Talk About Tuesday - I'm a Winner lol

In Which I Am Very Tired But Very Happy

 It's been quite the week. It's only Tuesday, but it has absolutely been A Week. I spent a lot of last night awake and anxious (don't drink coffee after 9PM guys, it's a trap!), my hormones are out of wack, I can't quite maintain focus for more than 20 minutes at a time, and my innards are wracked with gas (bc I think the mustard mayonnaise might be going by in my Yakisobas...). The world is, once more, falling apart at the seems. Eddie Van Halen has died. Johnny Nash, who sang "I Can See Clearly Now" has died. Half of the US government seems to have COVID-19. There's been at least one other Burder (bird murder) in my backyard perpetrated by our local hawk or falcon...

But I'm actually pretty upbeat and happy today.

That's pretty much 90% because I have a fantastic partner, but the other 10%? That's because I'm maintaining productivity no matter how distracted I am. Today I did crochet, drew, inked, wrote, sang, did a terrible little dance that scared the cat, prepped spicy noodles for my partner, prepped yakisoba for myself, made several very nice cups of coffee, and yes, missed the call for dinner twice because I was so into what I was reading and writing today.

I also got something in the mail that helps a bit ;)

See, a while back, there was a competition I entered to name some gaming dice for Skullsplitter Dice, and I actually succeeded in naming one of the new sets at the time - Astral Sliver! A lovely name, and lovely color. But get this - since I named them?

They sent me a set!!!

The color is a lovely amethyst with flecks of golden glitter, and it's totally not named Astral Sliver because I made a typo based on the poor colors on my aging monitor. I legit thought these were purple and silver. Instead, the gold is a lovely soft tone, and the sheen on the purple is incredible! They really are lovely dice :D

As for the set itself, the multiple d6's give you a chance to roll up a character sheet, backstab for extra damage, drop rocks or logs on your players, or just have that fun feeling of throwing a handful of dice around nice and quick (as opposed to most sets where you just get the one d6 that you have to reroll multiple times). There's an extra d20 in there, too, for criticals or other decision making rolls (or if one of them starts throwing ones like a total jerk - dice have personalities, yo). So you've got a very full set to begin with - and then there's the goodies!

*these might just be for Namers/Kickstarter backers, though!

In my lil parcel of goodies, I was given a sweet Skullsplitter pin with two hefty prongs on the back and a really nice black finish behind the shiny metal, and a neat green d20 that I'm digging a lot. How on earth did they know green was my favorite color? It's pretty dang cool, I have to admit. I'm not used to seeing dice with a matte finish, either, which makes it extra special and neat! It may be a Fey Lord's Boon d20, and if so, that's quite the gift, so I thank Skullsplitter and Blue Shift Media from the bottom of my dingy little heart (an organ I use so seldom I just forgot how to spell it five or six times) for this sweet, sweet set of dice.

Now I just kinda want to roll up a non-human Bard and play some D&D :P

That'll about do it for me today - I am still working on my Witchtober drawings (though they are hard to get through - inking takes a lot out of me, even as badly as I do it lol), and tomorrow I'll probably actually have a Wednesdaymania entry, so watch out for that!

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Fiber Monday

 

In Which I Did Some Crochet!

I've been working hard, lately, on Witchtober 2020. I'm a couple of days behind, but I'm still getting work done, and I'm proud of myself for that. I have sketches for the last 3 days (no "finished" inks, though), and I'm eager to get it on, but....

Today's not an Art day on the blog.

You're here about the yarn & hooks.

Some work on a shrug is afoot!

I mentioned that my sister was kind and gave me a pair of It's a Wrap! skeins, and I'm making use of the brighter color with this fun shell picot stitch. It's a six-row repeat (rows 2-7 of the pattern itself), with alternating shells and wide, loopy picots that I really enjoy working on.

As you can see, it's a fairly open design and may require a bit of blocking...

It's also a really fun design for this specific yarn, because the very separated strands and silky feel make the drape of this shell pattern infinitely more flexible than it would be in a more firm or fuzzy yarn. It looks great, too!

