In case this is confusing for folks finding my blog before finding letterboxing, the P# is how many boxes we’ve planted, F is how many we’ve found and X is how many folks we’ve exchanged sig stamps with at gatherings and on the trail and such. Click it and it will take you to my profile and tell you a little about our letterboxing life on Atlas Quest.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And another letterboxer that posts polls on her wordpress blog more frequently than I post about the hobby (why reinvent the wheel?):
http://ontariocacher.wordpress.com/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
July 8, 2008
It’s been a while since I’ve posted to this page. But I’ve been boxing and doing related stuff, so I’ll update. 🙂
Don’t Do the Derby didn’t “do” period. I was sad, but also sick… so I opted to spare everybody the contagion and contacted them to postpone… to.. when, I don’t know. But I still want to do a letterboxing event, so something will happen sometime! (How’s that for specific?)
In the upkeep arena… I had the opportunity to replant Mr Incredible in Ashland this past weekend. YEAH! He’s home now. Hopeing gas prices won’t keep me from replanting Elasti-girl in Louisville sometime soon. And Violet has gone completely invisible… missing, sadly. So I need to recarve her and get her in a better spot (shades of “be careful with your boxes” and hide well here… a recent AQ thread… thanks for the reminder GT). And I learned a few things while retrieving and checking on these boxes. Yes, things I kind of knew when I originally planted them, but with experience are now crystal clear.
- DO print out your own clues as reminders before going to retrieve boxes. At least, I have to do this. Even though I’m the one who wrote the clues, it seems my memory for exactly which rock or tree hides my box is not exactly spot on (haha… pun intended). This has happened with several of my boxes, even though they have had finders and no complaints about misdirections.
- Even though you might try not to give too much information in clues (at least, I want it to be a little puzzling)… it is a good thing to include at least a couple of more permanent checkpoints and or compass directions. Trees that block paths get removed from trails (yes, I was THAT lame with a clue). Luckily for me, the box had not been planted for more than a season, so it was easy enough to spot where the downed fellow had been.
- Don’t plant where park maintenance will most likely be performed. Flower beds, near trash cans and the like. Yeah, that one should have been a duh. But it was the off-seasoon, as far as parks go, and I just wasn’t thinking of park maintenance. Lost both of those boxes and they were part of a 3 box series. Sad… very sad. WILL replant, though, with better hidey holes.
Finished up my Holiday Hike and Hunt series, though, with the (late) May and last day of June plants. Happy happy, joy joy. Don’t think I’ll ever do another monthly series like that again! Too much pressure. LOL BUT, on the plus side, a new boxeer in the area contacted me to say she had looked into the hobby a few years ago and had found nothing in our area. Now there are a bunch and she and her boys are hooked! So, if I can get another planter in the area out of it, then I’m happy.
I do need to do a September box, the only one I missed. But I want to do something special for that one as that month contains “Talk Like a Pirate” day. Argh! Help with this one in the comments would be appreciated as I’m a little unsure which clue path I want to take with it.
Our public library is doing a letterbox aspect in their summer reading program. Another way to get more area boxers. I just wish they had been a little more serious with the boxes they hid. The clues were decent, but the boxes themselves were HUGE and “hidden” out in the open. Not very good examples for people who might decide to try the hobby for real. Hope I don’t loose any boxes because of it… but that’s the risk we take, huh?
FINALLY finished our entries for the Homeschool Literature Swap LTC. Hoping to get those in the mail soon. I can’t wait to see the others. I always try not to compare myself and my children to other homeschoolers, but this made it hard! This was our first attempt at LTC’s and I’m afraid we didn’t even approach art standards. Oh well. We’ll see how it goes. We should get them by the end of the week.
And did you see the announcement for the LB Con in 2009? http://www.atlasquest.com/events/event.html?gEventId=838 It’s in St Louis, MO… so maybe, Juuuuust maybe I have a shot at being able to go. Looking at the information for this led me to the Letterpod, a podcast for letterboxing news AND another source of clues. Cool idea. And then for clues, you can also sign up for the Lbox Announcement list on Yahoo Groups. Basic and similar to AQ’s function (kind of, sort of), but it is a separate site altogether from LBNA, so you HAVE to sign up to get the clues.
Rim Walker and I are trying to plan a little road trip for some boxing fun within the next couple of weeks. I’m looking forward to that. Get some boxes, get some field tripping in (gotta learn something along the way) AND some adult conversation. Can’t beat that.
Reworked my logbook too, using Rim Walker’s idea for a cover. Tweeked it a bit, cause I wanted a handle. So I worked some macrame into the O rings. Turned out just right. Maybe a little short, but I could only braid so much twine at a time. Will need to practice this art if I want to do more of it. But my old logbook was starting to drop pages, and that’s not good on the trail! Took those pages out, hole-punched them and stuck them in the new logbook. Coooool!
