Notecards, stamps, a post office closure

Last month, one of the little post offices I visited closed for good, due to retirement. The town will have a new post office but in the Spar. Anyway, the little post office had a closing down sale and I bought some blank cards. I don't use many cards as they are too heavy for international use (well, for the 20g rate) but I can use them for domestic mail. I love this one:

A Great Auk drawn with character. I have a correspondent who likes bird-watching so perhaps this card could be used for her.

The pen, by the way, is a Jinhao and when I showed it to a friend, he wanted one. It is surprisingly comfortable to write with, writing smoothly across the page.

I have a huge pile of post to reply to, but it is all welcome. I was even surprised today by a letter via SendSomething answering the Five Questions I had put up on my profile there.

This was the nice little post office in Beaumaris I went to. Opposite (and behind me taking the photo) is a nice little cafe I could happily sit in all day writing letters. However, I do not live on the Isle of Anglesey and so a trip there is an occasional treat now. Maybe I could still go there after I buy the new issue of stamps from elsewhere. 

I doubt the retired sub-postmaster and sub-postmistress will be reading this but if they do, I hope you enjoy your retirement and new home. I'm sure you won't miss all the paperwork and book keeping weekly.

The last issue of stamps were a bit on the silly side of things. The limbs fold over the edge of the postcard or envelope. However, the stamp issue is in a miniature sheet with two stamps of each value - 1st class, £1.05 (airmail postcard, 10g Worldwide/20g Europe airmail letter), and £1.33 (20g Worldwide airmail letter). There was quite a discussion over on the Norvic Philatelics blog - I wonder how many of this issue will actually be used postally. I have a few sheets so I can use some. However, as a sort of stamp collector, I'm unsure if they'll have much philatelic value. Self-adhesive stamps aren't the easiest of stickers to soak off paper, although there are ways...

A week left...

In my last post, I was perhaps lamenting not receiving many surprise letters via LetterMo and InCoWriMo. Well, it was early days. Now, I have over a dozen letters from penpals as well as new contacts. I had a look through my incoming/outgoing logbook, aka my page-a-day diary, and worked out the breakdown this month, up until and including the 20th.

Sent to people met through:

InCoWriMo 2014 - 1
InCoWriMo 2015 - 9
Swap-Bot - 1
Postcrossing - 1
Reddit - 1
5Q5L - 2
LetterMo/InCoWriMo 2016 - 6
Other - 2

Received from people met through:

LetterMo 2013 - 1
InCoWriMo 2014 - 2
InCoWriMo 2015 - 15
Swap-Bot - 3
Postcrossing - 3
Reddit - 1
InCoWriMo/LetterMo 2016 - 8
5Q5L - 5
SendSomething - 1
Other - 2

If I had the inclination, I could check back through my correspondence logbooks/diaries to see from where I had found people to write to, and work out the success rate. I can tell you that Interpals for me has a 0% rate except that it introduced me to Postcrossing where I have found success with finding penpals. I can say that the InCoWriMo/LetterMo penpals have overwhelmingly been quite successful for longterm correspondence, more so than searching through profiles on various sites.

How do you find penpals? - updated.

Back in 2012, I wrote a blog post called How do you find penpals? Although the details there are still valid, I would like to add a few more details. I'll repeat most of that post here.

So, how did I find penpals?

Well, in school, I filled out a form for a youth penpal service, though I can't remember which organisation it was. I paid for some penpals and received some letters. However, as a teenager, I found myself busy with other things, such as homework and being with friends. So, unfortunately, penfriendship dwindled.

Then, as after leaving university, I wanted penpals again. I bought a free ads paper and saw that there was a form to place an ad internationally through their sister papers. I placed an ad in 10 international papers and received some letters. I still write to one of them.

Then, when I got my first computer, I wanted some penpals, but only found people who wanted email friendship. One even got worried if I did not write daily. I gave up for a few years.

Then, in 2008, I decided to try again for snailmail penpals. First port of call was PenPal International and had  found a few people to write to. However, the letters stopped (maybe lost in the post, or they stopped writing). I also tried Interpals and found more people that way. However, it was the same old story, the letters stopped. Also, some who said they would write the first letter, never did (or it was lost in the mail). One thing good about Interpals was that I discovered Postcrossing and this satisfied my hunger for nice mail, with postcards to and from all over the world. I discovered their forums (fora?) and found penpals through that, although not everyone continued their correspondence with me. I have tried other penpal websites but ...

Some penfriends started sending me Friendship Books (FBs). These are little booklets, sent with letters for people to write their name and address in, perhaps a bit about themselves and abbreviations such as NPW (new penpals welcome), NNSP (no new swap pals). I haven't received any letters via this route. I had started to make my own, first sending them around Spring 2009, but none have made their way back home, even 6 years later.

These are a few I have made. I sew the paper into the cover, rather than using staples. I haven't sent many new ones recently. Comments received on the original post had concerns of where these friendship books go, some could be sent to prisoners, or to those who are not really interested in letters.

Another site I found for penpalling, well, is mainly a craft and swap site called Swap-Bot. Almost anyone, over the age of 18, can create a swap, people then join and when the deadline for joining is over, the host of the swap checks through the profiles of the people, and if all is well, tells the computer to assign partners. I have joined postcard, letter and Christmas card swaps. I haven't hosted my own swap (I would automatically join the swap). As I write this blog entry, popular swaps include various ones for Artistic Trading Cards (ATC), postcard swaps and pocket letters (in a 9-section trading card sleeve).

In 2012, there was The Month of Letters Challenge (LetterMo) for the month of February. The challenge was to send an item of post (postcard, letter, ...) every "postal" day, so this was 24 days for USA. I had mail ready to go out every day, but missed the last postal collection on one Saturday, so instead of letting the item be lonely in the postbox, I kept it at home until Monday. I wrote to new people who were doing this challenge, and have developed a penfriendship with some of them. I also took part in 2013. However, outside of just before February and a couple of weeks after, the site's forum was neglected. 

In 2014, I joined my first InCoWriMo (International Correspondence Writing Month) signing up on the fpgeeks forum. This is similar to the LetterMo challenge and I wrote/received letters to/from a range of different people. I might not have written to them if they had instead a profile up on Interpals. It was quite a freeing experience, not constrained by gender, age, preconceptions - just correspondence. I am still writing to some people from the 2014 InCoWriMo. I signed up again in 2015 but didn't take part in LetterMo. 

I have also found friendship via SendSomething. There are other sites available, e.g.  The Letter Exchange  (something I haven't tried yet, but they have a magazine, and is a subscription service), and Letter Writers Alliance (I am a member).  Instagram and Tumblr are other sites becoming popular to find penpals. You can get ideas there too about snailmail. There are groups on Facebook but caution is needed there too (I recognise some names from other sites where they haven't been reliable senders)

New up though is a forum and monthly project Five Questions 5 Letters. I have some new correspondence from that and it is looking promising.  

No Letters to reply to :(

I posted the last of the letters I wrote last Friday. Since then, I have had very little post and no penpal letters. I am itching to write, so I am currently looking through random profiles on SendSomething for potential victims to thrust letters on.
Please postie, bring me letters tomorrow!