30 minute life drawing.

Cat toys.

Scrap fleece, wool, and fluffy winter sock. Large seed beads (or small pony beads) for the mouse's eyes, a leather scrap for the tail, and embroidery floss for the whiskers. One toy is filled with catnip and the other with dried beans.

Let's hear it for kittens!

An exercise.

I have been filled with self-doubt lately - about my drawing technique, what it is I want to do during the day, if getting out of bed is really a step up. So I turned to my good friend Willem, who sent me a piece from a film score. From there I wove a pretty simple little story and hope to design the characters, settings, and so forth for Don't Call Me Candy, as a running strip. Just something to take the pressure off Something-New-Every-Day-OMG. Here's something entirely Wacom'd.

Bathing beauty.

Just a little warm-up. Yeah, static poses are boring and don't require a heckuva lotta skill - but when I can do them well, I feel good about myself.

Knox on fox in socks in box.

Another Christmas project that I can now post about! Yes, I made some people things for Christmas. For this scheme, I picked up one of those little wooden boxes from the craft store and decided that I was going to paint it like a grown-up and gift it like a grown-up.

India ink does nicely on wood - fast-drying, bright colors, no raised anything, and the wood grain shows through. So I recommend that. Then, finely sand to give a distressed look and really bring out the natural grain. Then lacquer. (My husband used to work for a paint company, so we have tons of this second-quality lacquer-like stuff that's used for oil paints. It's fabulously glossy.)

The 4-drops-blue, 1-drop-green combo I mixed was questionable at first, but I chose to roll with it. Turns out - after the gloss darkens - to be a classic-looking, aged hue. I then hemmed and glued some leftover bookbag fabric (thanks Stacey!) in the bottom. And it's a nice little trinket box.

Bookbags.

Assorted doodlings.

Things I sketch a lot of:

1) women in general;

2) eyes;

3) profile views;

4) clichéd fantasy babes

Taking it into the last century.

I haven't cross-stitched since the eighth grade, but it just came roaring to the front of my mind recently. Nobody loves a totally random, useless creative detour like yours truly.

Ragnar and his little friend Healie go on adventures together. They are an unlikely duo and I like to think there's some kind of Brokeback Mountain thing going on here. But let's not think too long about that.

This was going to be a bookmark, but my attempts to incorporate it into a fabric sleeve made it almost wallet-like instead of boookmark-like. Something to consider as a learning experience, perhaps.

Just like being home.

For those who haven't already been informed by the other 3,000,000 social media I use, I have been experiencing a killer withdrawal from one of my psychiatric medications. It makes me do things like sleep until lunchtime, eat chocolate at every opportunity, and run away from home like a 5 year-old. Not kidding. I went to the park and sat in a tree for about 3 hours. Or maybe that's more like running away from home like a cat?

Anyway, I am finally on the up-tick, at least for the time being. Let me tell you, it's N-I-C-E... like, actually being able to experience happiness when it's warranted. NEW CONCEPT. In the midst of this new energy, I recently decided to try some more game/world design. I love terraced cities. So I'm trying to design a small, self-sufficient mountain community fed by an aquifer and/or glacial melt that begins at the temple, traveling through a system of canals. Caste clusters receive the water at different stations, and with varying degrees of contamination from higher castes. Sort of like the concept of a family bathing in the same water, with the head of the household receiving the fresh water and the youngest getting the skunky leftovers from everyone else (hence the saying "throwing the baby out with the bath water"). THE HIGH PRIEST HAS PEED IN YOUR WATER. DRINK IT AND BE GRATEFUL. There's also a cemetery and a couple pastures for grazing rotation. Did someone say yaks?

The fun little sketch that makes my designing chops probably look more impressive than they actually are:

Shrawl, anyone?

My mom-in-law bought me some amazing fabric, with which I promised I'd make her a skirt. I trimmed off some leftovers from the pattern and decided to get acquainted with the stretchy purple stuff through a "practice" skirt for myself. Somehow, I ended up with this.

I started out making a loose "shrug" (apparently that's what kind of a half-jacket or slightly-ambitious sleeves are called) and decided to leave the other end free. So it can pretty much function as anything from a scarf to a top. What I really love about it is that it has kind of a kimono tone to it. I took my little shrawl to the local business that sells my clothing creations (well, two of them, including this!) and the shopkeeper acted wildly impressed that I designed this myself.

I just spend a lot of time playing with fabric. I love saris. I love folding and pinning. So a shrawl was really not that wild of a departure. Still, I'm happy with how it turned out and hope someone with a lot of matching evening gowns adopts my little creation.