A long, exciting week

The photo above is of one of the Superballs I set free in the wild. That's what my family calls it. Occasionally I buy handfuls of them from vending machines, then leave them in odd, unexpected places for other people to find, to play with. I took that photo a couple years ago.

This week has been full of "Superballs". Random good things, surprises and interesting moments. Maybe it hasn't been exciting by a lot of people's standards, my excitement is generally pretty quiet stuff. But it's been good.

The big thing of course, the Duck Tape contest. Still waiting to find out who won, and all week I was pretty obsessed with it, I want to win it so much, but now voting is done, there is nothing more I can do, and feel pretty good about at least making it into the finals. Winning would be a great thing for this little blog, because Duck Tape said they might post a URL to the winner's webpage.

I'm getting a Fiskars Fuse Creativity System! YAY! It will be here tomorrow and it's really too nifty! If you haven't heard of them yet, it's a upper end home crafting die cut system that will emboss, letter press and cut. You can buy an adapter kit to use dies and folders from other systems with it, and it has a very large area so it will work with larger dies like the Big Shot dies. I've been wanting one since they came out, so it's pretty nifty. I've been looking at information about making my own letter press plates using photo polymer plates, and talking to my husband about building a small breakdown portable exposure unit to burn the plates.

Since I've been considering self-publishing a zine full of dandelion recipes, I can do a letter pressed cover for it! It will be a small run at this point, but I'll also do it in e-book format. That's something I plan to start working on seriously as soon as dandelions come up in spring. My son said he would help with it.

Yesterday was my best friend's birthday. It's hard to believe it's been over a year since she passed. I miss her daily. Last year for her birthday, when it was still all very raw, we donated food to our local soup kitchen. This year we did the same thing, checking their website for the wishlist and buying them stuff off of that.
After we dropped that off, we went to a local craft show. I managed mostly to stick to my plan. One new cup from one of my favorite local potters, Hot and Spicy Reindeer Sausage from Indian Valley Meats and a few other little things.
Then we met Dad and William at Peggy's for pie. Peggy's is an Anchorage institution, it's been there since the 40s, and they make the best pie. We had lunch and pie, and watched planes and helicopters landing and taking off from Merrill Field, a small private plane airport.

There were a lot of little moments of happiness and joy this whole week, and the total excitement of the Duck Tape contest. I think they will probably announce the winner tomorrow.