What's really fun is the color - you can't quite see it in the photos, but the yarn has gone from a very pale blue with a lot of white to more of an aqua color with less white, and as I continue, it will tend towards more greens and yellows! The overall feel will be somewhere between spring-like and oceanic, hence the shells, which can feel either floral or aquatic!

Alright, that'll about do it for me today - I've got some witches to draw, cheese to grill, and a shower to take lol.

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Thursday Art Walk - Ah HA!

 

In Which I ACTUALLY MADE A DEADLINE lol

You may have noticed I've been struggling to get blogs up lately. I'm not sure if it's hormones, the weather, the unceasing grind of American life, or what, but I've just been exhausted. Not just tired - tired I can deal with - but bone-achingly exhausted. And before you aske, no I don't believe I have the 'Rona. I am 99% sure I don't.

Mostly, I'm just fat and stressed. Which makes me fatter. Which stresses me out.

But I digress, and you're not here for me whining about my balooning waistline.

It's October 1st.

That means you're probably here for Inktober....

But I'm not doing Inktober this year.

I know, I got alllll excited, but then the controversy of the guy who made Inktober possibly maybe almost surely plagiarizing his book on inking and... I just don't wanna get into it. I really don't. I don't want to get involved.

And I don't like this year's prompt list anyway, so it wasn't much of a choice.

Since I'm already working on a set of artworks (the Fruit Dragons!), I figured I'd just do that, but...

Then I discovered Witchtober.

Specifically the prompt list I found here.

So get ready for 31 images of witches, starting today with "Goth Witch"

"Gothic Witchling"; Ballpoint pen & graphite sketch; 2020

Slightly better lighting

You may notice that I still cannot draw feet. This is okay, though, because I gave my goth witch a pair of cute hoof shoes (or are they?!). I don't have a name for her, but she looks cool, and I wish I was her. I have ideas for what her hair looks like though - black near the roots, but turning more flame-colored towards the tips. That skirt is also made of fringe, so that's why it looks... hairy. And she has a raven for a familiar because I couldn't figure out what to do with that arm and I wanted floppy sleeves. Couldn't do a snake wrapped around her arm with floppy sleeves!

But I mentioned fruit dragons earlier!

Well... I'm sketching a scene with my Watermelon Dragon and a very unhappy knight.

"Mistakes Were Made" unfinished pencil sketch on printer paper; 2020

Yes, that dragon is currently spraying down that knight with watermelon juice while his horse ignores the attack and grazes nearby. The knight is fine, just confused and very sticky. I plan on redoing the lineart with either colored pencil or digging out some Sakura Pigma Fineliners if I can find any and trying those. The dragon itself is very smooth, though he'll have some stripes (green on green!), and his lil horns, wings, claws, and tailclub are all watermelon pink (with seed-shaped dark brown flecks on them!). I love him.

I think that'll about do it for me, today, folks. My shoulders ache from sitting over the ol tv tray and pencils. If you're wondering about what I use, it's simple: a mechanical pencil and a random BIC pen my old man picked up from some tech conference or another. It has a stylus on the clicker end!

I hope y'all get out there and draw, whether or not you use the Inktober challenge or something else. (You could draw 31 pictures of candy corn and I'd still be proud of you. I'd just be craving candy corn because I'm a freak!)

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Talk About Tues... oh heck...

 

In Which It's Late, and I'm Tired, so Here's a Story.

Not gonna lie, today's blog is Wednesday's blog because I flaked. This is on me lol. I probably could've written this an hour ago if I'd been paying attention, but, well, y'all know me by now.

Why do now what I can panic and half-ass five minutes before a deadline?

Today was another super-saturated day - muggy, warm, very foggy. I baked some marmite bread (it was really good and we demolished it before I got pictures of the loaf because I'm impatient and gluttonous). I watched a lot of non-Herb-Abrams UWF. It was a good day.

Since I'm so sleepy, I want to tell you all a lil story, and since it's basically Falloween (oh my god, really, already?!), I'll make it a bit of a spooky one.

This is the story of the Y2K Ghost.

