Fold. . . Lettergramme - no envelope necessary

Following on from my Love. . . Snail mail post, I bring you a thrifty (bargainaceous) and fun stationery idea: The Lettergramme. It's a bit like an aerogramme and it saves you from having to find/buy/use an envelope. You write your letter on a rectangle of paper and then fold the letter up to become its own envelope! A4 paper is a really good size, but the only limit is your imagination (and your country's postal regulations on allowable sizes for letters in the mail!) You can use one sheet of paper or more, but above two or three sheets folded as one, it gets too bulky to fold and secure properly. I first saw this idea in an origami book many years ago. I think it was a Nick Robinson book, but am not sure of its title. I just found instructions for a more complicated "3D" envelope here on his website, but the version I am familiar with is much simpler. I have used it countless times over the years, and I hope you find it useful too.

Here's a photo tutorial for you. . .

First write your letter (here using my Lamy Safari fountain pen).

Fold your letter in half, like a book, with the words inside.

Unfold, and then fold two edges to the middle crease as shown.

Fold the top and bottom edges inwards, parallel, to make a (nearly) diamond shape.

Take the bottom right point and tuck it in under the top right diagonal flap.

Repeat the same on the left side.

Although it holds together well on its own, secure with sticker/sticky tape if sending through the mail.

Pop it in the post, and do your bit to keep Snail Mail alive!

Love. . . Snail mail

Photo credit: Contest entry by Kate and Hendrik www.eqcomics.com Source - google images

I really love "snail mail". There is something so special about being able to open a handwritten letter and know that the contents were written just for you. You can also include other tangible bits and pieces in a way that's impossible with e-mail and receiving a letter is such a lovely change from bills and junk-mail in the mailbox. 

I've had a very lengthy apprenticeship in writing letters. Of course, there were thank you letters every Christmas and birthday, and as well as that I wrote regularly to several friends during teenage years and upwards. For much of my childhood, my mum and I lived 100 miles apart, she didn't have a phone line and we used to diligently write to each other every week. Just telling each other the small details of our lives and including things like little drawings or poems or very occasionally an audiotape of us speaking to each other. Also, for years when I was a teenager and young adult in the UK, I wrote to a dear friend (VG) in Australia. There was no such thing as email and we didn't speak on the telephone as it seemed so expensive back then, but our letters would wing their way around the world, often "waving to each other at the equator" - it was uncanny how often our letters would manage to cross in the post! We built our friendship through letter-writing, not by any other means, after a chance meeting in Guernsey back in 1986. These two wonderful women gave me my apprenticeship in letter-writing - it was such a treat to be able to open the envelope, settle down and enjoy every word of the letter inside, then fold it up to savour again another day.

My mum continues the snail mail tradition to this day, writing weekly postcards to Sonny Jim. For me, email is so accessible (and yet, so impersonal) and long-distance phone calls are now within budget. But occasionally, I still dust off the fountain pen and write a good old-fashioned letter, and it is always a joy to write or receive one. Just last week I got a letter from my Australian friend VG, and it was as lovely as ever to hold her words in my hands, and to see that old familiar handwriting, which I have known for 25 years now. I started writing back to her yesterday - there is much to say. . .

Although letters have been largely superseded by emails, I have yet to fathom how the parcel post could possibly be replaced. Unless one day someone invents a contraption like the one in Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory book! Willie Wonka invented a "Wonkavision" machine which was able to break a chocolate bar down into tiny invisible particles and send it across the room, where it re-assembled into an edible bar of chocolate -  but even that needed some tweaking, as Mike Teevee discovered to his detriment!!  Imagine going to the "Post Office" and watching as your parcel de-materialised in front of your eyes, only to "magically" reassemble itself at its destination?!