Now, since the weather is SOOOO very perfect here in KY today, I’m going to actually get out and find some… maybe do a little leg work for some new clues too.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
April 5, 2008
Finally! Another box to search for in our neck of the woods!! When the e-mail announcement came through last night I immediately searched for a few others in a nearby town that we hadn’t found yet and planned to make a day of it.
Found Rimwalker’s Eye Spy first. Let me tell you how desperate I was getting. It was about 48 or 50 degrees yesterday evening with a light rain and I headed out to where I thought it was to sneak a peek!! And got soaked through! Then had to come back by the house and pick up my other chidlren before heading off to pick my daughter BACK up and going to folkdance. I need to be at the church in 5 minutes to pick her up… just enough time to go check again!! Had to take my son and get his opinion, after all! 😉 SOAKED!! And 10 minutes late!! Oops! She wasn’t even watching the clock though, so she didn’t even know the difference!
Went back out this morning and found it. It was a tricky wicket! Loved it! Got the boy excited and that doesn’t happen often. Letterboxes have to have a meaning for him… he doesn’t just appreciate the time spent with family or the hike or whatever. So this one was good. Got him thinking about one of the possibilities I had mentioned and now he’s taken it over. gees… I’m going to have to keep my ideas to myself! 😉
Then we went to a nearby town to find 3 clustered together in a park. Apparently the recent rains meant flooding for this particular park. On our way up the path we found a HUGE turtle trying to escape the flood, I suspect. Played around with him for quite a while. His shell was about 15 – 18 inches long and his tail, which he had sticking completely out (for stability? it was a slick muddy mess there) was another 3 or 4 inches long. M loved him!
The box we found had suffered some pretty sad damage because of a pencil that poked through the baggie. Thankfully the planters live nearby. But we replaced the bag and was preparing to rehide the whole box when M, who had been happily busy in the playground, lost control and had an accident. And me without a pair of pants to change her into. So, only one box snagged there… we’ll have to go back another day. 😦 Oh well… still had a great time out today!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
April 1, 2008
In other LB news… somebody is pulling a very nice April Fool’s joke on the AQ site. Seems a lot of folks don’t want mass commercialization of the hobby but some of the moderators (?) have made it seem like AQ has gone into cahoots with McDonald’s… yeah… I’m rolling here!! Let me wipe this tear away… Of course, if it’s not a joke I’ll still think it’s mildly funny just because so many get their underwear in knots about such stuff they have little or no control over. Yeah, I tend to do that on other issues (see the previous post on the main page), but this just doesn’t seem that important to me. I’m sorry if I’ve offended any of my LB friends… come back on another day when I’m not so offensive… or catch me at a gathering. I’m really not that bad.
The Girl Scout letterboxing workshop is a bust with absolutely NO sign-ups. I can’t say as it surprised me… realistically it takes about 3 times to see something before it will start catching on. Which means we need to offer this thing 2 or 3 more times before we can start to see some sign-up. I think I’ll offer to do the workshop for our council troop leaders. If the leaders are more educated about it, it can only be a good thing!
As sort-of sad (but not unexpected) as that was, I decided to go ahead and do it the following Saturday, May 3, for the general letterboxing community. It is on the AQ site as “Don’t Do the Derby?”. This will NOT be a workshop, though… cause I’m not that good! But it will be an opportunity for folks to come in and make a letterboxing day of it in Frankfort and chill at a very nice park. Love to see you there! And maybe get your sig stamp??
Planted the March Hike and Hunt letterbox the other day… still not missing a month since September!! Yeah! I gotta say, I like this one a lot. It may even be one of my favorites. The carve is certainly nice. Ended up jumping to the other side of a very muddy creekbed in the middle of this plant and didn’t quite make it. Mud everywhere! And I had to stop at Kroger afterwards. Oh well.
Now I wish someone else would plant one around here so I can go find one!! I’m itching!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A Tutorial
Ok… disclaimer up front… I am not the world’s best carver. So maybe this shouldn’t be considered a tutorial as much as examples of a work in progress. I’m all into more information being a possibly good thing. If this doesn’t help you, sorry… maybe it will help me as a carver anyway. (Note: Clicking each image will give you a much larger picture and would be better to view the cuts in.)
Some tools you might use are toothpicks for the softer materials- scissors, a cuticle tool (I like it for hair and not much else) and/or wood carving tools (Walmart, $5 for a set).