I've mentioned, I think, that my father is an IT guy. He used to be in the Air Force, but he got out before I was born and moved on from that into a lengthy career in tech. I tell you he was military so you know he was a man trained for combat. I tell you he's in IT to let you know he's a fairly logical person (though as many will tell you, logical people are often still highly emotional... which doesn't factor into this story, but he is an emotive dude).

The IT career is also why I have the story.

As you might've guessed by the title of the story, my dad had to work on Y2K bug fixes in the later part of 1999, and they'd just moved into a new facility. I say new, but the building itself is quite old. I'd heard rumors of it being a factory where people had died (rumors he, himself, had told me). I'd had harrowing experiences in the basement (okay, that was because I was a pre-teen helping to build an elaborate Halloween Haunted House and maybe it was a bit much for my wimpy lil self). It was a big, creepy building which almost never had the lights on, and my father was running on stress, cola, and very little sleep.

And one night, as the deadline for Y2K approached, he was working alone in the server room, running updates and bugfixes when he heard someone typing away on their clicky mechanical keyboard.

ticka ticka ticka ticka ticka

My old man is a bit confused by this - the business, a call center, basically shut down after 7PM, and he was in the server room near midnight pulling another 18 hour shift in a long line of 18 hour shifts. No one should be up in the area he was in.

So he went looking for the mystery typist.

ticka ticka ticka ticka ticka

Was it one of the programmers, staying late to build a software patch? But no, the only programmer who would have stayed that late was his brother (my most musically-inclined uncle who lent me my first D&D novel), who would've said hello and chatted with him if he was staying late.

ticka ticka ticka ticka ticka

Maybe it was his boss staying late to get work done? No he'd said good night hours ago.

ticka ticka ticka ticka ticka

One of the owners? No, he was in Sweden, visiting family (he would send me stamps, from time to time, because I collected them).

ticka ticka ticka ticka ticka

The sound was really starting to get to him, so he kept looking and looking, but he couldn't find anyone on the entire floor. He checked the conference room. He checked the cafeteria in case it was someone using their chunky 1990s laptop. He checked the ancient typewriter in the hallway. Nothing. No one. He was completely alone.

ticka ticka ticka ticka ticka

In the end, he just left work and came home, wracking his brains for what he could possibly be hearing. He told my mother and me - my sisters all in bed, and me having another sleepless night because I just can't sleep sometimes.

But of course, the story can't end there, can it?

Of course not!

He went back to work the next day (no days off during the tech crunch of Y2K!) and asked around - no one knew what he was talking about, and no one had stayed late.

Strange.

And 7PM rolled around, and everyone left except for my dad. And one other person. I don't remember if this was my uncle who stayed behind (possible, he did networking as well as programming, and the Network had to be Y2K Compliant, too), but whoever stayed that night heard it too.

ticka ticka ticka ticka ticka

ticka ticka ticka ticka ticka

ticka ticka ticka ticka ticka

ticka ticka ticka ticka ticka

And they searched the whole floor again. There was no way for it to be anyone upstairs - the floor and ceiling were very, very thick to prevent the call center above from having noise pollution from below (and vice versa). There was no way for it to be anyone in the floor below - there weren't any offices below, only storage!

ticka ticka ticka ticka ticka

It was driving them absolutely batty.

Batty?

Hmmm...

There had been bat problems before, so they started listening to the walls.

Nothing. Not a scratch or scrabble from mouse, rat, or bat. Nothing there. But when they pulled their heads from the wall...

ticka ticka ticka ticka ticka

ticka ticka ticka ticka ticka

ticka ticka ticka ticka ticka

Infuriated and slightly alarmed, my dad and the other man wandered around trying to figure out what it was for a good hour or so, but it wasn't until the printing room needed to be checked that they finally realized what was happening.

ticka ticka tiCK CKLCKL CKLCKL

Opening the door to the printer room made the clicky sound much louder, but it also changed what it sounded like. Instead of a fingers-on-keys sound, now it was a rattly clatter like... like something was stuck in something else.

Like maybe something stuck...

in an air vent.

My dad looked up and saw it.

A strip of clear plastic (maybe tape?) that had somehow gotten caught in the air exchange vent and was fluttering around, flicking against the vent cover.

There was their ghost.

