Peguin riding a mouse?

almost done making presents!

this piece was a collaborative effort between the DH & I

he did the original drawing, the wood shaping work and the main paint

I did the detail work and created the needle felted penguin

(btw, the ears and tail of the mouse are leather and the whiskers are broom straw!)

this is a Christmas gift for my brother in law, our family computer guru, who has a little collection of penguins

I hope he likes it

from the looks of this picture, Santa has already been here

we've wrapped almost everything -- just a couple of things to finish -- like the penguin and the mouse

oh yeah, and just in case I might have gotten too smug, the project that I have been working on for literally MONTHS for my mother totally blew up in the final stages

let us say that there is still much for me to learn about being able to print 10 small images on both sides of a sheet of card stock and have them come out lined up correctly

this morning, as I was in that sort of "fugue" state between waking and sleep, another approach to this came to me, but it will be much more labor intensive than I have time for before Christmas, so that project will be deferred for next year's Christmas.

so this morning I'm working on printing a custom calendar (which I will need to take to my local office supply store and have bound)

finished another afghan square, and good progress is being made on the vest I'm working on

after months of having up to 5 things on the sticks at once, it's a little odd to only have the vest and the afghan squares

I may have to remedy that --- pronto

of course there are a couple of quilt projects in the works, and some beading/mixed media things, but at this time of the year when I'm trying not to create a lot of mess, knitting is a better bet