Current Mail Art

This is my current batch of mail art. 

 Embroidered Whale and Inked Barnacles.

 Purple Shore Crab with Message-
The bottle was an afterthought to fill the space, but text has a way of dominating an image and I didn't want the card to look like an elaborate frame for a cry for help, so I wrote, "all's well." I like that and sort of want to put them out into the world but I don't know about doing that to the ocean, even though it's bigger and older than me. I could offset the impact by gathering trash, but I should be doing that anyway.

 This is my first try posting something with a handmade stamp. It's got a first class stamp too. I carved this stamp for a letterbox that I haven't planted because of magnet logistic setbacks.

I read about this simple and easy cryptograph. Write the message real small on the upper right front of the envelope and then cover it with the postage stamp. I have self adhesive stamps rather than old fashioned gummed stamps. I am getting the hang of pulling them off but it was tricky at first, so I don't expect anyone to actually look under them. Anyway, I figure that it's an easy way to seed everything with easter eggs. This one just says "forever is ages." with a poorly drawn quail underneath. 

This next one I received from my dad's girlfriend, Dawn. She has been an artist a lot longer than I have and she jam packs letters with treasures and little notes. 

I have ideas for more involved projects but I feel like I should save them for the recipients' birthdays or something. But in fact, I should do them soon so that I can problem solve and refine and have them in my repertoire of techniques to build on.   

Bentos for Nick

Penguins with Salmon-filled Mountains

After years of wishing for quail eggs, I found some in a mexican market in Fruitvale. I made them into penguins. I think the one with a nori nose looks more streamlined and classic but Nick liked the one with a carrot nose. I was worried that they'd be finicky to handle because they are so small but they are hardly any trouble and taste extra good. They are $1.19 for 10, and each one is 1/4 the size of a chicken egg. So they are not quite a frugal choice. In terms of calories it's like getting a dozen chicken eggs for $5.70, but it's really worthwhile in terms of teeny tiny penguins, pandas, and chickens.

Pasta and Fruit

Pinwheel apple slices are only a bit harder to cut than checkerboard, and much prettier I think. I kind of ruined my first try by melting caramel onto their undersides. Now I know that caramel doesn't stick to the whites of apples. I felt so clever, buying two pieces of caramel from the bulk bins (you just put your quarter in a little metal box, which is really an elegant solution to folks who want to snack on candy in the supermarket). Oh, well. I made the container for the marinara sauce by folding foil around a heart shaped cookie cutter. I based the panda on this one, but it didn't turn out very adorable.

I don't send my special dollar store boxes when I pack bentos for other people because we'd all feel bad if I didn't get them back, but they also don't hold enough for Nick. Hardly anyone could take worse care of my bento boxes than I do. I have two and I've bought about 10. Even though I have everything I need for bento, I want to get more at the dollar store, Ichiban Kan, when I go to SF next week. What if they have a penguin mayonnaise container whose beak is a little spoon? What if they have bento boxes big enough for a grown up lady and covered in bunnies?

If you have a Christmas with no money, by no means should you tell your children they are missing out and give them cash. You should ideally pass down something from your family, and do it with sparkle and pomp and gravitas, or if you haven't got that in you you could make them something cunning with your special skills, something wooden or a bit of fiction starring them. And if you haven't got children that can appreciate that sort of gift, giving such gifts to them is a start.
Am I going to be so utterly drained by life that I can't coax a stable of unicorns from a few sheets of printer paper, when it counts?

I packed a bento for the first time in months, and I've lost the knack. I just put together cut up foods that probably could be eaten together. There are salami wraps, cranberries, avocado, and clementine on a bed of celery. 

This bento box is from Urban Outfitters in Ohio, and it has a way bigger capacity than the child sized ones I like to get at the SF Japantown dollar store.

I don't have anywhere to be anymore, so I'll just take this on whichever errands I do tomorrow, and maybe I will see someplace nice to sit awhile and eat.

I bought some chicken soup with animal shape noodles, and I was going to heat it and put it in my thermos and go for a walk to the water and eat my hot soup. That way I'd get a bit of exercise and check the seal and heat retention of my off brand thermos without getting too far from home. But instead I opened a can of the soup my mom buys, which is tastier and more expensive, and now I feel like my whole plan is ruined. Eat soup without animals? I'm not nearly hungry enough to resort to that. So it's just sitting in the microwave.

VT Lettersheet Journal

The last page of my lettersheet journal arrived today. Each page is finished and complete in a way that my usual journaling can't match.  They're dated by hand and by postmark. Only one has a drawing but three have images from hand carved stamps. The pages are information rich and layered. 

 I consider this a successful incarnation, and it suggested loads of improvements for the next one. I need to design the pages to be bound together rather than binding them as an afterthought. Sealing the lettersheets with a gluestick was a mistake. I should draw a lot more, since drawings break up text nicely. And someday I want to start using topical historic stamps. For example, I could get a set of National Park Stamps, and use them over the years as I visit the parks. For the ones that are shy of the letter rate, I could add postage with stamps commemorating that state's statehood or local fauna.

If there is a way to mail a letter from LAX, the Delta counter hadn't heard of it. So, I left my letter on the ledge of a marble planter in the hopes that someone would mail it. I was excited to think of how long it might live in a  glove compartment or luggage and what an exotic domestic postmark it might have when it arrived. 

It turned out it spent no time at all in a glove compartment as it was postmarked the following day from Santa Ana, CA- 40 miles from where I dropped it. Thank you, anonymous stranger! I can't yet see the shape of the letter dropping project this suggests.

Six Hundred and Sixty Kanji Lessons

I have been coveting a copy of Harry Potter and the Goblet of fire in Japanese for years, but when I sat down to order one for my birthday, I realized I'd prefer Order of the Phoenix. It is extremely far above my reading level, so there is no hope of reading it without first translating it bit by bit. of the ~100 kanji (counting repeats) on the first page, I can recognize 42 (a lot of repeats), but not in compound words or anything. Also, a lot of the superscript pronunciations are unfamiliar because I excused myself from learning all the pronunciations of a character and only learned 1. how to write it, 2. what it means in English, and 3. how to pronounce it as a standalone Japanese word.

So I spent last night on nciku.com looking up the first page of kanji by using my mouse as a stylus and I now have a page of translated kanji to refer to when I go back through with my dictionary. This harry potter book is two volumes, 1300 pages together, and my goal is to finish the first volume. I'm sure at that point I will be ready to set this aside and read something else.

Lettersheet Journal

For my upcoming birthday trip to Vermont I'm going to make a mailed lettersheet journal. Before I go I'll make lettersheets (letters folded up and mailed without envelopes) because that way the postmarks and everything are preserved on the reverse of the letter. I am going through loads of states because that's the cheapest way to fly, and my two hour layovers will give me a chance to hunt down mailboxes and get postmarks from Michigan and Los Angeles. Then, because I am a novice traveler and am flying into the wrong airport, I am going through loads of states via bus or something once I get to the East Coast, and that will provide more postmarks. While I am in Vermont we are going letterboxing, so I'll stamp the letters with those as well, on the outside fronts if they are small enough.

I think it's okay that this is a journal to myself, a collaboration with the post offices of a half dozen states and VT's letterboxers.