a peek inside the fishbowl

[ETA: three participants have been found. Yay!]

Don’t you love getting mail? I do. I reeeally love getting mail. There’s no better feeling than seeing something poking out of my mailbox and knowing it’s a surprise for ME. :)

I’ve been scripting a post in my head about a new pay-it forward** project. And then I read a post over at BeachMama’s about the very thing I was thinking about doing. Was this was destined to happen or what?

So allow me to cut to the chase:

I will send a handmade gift to the first three people who leave a comment and tell me they are interested in playing along.

In order to qualify:

1) You must have a blog.
2) You must write a post and offer to send your own handmade items to three of your readers.
3) There’s no restriction on what this handmade gift can be.

(Please don’t be intimidated by the whole handmade thing. No one is expecting you to make a quilt, knit a sweater, or fold 1000 origami cranes. How about some handmade soap, or marble magnets, or a pretty ornament?)

As far as the gifts go, I’m in the same camp as BeachMama. I don’t exactly know yet what they will be, nor do I know when I’ll be sending them out. But I will. My deadline is end of January.

So who’s in? I’d love it if this could continue to move ahead.

**(Via wikipedia):

” The expression “pay it forward” is used by a creditor who offers the debtor the option of paying the debt forward to a third person instead of paying it back. Debt and payments can be monetary or by good deeds. In sociology, this concept is called “serial reciprocity”. A related transaction, which starts with a gift instead of a loan, is alternative giving.”

I hadn’t realized that the concept has been traced back to Benjamin Franklin, who referred to it in a letter written in 1784:

“I do not pretend to give such a Sum; I only lend it to you. When you […] meet with another honest Man in similar Distress, you must pay me by lending this Sum to him; enjoining him to discharge the Debt by a like operation, when he shall be able, and shall meet with another opportunity. I hope it may thus go thro’ many hands, before it meets with a Knave that will stop its Progress. This is a trick of mine for doing a deal of good with a little money.”