Prepare to shudder....

I conducted a workshop last week. Whilst making the kits up, I obviously felt generous and included greeting stamps as well as the alphabet I had used, just in case workshopeers didn’t want to lose the will to live. Oh, and I was trying to avoid the savage comments that come when you force people to use individual alpha stamps!This is the card. I think you can tell that I was very careful with the stamping of the text, I think it actually looks careful! Apart from the smudged ink on ‘niv’ because I didn’t allow drying time in my triumph of getting the spelling, spacing, wobble factor and relative straightness correct. But I digress hugely. 

Frequently when a workshop finishes, someone cleans the stamps before I chuck everything in a bag. It’s a really nice thing that someone does, particularly as it’s often days before I get round to doing them. 

When I unpacked the kit for this particular card, I knew immediately that I didn’t need to turn out the alphabet and check that each letter was clean. I try to turn them out and handle them as one block, but that often gets away from me, and frankly after that, I’m the one who loses the will to live. Here’s my stash of the smaller alphabets I own:

Now you can see why I could immediately knew that the stamps would have been cleaned. I can’t help it. It seems easier to find them from the wrong order next time I use them than stop and sort them alphabetically at the time of cleaning. I’m not ashamed, alarmed or worried. Just resigned. Perhaps I should take all of these over to the shop and let the shuddering minds loose on them. Or does that put me in line for a slap, for gross pre-supposition and congenital laziness?