IdleEmma

Hey there! In brief, my name's Emma. I'm 23 years old, from Ireland and have a desire to spend my time reading, writing, drawing, knitting and crafting.

In more detail:

• I love snail mail. I have several pen pals around the world and I love taking some time out to sit down and put some words on paper.

• I also love snail mail because it's fun decorating letter paper and envelopes so that each one is unique. Also, it's allows me to put my hoards of craft supplies to good use!

• Did I mention my hoards of crafts supplies? I absolutely love making things and have an obsession with pretty washi tape and card stock.

• As for knitting, I taught myself to knit a few years back when I was avoiding doing research on Old Norse-Icelandic elves for my undergraduate final year project. One of the better decisions I've made in my life - doing an FYP that involved translating Old Norse when you don't know Old Norse was not.

• It may not have been a great decision in my life as it did make for a difficult few months, but I do find Norse mythology fascinating

• Which leads to a love of fantasy literature, movies and games, especially things related to Tolkien's books and Peter Jackson's films.

• And while I did find that Old Norse tricky, I'm rather fond of languages. I studied Japanese at university and I'm currently trying to learn some Dutch. I did study Irish for many, many years at school but my Irish is abysmal...not that my Japanese is any better!

Just a few things:

• cats
• chocolate
• tea
• happy mail
• documentaries
• nature scenes
• cute animals
• pastel colours
• a good book
• purple and grey (my favourite colours)
• maps

My absolute favourite movies are Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy and Hobbit trilogy. I also really love the books and I collect various different copies of The Hobbit. I have about seven copies of the book...including a Japanese translation, a Latin translation (even though I don't understand Latin) and a graphic novel version.

Other favourite movies of mine include The Martian, V for Vendetta, The Fast and the Furious movies (or anything with Vin Diesel really...).

For books, well, I guess I read a lot of travel literature! I love reading about people's adventures around the world and learning new things about places. My favourite of what I've read so far is 'Walking the Nile' by Levison Wood.

There are so many, many crafts I enjoy. I like knitting and I recently started learning how to crochet.

I am also a huge fan of planners. I have a Filofax and I love making my weekly to-do lists look pretty!

Snail mail and making mail art is another huge passion of mine!

I also enjoy card making.

As for different craft materials I enjoy using:

• die cuts - can never have too many, especially ones of useful phrases and words like 'hello'
• planner stickers...just very useful for my planner!
• journal cards
• pretty card and textured paper
• just general interesting stickers
• and basically anything interesting that can be used to decorate snail mail.

Oh, did I mention washi tape? Washi tape...I love washi tape. I always wish I had more!

I love tea! I drink about five mugs a day. I can't function without my tea (usually black tea with a dash of milk, no sugar!). Thankfully there's quite a large overlap with people who enjoy snail mail and people who enjoy tea. For any tea swaps I get involved in, I'm happy to try out any tea really! My favourites though are black teas and chai.

My favourite type of chocolate is...all chocolate? Maybe white chocolate...or milk...I really can't decide! Just along as it doesn't have nuts in it!

Things I don't like:

• mushrooms
• spiders (I really hate spiders!)
• nuts

Allergies

A few things to note about allergies, I do have a nut allergy so please don't sent me anything with nuts in it! If you want to send me chocolate and it says 'may contain traces of nuts', don't worry, I can eat that!

Requests

Religion just isn't my thing - I'm an atheist. Avoiding sending strongly religious themed stuff is very much appreciated! :)