Mighty Craic

So yesterday, out of the blue, I received an e-mail from a media company saying that they had come across a gardening cartoon of mine online, and could they have my permission to add it to a newsletter that will be distributed in one of their client's stores in March/April.

In the old days I would have just been delighted and said yes, just happy to get the exposure. This time, however, I took a deep breath and asked for a fee for non-exclusive one-time rights. And they said yes! My first "corporate" illustration sale...how cool is that?

Thanks to my brother-in-law Kaarel for inspiring the cartoon. :-)



I've opened up a new CafePress store, by the way. It's still under construction; I'll be gradually adding some of my favourite designs over the next while as I finetune the site, and have added the link to the left-hand navigation menu.

Learned The Cow That Ate The Blanket yesterday, partly because I adore the tune name but also because it's part of a set that we're working on at the Tranzac. I soooooooooooo love my new whistle, I do.

I posted a link to yesterday's Blathering on both TheSession.org and the Chiff & Fipple forums. Zina Lee from TheSession.org encouraged me to contribute to Mighty Craic, a place where forum users can post a picture of themselves as well as sample tunes. I was all keen on doing this until I started listening to some of the MP3s...holy cow, talk about intimidating! This one (Fermoy Lassies), for example, is from "Mattrick", a 24-year-old Halifax musician who recorded this track and a bunch of others ON HIS LAPTOP IN HIS DINING ROOM and HE PLAYS ALL THE INSTRUMENTS. Apparently he's putting together a CD; I'm definitely going to order one.

And this is just one of the sound clips you can hear on this page. If you like Irish music (or are curious about it), do check out Mighty Craic. I'm looking forward to listening to all the tunes.

(Please note: The sound clips don't seem to be accessible this morning. Hopefully the server will come back up later today!)

The woman who pointed me to Mighty Craic, by the way, has a track on the site called "The Winter Queen" which is also known as "Jane Yolen's Reel." The piece was written by her friend Will Harmon, commissioned by The Green Man Review in honour of the author. You can hear Zina, Will and "Reverend" perform the reel here. The Green Man Review has info about Zina and the reel and Irish traditional tunes in general here. You can also read Zina's thoughts on house sessions (which sound a great deal like housefilks!) here. I love her description of playing along on "The Winter Queen" at a house session:

"And a doorway opened for me, somewhere inside my head; a peek into worlds where the commonplace becomes meaningful by squinting at it a slightly different way, where you can turn your head and realize that something extraordinary has been waiting for you to notice that it has been there all along, where the magic steps forward out of the periphery of the mundane. By concentrating on the tune, I stepped a little out of time and space and sideways into Jane Yolen's worlds, knowing the whole time that even a tiny jog of my concentration would knock me back out into my living room, sitting next to Will, playing Her Majesty's tune."

For those interested, The Green Man Review reviews music and literature, with a focus on folklore and folk music. An excerpt from their "About" page:

"...Our strong ties to both the past and the fey make Green Man Review a lively -- and often tantalizing -- combination of ancient and modern, darkly realistic and frankly magical. There's a fiddling jack, a Sidhe archivist/librarian, and a changeling are also on staff. Our present office has a wooden handle on the street door to accommodate the fey, and we've developed a back-up set of tunes in MP3 to deal with the pixies who have migrated online and occasionally try to massacre our server."

:-)

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postcards and Will Write For Chocolate

I've updated my Will Write For Chocolate comic. Also do check out the column below the comic: "Avoiding distractions while working at home."

I'm having fun with this new comic strip, and the weekly schedule isn't nearly as cumbersome as I expected. I'd be grateful if you could help me get word of this strip out there...tell your family! Tell your friends! Tell your writers' group!

Will Write For Chocolate is geared toward anyone with an interest in freelance writing. Or chocolate. Or both. Strips are updated every Wednesday. Feedback so far has been very good. I've even been approached about syndication on other Web sites but for now I'd like to stick with offering it only through Offpanel Productions.

Re-read Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart recently. This is one of my all-time favourite "comfort" books, one that I re-read at least once a year. For me, it's always been one of those books that I can fall into right away, the characters and story completely engrossing, moving, entertaining, satisfying.

Some people think it a waste to re-read books. Why read old ones when there are so many new titles? I like reading both, and get a different pleasure from each. Reading a new book is like being introduced to someone I've never met before; there's always the possibility that I'll have found a new friend. Or perhaps someone I'd rather never see again. :-)

I find re-reading a favourite book is like hanging out at home with an old friend. No need to break the ice, no awkward doubts...just kick off your shoes, make some tea, enjoy their company.

Thanks to Rick and Barbie for the postcards I found in my P.O. Box:



"Dear Debbie, Here's another postcard to add to your collection. The images are all classic Kenyan wildlife shots, but I do wonder whether (or how soon) they'll begin to seem like views of a disappearing world. Already the snows on Kilimanjaro have receded a long way up, and are no longer anything like as prominent as the image shows. Cheers, Rick H."



IOWA: Land Between Two Rivers

"Hi Debbie! My name is Barbie. I am a friend of Ally's. I live in [city name deleted], IA and it really DOES look like the picture on the front. Who would have thought crops could be beautiful! -- Barbie P."

I love snailmail postcards: each is unique, personal, a brief wave of greeting, a miniature still-life. If you send a postcard to my P.O. Box, I'll post it to my online postcard collection: Debbie Ridpath Ohi, 34 Eglinton Ave. W., P.O. Box 189, Toronto, ON Canada M4R 2H6.

If you prefer the postcard NOT to be posted, please say so at the top of the postcard. Any postcards sent to my home address will be considered private and will not be posted.

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Waiting For Frodo...again?

Thanks to Elizabeth Popiel for the strip idea. I think I'm going to have some fun with this. :-) Elizabeth had actually suggested temporarily resurrecting a special edition of Waiting For Frodo, but I swore a while ago that WFF was retired for good.

BUT I never swore they wouldn't make guest appearances in my other comics, did I?

:-)

By the way, I posted the incorrect URL for Ruth's updated Web site yesterday. The MAIN page of the site is http://www.ruthohi.com/.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

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Dreamdoodle

In my attempt to continue improving my drawing skills, I've been doodling regularly using Corel Painter 8 and my Wacom Artpad as well as going through books recommended by my friend Kate Parkinson.

Anyway, my favourite type of drawing these days is the visual equivalent of stream-of-consciousness writing, where I don't really have a particular topic in mind but just let my Wacom pen lead me where it likes. That's how the drawing above got created. I have no idea where it came from except I was in a somewhat melancholy mood at the time.

My current reading material:

Get Fuzzy: Groovitude: By Darby Conley. I won this comic book in the raffle at the National Cartoonists Society Christmas party. Started reading it but got distracted by something else so am finishing it now. LOVE the characters in this comic, especially Bucky. :-)

Bloody Jack: By L.A. Meyer. Thanks to Ruth for telling me about this book for young people. I started it last night and had to force myself to stop reading it because I knew I'd suffer in the morning otherwise, plus it was SO good that I wanted to be able to read it when I was fully awake. Will probably finish it tonight.

An Understandable Guide to Music Theory: The Most Useful Aspects of Theory for Rock, Jazz & Blues Musicians: By Chaz Bufe.

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My Life In A Nutshell

Thanks to Reid, Luisa, Michael and Ronnie for their help with the strip above!

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