A different perspective! and the weekly thingy.

I thought y’all might like to see a bit of my stretching process as it currently stands.

You can also see the massive difference angle makes with how dark a brown the iridescent silk velvet I used for her skin is – seen laying almost horizontal like this it’s far darker, if I were shooting from the top down it would be really coppery.

So the steps to get to here: I slotted together the stretcher bars, and then glued on a backing piece of muslin just to give a more finished rear view. Then I stretched on a piece of cotton batting and stapled it to the back, cutting away any excess at the corners. Next I took the piece to the big iron at work and stretched it into place (on my break), starting with pinning the corners in place and then working along the edges.

Next I’ll be basting around the sides to hold the work exactly where I want it; then I can finally pull out those push pins, flip it over, and get the excess trimmed and pinned in place to make a nice neat back before I staple it.

Last thing will be to paint the edges with a dark metallic silver acrylic, but before that I need to decide whether I’m pulling out stitches to erase that unfortunate bump at the bottom of the floor, or adding stitches to even out the rest of the curve.

Places to buy stuff!

• The Gamecrafter: your home for the new and slightly improved Neurotic Owl Tarot. AND Neurotic Owl’s Faerytale Tarot! https://tgc.link/Faerytaletarot
• TEEPUBLIC: mostly t-shirts, a few other products.  Watch for sales, when shirts drop from $20 to $14!
• REDBUBBLE: Just, I don’t know, a ton of different stuff.  T-shirts are more expensive than Teepublic, but there are a lot more options.
• AMAZON: Home of the Geeky Gals Coloring Book!  Daydreams and Whimsies!  AND NOW, The Neurotic Owl Compendium!
• https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/naralesser
• ETSY: paper dolls, a knitting bag pattern, and a bunch of vintage dolls of various sorts from my collection. I just added more Sculpey buttons so go take a look! Aaaaand I’ve finally made a listing for pet portraits!

Did I miss something?  I think that’s everything.

What’s making me happy this week:

RenFaire was DELIGHTFUL if exhausting – get yourself friends who can all agree on a general plan for a day at Faire, are chill about detours, and all agree that leaving when you’re tired but not yet dead on your feet is more fun that sticking it out to the bitter end. I do wish the TRF website made it clearer that the $25 preferred parking is what used to be the free parking, and the free parking is a satellite lot that is a LOOOONG HIKE from the gates. I might have ponied up if I’d known, even if I would have been irritated about it.

I also was able to attend my beloved cousin Leslie’s funeral via Zoom, since it was in NJ and I’m in TX. I wouldn’t say that made me happy, but it gave me some little bit of comfort hearing wonderful Leslie stories from her immediate family, and it made a thing I still can’t fully wrap my head around a little more real. I know it seems a little weird to be talking RenFaire and bitching about parking and then funeral, but Leslie was a chatterbox and a social butterfly and a lover of the arts and a force of nature, and she would both love a day at Faire and storm the goddamn gates demanding justice until they ended up somehow valet parking her for free and thanking her for the privilege. Her memory will absolutely be a blessing to all of us who knew and love her.