On the one hand, that's a really long time. The print I have just now begun to make in my Mystique series will be on its way to the collectors in a matter of a few weeks. Four months sounds ridiculously long!

But then, I have to remember that the Senshafuda project was - from the start - conceived as a completely different concept. It's collaborative, and the communication and back-and-forth between all the parties, not to mention waiting for each of them to find 'free time' for this, made the long time frame kind of inevitable. So it probably wasn't such a good idea to start with a 'spring' set ...

But anyway, here's a recap of the past couple of days work ... A package with Tetsui-san's first completed batch arrived yesterday morning:

I got out my cutting board, worked out where the cuts should go, put tape to mark them, and got busy slicing:

As I mentioned the other day, new part-timer Yasui-san had brought over a bunch of the completed packs, so the next step was to put everything together. I don't have a complete set of photos, but there isn't much new to see. I headed for the basement to do the spray glue job for the front 'cover' prints:

And then came back upstairs to finish off. Each pack got the three prints from the same sheet as the front label:

They tuck into their 'nest' very nicely, and it looks just like my 'advertised' version!

Slip them into a tight little plastic envelope, and they are ready to go!

[Fun episode: I had the webcam running for these jobs this morning - the gluing (as you see above), and the packing. Those aren't specifically interesting jobs for people to watch, but the Webcam has been off for nearly a week and if people get used to it being 'off' all the time, they won't hang around! So I had it running just for the sake of having it active ... Anyway, here I am sitting at my low kotatsu table, with all the parts spread around: the finished bag of Senshafuda packs, the invoices, the mailing labels, etc. and etc. I fire up the camera and get to work. Few minutes later, just as I am packing the first one, I get a note on the Webcam message board - collector Dale over in the US is watching. The 'fun'? Well, back when I first put the catalogue page online for the Senshafuda prints, but before publicizing it, he was the first person to find it, click the (at that time still hidden) 'Add to Cart' button, and to place his order. So he was 'Collector #1' for this series, and here I am wrapping them, with his invoice on the top of the pile (they printed out in the same order that the orders had come in ...), and he comes online to watch ... Nice! And I was thus able to offer my congratulations 'live'! ...]

So we're up and running now with this series, and although these prints will (I hope) eventually be issued on a three-month timetable, I'd certainly like to get the next package out earlier than that. If we can do it in two months, we would then be primed for a three-month rotation basically lined up with the seasons.

I've already seen Seki-san's first 'roughs' for the summer set, and although I don't want to give away too much too soon, those of you who know something about summer in Japan know that you can usually expect ... some fireworks!