(Years later, my father would pick up an inflatable T-Rex costume and we'd joke that it was cousins with the dinos that had sacrificed their lives for the Ghost Plastic.)

So I guess the moral to this story is: Ghosts are usually something much more disappointing than an actual ghost.

And always look up.

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Fiber Mon.... I Can Explain...

 

In Which I Keep Falling Asleep...

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned it on here before, but... I have issues with sleep. Some nights, it doesn't happen at all. Other nights, I sleep like a rock the second I lay down.

Last night was the former. I was up past 7 and crashed for maybe 4 hours. Got up, showered, started my day with some yarn.

So here's a Trinity Stitch dish cloth with a fancy border because I felt like it lol

And a little Granite/Moss Stitch coaster to go with it!

Both of the above projects were completed using a 100% cotton worsted weight yarn and an H/5.00mm hook!

So since today was a day where I was constantly tired and distracted, I... missed my deadline. And now there's *another* Fiber Monday blog popping up on Tuesday.

In my defense, I stayed up until 7AM and took a nap until 11AM. I'm running on empty.

I also broke my phone charger because I move like a concussed hippopotamus and tripped over the cord the other day, so I had to keep my laptop on in order to even slightly charge my phone (it was at 15%)! So I was super sleepy today.

My eyes burn as I type this.

Hopefully I'll have something up before 1AM for Talk About Tuesday - maybe I'll give y'all an update on my novel? That'd be fun!

Whatever you guys are working on, I hope it's going great!

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Thursday Art Walk - Fruit Dragons!

In Which I Drew A Bunch of Thumbnails

I recently started following YouTuber DrawingWiffWaffles, and while I don't know that I'll ever be as good at drawing as her (I do not have boundless quantities of patience and discipline for my art, you may have noticed), I am hoping to apply a lot of her techniques to my own art. Hopefully, that'll help me improve so I don't just... stop after sketching a little.

One of the techniques I'm taking right now is thumbnailing - essentially messy sketches that you use to refine final drawings. I'm very bad at letting messy things stay messy, but hopefully, you can see the sketchy thumnailiness of the following images.

I'm also stealing a prompt list that DrawingWiffWaffles used. The list is by @SeaLemon on Instagram, and it's 30 days of Fruits. I did the first 5 below, but instead of just drawing fruits (which, in hindsight, maybe I should've started with...), I decided to make Fruit Dragons!

1) Watermelon

I really like the idea of a Watermelon Dragon for some reason. The smooth, green-striped outside of a melon is fairly herpetological to me, and I like the bright pinks and dark reds of the flesh, the white pith before the verdant rind, the glossy, dark brown or black seeds... the fruit looks wonderful, and designing things to look kind of like it is fun!

This is also where I settled on how I'd draw my dragons - the shape of the fruit determines the shape of the dragon! I used all ovals to lay out how this dragon looks, giving him half-oval watermelon slice wings and watermelon slice horns, half-watermelon feet, and oval floppy ears! I like his sweet yet derpy expression, too. I'm super proud of him.

2) Blueberry

This gal is a bit odd, you must admit. Circles are not very dragony, but I liked the idea of making an almost medieval-style two-legged dragon, but I might take her wings (which are supposed to look like the flower-end of a blueberry but instead look like weird grass...). I tried to make her more birdlike - pigeon-toed, kinda goofy, bipedal, and round-headed... but I don't like the profile view of her face. It looks terrrrrrrrrible. I honestly don't know what to do for a face on a round dragon, though. Do I give her an extra bubble-muzzle? That might work! I like the almost scorpion-like segmented neck and tail.

3) Pineapple

As far as positions go, I'm pretty pleased with the smaller version of Pineapple, but I like the way the wings are folded down on the laying-down version up top. I want the wings, horns, ears, tail, and toes to remind people of the green top to a pineapple, but I'm struggling with how to get across that classic pineapple shape on the body without making him... spiky. I'll figure it out. Kinda happy with how I got the rounded cylinders of the pineapple to go together to make the body.

