Damn rain.

I had some big plans this weekend to get some boxes while I was camping at Darien Lake. Celtic Quinn (who I met in July at the WNY Gathering) has a large series planted there and I was excited to get it since I haven't seen any of his stamps. Unfortunately the rain prevented any of that. It was my friend's birthday this weekend, which is why we were going and I had prepared by telling everyone that Brent and I would be leaving at some point to go "hiking". We got up there Saturday night, raised the tent, rode some roller coasters and drank a good amount of alcohol without incident. Around 1am, shortly after I fell into a Captain Morgan induced slumber, it started to rain torrentially. I thought for sure it would end soon as we haven't had rain in months but of course, it persisted the ENTIRE night and ENTIRE next day. Despite it being my tent's inaugural voyage, I had sealed the seems within an inch of their life and Brent and I had a rain free night. Go me! Others weren't so lucky but in the end it didn't matter because the tear down and clean up of our camp site drenched us to the bone so none of us wanted to do anything but go home. I would like to say I am one of those boxers that will carry on no matter what the circumstance but I'm not. I hate being in the rain and being wet and I hate my log book getting wet and the rain making my ink run and my bag getting soaked. I'm just miserable the whole time and refuse to do it just for the sake of finds. I always want boxing to be fun, not just for the numbers. And I know I'll drag Brent back anyway.

In other news, I've decided what images I am going to use for my practice plants. I wanted to create a box to plant before we start carving this winter so we can "trouble shoot" and get a feel for planting before we send all the ones we have planned to create this winter off in the spring. As previously stated, I don't claim to be an artist so I am scouring places for images to use. I found 3 that are similar and I am going to make them into limited time "Halloween" plants. They won't be a series, per say, as I want to plant them in different areas but they will be related. Maybe using commercial images or ones I can google is lame but I still think the worst hand carved stamp is better than a store bought one. I don't like to spend my time and effort trying to hunt down a box only to find a store bought stamp that I could have picked up at Micheal's while buying new pens and ink. It's just so disappointing because anyone can buy a stamp, throw it in a lock and lock and stick it under a rock somewhere. I want people to at least know I put time and effort into my stamps, even if they aren't great. And just because I am a bad artist doesn't mean I'm a bad carver. Who knows, maybe as my carving gets better it will bring up some drawing ability, too. Either that or I'll resurrect my stick figure cartoons that I drew often in college, appropriately titled "Crappy Cartoons by Mary". You could only BE so lucky to see those artistic endeavors :)