December 20, 2025
I somehow stumbled upon a red and white theme for holiday decor. I don't normally decorate much at all but got tired of looking like that weird house that doesn't care. Ii bought some red and white ribbon and some oversided bows for the columns on the porch and the light post and it turned out well! I'm leaning into the theme now with some ground lights also. The really restrictive color palette is great for easy coherence. I also wrapepd the presents with cloth instead of paper this year, furoshiki style. Reusable, looks good, and takes like 1/4 of the time.I've been doing a lot more craft type stuff with the kids recently. They made paper chains for the house, plus have been painting miniatures, sewing, and beading. I made smallest son a little star baby doll out of repurposed velvet and will be making some easy goblin toys to double as heat packs with more of the same plus some barley that I'm not going to eat today. I'm doing my best to knock out a bunch of little things before the new year so that I can start with a mostly clean docket and clear ideas for what I want to do going forward. 2025 has been a pivotal year. I'm no longer primarily a oil painter and have transitioned almost completely to being an author-illustrator-zine and printmaker. Condensing materials and efforts is a major goal going forward, though I have yet to clearly define what that looks like.
Christmas is almost here and I hope yours is a merry one.
November 26, 2025
I finally finished The Golden Bough yesterday! Wow that was more of an undertaking than originally expected. It was a worthwhile, as I got plenty of food for thought as well as some interesting ideas for stories from it and it clarified a way of understanding and interacting with the supernatural in a way that I have found intuitive but not expressed before. It's also interesting to read his conclusions as someone who was writing at the very beginning of modernity and not with WWI and WWII clearly in the rearview mirror. He says that much of magic and religion in the past was, at best, a waste of human effort and resources, and at worst, abject cruelty. I think this is fairly accurate, though his conclusion that science without the tinge of religion leads to better nature and liberty from the hardship of magical thinking has a spottier record in practice. It's very interesting to read someone who was writing before the symbolic understanding of the supernatural was introduced by Jung and others as well. Having lived through the new atheist movement in the 2000s and 2010s, it's clear that neither they nor the religious traditionalists have a full answer for what is the good for the common man.November 10, 2025
Got Space Rat 04 off to my editor-friend, Elias, knocked out a linocut commission, and decided to start working on a short story about virginal male unicorn cavalry. Turns out slightly horny i8ndulgent nonsense is highly motivation when I need to get through some more challenging work. The commission was for an art nouveau moose and fireweed for one of my twitter friends. Definitely a challenge! Moose are gangly critters and also rare and dangerous enough that it's hard to find reference images of them. They have a gait sort of like a reindeer sometimes, which is very cool!The kids are winding down on school for the semester and my 2nd eldest turns 8 this week! Time flies. I need to sort out what we plan to do differently for next semester, if anything. The music appreciation has been a bit of a bust since it requires set up from me. If I could find a good audiobook, that would be better. We did Mad Libs this morning and they thought it was hilarious, so we will be doing lots of those to suppliment grammar and composition going forward. I also got a simple 100 hyn hymnal that I'm going to start using mornings and evenings. More than that seems like a stretch for where I'm at right now, but something is better than nothing, and if God is real, then he'll probably be pleased I'm trying?
October 29, 2025
Habit tracking has been immensely helpful for habit building. I don't think I've done so much reading in years. I also did a bit of prewriting on some upcoming short stories that I want to illustrate as standalone zines. I think I might have read too much Ovid as a kid - everything has some kind of tranformation element and a struggle with fate. I thought The Golden Bough would have me leaning into the magical and the mystical, but so far the result has been the opposite. It's much easier to have a critical eye for religious practice when reminded that much of what people have done throughout human history doesn't actually...work. There's a puch in Christian educated circles for a kind of "reenchantment" based on the writings of Pageau and others. The main problem is that the historical person actually believed this stuff - it's not "true" and taking a symbolic approach to it doesn't make it more so. I want to see meaning where there is meaning, but where there is not, I don't think it's good to hallucinate it.October 18, 2025
What a productive few weeks this has been! I got several commissions done, a short story written for a magazine, Space Rat 03 completed well ahead of schedule, stickers and assorted illustrations done, and two Hugo books read and reviewed. Phew!I was on twitter earlier today and was reminded that too much of a particular genre makes for some weirdly inbred ideas, so I'm going to make an effort to read a little bit of other stuff before diving back in with Canticle for Leibowitz. I also should probably get my religious practice back on track. Without going into much detail, the combination of political Christianity being particularly heinous right now plus some of my own attachments to sin means I've been really struggling to give God his due.
September 28, 2025
Wow it's been a hell of a summer. Lots of ups and downs emotionally and a lot of stress with husband's work travel but I have survived it better than ever. The zine is in full swing and got a lot more interest upfront than I was expecting. It's a lot of work, but also a good return on that work so I feel good about keeping it going. I got a bunch of other little things done here and there, plus started the kids back up on school at the beginning of July. We also just got back from camping by Red River, NM so I am feeling rejuivinated after recharging my communing-in-nature battery. Baby turned 1 recently and if he really does end up being the last kid, that means I'm nearly out of the baby stage for the first time in nearly a decade. I'm not sure how I feel about it actually!I should be able to update the site more once I get a bit of a backlog going on the zine and finish up a few illustration projects. With school going, I don't have much baby nap time that isn't already committed to school or housekeeping and by the time night rolls around all I want to do is vegetate. Nearly at my fitness goal for the year! I'm at 157 lbs as of this morning. Diet is going really well and feels pretty sustainable. We had my FIL visit for a week, which set me back a bit, but otherwise it's been pretty steady progress. Been going to the gym about twice a week as well.
