More Geocache Swag

I gave away the last of the little cars my boy and I made a while back (see sidebar) so I was scrambling for stuff to trade for last weekend's Geocache outing.  I had some leftover glow-sticks from Halloween so I shoved those into my daypack and off I went.

I really didn't have a destination in mind but I figured I would start with some city caches in Newport News and see where I ended up.

Well, let's say I ended up learning the lesson that certain city caches that have an advertised difficulty rating of two stars (Careful! There might be some Muggles!) should have a difficulty level closer to five stars (Careful!  You are most likely going to be mugged, so bring a gun.  Parking is available on the North side of the hobo encampment, but expect your vehicle to suffer multiple break-ins and possibly be aflame once you finish pawing through litter-strewn shrubbery for a tupperware dish that may or may not have been used for a potty).

After a couple of those I headed to a safer part of town and looked for a few caches there but I really wasn't feeling it. 

So it goes.

As a side-effect to all this, though, I ended up being in an area where I managed to knock out 95% of my Christmas shopping so that's cool.  I even found what you see in the picture on the left in an import store in the area.  I haven't seen a bottle of Pop Shoppe soda in about 30 years so, even though root beer isn't my favorite thing in the world, I snapped it up.  Definitely a win, there.

This week I had a little time to build a new set of tradable items but I really didn't want to make anything with moving parts - the last couple I did like that took too long.  I cut the cubes you see in the upper left of this post out of a leftover piece of furring strip with the intention of just making some big ol' dice but that seemed weak.  What to do...

While we were decorating the tree, it occurred to me to turn them into little Christmas ornaments.  The process is below - as with the little cars, the four-year-old helped out a lot.

After painting:

After adding ribbons:

All done:

Start to finish I would say this took about three hours which is more along the lines of what I am willing to spend doing stuff like this - much longer than that and I start to get bored.  I hope to start Johnny Appleseeding these things around the area tomorrow.

Oh, in case you are interested, the next set of trinkets will be puzzle-based... sort of like the Jefferson Cipher Disks but a lot more awesome (copper, basswood, and oak instead of poplar, pine, and steel) if they come out like I hope they will.