Carve it Again!

I'm in the process of moving this week, so there hasn't been a lot of time for letterboxing. That hasn't stopped me, of course, from compulsively checking Atlas Quest for new things, nor from getting a few things done. Like picking up a couple sheets of that plumber's gasket stuff I heard about. Lowe's calls it "rubber packing sheet".

I attempted a re-carve of FLeFLKR using that instead of the eraser material. Almost pulled it off, too, but wound up cutting through some essential detail. Good practice, nevertheless. I did manage to complete my third official carve last night, which is also my second attempt with the gasket material. I am reasonably pleased with the result, which I'm calling the Angreh Tomayta.

My carves thus far are fairly crude, but since I'm only on my third one this doesn't worry me at all. They're mine, they're originals, and they're hand-carved, and according to The Letterboxer's Code that makes 'em special. I'll probably launch this new addition as a hitch hiker or a flea. Eventually. Probably not before I use it to make some limited letterboxer trading cards (LTCs).

And I think I'll need to mount this one. It's about an inch square and rather flat, which apparently leads to very inky fingers once you start stamping.

Things I Learned from My First Hunt

1. It's been *way* too long since I did anything significant outdoors.
2. Slacks are great for casual wear, but denim wins out in the woods.
3. The first thing to do after arriving on site: find a good stick.
4. Step carefully. Broken foliage uglies things up and is a dead giveaway that somebody was there looking for something. Think of it this way: would you want to start your next hunt on a trail where the scenery's been trampled down or torn apart?
5. Given a choice between series boxes and singletons, hunt the series boxes early so you don't run out of daylight. Last Sunday I found my singletons quickly but had to call off the search before I could complete the series I was working on. Had I reversed that, I'd have likely finished the series and just gone home without one of the singletons.
6. I really do enjoy the dumb looks coming from people who wonder what in the heck I'm doing poking at tree stumps with a stick.

Some bonus insights for future hunts:

* Gloves and insect repellent are going on my "must include" list for my carry pack.
* The importance of trail mix and Gatorade is not to be underestimated. I was very glad to have taken some along.
* Stealth isn't *really* all that hard, but it's going to take some practice to stop leaving trample marks and broken branches behind. I'm workin' on it!
* A camera. Take a camera next time! Not a "must", perhaps, but ya never know.

The Hunt

Yesterday marks my first day "on the trail". My target: a local park that has so many letterboxes planted that I'm starting to think of it as Puyallup's own "Little Dartmoor". It was a nice walk. The trouble is that I started off in the wrong direction, so I walked a LOT yesterday morning. I suppose that's what I get for not taking more walks through our local parks.

I eventually got there. You can't find the letterbox if you can't find the park in which it is hidden, and I certainly wasn't going to come home at the end of my first letterbox hunt with an empty logbook. That little delay cost me daylight, though, and I had to call off the search before I found the final box in a series. There will be another day for finding that last box. Maybe even next weekend!

My first find, ironically, was more or less by accident. I was looking for another letterbox and happened to find one laying beside a tree with no cover. Of course I pounced immediately, and after learning that the box was part of a series I wasn't planning to hunt this time around, I shrugged and cheerfully logged my first find. Serendipity or no, a find is a find!

All in all, I went home with five stamps in my brand new logbook. Not bad for a first day. Cuz... it's not.

Yep. Fun stuff. :)

First Carve? Woohoo!

Two rounds of supply shopping yesterday scored me some rudimentary tools of the trade. Some rummaging unearthed a couple of pocketknives I forgot I had. Armed with the basic essentials and a few cheap pink pencil erasers, I sat down to attempt my "first carve": a very simple little sketch I named "FLeFLCKR".

I probably don't need to mention how the first attempt went. It turns out that "simple" doesn't mean the same thing in carving on rubber that it means in line drawings. This is why I started with cheap-o blocks of rubber. I want to make my mistakes on those, and that worked out quite well for round one. Don't worry -- I've got my eye on some plumber's gasket for my next supply run. I've heard that's one of the best media in the biz.

Thankfully, I catch on fast when I want to. Round two turned out much, much better, yielding a printable image that looks like I wanted it to. Well, close enough anyway. I'll need to carve a sturdier version before I send it out on the trail. Despite my best efforts, I still undercut some of the important detail a little, so I imagine the stamp will chew itself apart under heavy use. I'll probably make some LTCs with this one and maybe take it around as a personal traveler. We'll see.

I was going to post a photo of the stamped image, but such "spoilers" seem to be frowned upon amongst the letterboxing set. Ah well. Guess you'll just have to come get it from me in person if you want to see. Or get into a trade after I figger out how to make the cards.

Next carve'll have to be a signature stamp. Either that or I'll be using FLeFLKR junior here when I go hunting (hopefully) tomorrow. Fun stuff!

What Bit Me?

'Twas about a week or so ago. No, it wasn't a dark and stormy night. Mighta been a rainy day, though. I don't really remember. I didn't really know letterboxing from The Lambada. I was just looking for different types of treasure hunting activities for a short article I was ghostwriting. I didn't have more than a paragraph to describe the hobby, so I barely smudged the surface. Once I had enough information to write the piece and be done with the whole thing, well... I kept reading.

Oh, I tried to move on at first. But I kept coming back. Every time I thought I understood the hobby -- and the audience to whom it appealed -- I'd uncover another facet which required another skill set and could appeal to whole other group of hobbyists. By the time I really *did* have it more or less figured out, I was staring at a fairly large gem. And I realized something: several of the hobbies I had dabbled in previously were involved! And since I'm always up for learning a new skill set... yeah. I got hooked. Hard.

I have an overactive imagination anyway, and I get lots of ideas. Combine that with an interesting new hobby (or set of hobbies), and there's only one thing to do with an itch like that. Gotta scratch it.