June 23, 2025
Been a hot minute since I updated the blog! I've been doing a bodybuilder diet and am down 5 lbs from 176 in 2.5 weeks (aiming for my college weight of 150). Feeling good and like this is sustainable, but I am significantly more tired at night between the deficit, the summer sun and heat, and my 3x/week lifting routine. I've been getting bits of projects done, though no major spurts of inspiration or anything. I do have an idea for a zine/comic about some space opossum rat people that I started outlining.The van windows got busted when we went camping two weeks ago so I've been stuck at home while its in the shop since the SUV can't fit all the kids. LOTS of walking but hopefully that will be over by the end of the week.
May 22, 2025
Dental for ALL the kids today and I'm absolutely exhaused. They were great, doc was great, and normally I take parenting stuff in stride but something about routine appointments makes me want to come back home and hide in a dark room afterward. Been mostly working on a short story about Juniper and Tanozi that I might turn into a webcomic eventually? I wanted to do that with the Lover, Devourer story, but humans are so much harder to draw in a serious way than humanoids. We also finished up the homeschool year. I don't normally take a summer break, but this year we are going to be off (doing other projects) until July. I need it as much as the kids, especially since I'm the one driving that train.May 11, 2025
LOTS of knitting and admin stuff this last week. I'm planning to do custom OC knitted dolls for people over on my Etsy. They are a lot of fun to make and there seems to be considerable interest? I finished making both Juniper and Summer and plan to also make Taozi and Yarrow. Very cute and fun to photograph
May 3, 2025
Just got back from a fun family camping trip to Carlsbad Caverns. It was probably the easiest trip we've done so far between finding other accomodations for the dogs and having a decently warm temp to wake up to in the morning. The caves were spectacular. The second night some other kids showed up at the camp area which means the children were all playing with new friends instead of hovering around wanting to be entertained. The food choices were a success as well - kielbasa and cabbage the first night and quesadillas the second. Wish the kids would eat steak but alas and alack they will not.I got a whole lot done on the trip as well. I finished Expedition Team for the Hugo project and polished off the final 10 promps I had to go on my sketchbook challenge on the ride back. I meant to work on some knitting since I haven't abandoned my desire to have a self drafted realisticish proportioned doll pattern to make clothes for, but I didn't have a ton of uninterrupted sitting around time in which to make decisions and count fiddly stuff. I should have a prototype done tomorrow though!
Between the 50 prompt challenge and a slowly growing list of other ideas, I have a substantial backlog of long and short term project ideas. I'm enjoying the combination of practical and fine art and want to keep going with a focus on tangible (and ideally useful) things. Textiles are going to be a big part of this, but I will probably get into shallow relief tiles as well.
April 20, 2025
Happy Easter! He is risen!After a day unseasonably intense snow, I finished the Blouse of the New Sun. Kinda bummed to miss out on the train ride to Santa Fe, but glad to make so much progress on a long term project. Easter was good - calm and pleasant and neighborly.
April 18, 2025
Look how cool these scifi lit mags are!!! I bought them because they have the short story and novella from the 1955 Hugo Awards inside and it was cheaper to buy these than collected short works by the authors, but I think I might have accidentally turned myself into a collector. 5.5"x7.5," matte, cheap paper, b&w illustrations inside. I did the math and they would be $4.16 in today's money. There really isn't anything out there that is this kind of high quality lit presented in physical form, cheaply. I can't wait to dive in.
April 15, 2025
Listening To: Scar Tissue - Red Hot Chili Peppers
One week 'till Easter! Making good progress on my Blouse of the New Sun, finished a Hugo Awards book (The Demolished Man), and have been furiously steam cleaning every surface of my house with the steam cleaner I got for my birthday. Extremely satisfying!
This honestly hasn't been one of the better Lents for me. I'm just not in a good place spiritually. I know what I need to do to fix it, but I really don't want to, and so.
In any case, time marches on.
March 29, 2025
Listening To: My kid whining over toast
Nearing the end of my Easter knitting commitments! I've actually ended up making my own patterns for most of them, with the added benefit of having patterns to share for it. The squid for my 2nd son tured out cute!
The youngest has started crawling and eating more table food, which is always an exciting transition as it means he gets to do a lot of discovering on his own now. We have a rodeo to go to today and are driving out to visit my granmother in the near future so that should be fun! I'm embracing the NM that I tried to get away from as a young adult.
