Win your very own Sprightly Mouse!

Normally I post on the weekend, but I'm a day or two early since I'm so eager to give away a Sprightly mouse!

This competition couldn't be easier.
On Friday Oct 2nd (where did September go!?) I'm going to randomly pull a winning name out of the hat.

Whose names are in the hat?
Everyone who subscribes to receive monthly emails from me. And I'll announce the winner in next week's post right after the draw.

It doesn't matter if you have already subscribed, or if you are just about to.
If you've got on the list before I make the draw on Oct 2nd, you're in with a chance.

Anyway, the emails you'll get are just a list of the last month's blog posts, in case you don't check in often and might miss something you'd find interesting.

The subscription list is safe and secure, and never shared with anyone else of course.

So what are you waiting for?
Sprightly says 'Go ahead, click the colored Get Email Updates link below!'

After you put in your email address make sure you click the box for 'SteveWorthingtonArt'. I believe the default is for Storyboard Squad, since Meridee and I lead double lives.
We're also storyboard artists, besides being a painter and sculptor.

And good luck of course!

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New shiny toy and new work in progress report.

My thousand year old cell phone stopped working.
I don't want some new fangled thingamabob texty toy doodad to make a phone call.
So I took it in, got a new card installed and voila! (as they say in France), it worked.
For about a day. Then it died for good.
Merde (as they also say a lot in France).

So it seemed there was no choice but to get the all singing and all dancing iPhone to replace it.
Not only can I now browse the internet while Meridee takes fourteen times longer than she says she will in the supermarket, but I can check my email in the woods, take pictures of baby lizards if I should find them on the bedroom carpet, and finger paint straight onto the tiny screen (you need the $4.99 brushes app for that, but it's well worth it)!

See what I mean?...


These new fangled phone things are amazing.
You can do a trillion times more with them than you can with your tv remote, and it's three trillion times easier to figure out how.
I still don't know how to use my remote.

Lee is off to make a mold on a life size angel or something. So he'll be on location in Colorado for he reckons 2 to 3 weeks.
So I went round his place yesterday to check my waxes before he mails them overnight to the foundry. They need them by Monday to turn them around for their next drop off back in Santa Fe, which will give us time to get them finished and patinas applied (I hope!) in time for my show at Manitou Galleries on Nov 6.

I'll give the foundry a call next week to make sure we're still in good shape.

I was pretty excited to see my small-ish turtle, mid sized bumper to bumper bits, bottle stoppers, and tree frogs especially.
I've been a frog nut since I can remember.








Once at school the teacher accused me of looking inside a book during a memory test.
We had to bring a book in from home, and read a paragraph and re-write it in class with the book closed. I was word perfect, which is why the teacher accused me of looking, which I of course proved not to be the case by writing it out again. Along with the next paragraph. And the paragraph after that.
Then I re-drew the pictures.
It was of course the frog section of an animal encyclopedia. I had read the frog section about a trillion times at home and copied the frog drawings probably every time as well!

So I suppose I did have a slightly unfair advantage, but it was quite satisfying to be such a smartypants and stick it to the teacher!
(I'm sure I would have hated to have me as a student)...

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Snakes alive (and snakes dead), people's choice and bright shiny things.

People.
Gotta love 'em.
Thanks folks, for voting my Sumo Wrestling Toads the 'People's Choice' during their stay at Brookgreen Gardens as part of the National Sculpture Society's annual show (which is over now).
I am stupendously happy to have got your votes. I think that's a pretty big deal.
Yeah!

Twice in the space of a week I've had to jump out of my car to shoo a coachwhip snake off the road.
On one occasion I was in an awful hurry to get home due to certain biological emergencies that result from a fondness for green chiles on everything, washed down with copious amounts of strong coffee.
I'd been driving us home like a vampire hurtling to his coffin against the quickly rising sun, only with the prospect of a much messier outcome should I lose my race against time.

Almost home... rounding the last corner... what's that across the driveway?
Right in my way, a 4 foot long coachwhip snake dammit! And a beautiful shade of raw salmon pink to boot.

