Lamb-velope

To continue the trend of envelopes made from children's books, here's another offering from Minikin by Stephen Cosgrove and Robin James.



No fancy envelope template this time - the pages are too small - I just fold them up as they are.

Clearly this one arrived intact and on time, because the recipient blogged about it.

More deco tape border action

I am blogging with heavy eyelids now, so please excuse any incoherence. I haven't posted in a few days... I've been really busy with work stuff, but I've also been writing letters! Woo-hoo!

Here is another deco tape border with some vintage stamps.



The envelope flap required securing of some kind, because the Edward Gorey stationery oddly doesn't come with any envelope glue. So Marie the Disney cat helped hold down the flap on this letter.

Bedtime. G'night.

Updating the table

Remember how I said I decided it would be really tedious to post about what I've written every single day of my March Madness challenge, and instead am keeping the totals in a little table on my lefthand sidebar so we can all track my progress? It is actually really satisfying to update said table every time I write a letter or a postcard. Weird. But I'm going to admit that I'm pretty proud of myself, after such a dry spell, for writing 18 pieces of mail since Monday.

Post postcard

This gorgeous postcard photo is the sender's own work. You know I squealed when I pulled this one out of my mailbox! Gorgeous photo, happy subject.



The back was just as meta-posty! I adore all the little mail-themed rubber stamps, and had to ask where she found them. (Etsy.) Maybe I'll have to acquire some - the mini pillar postbox is my fave! I love how she wrote my name in a little mail slot, too. Catwrangler has sent me some really, really fine mail lately, and I owe her a letter... surely that will happen somewhere in my March Madness challenge. Incidentally, regarding said challenge, I decided it would be really tedious to post about what I've written every single day, and instead am keeping the totals in a little table on my lefthand sidebar so we can all track my progress.

Zowie, it's been too long since I put a photo in my post! Thanks for bearing with all that text, time to get back to the pretty pictures. But, for the moment, time to get to work...

March Madness: a back-to-writing goal (100 by April 1)

You may have noticed that my blogging, and my letter-writing output, has been way down lately. This is partly because I've been super-busy (I always am, in January and February) and because I've been rather down myself. But there is a light at the end of the tunnel, my life gets a lot more manageable in March, and I am really looking forward to digging back into letters again.

I will confess that there are well over 100 items in my needs-response pile, a combination of letters and postcards and even a few little packages. I must remedy this!

I know I'm not going to catch up completely and immediately, but I decided I would set a goal for myself, and share it with you to keep me on task. At first I thought I wanted to write 100 items of mail (postcards count, along with letters!) in March... but I'll be away for a few days in there, and I wondered if that was really do-able. But I had some unexpected free time on Tuesday this week, and I did a fair amount of writing then, so I decided that I'd count this week in the total. 100 letters in about 5 weeks is about 20 letters per week - totally do-able, and probably pretty ho-hum average for my summertime output.

So, the challenge has begun. By April 1 I hope to have sent out 100 pieces of mail. So far this week I've done 14 already (7 postcards, 7 letters), so hey - I'm well underway! I think I can easily achieve my goal, but I want to keep myself on task and see how far I can exceed it.

As usual, my style is not to grab a pile of 10 letters and postcards and say "I'll respond to all of these NOW!", but instead I give each item its due response. Sometimes one response takes 10 minutes and sometimes it takes two hours, but that's the way I roll.

So I hope, if I owe you a letter or postcard and have for months, that you will see a response from me in the coming weeks. I will keep you all updated on the status of my output and the status of my Pile!

New mail blog + 50-state challenge for postcards

I just discovered the new mail blog (sorta - he blogs about delicious food, too) food.fun.post, which is the brainchild of one of my newer correspondents. He makes lovely mail art and writes a fine letter, too. My readers might enjoy his blog, too - I just added it to my letter blogs sidebar - but I'm posting this today to give him a little help for his 50-state challenge. He's trying to get a postcard from every state in the USA. He doesn't list his address on his blog so you'll need to leave your email address so he can send you his mailing address, but I'm sure he'd appreciate a postcard from your state if it's one of the 30 or so from which he's still seeking a postcard.

Letternet update

If you recall my original blog entry about Deutsche Post Letternet, I promised to keep you updated about the arrival of my address code.

I initially joined up and requested an address code on Sunday, February 14 - and today I received that address code from Germany via snail mail - or rather, via Luftpost. The letter is dated February 16, and though it doesn't have a postmark date (go figure), that still seems right speedy to have arrived in less than a week.

So I entered by address code and am now a "full member." The searching for pen pals system seems pretty darn random and you don't have a lot of search options (nor can you write your own profile, it seems), but I've requested at least one address so far, just for the heck of testing it out, and we'll see what happens.

UPDATE 23 Feb 2010: Thanks to a very helpful comment from tanuki below, I discovered a little more about the methods. No, you don't get notification when someone approves an address request - they just show up in your pen pals list. So I logged in just now, and found that someone had requested my address! I approved it, but now I just see a very minimal profile and an address for her. Does she write first, since she requested? Or do I? There is really no way to message each other or communicate about that. Maybe I'll send her a postcard.

Tied with a ribbon and sealed with wax

This beauty from the marvelous Catwrangler came inside the envelope like this - what a lovely idea! This way the ribbon and the wax stay perfectly intact. I had to photograph this one before I even read it, because I knew opening it would break the seal, and I could never get the ribbon back so pretty again.



I'd never seen this cat design on an envelope before - is the kitty holding a stick or chopsticks in its mouth?



I love this rubber stamp. It seems so obvious: "Send a letter, receive a letter," but it's one of those simple wisdom sort of things that's great to keep repeating, like a mantra.

This was a great letter to read as well as to unwrap.