Nowadays, I am lucky enough to receive occasional parcels of loveliness from various friends, and I like to do my fair share of sending them too. One very dear friend in Wales (K) has an uncanny knack of sending me a parcel at just the right moment, sometimes with British sweets and biscuits that I miss (like McVities' Jaffa Cakes or Trebor's Clarnico Mint Creams) as an added bonus. She also sent me the most incredible hand-knitted lime green shawl for my birthday in late January, just before I started up this blog. In the last couple of weeks I have received several parcels of knitterly goodness from far away. . . all sent through the traditional postal service rather than Wonkavision! First, I received some pretty little stitch markers and a stunningly beautiful skein of yarn from an English ravelry friend, S, whom I have never met in "real life":

It's by Hedgehog Fibres yarns, and the colours are so beautiful, whilst it feels deliciously soft. It's from the same friend who knitted me the beautiful Julia socks I blogged about here.

Next, my handmade Artist's Edition "Knitter's Manifesto" package I had ordered from Brenda Dayne of "Cast On" podcast fame arrived. All the way from West Wales! I'll let the pictures do the talking. . .

If you would like your very own limited edition package of handmade goodness from Brenda, check out her online shop here. Over there you can also buy a digital download of the audio "Knitter's Manifesto" or the wonderful Welsh for Rainbow collection of knitting patterns and stories from Pembrokeshire.

Last week, a surprise package arrived from some lovely Northland ravelry friends I have never met. When I opened the package it contained the Hap Shawl book by Sharon Miller which I have been lusting after since I began knitting my Hap Blanket - be still my beating heart! What a gift! Thank you so much P 'n' B!!

Finally, a lengthy letter from my old friend VG in Australia, including a Michael Leunig cartoon. He's a favourite of mine, ever since I was staying with VG in Melbourne back in the 1990s and became hooked on his cartoons/observations in The Age newspaper. Receiving a letter from VG took me back to the many years when it was our only means of communication, and our way of developing and sustaining a long-distance friendship which has thrived for 25 years. . .

I feel so lucky and grateful to have such kind and lovely friends, both old and new :) Despite the fact that "snail mail" is definitely outmoded, pushed aside by email and text messaging, I think I will always prefer it over email (even though, ironically, I send far more emails than letters now). I hope the postal service remains viable for a long time yet - I certainly plan on continuing to support it regularly, with hand-written cards, letters and parcels winging their way into someone's mailbox!

Love. . . Writing

Over the last few weeks I have realised just how much I like writing. I've slowly worked out that in much the same way as you can get pleasure from drawing without being an artist, you can get pleasure (and free self-therapy!) from writing without actually being "a writer" per se.

Back in early July, as I mentioned in this post, I discovered that in times of emotional turmoil I felt a greater need to write than to knit - which took me completely by surprise. Well, yesterday we got more sad news and the fountain pen has been calling once again. It seems not to matter if anyone will actually see what I write - in fact there is a wonderful freedom in just writing and writing and writing, letting the fountain pen nib leave a trail of emotions, reasoning, bargaining and acceptance in inky form, safe in the knowledge that no-one apart from me need ever see it.

Even typing (at which I am hopelessly inefficient) has its own particular appeal, and after years of shunning blogs as far too self-indulgent I seem to have become an easy convert to the genre! Whilst I write each blog post conscious that someone else might read it, even if I had an average of zero page-views per week I would continue. I write it mostly for me. How much more self-indulgent could I be?!! In particular, I have returned to my "Love. . . my life" post anytime I need reminding that I have so much to be thankful for. Like yesterday for instance, when one phone call turned our world upside down and literally years of planning, hoping and dreaming suddenly blew away like dust in the wind. But a new day has dawned and though it may be a different future to the one we three dreamed of, planned and hoped for, it will no doubt hold many wonderful surprises and opportunities. This time of heavy-hearted sadness and loss will pass. We will keep on walking forward and remember to appreciate each day we have. . .

. . . and you can bet that I will write about it - on the blog, in notebooks, in scrapbooks and on the backs of old envelopes, but I will write. I will breathe and love and knit and write and cook and eat and travel and laugh and play and feel and surprise myself countless times, and find that this is how a life is lived. . .