Cycles Perfecta

In honor of "Ride Your Bike To Work Week", here's a bicycle-themed LTC. The stamp was originally carved for the first Mucha ring last year (which was absolutely amazing!) and, yes, the stamp is actually 2.5 x 3.5 (well, it's actually a little smaller since there's a little border on the cards). My favorite part was carving the hair. I love carving flowing hair-it's so fun!

It's colored with my trusty set of colored pencils. I honestly don't know why I like to use colored pencils on so many of my cards. It takes forever to color them, yet I do it over and over. It just looks so pretty.

I'll probably end up planting this stamp eventually. I kind of want to put it near a bike path (for obvious reasons), but this is one of those stamps where if it goes missing, I am not carving it again. I nearly went cross-eyed carving it the first time! Maybe I'll think about putting it in a bike shop. Less chance of it going missing. Hmm...

The Age Old Question

Last year, I sent out a postal that attempted to answer one of the greatest questions known to man: Who would win in a fight, pirates or ninjas?

After crisscrossing the country, visiting letterboxers, attending gatherings, and avoiding traps by the various anti-pirate and anti-ninja factions, it has returned home!

Here are the results:

Pirates would win in a fight: 19 votes
Ninjas would win in a fight: 21 votes

And one write-in vote for dinosaurs eating them all.

Read on for the highly scientific and totally based in fact reasons for voting.

Pro-Pirate:

"They have no moral code...while the ninja is whipping around, the pirate will use his cutlass." -Dewberry

"We may be drunks, but we are deadly! Slow of wit but sharp of blade, we shall rule the world!" -Kittenwithoutmittens

"Ninjas require a full face mask, but pirates can make do with but an eyepatch. And besides, pirates have a kick-butt flag!" -wassamatta u

"They have way cooler outfits and get to sail around in awesome ships!" -Bikercats

"Rat Queen says that if a ninja was after her, she'd run away. But if a pirate was after her, she would run away screaming. Mr. M7 says that the pirates would win because they have no honor. We all agree that dinosaurs would eat them all." -Murray7

"Pirates have the best music! Jigs, reels, hornpipes and Wages of Sin is a cool pirate-punk band!" -dbltall

"While the ninjas have the turtles, the pirates have Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom. Plus pirates have cannons, guns and swords." -Team MTpt101

"They are like the Peter Pan of the sea. Stealing from the colonial powers who were stealing from the natives." -Anthrogradjess

"Mama Fox and Baby Fox are on the pirate side and it has nothing to do with Johnny Depp as Capt. Sparrow-ok, well, a little. And pirates have much cooler clothes and get to hang out at the beach-what more do you need?" -The Little Foxes

"With pirates as good looking as Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom, we'll always win!" -Mama Bear

"The clothes say it all...one has style, the other is boring! And the weapons...little flying discs vs a cutlass & a black powder pistol." -Feather

Pro-Ninja:

"My sons are adamant that the ninja is the superior fighter-they think it's no contest!" -Dewberry

"This Jedi votes ninja-training is everything!" -SHH/The Inky Jedi

"I'm with the Jedi. My heart is with the pirates, but the ninjas have ruthlessness and discipline. A scary combination." -Dale End Farm

"Ninjas are sneaky. Pirates are drunk. Ninjas have stars and can attack from afar. Pirates are drunk and fumble for a sword. Ninjas are quiet and can stay that way for a long time. Pirates are always singing about drinking while they are drunk." -Littlemonkey

"The pirate might put up a good fight, but ninjas are scary, deadly dudes." -Celtic Quinn

"The pirates would be drunk and the well-trained ninjas would quietly take out each pirate till they were all 'dealt' with." -NeNe

"The pirates would be more fun at a party, but in a fight, the well-trained ninjas would win." -The Box Hunters

"1. Ninjas are mammals. 2. Ninjas fight ALL the time. 3. The purpose of the ninja is to flip out and kill people." -AfghanPenguin

"Ninjas have way better movies. Also, you only need one ninja to defeat a whole crew of pirates." -Lucky Charm

"Ninjas are awesome!" -DK

"While I think it would be great fun to hang out with Orlando Bloom (*wink*), I do think the ninjas could win battles-so ruthless and deadly." -Scrapper

"Foxy boy is convinced Ninjas would win...they are much sneakier and more elusive." -The Little Foxes

"Ninjas are totally cool!" -Baby Bear

"Ninjas would win-with the power of the cat." -Team BearCat

"I visited a ninja house in Japan and know that they are disciplined, sharp and STEALTHY." -Cat Eyes

"Ninjas are best because they wear black and they don't have to worry about getting seasick." -PAWS

"Stealth, agility, grace and incredible bodies-ninjas all the way! Besides, with all that rum pirates drink, they're too pickled to win!" -mudflinginfools

"Ninjas all the way! They are too quick for any pirates to get their swords or guns out!"-Gargoyle Girl

"They are better at distance and stealth fighting. Ninjas do have a code of honor, but that does not mean they are slow or weak! It is an advantage to be organized and disciplined." -The Gillespie Tribe

More Schoolin'

The class I'm taking this semester is about user instruction, which means it's really an introduction to teaching theories and methods. And, of course, some actual teaching. I avoid getting in front of a crowd to speak whenever possible and even if you meet me on a one-on-one basis, I'm really quiet. Needless to say, I'm counting down the days until the class is over.