March 21, 2025
Listening To: J.S. Bach Lute Suite in E Major BWV 1006a - Evangelina Mascardi
This week is the start of 3x/week gym in the morning and I am SO tired by 3pm! Gonna be a muscle mommy (or at least have a nice butt) by the end of the year. I really need to get food under control but I married a good gook and am a good cook and we both love food and it's so HARD T-T
I've been knitting the kids one toy each for Easter. The first two kiddos got a little Fearsome Dragon, which is my own pattern that I've updated. The other kids want different stuff though so I'll either need to make or find patterns for those. I'm using some leftover sock yarn and batting so this isn't costing anything other than time. I sometimes feel guilty for not knitting for them (and my husband) more often, but I don't think people who don't do fiber arts really appreciate handmade garments as much as people who do them wish they did and I don't like setting myself up to be annoyed and/or disappointed by their reactions. Small stuff is fine though!
Baby is growing so fast - he's already 6 months old and nearly crawling. In some ways this age is hard because babies want a lot more entertaining from me, but in others it is so much more fun as their personalities develop.
I also started working in earnest on my Book of the New Sun blouse. I don't do a lot of fanart, but it is my all-time favorite series and I can't think of anything I'd like to wear on my sleeve more than a big ol' executioner's sword.
March 15, 2025
Listening To: The Water is Wide on hammered dulcimer - DeeDee Tibbits
A windy, achy, but satisfying early spring day
Got the Tracery Vest done last night and currently have a clear project docket for the first time since Novbemeber. It's such a light and free feeling. I have a lot of other nebulous ideas from the 50 prompts I've been sketching through as well as a potential competition for Old Soverign Publishing that I could probably make the deadline for if I start this week.
The kids are doing well and are just as intense as ever. We are making better time with math this semester now that I've discovered they find working through whole chapter chunks rather than a certain number of pages every day. It ends up being more work per day, but less disjointed and arbitrary. Language arts is still a slog but a beneficial one. I don't think there is any curriculum out there that will both actually put them through the rigors of developing writing skills and not be something they find a little annoying. There's value in learning to push through things to a good end I think and IEW is certainly not giving them nonsense busy work. Everything they are doing has a clear purpose, even if it isn't necessairly fun.
Ash Wednesday was yesterday and also marked the beginning of my Twitter break. I've been so frustrated and disappointed by politics on both sides for the past few weeks and I think I ve been getting too wrapped up in things that aren't really within the realm of things I can control. I do think Twitter is a useful tool for getting illustration work and I'm hesitant to abandon it for that reason, but it does siphon off my energy toward less productive ends. My goal is always to let my work speak for itself and I've decided that attaching myself in more than a vague way to any political movement or ideology undermines that mission.
I have an interview on Nathan Hood's channel re. the Corncrake cover and some of my other work and I'll link that here once it's live. I love talking to people and getting attention (shocker) so I'm looking forward to it.
February 23, 2025
Listening To: nothing
Got the Maneaters project finished, the front right of my vest done, and an interview and graphic design commission lined up for the unspecified future! Twitter and politics are really pissing me off and one of my goals is to switch my primary social media to something else. The weather here has been fantastic and promises to remain so for the next several weeks, so I expect to be out enjoying it with the kids as spring...springs.
February 14, 2025
Listening To: Magical Future Funk Nonstop Mix - Neo Tokyo FM
A super productive week! I started working out again and it really has boosted my mood considerably. Turns out cable machines are really convenient and fun and effective? I'd never used one before since I basically only learned barbell and bodyweight exercises. Gonna get a juicy booty ~_-
Artistically, I got most of the front right of my vest done, tinted a bunch of paper, and completed a commission for Corncrake Magazine, which I think turned out very well! I'm on a collage bender. The goal this week is to wrap up the Maneaters project, finish the front half of my vest, post stuff on Etsy, outline the final Senses short story, and revise the ones I've written to be less hamfisted steamy. Less. Is. More. Realistically, I can probably knock out only two of these goals but I'm really ready to move some things off the docket and start some new stuff that's lingering in the sketchbook.
February 9, 2025
Listening To: Music for Bugs - camiidae
A fairly uneventful week, artistically. I did some work thumbnailing for magazine cover commission that's due next month and made some papers for collage and figured out how to do purl side stranded colorwork finally. I also did a digital design to replace the less than successful sphinx one that did very well on Twitter! The weather here in Albuquerque has been about as perfect as it is possible to be, so the kids and I have spent a lot of time outside in the fresh air. I don't think winter is actually over yet but one can hope. My goals for this week are to declutter, finish the front of my tracery vest, complete a Maneaters collage, and come up with a refined design and color scheme for the Corncrake magazine cover.
February 2, 2025
Listening To: Twilight - Corpus Delicti
Happy Sunday! Significantly shifted gears on the Maneaters project - it's going to be a series of papercuts instead of lino prints now since I just don't have the technical skill yet to achieve what I want in print form. Cerberus is done!
;January 30, 2025
Listening To: Heart of Glass - Blondie
The eldest two kids started back up in gymnsastics today! It's a bit of a commute, but only once a week and they really enjoy it. I also made some ham and swiss slider bun sandwiches that the family enjoyed. I've almost finished making all the pages for my various projects and it feels good to have this place more or less finished.