I asked my daughter in law if she wanted to help our 5 year old grandson pen pal with us.

She is 26. She says...
- I'd love to, but I must admit that I've never mailed anything through the postal service. Where does the stamp go?

I laughed at how adorable she was at that moment. I mailed her some stamps and also, so she could see an example of how to mail out letters. We haven't seen one letter yet. 🤣

Just wanted to share. My son and her are the generation that has never seen a pay phone or lived without a computer/internet. Lol Thise were the good days... for us anyway. ♡♡♡

I bought some gray lino cuts from a craft store and was super excited to carve it. I almost impaled my hand with the gouger. Lol. It was sooo hard to carve. Now I'm scared to use it and not quite sure what to do withwhat I have now. Any suggestions??

This is wild to me!! I turn 25 next week and snail mail is such an integral part of my hobbies. I remember in school learning how to write/address/send letters and also how to write a check. I hardly ever write checks but I send mail almost daily haha! But I hope your daughter in law writes a letter or two if only just to try it out!!

HAPPY EARLY BIRTHDAY, YOU LI'L BDAY BUG ☆♡☆♡!!!
I'd have to push to get her to mail us anything. Lol. Shoooot... I have push to get a text from her. I don't bother texting our son anymore. He's THE WORST at communication. Luckily, they live about 200 miles from us and my wife's family lives in the same city so we go visit every other month. I miss the sh** out of that grandson tho ♡♡♡

I use an old Revlon emory board usually. Sometimes I use an old one of these. It works great. Home Depot has them.

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Sanding-Sponge-Block-400-600-Grit-99mm-x-70mm-x-25mm/930211438

Grey Lino should be softish and easy to carve. You can gently warm it - sunshine in a window for awhile works for me but I live in the desert. The hard blocks are often old and impossible to use. I’ve had to throw some out before.

Here is a helpful website:

https://www.artistsandillustrators.co.uk/how-to/printmaking/10-top-tips-for-linocut-printmaking/

It may not be lino cut...
It's gray and about 1/4" thick or thinner.
Not sure what to do with it. Lol

Hello from Pennsylvania! :) I'll be in Melbourne soon and would like to leave a letterbox while I'm there. Because the climate and conditions are a bit different from what I'm used to (I tend to be planting in wooded mountains), I wanted to check if anyone had helpful tips for making sure a box is set up for success in Florida. Anything I should specifically try to avoid that I might not know about?

That is Lino cut I think. I hope you can either return it or find a use! ❤️

The smallest possible. Tiny duct tape pouches work pretty well, although some feel that they attract bugs/critters here. Do not plant in any well manicured places, which is almost everywhere. Many of us like to put pouches on the backside of a certain palm tree (name anyone?) where the base meets the palm frond.

We look forward to hunting for your box!

BB

Hi there! I'm not in Melbourne but slightly north in Cape Canaveral.
My best advice for planting is to be aware of your surroundings.
If you see scorched trees, you are in a prescribed burn area and box may or may not survive a fire.
Wickham Park is a lovely park in Melbourne but be aware that the Space Coast Geocachers are super active and Wickham Park is a wildly popular geocache destination.
Last but not least, avoid the St Johns River floodplain, a hurricane passes over and your box is now a boat. A good watertight box because of the humidity & rain is also a good idea.
This is a fantastic time to visit Central Florida, safe travels to you, enjoy your visit and we look forward to finding your box in the future!

I use sanding sponges for Tan-Z with great results, so maybe they will work on linoleum too!

BB

Is there a way to print the backpacks in Clue Tracker? The backpacks have been created and I'd like to print them out but don't see a way to do it.
I know how to print from AQ but to print from the 24 backpacks would be lovely as it's around 160 clues and they are already organized there.

Unfortunately, Clue Tracker does not allow you to print clues. You can share your lists with another Clue Tracker user or with yourself (to copy a list to a second device).

I'm not familiar enough with Clue Tracker but worse case scenario you could screen capture them and print them.. laborious as that may be, it would work.