4) Lemon

Lemon was maybe the easiest to draw - mostly because I didn't give it a tail and I've got it sleeping in a nest! I really like the "lemon at rest" idea, and I'll probably keep it, though I'm not 100% sure how I'm going to really make it obvious that this baby is a Lemon Dragon (besides body shape - look at that lil tail nub!). I'm thinking I'll make the wings lemon wedges and give him little lemon pip horn nubs. Besides that, though, I think that might be my design, right there - right down to the lil floppy lemon-shaped ears! I like this one.

5) Banana

Ugggggh. I Hate how I drew poor Banana Dragon. I wanted to have a more Asiatic Dragon in appearance but I ended up with a messed up Muppet reject. I'll have to thumbnail this a bunch more to get it to work, but I still like the idea. Maybe I'll just draw a bunch of bananas in different positions, then put them together in Paint.Net or something to make the outline? And from there, I'll make the actual dragon? But yeah, not happy with Banana Boy here At ALL.

Still, this was just the thumnailing stage. I still have the actual sketching, lineart, coloring, etc to do.

My plan is to compose the image so the fruit itself is visible somewhere, either as a background in and of itself or as a background element. Maybe Lemon Dragon has a few lemons laying around? Banana Trees for Banana Dragon to hide in so I don't draw so much of it? I love the idea of Blueberry Dragon maybe trying to peck at some blueberries that have been scattered on the ground like some sort of derpy chicken!

All in all, this is a fairly successful experiment, and if I don't make all 30 dragons, it'll be because I get distracted... probably by Inktober, let's be honest lol.

I hope today's blog gave you a break from the State of Things as the are today. It's been a rough 2020, and I'm ready for something better, even if better can be hard to hope for. All I can say is this: Keep making things that make you happy, and share them.

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Fiber Monday

 

In Which I Did More Work On the Bag

It's a nice, chilly day. The sky is pale blue, the trees are slowly browning from our unfortunate drought (of which we've had more drought years than fine ones in my memory...), and my toes are cold in their thick cotton socks. It's a crisp 60℉ (15.5℃) with 26% humidity. Perfection. I'm happy with this weather, though I still have that sense of unease that too long without rain brings. I'm not even an outdoorsy type of person, but even I can feel that something is off with the weather.

I spent this morning examining the insides of my eyelids, sleeping in until about 11AM, so I apologize for the lateness of this blog but I needed that sleep. I was beginning to feel the exhaustion of my insomnia in a very uncomfortable way - it felt like my body was bruising. I feel much better today. More settled. More myself. More human.

There was a short moment this morning, as my mother got home, where things got a little crazy, but it was in a good way. Our toaster oven hasn't been toasting properly for a few weeks now, so she's picked up a new one. The cat is thrilled lol.

A blurry shot of the new toaster oven

An Equally Blurry Shot of the Cat Going Nuts in Her New Box

The mass of yarn in my room is slowly becoming more organized, too! Thanks to the ball winder my awesome partner got me for my birthday, I've been taking apart the tangle of my horde and putting it into neat(ish) balls. I still haven't mastered the winder, so occasionally, the yarn will slip and coil around the top of the ball instead of actually winding properly, but for the most part, it's going well.

Also, my younger sister was awesome and surprised me with two balls of Red Heart's It's A Wrap: Rainbow yarn a couple days ago in both "Seaglass" and "Couture". They're awesome and I immediately started looking for shawl patterns for them. I didn't expect them to be such a loose twist (there really isn't any twist to them, it's a bunch of very fine threads that are all clinging to each other with static and hopes and dreams), so there's a bit of struggle with splitting, but once you have the rhythm down, the cotton/acrylic blend works really nicely and feels great in your fingers. I've already done one pattern repeat of a butterfly-themed shawl in the "Seaglass" and I'm planning on doing something a little more nocturnal for the "Couture" (maybe moons? Stars?).

As for that little yellow bag?

It's Coming Along :)

I really like the basketweave pattern on this, and despite the fact that the yarn ball is now the size of a tennis ball, I think I'll keep going. If I have to use the red sock yarn as a contrast for straps & closure, that's what I'll do lol.

How are your guys' projects coming along? Are you getting your rows in? Your wordcounts down? Your colors laid down? I'm rooting for you!

Go Enjoy Something!

FC