Women Working

This is one of my favorite black and white photos I've sent on Postcrossing lately: US-1292659 to Amanda37 in the Netherlands.

The postcard is available from Syracuse Cultural Workers, and the photo was taken in 1976 by Ellen Shub, in the now-defunct New Words Bookstore in Cambridge, MA. I am especially attached to this postcard because I was a frequent visitor to New Words Bookstore in the 1990s, and it was a fine place indeed.

Fantastic Dutch stamp: Golden Earring

This stamp just arrived in my mailbox today, riding on a Postcrossing postcard from the Netherlands. I've never seen this stamp before, and I don't even know who Golden Earring/Moontan is, other than that they seem to be a music group. But WOW, what a stamp image! That's quite a headdress the nearly-naked lady is wearing. Are those ostrich feathers on her head?

...just a brief break in my crazy February to marvel at the wonderful world of postage stamps...

Oh, and Happy Valentine's Day!

scritch scritch CHOMP

Here's one of my favorite postcards from The Cutest Sneeze in the World postcard set from Chronicle Books, with artwork by Jeffrey Brown. My cat Soda definitely likes to try to chew pens like this occasionally. I sent this one as Postcrossing US-1385297 to Finland recently.

On an unrelated note, just a quick apology for being so absent this month. I've not been blogging much, nor have I been reading others' blogs, and I've only barely shown up on Twitter here or there. It's my busiest time at work, and I've got my head down until early March. I haven't even had much time for letter writing, though I've managed a few postcards. I'm missing my mail hobby quite a lot, but I'll return to it soon. There is light at the end of the tunnel after a couple more weeks...

Birds of a feather handmade card

A pen pal and blog reader sent me this lovely handmade "birds of a feather" card way back in July.



I'm very taken with the design, with the "airmail" note-carrying bird stamped in bronze, overlaid on some lovely handwriting in what looks to be Italian, plus some lovely postage stamps and a postmark.



I hope the angle on this photo captures how stylishly and subtlely the bronze bird sparkles...



...and of course I love the vintage cat stamps on the envelope! Neat use of old ledger paper for the label, too, which is burnished on the edges.



The flying-birds rubber stamp theme continues to the back of the envelope, where the stamp-birds of a feather are flocking together. It was a real mail art treat, with a lovely letter inside, too.

Postcrossing: I achieved my top 200 goal!

I've been nursing a silly little goal for a while now, and I finally achieved it: I have made the top 200 Postcrossing senders in the USA (by sent number, not by distance yet).

There are a LOT of high-volume Postcrossers in the USA, so this is a happy achievement for me. It's a little discouraging when I send to or receive from a user in another country who's sent fewer postcards than I have but is in their own country's top 10 or top 50... but really, why am I so competitive?

Anyway, January was a fun month for Postcrossing.

Incidentally, yet another new-to-mail-and-mail-blogging enthusiast has declared this month - February 2012 - a month of letters. She's getting some killer publicity (the Guardian??) and has a lovely website and Twitter feed. I'm participating by default - I pretty much send a piece of mail every day - but do check out Lettermo.com.