original Ontario letterboxers, there are some amazing boxes around that have fantastic logbooks with lots of entries if I'm willing to travel.  However, state-side boxing is a completely different story.  I guess just from the sheer number of letterboxers in the US, when you find even a new letterbox there are already many, many entries in the log.

Grumble, grumble.

Mal... bad... in the Latin

I've been a bad blogger... BAD! Many apologies.  I'm happy to say though that since last post, I've been carving up a storm and planting and planting and planting and planting (and planting and planting).

And finally, just now, I've added my newest box, Hic Sunt Dracones, which is my favourite box at this point and has been in the works almost since the beginning.  I had carved this difficult stamp months ago knowing where I wanted to put it and how I wanted the clue.  Finally, tonight I put the finishing touches on my hand-drawn map and after having planted the box on the weekend, the clue is now live.

Now I just have to sit on pins and needles until someone (hopefully) finds it.  And not for nothing, but let's just say that *I* would want to be the first finder on my new box.  Just sayin'...

The sky is falling!

Okay, so over night last night the cities that I work and live in got dumped with snow.  We got 25 centimetres overnight and it is still snowing... 15 centimetres more are expected during the day today.  Almost everything around is closed and they're having trouble keeping up with clearing the roads.  At least, that's what I hear.  I have no idea as I am still in my pjs, watching daytime tv, and finishing up some work that I brought home yesterday.

Today is Groundhog Day - and therefore OPAL day.  Poor little groundhogs - they should just stay in bed, no reason to come out after this kind of snowstorm.  But, it does reinforce the fact that while there are few letterboxes in Ontario, there are even fewer winter-friendly ones.

So, I prepared a few winter-friendly boxes, they are out there in the wild, and now all posted and available on Atlas Quest. Unfortunately, I didn't get three out that I had made - due to timing and the weather - and now I think they're giving me sad little looks.  Oh well, they'll get planted soon enough.

Here are the boxes I planted for OPAL 2011, all winter accessible:
Buzz...
Unless
Bottoms Up!
I Don't Want to Be Among Mad People
Literary Cats
I Knew Him Well
Niagara Region Wines
Spring's First Flower

Happy trails!

Still here, carving away.

I haven't skipped town for sunnier pastures (yet), I've been happily carving and planting away in anticipation of OPAL on February 2nd. Nothing like an actual event to inspire me!  I'm in the double digits now... and won't stop until I run out of time.

Today's carve, transferred onto pink stuff with a blender pen...

But, since my last post: I've gone to my first letterboxing event, met some cool carvers, found a number of boxes, planted a number of boxes, planted an HHH and a mess of HHs, and carved to my little heart's content.

One new thing I've discovered is the blender pen.  I've used acetone on cotton in the past to try to get transfers from toner-based copies onto my carving mediums - usually to much disappointment resulting in the need to retouch the images by hand.  But, the new blender pen - which contains xylene - works in the exact same way, but in the convenient form of a marker.  Also, because it's specific purpose is to do these types of transfers, the quality of the active chemical is such that I'm getting much better transfers.

Can't wait for spring and some proper letterboxing... This freezing cold is starting to get to me.

Carve, carve, carve!

So the holidays are now long over, and I managed to hide one box and one hitchhikers' hostel over the holidays, though no finds for me.  Not long after, both boxes were found (which I find comforting - I hid something someone wanted to find and it was found before it could go missing, phew).  Tragically, I still have one box that I planted last September that hasn't been found.  It has a time limit on it due to the impending destruction of the location of the hide, so I feel bad for the little feller...

This weekend has been very fruitful on the box creation front.  I carved five stamps, completed three boxes, managed to hide one, as well as took advantage of DeSerres' current sale on ColorBox inks.  I have two series on the go, and various singles boxes finished or in the works, all leading up to Ontario Plant a Letterbox Day.  Crossing fingers and hoping for the best.

Mastercarve

Well, I've just finished my first stamp using Mastercarve.  Generally speaking, I don't think I would use it again.  The material itself is far too spongy for my liking making it difficult to carve (the small parts move to get away from the blade).

Potential spoilers below (I may or may not be actually planting this carve; I don't think anyone will actually know what the carve is supposed to be.)

For your viewing pleasure, some badly taken pictures of the carve as well as the first stamp - all prior to be cleaning the image up:

Christmas Came Early!

So last Friday was like... well, Christmas.  I finally received a big package from the US filled with a variety of new (to me, anyway) carving materials thanks to Stampeaz.  As you can see, I ordered the new Firmcut, Speedy Carve, a wee linoblock and a block of Mastercarve.

I was super busy last Friday night and over the weekend, but was just itching to carve something with some of the new materials... I now have a number of projects underway.

So far, the only material I have used  is the Firmcut which I actually quite like. I had seen some comments elsewhere that folks felt that it was not picking up ink due to its shine and that it was difficult to carve.  So, I tried it out so that I could see for myself.  I carved a stamp that has a lot of ink space and it worked marvelously.  [If you want to see the results, all you have to do is find But They're Starving!]

The material upholds its namesake: it sure is firm, but I quite like it.  You do have to intentionally end a cut with it, but I think sometimes I mess up the ends of carving strokes by letting the pieces break off at the end.  So, I consider this a plus.  I would definitely use this material again... I have lots left, so I anticipate many new boxes of this to come.
 
I plan to use the other materials and let you know what I think, but I'm not quite there yet.  But I will leave you with an open letter to the Staedtler company:

Dear Staedtler;


I am given to understand from your international website that you are an over 100 year-old German company specializing in arts and stationary products.  I thank you for your contributions to the arts community and efforts to improve the products that bring such joy.


However, I must insist that you cease and desist with your inaccurate descriptions of the sizes of your artist carving blocks.  As a German company, from a nation that operates under the metric system, I would have expected that if an error in measurement occurred, it would have been to the imperial measurements, not the metric ones.


It is a shocking to suggest that 2.5 inches is equivalent to 6.4 millimetres or that 0.75 inches equals 1.9 millimetres.  Both of these measurements are inaccurate by an order of magnitude. Now, likely, you have mis-labeled your products with millimetres when it should accurately read centimetres.  However, this is a grave mathematical error the effects of which have far reaching implications!


For example, would you ever consider a fox to be the same size as a bird? No, it's ten times larger! Or a cat the same size as a mouse? No, it's at least ten times larger!  What if a mouse thought, "Why should I be scared of that old cat? Staedtler says we're the same size! I think that we should be friends!" I think we both know what would happen to that poor mouse, Staedtler, I think we both know.


And so, I implore you to recheck all of your size measurements.  The dramatic impact of your wanton misuse of the metric system can have impacts that no one could even anticipate.  

And please, think of the mouse.


Sincerely,
Bumble