Second letterboxing day of the long weekend: Port Hope

The Salmon Run

Sunday of the long weekend started with some horrid humidity and some shockingly high temps - 40 C with the humidex.  Yuck.  And thunderstorms on the way... I ended up with a pretty bad headache halfway through the day which pretty much ended my day early, but I did get out and find some great boxes.

On route to Count Olaf. 

First, because it was on my way, I hit up Mallow Flower Up the Garden Path which I had missed last time.  Got it this time.  Moral of the story: either my legs or my stride is shorter than pretty much everyone else. Five of my steps in, and it was where it should be.  The red check mark will mock me no longer!

A little further up the highway, I stopped to give a go at studioloo's Count Olaf box in Bond Head. No success, but not a real thorough search though due to the crazy waves coming up the beach due to the oncoming storm.  The waves were actually so high that it was hitting me hard at the knees on the part of the beach where you should be able to find the box.  A little worried about being knocked over on the rocky beach, I put this one in my book for another search on a calm day.  But found some delightful sea glass on my way back to the car...

Green and blue (!) sea glass.

I then made my way out to Port Hope to find another of butterfly5's old boxes, Ganaraska River Fishway - Corbett's Dam Salmon Run.  Found this box without any trouble and took some serious time to go through the logbook and enjoy all the stamps and comments from visitors over the years. This box is now over seven years old.  Crazy.

The Salmon Run. Sans salmon.

I then tried to find Ganaraska River - Float your Fanny Down the Ganny also by butterfly5.  No go.  Once I figured out the clue, I tried unsuccessfully to find the box.  Not saying I had the right spot though - I think this is one I'd need another person to puzzle out the location with.  And, you know, to spot me if I fall in the river.  Which is highly possible.

I felt a headache coming on, but tried once more to get one more of butterfly5's boxes before I met up with Jay Birds, the Port Hope Waterfront Series (one of which is retired, only one box left).  The clues all worked just fine, got to the place where the box should be (and probably is) and was swarmed once again by European Fire Ants.  Stings on my foot this time.  Because the area was so overgrown, I couldn't get in and out of where the box was quickly in order to avoid the ants.  Having been stung and in pain, I gave up and headed out to Port Britian.  (Yes, I'm a quitter.)

Just beyond this image is a pack of ants that now have the taste for blood.

The clouds rolled in and Jay Birds and I only got to do her new excellent series, the Port Britian Parrotheads.  Any by "do", I mean walk around together chatting and then running like hell with the rain starting really coming down.  But, I did all three and then, head pounding, called it a day.

Gorgeous weather for letterboxing...

Hope you are all out letterboxing on this fine holiday Monday! I sure am!

First letterboxing day of the long weekend: Toronto

Today, I got up way too early for a long weekend to make it downtown for an appointment to get my hair done.  Once I got that out of the way, it was time for some letterboxing! (Finally!)

The beautiful Music Garden in Toronto

First off, I drove to the bottom of Spadina, parked, and went in search of Music Garden by tapeheads.  The clue took me to a place I'd never been before: the Toronto Music Gardens.  It was beautiful and fantastic!  The clue was spot on, the gardens were beautiful, and despite being in a busy part of the city, tapeheads found a wonderful secluded spot to plant this box.  Bravo!

Next, I swam (swam because it was so bloody hot out - 40 C with the humidex and smog alerts galore) up Spadina and over to the Skydome to find another of tapehead's boxes, Chinese Railroad Memorial.  To be honest, I used to see this monument on a regular basis but I never knew what the monument was for.  Thanks to letterboxing, now I do.

I then crawled (okay, it was really hot and I was slowly disintegrating here) along Bremner to the CN Tower to give a try at Big Blue Team's CN Tower letterbox. I had been really worried about finding the right spot, but I found it really quickly.  However, there was  sentry guarding its location.  I tried to wait her out, but the time was ticking on my parking pass and I needed to get back.  After half an hour, I gave up.  I will return...

He's just sad he has no head.

After slithering back to my car, and letting it run with the AC on full blast for a little while, I drove on over to the Distillery District to find a new box from an out of town letterboxer, The Mayor.  The box in question was Toronto: Hogtown and it was waiting for me right where the clue said it would be.  Three cheers from out of town letterboxers!

Back in my car, I headed one more time down to the bottom of Cherry Street again to try again at the third box of the Shot in Toronto series - I found the first two over a year ago.  I was assured that the box was there and there have been subsequent finds on it, so I was eager to get rid of that red check mark on the box and get the remaining stamp for my logbook.  No good: I did not find the box, but I did find an angry nest of European Fire Ants.  And got bitten.  Four times.  Man they hurt.  Next time I try this box, it will be in the winter, I assure you.  [Apparently these things are getting worse here, more info here.]