These are the basic tools… a speedball gouge which, I think, you use sort of like a sculptor would by taking huge chunks out and and an exacto knife which is more like a painter drawing in lines and seems to me to be easier to work with for more delicate stuff. Try both… your preference may be different depending on what material you like to work with; the pink stuff is thinner and less flexible, the Master Carve stuff is much thicker, very flexible and my preferred medium. My friend likes the pink stuff and the speedball better. I got started with the white erasers from the store’s stationary aisle… the same stuff as the Master Carve, only smaller… maybe what you start with is what you get use to?
You want to start out with a good image that you can either A: trace onto tracing paper so that you can clearly see where you’re transfering it onto your carving medium or B: easily trace around the image itself. My best results have come from using a #2 pencil for the tracing/transfering and with images that won’t end up with teensy-tinsey areas of medium left behind (that results in much finer detail work and I’m not that good yet ;).
With all of this in mind, decide while you’re picking an image which way you will want to carve it. Will you carve away most of the medium and leave what would be considered a positive image (the stamped image is the lines of the picture) or will you carve away smaller amounts, usually the lines of the image, and what is stamped is the colored areas of the stamp and produces the negative image. The second is usually easier, I have found, but the first has turned out nicer stamps for me (when I can take the time needed to do them well.) Sometimes the image you’re working from has several different colors in it that touch in different places of the picture so you will need to give some thought to which you want to cut away. It wouldn’t do to cut away the red and black in my example because then the stamped image wouldn’t show the transition from the boot to the leg… see what I mean?
After you have transfered your pencil image onto your carving medium I have found it helpful, and the step I am most likely to forget, to go over it with a ballpoint pin. In this way, you can ink your stamp in the middle of carving it to check on your progress without loosing any of your pencil image when you wash the ink off.
These images show, in order:
-
the carving medium ready to cut, and the exacto blade that I use the most.
-
using a cuticle tool for the hair
-
and what the finished hair looks like. You can also use the tiny #1 speedball gouge for this, but I haven’t been able to order one yet. Sometimes you can make use of tools around the house!
-
starting to cut away the delicate areas with the exacto
-
more of the same… I find it easier to use the exacto for this delicate work because I don’t have enough control with the speedball tips I have – they’re not small enough. At any rate, remember to cut away from your image so that you don’t cut into it accidently (referred to as under-cutting).
Before you start to cut the outside area you’ll want to ink it up and check out what you have so far. Sometimes little areas show up that need a finer touch. After the trial stamp, clean it off and start on the outside area. For this stamp I decided I wanted to gouge the outside away, leaving something that looks more like the old woodcarved images. When I do this, I start by cutting a shallow line around the outside of my image. You can see that it gives me a trench to gouge from if I put some gentle pressure there. This keeps me from starting my gougeing at uneven spots on the outline. When you do start to gouge, go away from your image as much as possible and start with shallow gouges. Ideally, the medium being carved away shouldn’t stand above the blade top.
This final series of pics shows my initial gouging, the final stamp and all of the practice stamps I stamped during the process. If you enlarge the final, you’ll be able to see that I’ve numbered the images with 1st being the first trial early in the carve and 7 being the final image that folks will get when they find the box. All in all, it took about 1 1/2 hours for me to carve this with a few distractions. Needless to say, fewer distractions means a better stamp and I have cut some better ones. This series was fun, though.
Constructive comments on my “work in progress”? Is it wasy to understand or did I miss something? Happy carving!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
March 4, 2008
It is a nasty, icky, rainy day. So what do I choose to do? Plant a box of course! 😉 A couple of folks have e-mailed me for the clues to Jack Jack and so I felt compelled to plant another of the Incredibles before they get in the vicinity. This one of the five might be the coolest one there is… for another hint, check out my profile page on Atlas Quest for the super power I would most like to have ( my trailname is Eeny Meany Miney Moe ).
Yes, I know it’s March and I haven’t planted my new Hike and Hunt yet… next break in the weather! LOL Plus 2 temporary Incredibles at Cove Springs and a new series “Lincoln Heritage Trail”… and a girl scout letterboxing event in April… I think I’ll be staying busy enough with letterboxes. Just wish I had some to find. 😉
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Feb 17, 2008
Finally! I AM NOT repeating my sad little “missing a month” thing in my hike and hunt series… January and February got planted yesterday…. yes, January was a little late, but you’ll have to cut me some slack. The weather hasn’t exactly cooperated here when my schedule would perit me to do the things I want to do, as opposed to the things I have to do!
