News, and Mario Mushrooms

First of all, the big news I alluded to in my last post:

Graduate school plans have been decided! This summer, I will be moving to Berkeley, CA to do the Physics PhD program for the next 6 years. (Give or take...) I'll still come back to St. Louis every so often to visit family and friends, and I'm hoping that once or twice a year that will align with some local conventions. ^_^ As for conventions in CA, I definitely plan to attend a few, but there might be a bit of a hiatus in my Artist Alley adventures. (I hear the first year of grad school is especially heinous!)

In the meantime, I'm going to try to get a Paypal store set up here before I move, with the buttons and cart and everything, so stay tuned!

I've also just completed a little project for my roommate. We've been playing entirely too much old school Super Mario Bros - and some occasional Duck Hunt - and thus, her (exceedingly late) birthday present was born! Small mushroom pillows, shown below with cat for scale. And added cuteness. Now kitty has 10 lives instead of 9!

Bishie Con Crunch Time

Yesterday was a big day - I mailed out the other Cheese-kun commission from Kollision Con, and finished my applications for graduate school! (Well, sort of. I still have one small form to finish filling out, and then scan and email to one of the schools. That will get done tomorrow when I visit my parents and their scanner. There are also 2 more applications I haven't even started, but the deadlines aren't until mid-January, so I'm not worrying about those until after Christmas. All the ones due next week are basically done, which is what counts right now.)

Accordingly, today began official Bishie Con Crunch Time. Today's project was Cheese-kun keychains, plus some general cleaning and organizing that I had been neglecting.  I really hope to finish re-stocking all the items I ran out of at Kollision by the end of this weekend, so I can have the few days right before Bishie to try out some new ideas. ^_^ Whether this is actually possible, though...

I've updated the merchandise page a bit, and I will try to post pictures as I work on stuff. I say "try," since I am still limited to my Mac and Photobooth. Rumor seems to be that I might get a new camera for Christmas, though, so huzzah!

More Cheese-kun! (and Real Life Stuff)

I have finally mailed off 1 of the 2 Cheese-kuns ordered at Kollision Con! The other should be ready to mail on Monday.

Ready to head for his new home!

While working on that one, I also ended up making a sideways Cheese-kun. I say sideways because the fabric is stretchy in only one direction, and I accidentally made this one vertically stretchy instead of horizontally. I try to make even the smaller Cheese-kuns fairly plump, for hugging purposes, so this guy is a little skinny for my tastes. Still, I will be bringing him to Bishie Con to see if someone can give him a good home.

Good hugging radius for a small child?

In real-life news, I am nearly done with my first round of graduate school applications. There are 4 schools on my list with deadlines in mid-December, so trying to get those done in a timely manner (and well before Bishie Con) has been keeping me pretty busy. I've finished 2 of them so far, and just need to tweak my personal statements and finish up some odds and ends for the other 2. With those and the Kollision Con orders done, I will finally be able to concentrate on replenishing my stock for Bishie Con!