Happy Birthday to my Older Sister

In honor of my older sister's birthday today (since I didn't get anything made for her in time), I'm re-posting the pic of the painting she did for my birthday many years ago:

I still think it's a shame she doesn't paint anymore.

Tiny Insidious Yarnblob and its Mom

The Tiny Insidious Yarnblob is so small and stealthy it can sneak right through the yarn guide on a winder, leaving the unsuspecting knitter flat-footed when finally faced with trying to tame this Yarnblob without dropping stitches:

A sneak attack by this tiny creature is not its only danger, however; like many creatures in the wild, its mother is never far behind:

P.S. Happy Birthday to my younger daughter, who turns 13 today :-)

Lori’s Painting

This is a picture my older sister painted for me for my birthday many years ago:

Sadly, she gave up painting, and this might be the last one she ever completed. Mind you, nothing in particular happened to make her give it up, just life in general. I'm hopeful that one day when her children are older, she'll pick it back up.

I’ve always liked this painting. It’s like a snapshot of what she thought of me at the time: I’m at the top of my castle tower, workin’ my mojo in the sky, surrounded by flower gardens and sailing ships. There are some other telling details you can’t see in this scan: the sun has a smiley face she created by texturing the paint, the tops of the towers and the doors to the outer curtain wall are painted in gold, and those doors are guarded by two Ewoks (yes, Star Wars Ewoks).

The ringed planet visible inside the atmosphere at the upper left was a standard inclusion in her works, whether drawn or painted, serving almost as a second signature. I always marveled at her ability to paint skies, etc., as this is something I do not have the skill for. I do okay with miniatures, but creating my own compositions and putting them to canvas just intimidates the crap out of me, which is another reason I think it’s sad that my sister doesn’t paint anymore.

Note that she didn’t have any pictures of castles or sailing ships to work from, so she approximated both. The internet and World Wide Web barely existed at the time: this was 1989, after all, and getting to a web site, any web site, was a two step process involving dialing a phone number. Heavens to CrapCat, now I've done the math on how long it's been. Yikes.

Also note that the sails on the sailing ship are backwards. I teased her about that, of course, and ultimately we decided the ship was simply in reverse and backing out of the harbor. Didn’t know sailing ships had reverse, did you? Argh, matey: let’s back’er up and head fer the pub!

Birthday Cakes

My younger daughter had a birthday yesterday, so we managed to have her party actually on her birthday. As with all my kids, I wanted to make a couple of cakes based on something she likes. Currently, that thing is vampires, and has been for about a year or so. I wanted to make something like a 3-D crypt or coffin, so I started out with a 9x13" cake. It didn't pan out:

Ok, it's a Cake Fail: it just wouldn't come out of the pan whole. However, I managed to salvage enough pieces large enough to make a smaller version:

I also made a castle cake, and tried to make it look like a ruin, which was not difficult given that it also didn't come out of the pan whole. Fortunately, the green icing used to portray moss was also useful as an adhesive:

I had to make a third cake because the coffin was basically a 1-2 person cake, so I used an idea my Hubby found online, and made a basic white cake with an added vampire-related feature:

I put the same strawberry goo in the middle of the layers, which added flavor without adding too much sugar, since I made the filling myself.

So what happened to the coffin cake? As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words: