*laughs and laughs* It’s a very Ursula Christmas for me this year. Over the last 6 months or so, Ursula’s done several sketches that I just Had To Have: the dragglerabbit, the Arctic party, and the dwarven baker. I had to have the dragglerabbit because he looked just like I feel on a bad writing day, the Arctic party was obviously meant for me, and the story of why I had to have the dwarven baker is here. I waited until I was in Ireland to have her ship them, and a couple days ago I got them in the mail and I’ve just opened them up. The dragglerabbit is laugh-out-loud funny. :) They’re absolutely wonderful sketches, bigger than I expected and on heavier paper, so they’ll frame really nicely in some nice simple frames (sketches, IMHO, ought not be fancily framed, because they’re simple things themselves).
Then Ellen sent me the Ursula 2006 calendar, which turned out *very* nicely, and if Ellen does another print run on them I’ll link to them. So it’s a very Ursula Christmas around here, and that makes me very happy. :)
Homemade marshmallow creme proves to be surprisingly easy to make, and makes extremely good fudge. The too-large crystals of Irish sugar make grains of sugar in the otherwise excellent fudge. I’m going to have to see if I can find smaller grained sugar, or I’m going to have to get a sugar grinder, because this won’t do. (I’m a bit of a perfectionist about my fudge.) (Ted thinks I should go to culinary school because he thinks I’d be completely fascinated and delighted with the food science courses and, well, just all of it. I think he’s trying to get out of cooking. :))
We discussed going into Dublin today, but frankly, I’m too damned tired. I *do* have a cold, and I’m just worn out from the last week of shopping. Shopping is hard! Let’s go writing!
*laugh* Yesterday over lunch Shaun asked, out of idle curiosity, what currently-existing mammals we would choose to be, if we had to choose. Ted, without missing a beat, said, “A Kodiak brown bear.” I said, without missing a beat, “A dolphin.” Shaun, of course, would be a tiger (giant cats!).
I thought that said pretty much everything about all of us that needed to be said. :)
(considerably later)
I’ve just done a quite good drawing. I don’t know if it’ll look as good when I’ve scanned it in, since scanning always seems to play up any flaws in a sketch, but I’m really pretty happy with it. Lucky for me, I haven’t got a scanner right now, so it can sit in its goodness for a while.
Pleased as I am, I’m also frustrated, because I can’t do this every time I sit down to draw. I don’t want much, just to be perfect at everything I do. :p
Caster/Castor sugar is finer than gran, or there’s always icing sugar. But I /like/my fudge crunchy!
It’s easy enough to knock down sugar in an ordinary food processor. (This is how one makes superfine sugar out of ordinary American granulated sugar, for example.)