Updates! Woggies #8, #10, AND #16!

Yes spring has sprung, and it's verdant atmosphere has brought about updates in not one, not two but three woggy projects, all within the past two weeks!

Woggy #8 Update: "Lil' Me"

With my notebook-buying obstacle out of the way, and my proper time-era enhancing pandora station created and at the ready for inspiration, my mind and hands were set free to begin with the drawing. After a small bit of research to verify a few additional time-accurate details, I started my concept drawings and began the intro to my first book. I was a little slowed for a bit after completing the introduction, trying to decide what the story for this first episode/issue would be, but after a bit of brewing I was able to successfully work out a storyboard for the whole issue.

At this point all that is left is to sit down a little bit each day and continue the work on the final, finished-drawing versions of the storyboard for this issue to be finally complete. Time intensive to be sure, but right now the road is clear and straight up through the end of this book. Hooray!

I can now check some items off my Woggy To-do list:

X Dig up my old plot and story notes, and my folder of character drawings
X Sketch out a plot for my introductory episode/book
X rough storyboard the book

And for the record, I have begun working on:

• draw book #1

Things Left To Complete This Woggy Project:

• finish drawing book #1
• admire fab new book!
• repeat process for several more books
• research publishing graphic novels/ comic books, including self-publish options
• begin sending out stuff/ doing whatever initial stuff i need to do to pursue publishing of first few books
• continue making more books
• consider creating a dedicated website for the books
• write more to-do steps

______________________________________________

Woggy #10 Update: Understanding Comics

In the course of me working on the drawings for Woggy #8's introduction, I ran into a bit of a problem figuring out how to represent a particular action sequence that was very important. Considering how to solve the problem, I thought immediately of Understanding Comics and figured there would probably be something in there that might help me figure out a good approach.

Funny enough, the place where I had stopped reading, or more specifically the chapter I had bookmarked as the next one to begin, covered exactly the topic I was needing to read about. So that afternoon, while I had pulled the book off the shelf thinking I would just flip through to a section I had already read, for a few references and words of advice, I ended up instead sitting down and reading a whole new chapter of the book. In this way I not only learned what I needed to know for Woggy #8 right when I needed it the most, helping me solve my problem & inspire me, I also inadvertently completed a new step towards completing Woggy #10 at the same time.

Items I can check off my Woggy To-do list:

X Take book off shelf and begin reading again
X Consider buying another book from the graphic novel section! (actually did this a while ago, as mentioned in the last Woggy #8 update)

Things Left to Complete This Woggy Project:

• Set aside an evening or afternoon
• Read more of book
  
• Repeat until book has been finished

______________________________________________

Woggy #16: New Bed

Completely unrelated to the above two woggy updates, I am happy to finally report progress on this woggy. A lovely spring day brought us out for a walk in the park, and subsequent walk home right past one of our favorite furniture stores down the street. While there we both saw a bed frame we both liked and discussed it as a possibility, and found a fab couch on super discount, which after a half-day's thought, resulted in our decision to buy it.

While it was a couch purchased, and not a bed, those of you looking at the poster above might have noticed these are not unrelated. A new couch in the house brings about a quite urgent need to remove the old one, especially when one lives in a small downtown condo. Mind ever-quick, I jumped on this opportunity to point out that we would probably save alot of time and effort if we added the box spring and old bed frame to our flyer, since we already knew we were going to get rid of them.

And thank you, terrible economy, someone has already offered to take both of these worthy objects off our hands and out of our house within the week.

Of course, this means that from now until the date of bed frame delivery (to say nothing of all the steps in between) we will be sleeping on the very basic and chic "mattress on floor" layout, the ultimate in minimalist bed furnishment. But no one said progress was without its downside...

Items I can check off my Woggy To-do list:

X go to a store to look at a bed
X put our box spring and frame up for give-away
X give away our stuff to give-away person (ok, this one's almost checked off..)

Things Left To Complete This Woggy Project:

• go to more stores to look at other possible beds
  
• decide on a bed and buy it
  
• get our new bed delivered
• say, "Hey, doesn't our new bed look great?!"

Update: Woggy #15

Back in February I mentioned I had been working through a difficult book called Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life. Having taken a break recently for one of my periodic spiritual retreats, where my goal is generally to center and refocus myself, I decided to put an emphasis on reopening the book and making another serious go at the next book exercise.

