Yeah, yeah, I’m terrible at updating. I know. Suffice it to say, that things have been rolling along. Week six was the week where everything got real. The transmission dropped out of my car and I spent the whole week trying to force money on people in exchange for vehicles. It’s harder to do than it sounds.
Blah, blah excuse, blah, blah, blah aside, I didn’t really have a lot of time to spend working on something for Thing a Week. (That would be the sweat part) I did however, discover that Valparaiso has two things that I love combined together! Letter-boxing and a labyrinth! For those of you who don’t know what letter boxing is, it’s something akin to Geochaching, but with stamps. You look up a set of clues online, solve the clues, find the letter box, and stamp your personal stamp in the letterbox, and the letterbox’s stamp in your journal or on your hand, or really wherever you like. Valparaiso has a public labyrinth (!!!) which has it’s very own letterbox (again – !!!) Basically two whole fistfuls of awesome smashed into one. And I don’t already have a letterbox stamp. Obvious answer? My project for Thing a Week this week is a letter-boxing stamp.
The stamp needs to be not larger than two inches square. I had a piece of linoleum mounted on MDF that fit that description. Unfortunately (for me, anyways) it was a piece of very hard linoleum, designed to be cut with wood engraving tools, which I don’t have. I have cut blocks like this before using my normal lino knives, however, so I wasn’t really worried. That is, until I realized that a 5×7 piece of mounted lino gives you a lot more space to keep your other hand out of the way of bouncing knives than a 2×2 piece does.
Suffice it to say that I sliced my finger open. (That would be the blood and tears bit.) I was going to just give up and use a get out of jail free card, but then I got really mad at the stupid stamp, cut myself a normal piece of lino, and made the stupid thing over without re-slicing my finger. Here is a photo of the negative, stamp and positive image that I wound up with. Linked image of the three with my slashed-open finger for the strong of stomach.
The takeaway? The letterbox isn’t there anymore. We looked and looked. I think the landscaping got redone last year, and someone threw out the letterbox. But at least I have a stamp now? Whatever.