Happy holidays!

There's rather more stuff in here than ought to be posted on Christmas Eve, and some things are pretty unfestive. Please know that I'm okay, despite it all.

The main thing is that my eyes are getting worse. I've had a pretty pronounced astigmatism since birth, and as soon as horn-rimmed glasses went into fashion in the nineties, I've been totally fine with it. Now it's got a lot worse, so much worse that my optician had to switch manufacturers for my new glasses, because the old manufacturer only did glasses for astigmatisms up to a certain degree. I have two pairs of glasses - one pair of normal varifocals, which works pretty fine, except the close-up range isn't good enough for me to see. So he made me a second pair for screen and 3m vision, with the astigmatism corrected, but I can't make my eyes work with it. I'm giving it three weeks until I'm sure it doesn't work before I go back to my old screen glasses, which of course did nothing for the blind spot either, but at least working was halfway possible with them. I pray they'll still feel okay after all this mess.

I'll work with it somehow. I confess it's daunting, sitting down to work and either working with huge magnifying glasses and almost blinding light, or just looking at one great blur, but I can't not create.

Here's the pin designs I did in November (with a very loose Éowyn scribbled in the hospital yesterday, just before the doctors proclaimed my son's arm knitted well, yay!). I went for either less specific and more connectable this time, so they would work with German con audiences. (Did I tell you that the Fingolfin pin has been taken for Thorin Oakenshield and Melkor, while Finarfin was usually called "Legolas"?) 

So here's a bucolic/Pan-like one (I call him "Tinfang Warble"), a little nod to a love of books, the three Elven rings, and Éowyn. I'll be away for a few days over the holidays, and plan to finish them up and send them to production in early January.

Speaking about finishing up! My fantastic daughter helped me wrap up the rest of the calendars yesterday; so a lot of you in Germany will find them in your postboxes just after Christmas! I've started shipping out the first Friend in Need prints as well, with those among the German calendar-receivers who signed up for both. I hope to send the rest of the prints in January - so I can print the UK post labels in bulk before I have to do them all manually as non-EU. ;_; 

Aaaaand I may have to draw at least one more Kylo Ren/Ben Solo/Rey piece. XD 

Have a cosy and warm end of 2019, and see you all in the new year!