Impaled Strangled Jaundiced Under-nourished Mutant Duck-Snowmen With Spotty Skin

Above: Will Write For Chocolate has been updated.

There was a time in my life when I was actually semi-competent at handcrafts. I made little Fimo characters, felt ornaments, handmade paper, wreaths braided from herbs and other plants I had grown and harvested myself. When Jeff and I got engaged, I created our wedding invitations and programs myself, using watercolour paints and calligraphy.

Earlier this year, I volunteered to organize a Christmas Ornament Exchange on LJ. I thought I could make some more of my cute little Fimo characters. Except I had underestimated the toll that tendinitis had taken on my Fimo-manipulating tendons...I ended up making my snowmen ornaments much smaller than I intended, and the paperclip hangers look way too big in comparison. The Fimo carrot noses I put on looked like duck bills instead. The Fimo cracked a bit in places when I baked it because I hadn't kneaded the dough enough. And then the glaze I put on turned yellow in patches.

Ugh. :-(

So I've christened these horrific creations my Impaled Strangled Jaundiced Under-nourished Mutant Duck-Snowmen With Spotty Skin. Hopefully the catchy name will help make up for the lack of innate cuteness and craftmanship:



I was amused by my friend Craig, who posted the following on the Flickr page with the above photo: "These are cuter than anything! I'd cover a ton of trees in these! Seriously! Can I order some? Can you make more?"

Nope. Never. These will remain one-of-a-kind. The world will be a better place for not having more Impaled Strangled Jaundiced Under-nourished Mutant Duck-Snowmen With Spotty Skin, believe me. I'm sending them to 11 people plus one for the Interfilk auction at OVFF next year (thanks to Melissa Glasser for volunteering to collect these Interfilk ornaments).


As for other crafts: well, I've always been terrible at needlecraft, mostly from lack of patience. The only thing I ever successfully crocheted in my life was a small baby blanket for my niece Sara, using granny squares, and that ended up being more of a large knotty handkerchief than an actual blanket. But I proudly sewed on a cloth label that said "Made With Love From Your Aunt."

I was going to post about the wonderful ornaments I've received so far from the Christmas Ornament Exchange Group in this Blathering, but it's been agreed that it would be better to keep them a surprise for now while people are still receiving them in the mail. Please do check the Ornamentalia LJ group closer to Christmas, when I'm sure photos will start appearing.

Instead, I'm going to highlight the skill of a few needlecraft-savvy friends.

Like Beckett, who sewed this Jedi Knight outfit for one of her sons for Halloween this year. And if you haven't visited her Flickr sketchbook, please do!

Like Allison's cross-stitch pieces. Check out her Woodland Santa and Tapestry pieces, for example, and the cross-stitch she made for me (photo above and to the right).

Like Margaret, Quilter Extraordinaire, who organizes the creation of the GAfilk Quilt each year. She quilted me this ornament to hang from my office tree:



Like Julie, who knit these cool hand-warmers.

Like Judith, whose beading prowess has progressed exponentially since a beading workshop with Kathleen Sloan. Here's a cool Minas Tirith beading piece she did a while back.

Like Bev (my friend Craig's mom), who does AMAZING quilting art pieces. Check out the detail on her Killarney Lighthouse piece.

Fun links

These ones are from Jeff...

This Amateur Gourmet post is lots of fun, combining food and comics and storytelling. I might use Comic Life to try this in Blatherings sometime.

Incredible Little Mech Sculpture: Holy cow. This little mechanical guy was created by Netherlands artist, Mark Ho. It's constructed of 920 homemade parts (101 of these parts are in each hand), made from bronze and stainless steel. You can find more info about Mark here.



And then if you really want to be distracted from work, check out these mesmerizing videos:

Video 1 (could someone please translate that sung Japanese phrase for me? I can't get it out of my head...)
Video 2
Video 3
Video 4

Flying dreams

Above: 20 minute doodle in Corel Painter IX using the Chalk, Digital Watercolour and Croquil brushes. It started out as a flying picture, but started falling instead. At least it's not as obviously a freefall as this similar illustration I did last year.

I had trouble sleeping last night and am pretty tired today. I started thinking about dreams this morning. Does anyone out there still have flying dreams? Y'know, the dreams where you learn to fly or you're able to fly? I used to have those all the time when I was a child. Occasionally they'd end with me plummeting to the ground (and waking up), but the flying made the fall worth it.

Does the fact that I don't dream about flying anymore mean something? More often, I tend to have stressful dreams...I'm either running from someone or something, I'm late or have forgotten something important, or exaggerating something that's been stressing me in waking life. Or stupid, boring dreams: shopping in a grocery store, inane conversations, etc.

When I was a teenager, I remember being fascinated by the whole dreaming process and researched it extensively. I remember being able to train myself to dream about something specifically by focusing on it just as I drifted off to sleep. I'm not sure if I'd be able to do that now (I fall asleep VERY quickly after going to bed) but I'm going to give it a shot.

I want to dream about flying again.

Busy week. Nearly finished my novel revisions, but I also have a number of illustrations due for a client by the end of the week.

Comic I recently did for Inkygirl:




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Illustration Friday: Smoke

I created the above this morning for Illustration Friday. This week's topic: Smoke. For this illustration, I experimented more with the Chalk brush tool in Corel Painter. I used Digital Watercolour for colouring in the girl as well as shadow textures. I may work this into a polished piece in the future; I want to experiment more with the lighting as well as adding background details (stars in the sky, etc.)

I find Illustration Friday great in that it's a way to keep me illustrating for the pure fun of it rather than just to someone's spec.

Hey, I've been invited to the National Cartoonists' Society annual Toronto Christmas party this year again! I had fun at last year's party, so am very much looking forward to this one.



Yesterday, these roses arrived for Urban Tapestry along with a very touching note. Many thanks to our friend (who prefers to remain anonymous) for this lovely gift! Allison and Jodi will see the flowers when they're here this weekend for a GAfilk prep practice.

Below: Gary and Sheryl at OVFF.



The fabulous Lady Mondegreen (Batya, Seanan, Amy, Merav):



Hearing this group was one of my con highlights...wonderful harmonies and great energy here! They will be giving a concert at Concertino and are International Guests of Honour at D'Zenove Convention in the UK.

I heard them once or twice ages ago and enjoyed listening, but they're so much more confident now and are obviously having fun. If you get the opportunity, do go hear them perform!



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Orkut scrapbook wars revisited

Above: Mary Bertke and her band, Aisling, perform at Liberty Bookstore in Upper Arlington, Ohio. Some great music, and I loved how all the band members seemed to be having so much fun.

There's an article about NaNoWriMo in this week's Book Standard, if anyone's interested. Apparently more than 62,000 participants have already signed up. And yay, Chris has added a link to Inkygirl on my Nanocomic page. :-)

Finished my J.K. Rowling song last night. I sent two files to Jodi and Allison: one with the full arrangement, one with their parts highlighted. We're getting together this weekend for an Urban Tapestry practice in prep for GAfilk.

The Book Standard has a still from the New Line Cinema production of The Golden Compass. I really, really hope they do a good job with this movie. I loved the trilogy so much that I can't help but be more than a tad nervous.

A couple years ago, Jeff Bohnhoff and I engaged in sort of Photoshop battle on Orkut which we now refer to as the "Orkut Scrapbook Wars." I'm no longer on Orkut, but still have the pics. Here are a few, for your amusement and horror:

JeffB's infamous debut concert at FKO (posted by me):



Me and my pal Kirk (posted by JeffB):




Jeff's secret movie career (posted by me):



JeffB and me in Grade 2. I had a crush on him despite how high he buckled his trousers. He tricked me into eating Silly Putty. (posted by me):



My stint as a Star Trek actor (posted by JeffB):



JeffB as an unborn infant (posted by me):




JeffB and Pamela (posted by me):




Me with cleavage (posted by JeffB):



Jeff was always a cuter baby than me (posted by me):



In the end, we decided to call it even. :-)

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Closure

The illustration below was created in Corel Painter IX for Illustration Friday. This week's topic: "Wind."



In a post I made several days ago, I described an incident at an early OVFF where a flautist's comment turned me off the convention for years. Well, I heard from that flautist a day later! At least we both theorize she was probably the same person.

I thought it incredibly brave of her to contact me, especially since I had already admitted in the comments section that the incident took place so long ago that I didn't even remember what the unidentified person looked like. It turns out that she and I did meet in person after that in a much more positive setting, but neither of us connected the other with that incident.

Anyway, it turns out that she was having a bad weekend. A REALLY bad weekend. "...If that was me, I do apologize -- I'd hate to think that I managed to make someone else even more miserable than I was at that convention." Both of us have come a long way since that OVFF, I think.

I'm not mentioning her name because I'm unsure about whether she minds being identified publicly or not, but she does at least occasionally read Blatherings: THANK YOU! For being so brave, and for providing some unexpected and much appreciated closure.



My goals this weekend: finish comics for NaNoWriMo, finish writing a song (possibly even TWO songs) as well as recording my flute part for Seanan's CD, finish my contribution to the Christmas Ornament Exchange.



As I mentioned in my LJ, I'm excited to have gotten tickets to see Wicked with my friend Lyanne in December! I've heard many good things about the show, and I loved Gregory Maguire's novel of the same name.

Just finished Endymion Spring by Matthew Skelton. I can SO see this book being turned into a movie.

And finally, I LOVE MY HOME OFFICE. Yes, I've raved about my basement office before, but I must rave some more. "Heading down to your Cave?" Jeff will ask as I descend the steps to the basement, steaming mug of cinnamon tea (thanks, Beckett!) in one hand, books in the other.

I love having my own creative space. I love looking around and see my books piled everywhere (yes, the shelves have already filled up and I'm resorting to piles now), my painted office tree with its various ornaments from friends, my craft table, musical instruments, Patrick Stewart and Ruth Ohi posters, my magnetic wall. I even inherited Jeff's lava lamp! Yes, my office is that classy.

Must write music now...




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