I'm in the process of working on my final project for the class. It's a 45 minute lesson on something involving the library science field I want to go into once I graduate. Since my areas of interest are special libraries and archives (which, coincidentally, has the least amount of user instruction) it's a bit harder to figure out what I want to teach. The other people in my class are all going into school media centers, academic libraries or public libraries (which all involve lots and lots of user instruction), so they've been doing the usual "This is how the catalog works, etc, etc." The only other archives student in my class made up an archive (that specialized in artifacts relating to pirates, yar!) and went over the rules and how to use a finding aide. I'm going to focus on corporate libraries and do a re-interpretation of a presentation that I've sat through at work.

And because of my procrastinating ways, I have two weeks to pull it together. I'm hoping to get a large part of it done this weekend while the weather is certainly un-springlike. As I type this, I'm watching the falling snow being whipped around by the wind. It's April! At least the snow isn't sticking. If the weather was nicer, I'd be seriously tempted to go out and find my first letterbox of the year now that most of the snow has melted. I have a serious itch to go letterboxing, but haven't been able to all winter since we've had a continuous snow cover since December. If I get enough work done this week, maybe I'll escape out to the woods next weekend and find a box or two. If not, then I'll get my fix at the Northern Iowa gathering in May and the Great Lakes gathering at the end of May. I don't know how much 'boxing I'll get to do as the host of the gathering, but that whole week is going to be like one big party for me. There's Memorial Day on Monday, my birthday on that Thursday, and then the gathering on Saturday. Maybe I'll finally break 300 finds for my birthday!

Enough procrastinating for now...

Stella!

No, not that Stella!

I originally carved Stella for a postal ring. She's just a piece of clip art that I received from the weekly Dover Sampler email (it's from the publishers of all the Dover books-things like clip art, textures, etc. Every week they send out a free email that has samplers from their various publications. There's a lot of good material for stamps-like Stella!). I carved her in about an hour and a half, which just seems amazing when I look at all those little stars. She's about 3.5 inches tall and about an inch and a half wide. As a postal, she was almost lost twice and now that she's safely home, I don't think I'll ever plant her in the wild since I love the stamp too much. That seems a little silly, since it's just a piece of rubber, but I would be heartbroken if she went missing.

The "Stella" LTC is black paper with gold glitter, gold paper and then Stella stamped in black.

The Perfect Latte

The Tea LTC group decided to move on to coffee for the next round. I chose to do my favorite coffee drink-a latte (well, a skim latte with plenty of foam and a raw sugar sprinkled on top in a cup and saucer). The best lattes that I've ever had have been at a sidewalk cafe in Florence, Italy (I guess that one was really a cappuccino, but it was absolutely amazing!) and at a coffee house in Seattle. I love the artwork that the barista creates using milk and espresso. When I worked at a coffee bar in college, I would always try to create swirls and whorls every time I made a latte. I had to incorporate the coffee art somehow into the card. I created the stamp from a photo from the internet. It was absolutely amazing to see some of the coffee art that's been created-flowers, leaves and even a couple of characters from Miyazaki films.

The bottom card is an advertisement for Rajah Coffee from the late 1800s drawn by Henri Meuniere. It was also available for trade in a full-color version for non-trading group members. It was one of those images that the second I saw it , I had to carve it.

My First LTC

Yes, I've gotten into the whole LTC (Letterbox Trading Cards, although I think Letterboxer Trading Cards makes more sense since letterboxers are the ones making them and the stamp might not end up in a letterbox. But what do I know?) craze. It's not surprising really when you consider my little paper fetish. It gives me yet another excuse to buy pretty paper and carve stamps.

The one above can be blamed for getting me hooked on LTCs. It was created for a tea-themed swap last summer. I love carving Asian images and I love how this stamp came out. It's one of those that I just stare at every time I come across it while rummaging through my stamps and think "Did I really carve that?" I hate having it sit in my drawer o' homeless stamps, so I'll have to find a suitable place to hide it. Maybe in or near a Japanese garden. There are six different origami paper backgrounds to this card and I got quite the kick out of asking people which background they received. I had no idea which one I would would receive back, but this red one is one of my favorites. It was one of the patterns in a package of origami paper that I bought at Uwajimaya when I was in Seattle last July. I also love the T'ien Yiheng quote on the back:

"Tea is drunk to forget the din of the world."

My Neighbor...

Snow Totoro!



Well, technically Totoro is a couple of blocks away.

I drive past this house on my way home from work every day and I just get this huge grin on my face every time.