While it was difficult and I avoided getting around to it more than I would have liked, once I did open the book and start rereading the section that had been giving me trouble, I found myself moving through the next pages and their exercises in a foot-after-foot fashion. While it still required considerable intention to turn each page and do each exercise, I found myself on the last day of my retreat two chapters forward, where I stopped not out of fear, but due to the request of the book and exercise itself. The exercise was one of writing down a list of difficult tasks associated with the things brought up by the previous exercise, and setting yourself a timeline to attempt the first of those items on the list. Once you finish with that task, you then continue through the list. So an intentional resting point of sorts in terms of reading through the book.

I felt really good having worked through the difficulties and reached the point I had, which was made to feel even more of an achievement after reading the last summarizing words of the chapter:

"If you've made it this far, then you've done some really good work."

Things I can check off my Woggy to-do list:

x set aside time to read
x write down the answer to troublesome question
x continue reading
x keep moving through next stumbling block

Things Left To Complete This Woggy Project:

• being working through the list of items in chapter 10
  
• continue until all items are accomplished
  
• consider doing the daily/weekly mindfulness exercises from the earlier chapter
• begin reading chapter 11
  
• continue reading and doing exercises until the end of the book is reached

Woggy #21: Game Night Bag

My husband plays board games as one of his major hobbies, and belongs to two local game groups, which meet weekly for game-playing sessions. Attending these usually means bringing along at least a couple of his own board games, plus a snack to share. For years he made use of a sturdy old canvas market bag that we got as a member bonus for being members of San Francisco's KQED. Now we've been living in Seattle for over 10 years now, so I'm sure you can imagine the shape this bag has reached by this point in time.

Last year at the big local indie craft show, I saw some bags that were pretty similar to this and thought it'd be fun to give my husband a board-game-themed bag for him to use as a replacement for the dilapidated old tote he insisted on continuing to use. But, as it turned out, these bags didn't come any bigger than a large handbag, which is nowhere near the capacity needed to carry actual board games.

So eventually I began to wonder if I couldn't make him a bag myself. While I never could figure out how those craft people managed to attach a hunk of cardboard to a vinyl bag, I did eventually find a supplier for novelty game-themed quilt fabric, and bought enough to make some sort of sturdy large bag.

My husband thankfully has been enthusiastic about the idea, but while he was helpful in choosing the fabrics to use for his bag, he has as yet been not so forthcoming about his actual size needs for a bag. Once we can finally work that out, I can come up with some sort of a pattern and turn this pile o' fabric into the fabbest game bag this side of the Cascades.

Things Left to Complete This Woggy Project:

• get bag need measurements from Chad
  
• sketch up a pattern plan, including a plan for sturdy straps
  
• cut fabric to sew
  
• sew bag together
  

Woggy Index Page

Numbered index to all woggy files:

#1: BC Scrapboook
#2: Mario Livio Book
#3: Learning Calc
#4: Velvet Shirt
#5: Monkey Novel
#6: Looking For America
#7: Election
#8: Lil' Me Cartoon
#9: Mini Walden
#10: Understanding Comics
#11: High Seas Adventure Novel
#12: Giving Plan
#13: Lego Taj Mahal
#14: MOC Page
#15: Getting Out of My Mind
#16: New Bed
#17: Family Tree
#18: Window Shade
#19: Mail Sorter
#20: Home Inventory
#21: Game Night Bag
#22: Driver's License
#23: DJ Dress
#24: Moon Walk Novel

Update: Woggy #13 Complete!

After many, many hours of enjoyable work, I'm happy to say that this miniaturely giant woggy has finally been finished! Whatever Lego fan actually posted somewhere that he completed this feat in a mere 10 hours either has a faulty sense of timing, superhuman building power, or must have employed a large army of miniature robots to complete his task.

My final hours of project completion were assisted greatly not only by my small Lego workmen supervisors (see three of them helping to the left), but also by my Velvet Underground-seeded Pandora station, which I feel helped especially pulling me through all the delicate, frustrating, and slightly nerve-wracking moments connecting all the large component parts to one another.

And baby it was allright
And it was alright
Hey it was allright

Unexpectedly, the worst moments came not from placing the large central dome, which unlike all my previous attempts at handling it, did not fall apart or lose any tiles in the process, but from the plugging in of all the exterior building pieces to one another. As soon as I would get two plugged into each other and attempted a third, I'd find the second and third pieces come together only at the expense of the first two pieces coming apart. After an of absurd series of together-together-apart, together-together-aparts, I did finally succeed at getting them all together into one comprehensive whole, and only a few minor and non-lethal break and repairs.

