Oh, I didn't see you there! Well good golly ging-gang goursh, would you look at the time, it's *stares dead-eyed at my empty wrist* ... *keeps staring* ... *stares for just enough time for you to feel like you shouldn't be here* ... Oh, I didn't see you there!
So, a not un-great deal has been dealt since my last update, and very little of it was productive. Still I did manage to get out the third instalment of my Parsnip Supplement! This one features (what I'm uncharacteristically confident in calling) the first Avonvale comic!
In amongst the other not-a-newsletter flim-flam you'll find a new kind of puzzle: Sudokémon! Little 3x3 logic puzzles leaning on your knowledge of which Pokémon types are super effective against which others. Why? I frequently ask myself the same question.
You'll also find a little brief biography of one of my longest-lurking cloth-clad characters Claudio, alongside a grumpy gaggle of doodles of said raging rag-doll.
And now for the personal section of the update. Do you want the good news or the bad news first? Well I got the bad news first, and who am I to argue with chronology.
A couple of weeks ago we lost our family cat Khikhi after a mercifully short illness. It was quite a shock and hit me particularly hard since, at 17 and a half years old, she's been with me for more of my lifetime than not. I'm still trying to deal with the change in routine and catching myself reflexively expecting her judging eyes, cantankerous meow or trail of chaos.
However in her stead we have Pickle who has very happily usurped her territory and is starting to get very comfortable not having to worry about the temperament of her grumpy predecessor. She's a good reminder to focus on what remains than dwell on what's lost, but suffice it to say the week of and around the unfortunate event wasn't the most productive.
As circumstances would have it the following week was of stark emotional contrast, kicking me out of my slump to visit friends in Cardiff! As expected this was also not a productive week, but was a much-needed wind-down. Silly chats, museum visits, board games, synchronised wobbles, Murderbot, banana bread, Dungeon Meshi, underwhelming quiche and QI! Twas a great time and, whether it was pent-up post-Khikhi emotions or not, I found myself really rather sad to leave.
In preparation for this giggly gathering I commandeered some mourning time to prepare gifts. Crochet gifts! A gasping Golbat, scrungly servo-skull, yearnful Yan, resplendent Rocky and mysterious Mothman assemble this plethora of presents and I'm pretty pleased with most of them. Some could've deserved a second run-through, but time limits be time limits. Importantly though the recipients were happy with them. Moreover it counts as a bingo square, so I shan't complain. 😅
For the final miscellany, I spent a little more mourning time almost completely rewriting my website's Comics page. It shouldn't look all that different (that's coming later), but I've now added subcategories to each comic series for ease of navigation. So if you wanted specifically to see the origin stories of the Calendars, or the Outliers' 'Why We Didn't Finish' series, it now requires less scrolling, hunting and/or pecking.
I also made a page for reading all of the dusty old Secret Sleepover Society comics together, as well as updating the Outliers' older, dustier 'After Dusk' page to align with all of the other comic collections pages. Will people ever visit these? Probably not! But I've done my part.
Streaming! I remember what that is. At least I hope I do, because I'll be jumping right back into the statistically peculiar world of Lost In Random this evening! The story seems to be reaching a crescendo, but if this game has taught me one thing it's that I shouldn't pretend to understand where it's headed.
Saturdays find us rising from the darkness and skittering away from the nightmares in Dying Light, before calming ourselves down on Sunday with much-needed friend doodlage.
And so another twentytwonight passes us by. Thank you all for your support, particularly through such tumultuous times as these. With any luck and a nontrivial deal of effort I hope to be back into the swing of things by the next update. I have another newsletter to forge, comics to doodle, videos to finish, other videos to plan, chess to chaosify and a routine to reforge. Some salt also might need pinching if we're to believe all that though.
For now I shall bid you a wonderful fortnight and remind you all to appreciate what you have. Keep the past as fond memories and the present as a chance to make more.
Look after yourselves,
Crispy 💜