Keris Stainton

Housekeeping

No, not in *my* house (don't be silly). Just, you know, stuff I've been meaning to mention and keep forgetting...

1. Thank you so, so much for helping me get to and then beyond the 80% target for New York. It's less than two months away now and I am so excited (and also worried, because I can't remember the last time I walked one mile, never mind 13...).

2. There are still a couple of knittens to go out. I know I said end of August, but my arthritic fingers haven't dealt very well with the changeable weather and there's only so much knittening they can take. They'll be with you soon, though. Honest. Soon.

3. Over on the right there, under that pic of me, you'll find some new links. In the WRITING one you'll find a couple of JPegs and even some PDFs of article's I've written. I'll be updating them periodically. (Get it? Articles? Periodically? Oh, never mind.)

4. There's also something called TODAY'S DANCE which is the song that me and Harry have danced frenetically around the lounge to that day. With the wonder of technology, you can point to it with your mouse, wait for the Snapshot thingie to open up and then actually play the video ... without leaving my blog! Feel free to frug furiously around your own home.

5. And then there's FRIDAY PHOTO, which was going to be my response to a Friday photo challenge from another site, but they've stopped setting them. However, I like it so I'll keep doing it. In future it'll just be whatever photo I'm liking on whatever day I put it up. And I'll probably change it to PHOTO OF THE WEEK or something, if I remember.

While I'm being self-indulgent (although it is my blog - where can I be self-indulgent if not my blog, eh?), here's a Blossom pic I did this very morning. I'm going to colour it in at some point (Ha, get me. Colouring in. I'm 36!) and then I'll upload the coloured one too, assuming I don't make a pig's ear of it.

So that's me. How are you?

Mothers' Day

Yes, Blossom's back! :) I did this with Mothers' Day in mind and it was going to say something about how all Mummies should get flowers on Mummies' Day, but then the card H made me at preschool says, "If Mummies* were flowers, you'd be the one I'd pick," which suits it much better.

*"Mummies" looks really weird when you type it so many times ...

Yet more Blossom

This is especially for those of you (well, I think it might've just been Linda, but still) who asked if I had any art training.  Clearly, no* Look at the size of those chickens!  Yes, they're supposed to be chickens - couldn't you tell? 

I actually first drew Blossom after seeing a little girl collecting eggs in a farm next to a, um, pub garden me and D had visited.  She was running around giggling and the chickens were all running after her and it was so cute.  Somehow, I don't think I've quite captured it here! 

* I did A level Art, but dropped it after the first year when not only did my evil art teacher Mrs Whitehead "extend the lines" of one of my exam-pieces when it was left overnight (the exam took place over two days and Mrs Whitehead was obsessed with making everything abstract) but the actually-quite-nice pottery teacher wrote on my report that it would take "a minor miracle" to get me through the A level.  How I loved school. 

Pants and more Blossom

I loved Pirates of the Caribbean.  I thought it was a fantastic, imaginative, entertaining, old-fashioned adventure.  And of course Johnny was amazing (especially that entrance) and even Keira Knightly wasn't as annoying as usual and Gareth-from-the-office was hilarious and, even though I didn't totally follow the "plot", I loved, loved, loved it. 

Last week we went to see Pirates II: Dead Man's Chest.  I was really looking forward to it, as you can imagine.  I thought it was pants.  Even though the action was almost constant, it was somehow slow.  I was repeatedly bored.  Orlando Bloom was as wooden as the chest that I couldn't bring myself to care about (mainly cos I couldn't get to grips with what they actually needed it for).  His delivery of a line something like, "I have doomed us all" made me nostalgic for Keanu in Speed.  Johnny was great, but he was almost too much - sort of a charicature of a charicature (god knows what we'll get in the third installment).  And Keira annoyed the hell out of me in this one.  Takes some of the tension away when the heroine gets into a dangerous situation and you're sitting there thinking, "Oh just die and shut up." 

As for the "plot" .. I couldn't begin to tell you what was going on.  Some of the effects were amazing - Davy Jones and Barnacle Bill's in particular (I loved the little 'mouth' type thing opening and closing on his cheek) - but at other times I knew they were effects, if you know what I mean.  Plus every time they mentioned Davy Jones I started singing Daydream Believer in my head. Disappointing. 

And, for all her - ahem - fans.  Here's some more Blossom.  The little bird is her friend.  He doesn't have a name (though in my addled mind, he does have sort of a world-weary personality; bit of good-natured cynicism to contrast with Blossom's sunny disposition .. good grief, you people really shouldn't be encouraging me). 

Well, you asked for it!

Ha, you're a bunch of saps.  Either that or you're humouring me while you slowly back away.  Well, I've found the rest of the Blossom drawings and it turns out they're all pretty much the same.  But because I haven't got time to think of anything else to write, you'll have to have another one.  Look on the bright side - it's Favourite Photo Friday tomorrow! 

Blossom

Due to a couple of exciting developments (which I can't blog about at the moment), I'm pretty darn busy, so it'll have to be a quick one.  For some reason, when I was pregnant I had this compulsion to draw this little character I'd made up and named Blossom.  I'd show the drawings to David and he'd look at me like I was mental and pat me on the head and the next day I'd draw some more.  Once Harry was born, the urge to draw her disappeared.  Very odd. 

Harry's new favourite thing is scribbling (whether with chalk on the front wall of our house or crayons in a notebook).  Today, in the notebook, I found one of my character drawings - the only one I coloured in, I think - and so, in lieu of anything else to blog about, I'm sharing it with you.  You lucky things.