Rocking Your World Friday - week 4

Well that’s another week gone – they seem to be going by everso quickly since I joined the Rockin’ Crew!

A fairly quiet week, but still with plenty of highlights:

The first thing that’s been rocking my world this week is Postcrossing – I’ve had an even better than usual postcard crop recently.

Last Saturday there were no less than three cards on my doormat, and they were all really cool ones.  One from Barcelona with a great photo of the Gaudi park (I’d LOVE to go there one day), one from Amsterdam featuring the (in)famous Bulldog café (I might have already been there, ahem, once or twice, a long time ago, back in my student days :)  ), and one from Germany with, rather inexplicably, an oil painting of a skeleton doing a pee :D

Also, not pictured, a few days later I received from the US a fantastic lenticular card of a 3-D eye which winks as you move the card.  Very very cool.  And a really fab roller coaster card too (my first ever from Australia).  And a card with a photo of a man balancing chairs on his fingertips, from a lady in the Netherlands who makes lovely ATCs who I'm hoping to maybe swap with.

You never know what kinds of postcards you are going to receive, or who from, it's certainly more fun than coming home to just bills on the doormat.

On Saturday night we were at the rink as usual watching ice hockey, and as the visiting team this week were the Basingstoke Bison, I got to see my pals Grant and Emily as that’s their team – always nice to bump into friends.

Sunday was the real highlight of the week, as we had a brilliant day out in gorgeous Glastonbury.  It was a cold (and mega windy, especially at the top of the Tor!) day but gloriously sunny.

For some time (almost a year) we have been gathering clues around Somerset to find a particular geocache, and the last piece of information we needed was atop the Tor.  So we climbed it.  Up the steepest side of the hill.  In a force 1000 gale.  It was certainly invigorating!!!  And with hindsight, insane :)

We climbed up from those little teeny houses

it was steep!

I got a real feeling of accomplishment from it though when I got to the top, as it’s rare for me to push myself quite that hard.  Next time, though, I’m going up the normal path that isn’t quite so vertical :D

Bit windy at the top!  Do you like my combover? :)

The boys had tons of fun running into the wind and almost standing still

After climbing the Tor we had a mooch around town, ate a delicious veggie pasty, and then found and logged the year long cache thanks to the final clue.  Hooray!

Monday I had a day off work – always nice :)  I used the time to ..... dramatic drumroll ..... FINISH MY SKETCHBOOK PROJECT ENTRY!!!!!! I can't stress how much of a big deal that is :)

Around Christmas time I had pretty much resigned myself to the fact I wasn't going to get it finished in time.  And that would have been a real waste, both of the entry fee, and more importantly of all the time I had already spent on it.

But then I decided I had to get my head down and get on with it, and get on with it I did.  And it went in the post this Tuesday.  Such a relief :)  Now I can get back to all the other things I should have been doing this month, like the pile of circle journals in the corner, and my sad neglected art journal....

Tuesday night I had an early night - first one in ages, I just tucked up with my book and was asleep long before midnight.  Bliss.

The remainder of the week was fairly uneventful, the two highlights being watching the King's Speech on Wednesday evening - wow, what a great film!

And sourcing a freestanding Daylight lamp for winter evening crafting from Freecycle!  for free!  (obviously, otherwise it would be called paycycle :) )

Please pop by Virginia's blog if you would like to read about everyone else's rocking weeks, or if you fancy joining in with us.  I can thoroughly recommend it - focussing on the positives gives you a nice warm glow :)

Postcrossing : Vol 4

Woohoo!  After eight months of Postcrossing, I have reached my century - over 100 postcards received! 

Here is my fourth book of postcards, with cards inside from Japan, Portugal, California, Russia, my first card from Romania and a surprisingly large number from the Netherlands, amongst other countries.

All in all I've now sent to 32 different countries and received from 29:

Here are all 4 books so far together:

I received some fantastic cards in this latest batch, but my very favourites were:

From the UK, a Banksy card.  You can never go wrong in my eyes with a bit of Banksy.

From California, USA (obviously :) )

I am a real sucker for this style of iconic US state postcard, I hope to collect one from all 50 states eventually


This one, from Germany, is so gorgeous and colourful and lively.  It made me smile.

 

I love this one sooooo much - First Nations art from Vancouver Airport.  (Surprisingly not from Canada, but from a chap from Manchester, England)

Another graffiti card - I'm getting a good collection of these now - this one is huuuuge, from the Netherlands.  The sender, Betty, wrote loads and loads on the back too, it's great to have lots to read as well as a purty picture on the front.

