Tiny Bird Book

Made for the One Tiny Book Swap on craftster...

I made a second bird book at the same time which I'll toss on etsy in a few days.

P.S. For those of you magic makers out there, today is a good day for candle magic :)

A Not-So-Vintage Witch

I made this gal for the Vintage Halloween Swap on craftster. I really love her. Her wee skirt is all poofy, her legs are stripey, her hat is pointy. It was only when I started packing up to send that I realized that although she's lovely, she's not very vintage. *sigh* I should have know this gal would cause some trouble when I took that last photo. Hussy.

It's alive!!!

If I owe you an email or anything I'm sorry. I'm here, I haven't forgotten, I'm just WAY behind on just about everything. Since this time of year is always insanely hectic for us I probably should have re-thought joining four swaps all due within the next couple of weeks. Ah, well.

Here's a peek at a few haunted chunky houses I've been working on, some of which will be shipped off to my "Eye of Newt" swap partners after I fiddle with the back of them :)

P.S. A very important message for LGBT kids ... or really, anyone who is having a difficult time in high school "It Gets Better" It really does :)

Happy anniversary!

Happy anniversary ya big lug.

xoxo

It has begun...

The harvest has begun and the husband is busy with his grapes while I am left home with the kiddo.

What to do? Bake pies.

Here's the Big D helping prep the apples we picked last weekend. Apparently he's also diverting peels from the compost bin. After about 20 minutes he announced it was time for his break and was off to do something much more interesting...

...bobbing for apples on the kitchen table.

No worries, the pies still managed to get made without his help.

I love the fall.

If there was any doubt.

I know full well that there are faeries flittering about this lovely place but I'm sure that some others may not be so certain.

To convince those nay-sayers I present you with exhibit A.

"Why, that's just an ordinary pumpkin." you say.

Well, my friend, that is no ordinary squash. THAT is a magic pumpkin. That pumpkin, and it's brethren on the vine, were not planted by us, but simply sprouted from the earth one day!

The only logical explanations are that it is a rogue pumpkin of the magical variety or that faeries planted the thing.

Please don't try to convince me otherwise. I'm far too smart to listen to reason :)

Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Know what I mean?

I'm sure you already know this (you are a clever bunch) but the title of yesterdays post comes from Monty Python. You must know the famous Python foot...

I remember watching a documentary with Terry Gilliam (Python member, animator, and well famous director) who said he would go to the art gallery and just stare and stare at this painting, Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time by Agnolo Bronzino.

It is a very strange painting and it's easy to understand why someone would ponder it for hours. I mean look at the curve of Cupid's body and how his head just doesn't fit quite right. That old green hag in the middle of the left side of the painting looks like she is having a mental breakdown. Then there's the strange girls head to the right of Venus... what the hell is going on with her body? There's so much weirdness going on!

But what was it about this painting that caught Gilliam's attention? Take a look at Cupid's right foot. Look familiar?

Terry Gilliam is one of those people that, although I may not be the biggest fan of his work, I am a big fan of him. I love Gilliam's enthusiasm, imagination, honesty and the wonder of the things he produces.

"Well, I really want to encourage a kind of fantasy, a kind of magic. I love the term magic realism, whoever invented it – I do actually like it because it says certain things. It's about expanding how you see the world. I think we live in an age where we're just hammered, hammered to think this is what the world is. Television's saying, everything's saying 'That's the world.' And it's not the world. The world is a million possible things."

For more about Terry Gilliam check out this great site http://www.smart.co.uk/dreams/

And now for something completely different.

I've been painting like mad lately. Painting things, not pictures.

It got me thinking that it's been ages since I painted something. It's been positively eons since I took up those evil oils that always seem to foil my lovely ideas.

So, what a nice surprise to have an oil turn out almost as it should. And to have it be a landscape (that pesky subject has eluded me since the dawn of time) has given me a proper smile today.

Hurrah for try, try, trying!

EDIT: I've had a REALLY productive morning and managed to do two more small landscapes.

Ha! You can see my strokes getting rougher as the day has progressed. I think I'll put those oil brushes down for the rest of the day... though I can't promise I won't pick up some other ones :)

A new batch of houses.

I've finished a new batch of wee pixie houses. I think that the new rooves are more interesting and just might try to create the same sort of look on a larger doll house. What I really like is that they fit in to the wee natural places that inspire them. Those little places look like they belong on that old stump :)

 

P.S. Thanks for all the nice words about the thievery the other day. It looks like the entire tumblr account has been deactivated or else the gal removed it herself. I really do appreciate how sweet you folks are. You make it very hard to be a grump :)

So maybe I'm a little bitter...

If you've been to my site you know that there are a few free goodies on there. I offer pdf's, image files and wholeheartedly encourage people to make their own loverly magical messes. I am an absolute advocate for mutual inspiration... you inspire me, I give something back. Breeding wonder and spreading the magic is what it's all about.

When I see people recreate crafts that I have made I generally find it flattering. Fat lot of good it would do to make things that simply gathered dust, I'm glad they hold some value for others. As an artist who hears the words "weird" and "creepy" a fair bit I'm well chuffed that some people are inspired by my strange little world.

That said, what I abhor, is outright theft.

It seems someone has stolen a page from my website. A WHOLE damned page. Not only did they steal the text, in it's entirety, word for word, but they also stole the images. Not only did they steal the text, and all the images, they linked to my images and stole my bandwidth. *sigh*

Now, if this person had simply put "...from knickertwists" I wouldn't have been irked at all. Instead, at the top of the offending blog, it reads "All of the photos posted are taken by me, unless I say otherwise." Ah, a thief and a liar.

Now, I can count the number of public domain images used on my site on my fingers. I have spent countless hours shooting and editing literally 100's upon 100's of photographs, graphics, and creating the entire content for my lowly site. Don't get the wrong idea... I'm not silly... I expect that images are going to be swiped, but for someone to steal a whole damned page? It's too much.

Thief, if you are reading this, I want you to know that you've pissed me off. It's not okay to take something that isn't yours... it's unethical, immature, lazy, demonstrates a complete lack of integrity and shows that you are devoid of imagination. Guess what? There's an actual person behind those words, and photographs you stole. Why don't you put your own damned heart into something?

My happy place.

If you imagined me an airy fairy slip of a girl in a flowy dress puttering in my garden and giggling with the fairies I'm afraid you'd be sorely disappointed upon meeting me.

Today I'm a plain chubby gal in jeans and hoodie, riding a red Troy mower, wearing ear muffs and singing Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights very badly at the top of my lungs.

2+ hours on the riding mower and look at that... beautifully chopped grass. You can't see it very well from the photo but there are lovely straight lines up and down our giant hill from my super mowing powers :)

I don't think I could be any happier than cutting the grass for hours on end on a gorgeous fall weather day. Who knew that would be my happy place?

Back to school!

The kiddo went back to school yesterday. The house was terribly quiet and although it's a nice change from the usual noise I'll admit it was a bit lonely without the boy. I really could hardly wait for that bus to come over the hill and bring the Big D back home :)

I've been working away on some swappy stuff and other projects. I can't really show a lot off, as it's not quite nice to look at just yet but here's a couple of things in the works...

A new pixie village still under construction.

A super creepy spirit board. I really love those old woodcut images. And speaking of creepy...

We had ourselves a bonfire on Sunday to celebrate the end of summer and it looks like we had a guest. What do you think?