Also, on my way home, I stopped into Currie's and found some delightful letterboxing supplies...

Tomorrow, Port Hope and beyond!  Happy trails!

Letterboxing weekend ahead...

The clues have been searched, reviewed, tabulated, and printed.  Three day weekend, three different locations for letterboxes - it's going to be a very boxy weekend. 

Happy trails and have a great long weekend!

Carving tools for pumpkin carving

It's that time again: time to start putting some serious thought into the most important carving days of the year: the three days leading up to and including Hallowe'en.

Checked out the new Pumpkin Masters stencils at the local Michael's... Nothing that inspiring this year stencil-wise, but in the last 10 year or so, I think the better stencils can be found online.  I'll likely do a post about that in October.

However, if you want to do some serious pumpkin carving, just like carving stamps, one of the most important thing is the tools.  Pumpkin Masters put specialized carving tools on the map about 20 years or so ago, and I think they are still the best of the widely available types of tools.  But if you want some insight into what I think the best tools are to use, and what I use to do my pumpkins, keep reading.

Just like with stamp carving, whether gouge or knife, the size of the tip is important: the smaller the tip, the finer the cuts you can make and the more detail you can incorporate into the carve.  However, unlike stamp carving, the cutter you use does not need to be as sharp - it's a saw rather than a blade.

There's also the consideration of the strength of the saw: if the saw metal is too soft (or you're wrenching too hard in your sawing motion) the whole blade will bend and eventually break off of the handle.  Not good.





Three for $5 - or less if you use Michael's 40% off coupons. 





So, here is what I use almost exclusively in my carving - the Pumpkin Masters artificial pumpkin carving saws.  [Michael's doesn't carry a lot of these, and for whatever reason, they sell out - go buy some now if you want to use them at Hallowe'en, because they'll be long gone by then]  Note: I abhor artificial pumpkins.  It's disgusting and an affront to the holiday.  Please avoid.

Why I like the artificial pumpkin saws:

• Because they are built to cut plastic (yuck) rather than pumpkin flesh, the metal blade is stronger than the regular tools which can break after serious use (we carve in the neighbourhood of ~40 pumpkins a year)
• The blade tapers to the tip, becoming super-fine at the ends - finer than the skinniest of the regular pumpkin saws

Anyways, I wanted to post this now: I fully intend on posting some great how-tos on some detailed pumpkin carving for you talented stamp carvers out there, but if you don't get the tools you need now, then you may be a little irritated later.  If you want to see some of last year's carves, check out my old post here or here.

Happy Hallowe'en... err... trails!

Magic, letterboxing, & cinemagraphs

I’ve already posted about my love of magic in the world.  Some of you have also commented on the animated images that I often put up along with my posts – another thing I find magical and like to include – these are called cinemagraphs.  Essentially, they’re just animated gifs, which are just animated pictures that are pretty much as old as the internet. Unfortunately, they mostly look like this:

When, really, you can make them look like this:

I fell in love with the subtle style of it, like something was magically hidden within the image. Almost what you’d expect Harry Potter to see whilst traipsing through the halls of Hogwarts. But this feeling is not unlike how I feel about finding letterboxes; once I learned about letterboxing, it felt like there was magic hidden down every park trail.

So, I started posting some of my favourite cinemagraphs with my posts, always sort of sad that I couldn’t make my own – particularly of my letterboxing trips as a continuation of the magic in the woods.

Then one day while reading some blog post about the best iPhone camera apps to have, one came up that solved this problem for me, called Cinemagram. The review of it looked promising, so I bought it and had it with me for my last Guelph letterboxing adventure.



Near Blair's Sheaves Tower Letterbox.
Notice how the water goes out than reverses.
Now it can loop and go out only.

The app worked great to create these images on the fly (as in, literally, right on the trail walking back to my car) and I started using them in my posts as of that time. My only complaint was that the gifs made by that version of the app was that the images were looped by playing the video forwards, then backwards, then forwards again and so on.

Luckily, they updated the app almost the next day which included a toggle to switch that so that you could go forwards then loop right back to the beginning to start over in the animation.  To the right is an image from that day of letterboxing where you can see that problem.  At the bottom of the post is a more recent cinamagraph from when I checked up on one of my own letterboxes.

Anyways, I’m loving being able to make my own cinamagraphs. It's the perfect accompaniment to my travels and they are certainly something I intend to continue adding to my posts in the future.

The Rouge River on route to A Touch of Voodoo letterbox

Happy trails!

