Sand Animation

The following video is from Ukraine's Got Talent. Sand animation artist Kseniya Simonova won for her two pieces on that competition.




Her work is so powerful and heart-breaking.

Hairless Spud Update

I have been following the slowwww progress of Spud the hedgehog's recovery on the St. Tiggywinkle's Wildlife Hospital website. He came to them completely bald covered with scabs due to some undetermined skin disease, poor little critter. He was barely recognizable as a proper hedgehog.









But with regular warm baths which he seemed to enjoy readily, daily massages with aloe vera, good quality dog food and several bouts of medication Spud has improved to a point where he is regrowing his spines.
Yeah, baby! Catch his update here.

Burda, Burn Tests and Fancy Scribbles

Had a good rummage through the calligraphy pile last night and came up with a couple of samples of stuff I did a while back. This one was for the halls at work for Halloween last year. When I left Microsoft at the beginning of summer, it was still up in one of the halls.








This next piece is a test for a class I took a few years ago. The words came to me in a meditation so I duly scribed them in a sort of blackletter hand.













Now for something completely non sequitur:

I did a burn test on that steel blue/grey raw silk mix I'm making the Marci Tilton V8600 jacket out of and it definitely is part silk, but I'm not sure what else...rat hair? Bamboo shoots? Cotton candy? I dunno.









I have also been meaning to make something from this lovely Burda magazine from 1965. Details to follow in a later post.

PNWA Summer Conference

No sight of that wicked canny feline Super Bob, but I just got back from the PNWA Writers Conference where Were-Dolphins and Bionic Shrimp made an appearance, at least in the minds of a few writers who attended wayyy too many Urban Fantasy, Sci Fi and Steampunk-oriented workshops.
There was a book signing one evening, and like most book signings practically no one came due to the late hour in which it was held - after a dinner banquet with Joe Finder as the guest speaker. Most of the conference attendees headed straight home after the dinner and who can blame them? They were tired after a long day of sitting in on talks about the publishing world. When I finally found the table where my pile of books had been heaped up in a corner I saw that my name card had been hastily slapped together - they had scratched a very wiggly Annika deGroot in Sharpie on the back of one of Terry Brooks' printed name cards. So I told fellow authors that I was Terry's alter ego (hey - we both have white hair and write about elves...) May be next year they'll hold the booksigning party before the banquet in that hour+ lull between the last workshop and the start of the banquet. One hour is plenty time to saunter over to your favorite author's table, strike up a conversation and get a book ot two signed.