And since I’m on a roll and the winter rain that we were supposed to get today held off, I got 2 of my 5 Incredibles planted. YEAH me! Now if the snow that’s supposed to come tomorrow holds off (it’s KY… we expect that kind of mood swinging weather), maybe I’ll get the other 3 Incredibles planted.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Feb 1, 2008
I am laughing my butt off here this cold morning! It always sends me for a loop how political and hypersensitive people are… and I think, “well, maybe I shouldn’t respond, cause it just makes me seem hypersensitive too”… but I do it anyways – to a point. And this happens all over the www when people share a conversation without the benefit of tone of voice or hand gestures… but it bugs me. Let me sahre the story…
I happen to be on a chat board for new letterboxers. I have posted to it only twice. The first time was to point out to one poster that he/she seemed to have been offended, even though they vehemently stated they were absolutely not. My point was to say that different letterboxer do this hobby for different reasons and want different things out of it and to bemoan and berate the things you personally do not like on a new boxers forum seems to be counterproductive.
So then, just the other day (and about 2 months after the previous incident) I post to reply to this same boxer that they had posted some good and useful information and they should add it to the site as a file, as it is bound to come up again. To which I get the curt response that, basically, if I want it to be a file, to do it myself. Well, which made me twitch just a bit, but I do lead a couple of boards myself so I kind of get this. But at the end of the post this boxer says “interesting non-pc trailname”. WHAT? Does this seem like a little jab to you? A kind of, “well, I didn’t bug her by telling her to do it herself, so I’ll just throw in this totally random and off the topic comment after my signature line.”
The background: Our trailname, since we go as a family, is Eeny Meany Miney Moe. I am Eeny, my son is Meany, my older daughter is Miney (which so totally fits with the way she was as a toddler because everything her twin brother had, she would take away… she would crawl across whole ROOMS to take away his pacie, even though she didn’t suck one) and the littlest is Moe (which fits for her as it is a sort of nickname for her with some). And, giminy… it’s a “pick and choose who’s it” game from childhood! MERCY! PLEEEEASE! So it made me twitch just enough to respond (yes, I did… maybe I shouldn’t have, but I did..). “I have no idea what you mean by “non-pc” unless you are referring to rude words I would not use to describe my children, which is the intent of our trailname (then telling them who each referred to), or you are just too far removed from your childhood to remember.”
Do you know??? That post got 22 replies from 12 different folks, all basically backing me up, saying why would you question someone’s chosen trailname because of one of many possible meanings? Well, this persons response was “some people can only see the bad meaning”. So I’m supposed to pick my families’ trailname so as not to offend 1/4 or an 1/8 of the population? Uh, no… The non-pc version that this person is referring to was not even the original and only one (2 at the most) of about 10 versions dating waaaaaay back.
“Eeny, meany, miney moe…. Catch a tiger by the toe… If he hollers let him go… Eeny, meany, miney moe”. You’re it!
**********
In other, more pleasant letterboxing news, here it is February and I didn’t yet plant the January box for my Hike and Hunt series… *sigh*… It’s just too cold! So, I think I will carve a simple February stamp and plant them both within the next week. Yeah, shades of September coming back to me here, when I didn’t get THAT month’s planted, period. Didn’t you know? The new calendar goes July, Aug, Oct/Nov/Dec, Feb…. LOL at myself!
One more Incredible to go, though!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
January 2008….. Trying to get all 5 of The Incredibles carved to place for SHNV’s super hero statewide series… so far I’ve got Dash, Elasti-Girl and Jack-Jack. I should just go ahead and plant the ones I’ve got, I guess. But something about that just rubs the wrong way…
I DO have an image for my Holiday Hike and Hunt series that I need to get in a box, make a logbook for and get into it’s hiding place. May be a somewhat cryptic clue. We’ll see. I practiced with the Speedball for this one and it looks rather different.
Make a photobook – it’s easy! |
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Christmas Letterboxing
Oh what fun, it is to letterbox, in a one-horse open tractor…heh!
This was fun! My sister and dad had this great idea to hide some of the tween’s Christmas presents on his farm for them to find Christmas morning. What a hoot! Of course, my sis found a bunch of fake pirate eye patches, swords, dabloons and other things… I had to come up with the clues. Let me tell you… that was hard, since I don’t live there or didn’t grow up there.
Took us a good hour, hidden away in my parent’s locked bedroom, to come up with these clues! But it was Soooooo worth it!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
For recently added boxes around the country, check out my sidebar, front page. I’ll post here on our own letterboxing type stuff, cause it’s not really day to day stuff (though I do it whenever I can).
This page has the following sub pages.
Is letterboxing like geocaching?
Yes! Letterboxing is like geocahcing in that you go on walks and hikes and snooping around in general to find a hidden treasure. The differences between the two are that, with lb’ing you get a stamp image to find instead of a trinket AND very often you have much more specific clues to get there… not a “get in the vicinity and look for the most likely hiding place you can find”… the clues can still be rather cryptic, though as in my “G What a Rifle” .
http://www.atlasquest.com/lboxes/clue/index.html?gBoxId=57201