What to do with retired stamps

What do you do once you retire a stamp?  Not sure what the correct answer is, but my event stamp for Wink Wink, Nudge Nudge was taking up space on my desk so I posted it on the AtlasQuest exchange board and had a lucky new owner within an hour.

But as I started packing it for the mail, I felt a little... sad? nostalgic? So I pulled out some blank cards, made some prints, and have some sassy cards I can add to my card supply.  Hope the stamp likes its new home!

Although, watch the cardstock you use - the stuff I used here is too glossy and the ink is still not dry, a week later.

Watch out for the edges of big slabs of Speedy Carve

Ack.  I did it again.  I forgot to check my block of Speedy Carve for the bad edge that exists on some of the blocks.  Result?  I've carved too close to the edge and the registration sucks.  Grr...

Anyone who actually reads this blog probably knows about this problem, but for those who don't, here is the lowdown: Speedy Carve all seems to have a flaw where one of the edges slightly tapers off within about a half centimetre of one of the sides.  It's really hard to see when you look at a new block, so you need to take something flat and put it on the block to see if you can see daylight out one of the edges.  Simple solution is to just carve the opposite side or keep away from that edge.

Unfortunately, I've been carving so much lately with my new grey linoleum as well as the rest of my NZ Cut, that I completely forgot to check for that when I opened this new slab of Speedy Carve.

Kirbert eloquently talks about this problem in his excellent carving under the materials section of his site, here.

What I now do to solve this problem: write directly on the block where the problem is so I don't get too close.

I always have to remind myself to double check any carving block I use to make sure the material is even and flat... Any type of material can have flaws in it and I don't want to find out after I've done a complicated piece that there's one smack dab in the middle of my carve. Grrr.

Letterboxing: an "intriguing" pastime

Disclaimer: rant ahead.

 

 

Intriguing.  Ugh.  I can even remember when I first learned about letterboxing reading that word, "intriguing".  Nearly put me off the hobby all together, actually.

 

Somewhere, sometime, in letterboxing's history, someone wrote these words: "Letterboxing is an intriguing pastime..." And this has been reproduced.  Everywhere.  And I hate it.  And so, if you are the unfortunate soul who first used this unfortunate word, please turn away and go to some other website.  You should definitely spare yourself the rant that follows.

 

I should first say that there is nothing wrong with the word "intrigue" or any of its deriviatives. I found my favourite television show to ever be produced, LOST, to be very intriguing. But the producers of LOST never themselves said, LOST is an intriguing show.  And in that context, I have no issue with the word "intriguing".

 

However, when I first learned about letterboxing, I googled it and first went to the LBNA website and read as follows: "Letterboxing is an intriguing pastime..."  Ugh.  It made my skin crawl.  The very site promoting/supporting/enabling letterboxing called itself intriguing. My, isn't that self-serving.

 

Isn't something being intriguing in the eye of the beholder, so to speak? Merriam-Webster says the definition of intriguing is: engaging the interest to a marked degree, or fascinating.  Well, aren't I fascinating?  If I wrote in this blog that "I am an intriguing woman", your first thought would probably be, "that's for me to decide!". You'd think that I am in no position to know whether that is true (and also, htat I am narcissistic). I feel the same is true of a institutional-style website, such as LBNA or AtlasQuest who hold themselves out as being the letterboxing community, stating that letterboxing is an intriguing hobby. 

 

Now, as a matter of fact, I do find letterboxing to be intriguing.  Not all aspects of it anymore - I now find certain clues to be fascinating - but the not the initial intrigue that drew me in in first place (I discussed this here). I have no issue with any individual letterboxing proclaiming loud and clear that they find letterboxing intriguing - they are outside, independant observers who are stating their personal opinion.

 

So why am I ranting? Because I hate that phrase.  Hate it.  I hate that potential boxers who are searching out this hobby read on various websites that,

• "Letterboxing is an intriguing pastime combining navigational skills and rubber stamp artistry in a charming "treasure hunt" style outdoor quest." LBNA
• "Letterboxing is an intriguing pastime combining artistic ability with "treasure-hunts" in parks, forests, and cities around the world."  AtlasQuest

And worse, these are further picked up and quoted all over the web when answering the question, "what is letterboxing?".

 

I have no doubt people will find letterboxing intriguing.  I hope they do, it's part of what gives magic to this hobby.  But can't we demonstrate the intrigue rather than self-servingly say that it is so?

 

/rant

Other things I obsessively do with my hands

Other than carving stamps, I spend a great deal of time removing and applying nail polish.  I love nail polish. I have a huge box of all kinds of different colours and types, and I probably redo my nails in the neighbourhood of 2-3 times per week.  Just like carving, I do it while catching up on tv shows or movies.

You will notice there is no carving material or letterboxing in this image.