I think this image of Tibetan prayer flags in a scroll, also sent from Holland, is beautiful.







And this Edward Gorey illustration, from the USA, is just plain cool

 I'm not sure how clearly you can see this one, the card came from China, and the photo depicts ancient Chinese burial grounds, where the coffins were placed on natural "shelves" in a sheer cliff.  According to the sender, little is now known about the civilisation that these coffins belonged to.  Fascinating.

Not quite as educational, but nice all the same, a cute tattoo card from the Netherlands

Also from Holland, Super Squirrel! :D

But I have left the best card until last.

Not only is the card itself, from America, great - I love cemeteries, and this cast iron monument has a poignant story (he guards the grave of his little owner Florence, who died age 2 in 1862) - but also the sender had imprinted a hand carved stamp of herself and her husband on the back:

 

I love hand carved stamps!

When I registered the card, I checked out the sender, Jennifer's profile, which revealed a link to her blog.  Turns out she is a prolific craftswoman and, in between sewing and embroidering and bookbinding and stamp carving, she makes the most amazing jewellery.  Like this:

We started emailing to and fro and seem to have swiftly become firm buddies.  

Thank you, Postcrossing, for my new friend :)

So that's 100 cards down, here's to the next 100.....

Postcrossing....vol. 3

25 more (official) postcards have now arrived, plus a couple of fab private ones, so it's time to make another one of my Postcrossing books....

That's three volumes in just seven months of Postcrossing, I'll need a dedicated bookshelf for these things soon!

I've now sent postcards to 25 different countries:

<-- and received from a whopping 27 countries!










Countries I have received cards from recently for the first time are:

• Luxembourg
• Switzerland
• Portugal
• Japan
• Italy
• Estonia, and
• Brazil

Loads of firsts!!

My favourite cards received since my last update are:

How could I not love this one??? :D  <3 hockey, <3 Canada, <3 this card!!!!  This one was a private swap from fellow Canucks fan Carrie from Victoria Island in beautiful British Columbia.  She also sent me a Canucks memo pad to go on my fridge, because she's a lovely lovely lady :)

This card came from Germany - I wish all recycling bins looked like this one :) Genius!

This one came the same day as the one above - cool ostriches!  They came from Finland.

This card actually came from a British postcrosser, but she had purchased the card in Alberta, Canada.  And any card from Canada gets the tumbs up from me :)

Plus it has a gorgeous ammonite on it, and I like that kind of thing.

This card is so cool - I would LOVE to go to Alaska one day!

The really brilliant thing about this one, is that the lady who sent it to me, used the actual stamp pictured on the front of the card:

How much fun is this card from Germany??  The giraffes were some kind of art installation in Hannover, apparently....

Colourful chooks from Belgium...

This card from Lithuania was my favourite official card this month, it shows a traditional Lithuanian fishermen's graveyard, with wooden grave markers, fascinating stuff!  This is what Postcrossing is all about...

From Taiwan - this clever word art card from a young man who works in a modern art gallery. 

I love love love this almost abstract forest scene from China - I'd love to go geocaching there :)

And finally for this roundup - this amazing street art from Estonia!

As usual, this is just a small selection from all the great postcards I've been sent - click here to see the whole collection

You know what?  I absolutely love postcrossing!

How else would I get to learn so much and meet so many people from all around the world?  It's just hands down fab :)

a Postcrossing update.... vol. 2

This is the second of my Postcrossing books.

In total I’ve now sent 52 postcards out into the wide wide world, and have received 46

Here’s my sent and received map so far:

It’s so much fun to see where my little friendly messages have gone, and where my own equally lovely missives originated. Both Connor and I get so excited when we get home in the evening to find a new postcard sitting on the mat. My postman must think I am everso popular! :)

My favourite received cards since my last update (click to see them better):

You can see this one at the front of the book above – it’s a vintage oversized card showing B&W scenes of old (pre the fall of the wall) East Berlin – fascinating!

This card from China is just beautiful – it had gorgeous stamps too

This Postcrosser from the Netherlands tried hard to find an ice hockey card for me, but this fab image is close enough :)

This image made me smile :)

This German card was totally handmade – very cute!

This graffiti card is huge! And depicts some of the graffiti on the Berlin Wall c 1988 (since demolished). Tying in neatly with that first card I mentioned.

And finally, this card form the Czech Republic features the artwork of Alfons Mucha – which I like very much







Until next time, Happy Postcrossing!