Bibiane (and her dog Pickle, who has one blue eye)

Bibiane (and her dog Pickle, who has one blue eye)
Originally uploaded by relentlesstoil.

Thanks in large part to inkyblack I have a new gig drawing other people's adorable children. And their adorable dogs :)
I hope you can tell, by this picture especially, that I'm as giddy as a piglet in poop! This particular child is cuter than cute and her parents so sweet and gracious.
If you would like a similar drawing of your adorable child, email me (keet [dot] leibowitz [at] gmail [dot] com).
I do suffer a bit of guilt though in that I have yet to draw my own little barefoot shoemaker's daughter. So this is why, whenever I need a break from drawing, I whip her up a little something, like Miss Fluffleberry, or Mr. Floppy. She's been very happy with this setup so far.

Its fleece was white as snow

The whole time I was making it I realized...
Originally uploaded by relentlesstoil.

The fleece I used for this chubby lamb softie is the most wonderful fabric I think I've ever worked with. I've made a few softies out of fabric with pile to it and I'd always found I had to pin and baste the bejeezers out of them to keep from slipping. I approached this one loaded for bear but there was really no need. It was so easy and so forgiving.

I got the idea to make a lamb softie from a drawing I did a few weeks ago (Ali Had a Little Lamb). As with anything lamb-related I thought of my teensy-but-bold friend Maddie and her family. They're really into lambs. :) And now that I've made all my little mistakes with this one (for example, using fusible webbing to keep the face in place -- no need for that), I can make her one that is just perfect.

At last!

At last!
Originally uploaded by relentlesstoil.

So, my friends may remember that around the beginning of January I was very excited and busy working on something big which I could not yet reveal.
This is it!
Baby announcements, printed on scrumptious linen, for a scrumptious baby of Chinese-American heritage. It was the family's idea for me to draw a puppy to record her Chinese zodiac sign, and I tossed in the lily for Lillian.
I still spend many happy moments staring at her perfect pink fingers and thinking that, now that I have done the baby thing once, I could do it a second time so much more confidently (although adoption would be our best and preferred method of expanding our family). Then again, I also spend many happy moments being glad that my days of coping with an infant's schedule (or lack thereof) are behind me!

P.S. -- How do I articulate what a profound honor it is to take on the job of announcing someone's birth? All I can say is that being chosen for this project made me feel incredibly special.

Mr. Floppy

Mr. Floppy
Originally uploaded by relentlesstoil.

Thanks to server outages at work, I made a big bunny softie for Maya. She loves it!

"Doghead, you good dog, you."

"Doghead, you good dog, you."
Originally uploaded by relentlesstoil.

Quote from a wee relative of my friend Lisa. He had a dog called Doghead whom he loved a lot.
This is my way of saying goodbye to the year of the dog! I'm sure to draw a pig for the new year soon.

One-Eye and His Treasury of Best Loved Poems

One-Eye and His Treasury of Best Loved Poems
Originally uploaded by relentlesstoil.

1. This is for a wonderful little boy whose parents, perhaps without knowing it or meaning to, have helped so many preemie and micropreemie parents through what is an awfully scary time.
2. I had my idea of what this was going to look like and then my husband had his. He sent me to futhark.com to study some runes. It was a good idea.
3. I think I'm pretty obsessed with these misty blue-grey backgrounds. I would like to say it is the influence of winter here in southeastern Pennsylvania, USA, but actually our winter is this seemingly endless expanse of grody, frozen brown. So, these misty blue-grey backgrounds are what I wish winter would look like. And then I wish winter would dump some good sledding snow on me and go away really quickly.
4. Yes, this does make me feel like unpacking flat boxes of unassembled furniture and cursing over Allen keys. We got the Sverker series of shelves when we were first married and Sverker became an expletive in our home. It's still handy.
5. I went scrounging after some Swedish music too and the best I had was a-ha (Norwegian). I loooooooooved a-ha when I was a youngun. Forget "Take On Me," the other stuff is lovely and dramatic and totally 80's and I think my friend Keri should put it on loudly and write novels to it.
6. Speaking of writing and books and best loved poems, I miss my friend Julie so much, and Julie never says no to a good book.

shoo shoo boogie boo

shoo shoo boogie boo
Originally uploaded by relentlesstoil.

1. Nathan has taught me the love of penguins.
2. One of my goals in life is to leave many zany stories behind. Here is a zany story about my late grandmother: when it was REALLY cold she would bundle up her sons and use the term "shoo shoo boogie boo" to emphasize just how cold it was. I am not really sure where the term comes from. My uncle has a theory that it has to do with the perils of having to tinkle in an outhouse in frosty wintertime (we're Polish American and shoo shoo is a Polish kid's term for tinkle... although my generation of the family never actually used that term and I suspect my father's generation didn't, either). Who knows.
Anyway, it is for damn sure shoo shoo boogie boo cold here. I feel like it's been below freezing since 1819. We've had very little precipitation, though, so instead of a winter-white wonderland and !!!getting to sled down my awesome sledding hill!!! it's just this frozen-stiff, grey-brown BLAH out there.
If it must be this cold, I would really rather be sledding down my awesome sledding hill with all the kids. We could all use a snow day.