Nose To The

This is how many kits I packed this weekend.

It may not look like much, but it's about eight or ten hours worth of measuring tiny quantities of seed beads (I like measuring spoons) or counting out bigger beads, pouring them into miniscule baggies, affixing the appropriate sticker to each baggie, and then putting the selection of beads-in-baggies into a slightly bigger but still much-smaller-than-a-sandwich-baggie baggie, along with assorted findings such as clasps, thread, needle, buttons, memory wire and so on, and then grouping like baggies (where "like" means "for the same kit, though possibly different colourways") into a bigger baggie, one so big it really ought not to be used in the diminutive, not that it's sweater-sized or anything, but it really is quite a bit bigger.

Then make sure there's a printed set of of instructions-plus-cover-sheet for each kitsworth baggie, group the instructions by kit, and put them in The Box That I Will Not Check. The footprint of the box is about the size of two sheets of paper side-by-side, and it's perhaps 4" deep. You'd think, after these hours of effort (I sat down to eat breakfast and dinner with the kids, and watched an hour of TV with my son, but other than that I packed kits all day) I'd have boxes piled floor-to-ceiling, bursting with kits, but no. The box is not overflowing, let alone full.

It's a little discouraging to have spent all that time and printer ink and have so little to show for it.

Not to mention a sore back.

On a more cheerful note, my oldest nephew (I'm not sure if he's nine or ten; I'm aparently not quite doting enough in the Aunt Department) won a poetry competition with the poem below. He does not have a sister, by the way.

My father looks like Frankenstein,

my mom looks like Godzilla,

my brother looks like Dracula, 

my sister, Vampirella.

My family is the scariest 

in this entire city.

I really can't explain how I

turned out to be so pretty.

--- Darwin O. Bloch

(Picture circa 2004)