18 March 2006

This Blog Has Been Idle But I Have Not...

("No! Please don't give me more responsibilities!")


"See you in January?"
What the hell was I... Um... right... Well, I'm back.

My apologies, for the delay.

If it makes you feel better, I had a novel to complete (rewrites upon rewrites upon...) It's being sent off to an agent as I type this. As I said in the title here, whilst this blog has been idle, I certainly have not. I also severely underestimated a whole host of things last year, not the least of which is the sheer amount of time I'd have to devote to running a Renaissance Guild. Can't everyone just show up and play faire? Apparently not without a whole helluva lot of guidance.

But I love it. And I love my guildmembers, of course. I just wish they were all old pros so we could get past some of the inaugural year stuff and get onto the play.

One of the things I've been working on is a marionette. As anyone who views my Blogger profile knows, I have a serious yearning for the old days of Henson puppetry. I'm not particularly gifted at being a puppet performer, but I love making them and experimenting with new ones. My old fool character "Calabash" will likely sit out this year of ren faire while I play sheriff to keep an eye on my fledgling guild.

A number of people protested when they heard me say that, so I've been trying to figure out a good way to keep Calabash at faire without having to be the man behind the mask... so to speak. So I blended my puppet-jones with my sculpting skill and an eye for caricature and made...

Mini Calabash!
(Well, his head, anyway)


Of course, I prototyped the thing first...


If you wanted to try it, this is a good basic book to start with,
though the illustrations leave something to be desired.


I'll post some pictures of the costuming for the little guy later as I get back underway with my new garb. Garbing a marionette, it turns out, has it's own set of rules, but we're not ready for that yet... this weekend... an actual UPDATE!!! (OOOooooOOOOoooooOOOhhhhHHH!!!)

See you then!

Scott