Little personal things.

I'm about to send out a newsletter - the first newsletter in a YEAR ?!?! - and if I added all the little personal things I wanted to add, it would be too long for a newsletter. They're not even that personal, just things I want to share with you, mostly images, which would also make the newsletter heavy (and it's already heavy). 

So I thought I'd make a public post here with all the images, and link it from the newsletter. (If you'd like to receive the newsletter, sign up here real quick! I'll be sending it shortly!)

STUDIO TOUR!

I'm spending the whole week (among other things) cleaning my house and preparing for the studio tour this weekend. My friend Neil installed a rail system to hang artwork from in two of my rooms (BLESS YOU NEIL) and I'm clearing out the never-used brick room for my guest artist Diane Myers (you'll see her stuff in the newsletter - she's an amazing handweaver!). Right now my house looks like this:

(The rail Neil installed for me isn't wobbly, I just got startled by a cat mid-panorama.)

Diane's display stuff is sitting in here, patiently waiting for me to finish cleaning. 

It's not too bad, but it'll look... different... I hope... in four days. WISH ME LUCK!! Or, come see it in person - if you're in driving distance, the house will be open from 10-5 Saturday and Sunday!

I picked out some figure drawings from the past year to include for sale this weekend. Pip helped.

If you're a $5 patron you've seen all of these before! I think I'm gonna go all in on these weird wacky-colored watercolors from here out, they're a blast to make!

While I was clearing older artwork out those portfolios, I came across SO many oversized guest strips that I did ages ago! I enjoyed revisiting my old potty-mouthed comics so much I figured I should share some with you. Here's a couple that I did for Jeph's Questionable Content:

Holy crow this one is OLD!! You can date it by the relationship phases! (But I wish I'd put an actual date on it because I don't remember when I made it!)

Here's a less-old one:

Less old, but still old enough that Butts Disease was in full contagion.

Here's a little bonus from 2007, a year that I barely believe even existed! I used to do these one-off Sunday strips called Joe Shmoe that was just GWS at the coffee shop.

I think I only made these when someone asked me to contribute a new GWS strip to an anthology or to sell for a fundraiser. I have no idea how many I did!

Shit, I do miss Jamie and Hazel sometimes. <3

GARDEN!

Amidst all the studio tour prep, Maintenance Man Danny (Maintenance Man Calvin's younger brother) came over and told me he's gonna finish painting my wall tomorrow, which means I had to finally deal with the garden, much of which crawls up said wall. 

Eager for a distraction from indoor work, I dropped everything and spent three hours taking apart what took days and weeks and months to grow.

Only the kale and the enormous, surprisingly successful rosemary bush remain. 

On the left you can see two big bushels of dead zinnias impaled by bamboo stakes, which I'm hanging to dry so I can harvest their seeds so I can have MORE ZINNIAS. I like to think they double as a message to other zinnias, to warn them what will happen if they cross my path. (I'll nurture their babies.)

I couldn't bring myself to take down my weird bamboo tripod with the pride flag and sweet tinkling wind chime yet. Maybe I'll leave it out til it starts to snow.

I haven't yet looked up how to harvest marigold seeds, but they're next.

The warm October tricked a few last-chance veggies into thinking it was spring...

... and if there's one thing I've learned about plants over the last year, it's that this shit is FREE and their success is somewhat out of your control, so you might as well TRY to keep them alive.

I doubt this sugar snap pea will make it in my drafty kitchen windowsill, but it's worth a shot!

There were some tiny maple babies in my garden that had changed color like real adult maple trees in autumn, so I decided to bring them indoors, too.

(In case you're wondering, the rocks are there to dissuade my cats from turning the pots into sandboxes/litter pans.)

What else? OH!! I got a bike!

My first bike since high school! The local bike shop sells their rentals every year, and I've been waiting too long to pull this trigger. I wanna be a Bike Person. A Person who rides Bikes.

Something else I've waited too long to do:

My computer's been propped up by four in-box GWS compendiums and a narrow strip of board for... a long time. It may look okay, but it's been an ergonomic pain in my literal side every time I color Elephant Town. I bought a couple of hairpin legs and sawed a thicker board down to size, and:

SO much more space. 

It's temporary, but it's making me happy for now!

That's it, that's all the not-actually-very-personal personal things. Thanks for strapping in for my Monday nonsense. <3