In the end, the final result was pretty impressive. Hugely impressive in fact, and now I am beginning to consider the question my husband first asked me when I brought the Taj Mahal set home, and that is "Where exactly are you going to put that thing in our place?" I had decided not to worry about that trivial detail until after it was finished. For now, this Ottoman looks like a good place, though obviously not a permanent one. Anyway it sure looks great, especially when I put a light inside and the fountain from my city set in front of it. Who needs airfare? In that perspective the cost of this project now seems downright economical!

Woggy Project #10: Understanding Comics

Like many people of my gender, I did not grow up reading comic books. This is not to say I was entirely unfamiliar with the medium, of course. I read the newspaper comics every day, and if I do remember correctly, much of every rainy-day fun book I ever remember reading/ activity-izing contained alot of what would probably be considered graphic storytelling. The memories are vague, to be sure, but I definitely remember a comic-drawn George Washington telling me all about the Minutemen.

As an adult, I have read and collected a small collection of books that I now realize are basically of this genre, even though their location in the bookstore made me unaware of this fact. Wanting to understand various facts about Relativity, Physics, and other topics, I gravitated towards the books which told these facts using pictures rather than plain words. They have names like Relativity Visualized and Introducing the Universe.

Also as an adult, continuing my enjoyment of newspaper comics, I did find a few which when put into book collections do actually find themselves shelved with the graphic novels rather than humor. And, as a fan of animated films whose primary feature is not their accessibility to the grade-school demographic, I have found myself really liking a whole host of films which, I am told, have graphic novel counterparts I should probably try reading one of these days.

So for a fairly long time I have had the general impression that comics might be something I'd like to try. However, while I can't deny the evidence that I should be interested in them, there has been a mighty obstacle standing in my way, and that is the culture of comic books and comic book stores. Having attended a college that was not only filled with geeks but specifically filled with male geeks at a ratio of 3:1 female geeks, it was of course completely impossible for the institution of the comic book store to have escaped my notice. I had, in the course of palling around with friends inadvertently found myself inside of these mysterious buildings on more than one occasion, and in an attempt to be one of the guys tried in vain to make sense of the culture, or at least to blend in. Suffice it to say that while I occasionally managed to find something that I could actually stand in front of for more than a few minutes without giggling, rolling my eyes, being horrified, or needing to suppress a strongly impending feminist tirade, those moments were very few, very far between, and never long enough to get me past the sea of content that was clearly not for me and all the way up to the register with my wallet.

Any female who is reading this and is still somehow unaware of what I'm talking about, let's just suffice it to say that it's a bit of a boy's club. And a strange one at that, stuck somewhere in adolescence where there is plenty of discussion of girls, unless one actually shows up, in which case she better get out of here because who wants a stupid girl around here? For additional assistance and reasons, you may want to more closely observe Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons.

So anyway, this takes me to today's subject (yes, finally, I know...) which is the book Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. Having occasionally voiced my dilemma over comic books, I had found this book recommended by several male (and comic-book-reading) friends as not only a book I might actually like to read, but also one that might demystify some of the mystifications I was experiencing.

Very happily, buying this book did not require me actually having to visit a comic book store. My favorite bookstore actually has a very civilized looking "Graphic Novel" section, where I can stand and look over the shelves and still feel like a grown up lady in a bookstore reviewing my sophisticated literature choices. I still feared that some "Comic Book Guy" might be lying in ambush to ask me "Excuse me lady, and I dooo use that term loosely, but the romance section is that way," or worse, that he might just rip the book out of my hand and give me a disdainful sound with a curt "I don't think so; " but it seems my fears may have been a bit exaggerated.

So, I got the book home and began reading it along with the remaining pile of books I brought from the store. And I did really like it. Very interesting and thoughtful and educational, even. But like many other books, it somehow ended up set aside one evening not to be picked up again, and eventually made it back onto the graphic and art book shelf, and I haven't gone back to it since. I'm looking forward to it, though!

Things to Complete This Woggy Project:

• Set aside an evening or afternoon
• Take book off shelf and begin reading again
• Repeat until book has been finished
• Consider buying another book from the graphic novel section!