Merry Fishmas!

Just dropped in to say…

The Year of the Dog

…the year of a rather lolling, flappy-eared and long-tailed black dog to be precise. Some time a few months ago, but not as early as January, we crossed into a new year in Spelling Animals. This annual event occurs when I have spelt everybody’s names in the previous creature, and I need to chose a new creature. By everyone I mean all my nieces and nephews, I will spell anybody else’s name in any sufficiently bendy creature in any year, but usually only for money: the real creatures still have to eat. So this is the year of the not-very-species-specific-black-dog,…

A new species of Spelling Animal: Octopi

This was a new one for the Spelling Animals: I was asked to paint ‘Jill’ in Octopi! Interestingly this species of spelling animal presents the opposite challenge to the more conventional types: with cats and the like one often wants a few extra limbs to form letters, with octopi, one wants fewer. Fortunately octopi limbs can be tangled and wrapped in a pleasingly Baroque fashion 🙂