Thursday, December 11, 2008

Busy busy

A friend recently said that pre-Christmas is in a different time zone which works at twice the speed and I fear she may be right. With nine days to go before we head to Germany all I've done about getting presents for the family so far is having ideas...

Meanwhile, commissions are rolling in, which is so exciting! But also so time consuming! It also leads to some crazy straying-from-the-pattern-of-the-moment-path right into the production of robots!



I'm so pleased with this little guy. The picture is shit. Really. In real life he's so sweet, I just want to hug him! All day! Of course the making of robots had occurred to me before, but, like, the whole world is making robots these days, so it didn't seem that much of a challenge. But now I can think of a hundred kids who might get one for christmas!

Aside from that, the Flumptwizzle pattern got re-purposed into a fancy pink kitty cat.



I know. Let's not talk about the quality of these pictures... It seems that my photographic abilities, never hugely exciting, disappear completely with the hours of daylight in the winter. On the good side this means, of course, that with the solstice right over there about to come up, things should start improving soonish again.



On a different, completely random note, and just because I'd like to say it, it was the last fencing class of the year yesterday, and I went to the pub with some of the guys afterwards, and it was really pleasant.

That's it.

Saturday, December 06, 2008

Tired but happy. Oh, and rich.

All that griping, and for what? The market went really well, people seemed to go crazy over all the ornaments, in particular. Must remember that for next year...

Also, Frederic the Sprout may just have gotten his first foot onto the ladder to movie stardom. We shall see what comes of that. I'm rather excited about the possibility.

Friday, December 05, 2008

Last minute brainwave

You know, I'm really quite worried that nobody will show tomorrow. Oh well. Last night, as was, I guess, to be expected, the Last Minute Brainwave [tm] Hang on. As I was trying to finish that sentence, I got distracted by crazy numbers of birds trying to all land on one tree simultaneously outside my window. So I had to go and take a picture, and here it is:
Waxwings, apparently

A quick trawl through the Concise Encyclopedia of Birds (Bertel Bruun, 1974, illustrated by Paul Singer) identified them as Waxwings. Just as well I started at the back... The book (bought for 80p in a charity shop, mostly to have something to copy when drawing birds) sez: Waxwing: a member of the family Bombycillidae. The three species of waxwings are found in the forests of the northern part of the Northern Hemisphere. Waxwings are medium-sized, crested passerines. They are social in habits outside the breeding season. Waxwings often perform irruptions of areas outside their normal range. They live mainly on berries [which explains why they were going crazy over the rowan tree...] Well. Irruptions, indeed.

Now what I wanted to say seems all boring in the light of these punky irrupting birds.

Foo. Monster. Box. Mini. Blah.

Last minute brainwave

Thursday, December 04, 2008

Breaking News

Just because I *know* you're burning to know this: After a few weeks of getting worse by the minute at fencing, and after just 13 months, yesterday I took *and passed* my silver award!

Yay me!

Wednesday, December 03, 2008

Counting down to the Christmas Market


I'll be truly glad when Saturday is over. The last few weeks have been spent in a bit of a tizz, doing bits and bobs here, and dithering and swithering there, having ideas, throwing them out, trying them anyway, declaring them a waste of time, all with the vague feeling that it'll all be over in a flash, and then the real Christmas will be here to panic about.

I didn't get as many of the monster ornaments done as I had planned. Might be a good thing... not sure how popular they'll be. I'm pretty chuffed with the gocco-printed cards that happened, once again in conjunction with Sharon. I've still got some of the packaging to sort out, and then keep my fingers crossed that people will be in a bit more of a spending mood than last year.

Meanwhile, Nils is slowly being introduced to the idea of Advent calendars and Christmas baking, the latter catching on pretty fast.