Beeping the horn won't help, they're deaf to airborne sounds.

And for some odd reason, they aren't scared of cars.
But when you hop out and they detect your human form they flail away like a mad thing.
Much like my attempts to get the keys in the door.

Then a few days later I saw another one across the road laying there without a care in the world about a block or two away.
So I hopped out and pranced around it, to see what it would do.
First they try to make a mad dash for the edge of the road, but they thrash so hard against the smooth asphalt that they slip and slide about instead of moving forwards.

So I danced past it and it turned at me and raised it's head with its mouth wide open.
Just until it figured it could zip past me and off through some rabbit bush and away.

Then I spied our 'pet' bull snake in the garden while I was looking for our weed spraying bottle.
He was patrolling among some large flower pots near the bbq grill.

I noticed he had particularly rich reddish brown blotches. Must have recently shed his skin.

He casually nosed around, and took up residence inside the bottom of the grill.


Besides that, I saw another Coachwhip snake right on the road outside our house one evening when we drove home from somewhere or other.
I hopped out, but sadly it was dead.

I was wondering if one of our neighbors might have killed it by running it over. There's only 5 other houses on our cul-de-sac, so it couldn't be too hard to narrow it down.
But it was kind of right on the road where we'd be after we've backed out of the driveway.
So now I'm plagued with the thought that I in-advertantly killed it, after saving it a couple of times.
Could have been some one else, but then again, could have been me.

Will I ever sleep again?

Probably.

Other than that I'm pondering just how super bright and shiny to do the patina on my tree frogs when they get cast.
I fancy taking a leap into the super bright arena for a change, since I think the subject matter could handle it.

No news regarding progress of my pieces, it's all a bit out of my hands for a little while 'till they come back from the foundry for finishing and patina.
But I think I'll be bugging Lee for a progress report this week...

My website, and Etsy store.

How Sprightly mouse and Creamsicle kitty became friends, and Barkin' Ball, the Santa Fe Animal Shelter and Humane Society bash...

A couple of weeks ago Celia at the coffee shop told us she had some kittens.
Not being one to miss a photo opportunity for Sprightly mouse, I asked if I could borrow them for a couple of hours.

Last weekend she brought two of them by. Creamsicle and Picasso.
They were unbelievably well behaved and photo friendly, and Meridee fell instantly in love with Picasso. If we had to have a Picasso in the house, that little kitty would be it.

Celia was keeping Picasso (not that we could have, Meridee is off the charts allergic), but said Creamsicle needed a home. So I used one of the pics to make a poster for her, which this morning she told us has done the trick (I cut off her phone # for this blog post version).


She put it up at the local Co-Op market and has been inundated with offers, so after a careful screening it looks like Creamsicle gets a home.


We also recently went to the Santa Fe Humane Society and Animal Shelter (or vice-versa) to meet Gabrielle who works there, and drop off a set of six bronze mice for their upcoming bash and art auction, the 'Barkin' Ball'. It will be held at the convention center and tickets I believe are $60 (as of right now).
The shelter's not far away, and is sprawled on a bunch of land overlooking plains and mountains with spectacular views of the sunsets.

Gabrielle was very nice and showed us around the building with all the otherwise homeless bunnies, kittens, cats, puppies and dogs that they are caring for. It's pretty hard to resist the big sad brown eyes as they get up and stare imploringly at you from their tiny rooms, gripping your hand with their paws. It's kind of a bit like doggy jail, except for the puppies who just roll about blissfully ignorant of their situation.

It's more like camp for them.

Since June, when I decided to give one mouse away to art auctions benefitting animal shelters, for every five mice I sell I've given 8 away. I'll need to give a few more to the Barkin' Ball and I suspect soon a bunch to Felines and Friends for their Christmas bash since those mice just keep trotting out through the door!

I think there's another homeless animal shelter locally that might host auctions, after that I'll be searching further afield.

My mice are on a mission to find homes for them, one kitty at a time...

My website, and Etsy store.