Actually, thinking about it, if I screenshot text I can copy and paste from photos (my phone allows me to convert pics of text to actual text). Just store them all on a WordDoc or TextEdit and print that way.

I'm sure there's an easier way in CT, though.

Thank you. Was looking for a shortcut and wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing something.

Thank you.
I just printed off 160 clues on AQ and am now cataloging them into their appropriate piles. And nope it’s not tedious, got my helper Coconut 🐈‍⬛ who is expediting the process 🌪️ and making it fun!

One of the many, many things I love about Clue Tracker is I rarely print clues anymore. Unless the clue is exceptionally long or I need to collect a lot of info, I just use my phone. All the clues are there in the order that I want, and I feel less likely to draw attention to myself looking at my phone versus a piece of paper.

Woohoo!!! It arrived!

Same, I rarely ever print clues except when we know cell coverage will be minimal.
Printed clues are helpful then.

Yay for Coconut! 🧡

Three FLAmigo's got me thinking about this when they mentioned "my helper Coconut 🐈‍⬛", in the Clue Tracker thread.

Also, we have a new member of our family. There was this little feral kitty running around our neighborhood. She was terrorizing our bird feeders (and our neighbor's too). Even though she's only a year old, I think she's has already had a litter.

So we decided to trap her and have her fixed. What happened after that was yet to be determined. The trapping and fixing went well (for us). So ECP decided we should try to integrate her into our household. She was extremely shy and skittish at first, as expected. But we eventually gave her the run of the house and she absolutely fell in love with our big (26 lbs) ginger cat, Logan. Our little tortie, Trinity, was less welcoming.

It's been about 3 weeks now and she is settling in and getting used to us. With Logan, she runs up and down the hall like a crazy person. Here she is, her name is Oreo.

There's plenty of space for the cats, we have a screened in porch in front and a 9' x 12' catio in the back.

She sounds like a hoot and she looks adorable! I'm so happy for you all!

But that’s one of the great things about Clue Tracker. You don’t need cell coverage if you’ve saved the clues to the app.

We have one cat, Hope, she is 13. You can see her pic on our box #384623.

Oh she is a gorgeous tuxedo and Oreo is the perfect name for her! That’s so lovely that you have 3 🐈‍⬛ 🐈 🐈‍⬛ ! A lap warmer probably almost always available at your house!
Our Coconut was a rescue and her bio said she needed to be only pet. We are afraid to test that theory.

I did not know that.
Alrighty then. I gave up sorting the printed clues a couple of hours ago and kind of felt bad. But not anymore!
Thank you for the heads up!

I've been out of the postal game for awhile now (I'm always sort of lurking incase I want to hop back in because I did love it so much, especially in the winter) so maybe it's not fair for me to put my input here, but I have to say that a stamped image on paper would be considered an LTC, by my standards, even if it's not a traditional size.

Part of what made postals so magical was receiving the personalized and inspired logbook with the handmade stamp and any other pieces of craft/information that the creator felt relevant. It was a true letterbox made with a unique effort that was made start to finish by an individual in a way that no other letterboxer could. Even if the tracker theme was something narrow, like "a rock", everyone would carve a rock differently and present it with a logbook in a way none of the other participants would. It had all the elements of a traditional letterbox, just made to fit in an envelope.

I've never visited a traditional letterbox where you collected a pre-stamped image and stuck it in your logbook. Part of the "special" of finding a letterbox is that it's a creation of the moment, and though you hope it's there forever, you never know when weather or a USPS mail-eating machine is going to take it away from you.

All this to say: it's letterboxing, and letterboxes going missing is part of the game, whether it's found on the trail or in your mailbox. :)

We have already heard the description of Letterboxing 101.

I looked up Blog Post Mortem. It appears to have a similar plot device as Word Processor of the Gods. It was made into an episode of Tales from the Darkside.

I may have seen this episode, but I'm pretty sure I haven't read the Stephen King story. Nevertheless, I have read or seen this story somewhere else.

Thank you for posting!