Hurricane, hurricane, go away!

Good ol' Hurricane Irene is going to be heading through my area later tonight, so I'm expecting to be without reliable power and internet access for a few days. I put my friend on the west coast on check-in duty, so she'll be posting to my plurk, FB, etc for me, should the power not be on here for a few days. (Thanks, sis! Loves ya!)

My neighborhood is always one of the last to get power back on and it goes off even without reason (lost it for 5 hours while it was sunny the other day...), so not so optimistic about it getting put back on in a timely manner. :-/ However, my fiancé's parents' house rarely loses power for long (he's about 45 minutes away from here), so I'll likely be over there for as long as the power is out here in Media. Hoping this means I won't be entirely without internet access and power for long! (This is one of those times I really wish I could afford to have a smart phone...)

Fingers crossed everything goes well here in the Philly 'burbs and that everyone on the east coast stays safe! Good luck, everyone- be smart, and we'll get through this fine!

Edit: 6:30pm Sunday
We really lucked out in the area- we were in a tornado watch area and they were spotted nearby, I think (from what I could tell from the radio news), but they stayed away from us. We lost power and cable for a while, but for the first time EVER after a storm, it came back within 12 hours. I don't get it- it goes out longer for no reason. I guess because more people were out than just the neighborhood we were higher up on PECO's priority list. ;) But hey, won't complain! The cable's been flickering in and out all day, so I'm not going to call my internet connection reliable yet, but the winds have finally stopped, so that should be fine, too.

I'm just so glad the storm stayed mostly away from here! Our basement flooded a bunch and my dad and my fiance were up all night using shop vacs (hooked up to generators as the power went off and on at different times), but they did well and kept out as much water as they could. It's fine now. :)

I just hope most people were as lucky as us!

Art Update - Plushie time!

Umm, yeah, my blog. I had one of those at one point, didn't I? And I used to actually update it regularly, I think. ;)

Today I'm sharing some of the plushies I've made recently... although some are from earlier this year, so I suppose that's not really "recent".

First up is a Dumbseeker. This is from the Henry Hatsworth video game, like the horde of plushies I've made over the past few years.

It's rather strange looking, but it's supposed to look like that. ;) It's about 6" tall and made from acrylic and bamboo/wool yarns and felt (the mouth). It's filled with stuffing, but also pellets to make it floppier.


Next up is Illia, a D&D half-elf bard played by one of my best friends. This was a present for her earlier this year:


She's mostly made from acrylic yarn, but I used felt for the straps of the quiver and the harp. The longbow, harp and sword-in-scabbard are polymer clay that I painted with acrylic paints. She has a tiny plastic star that I painted to look like a flower glued to her head (to look like she has a flower tucked behind her ear).


Now another present. This one was a very very late birthday present for my best friend; it's supposed to be her favorite wrestler:

As I know nothing about wrestling, I based this off of pictures online. Hopefully I got it close! I painted little crosses onto his shorts and shoes with fabric paint, painted his mouth, eyebrows and facial hair, and painted the eyes. The body and hair are acrylic yarn and the axe is polymer clay.


And two more! These were for a writing/art challenge over on livejournal and are two of the characters from another author's story:


You can find the story here and see the scenes I put together with the dolls over on my livejournal. Here's my favorite of those pictures, so I'll share that:

The boy doll has two tiny books that I sewed together from linen and leather fabrics and the girl has a tiny chain and bead necklace. I really enjoyed making the girl's pants because in the story a plot point is the character turning a skirt into pants, so I made those wider than usual.

I've been working on a few other dolls, too, so I'll share those later. :)