It's probably a good thing I'm fairly used to chaos, and also that we didn't actually need to fly anywhere in a hurry.

It took me four goes to get the kids' passports renewed (and this isn't even mentioning the chaos and confusion trying to tee up with my friend who agreed to be their guarantor).  Fortunately the post office I was using is less than 10min drive from my place and the lady who processes the applications is very good-natured and patient.

As per usual, it ate my art time.  I did manage to finally get all the primaries done.

Which is not nearly as entertaining or interesting as the states of the @nonameslefttouse addresses.

After ages of trying I've finally come to the conclusion that I can't make enough progress fast enough for a Patreon to be worthwhile to most people, and also there were some little niggly things that were bothering me, so I've partially shut it down (deleted my pledges to other creators and "unlaunched" my creator page but haven't deleted the account yet, I may either do that or relaunch down the line, will see what happens).

So I'm down to just ko-fi and crypto in my pathetic attempts to make money doing my thing.

The mess that has been this year continued along with my sustained failing to manage one in school and two out.  I've ended up palming most of the school-related stuff off to JJ, which has mostly been parent/teacher meetings and he's supposed to be helping her with homework and doing the admin stuff too but somehow I'm still getting stuck with that (guess the 12yo is just used to me dealing with most things).

10yo got into making paper planes again, he was happily off on his own once I'd reminded him how to make them.  As he was occasionally cutting our printing paper into squares for some of the plane designs, he decided not to let the off-cuts go to waste and started making smaller and smaller planes.  I think he remembered doing something similar last year.

Because like I ever do anything quickly.

So after making some good headway on the tail feathers from last progblog, I eventually realised (again why could I not do this earlier) that they weren't flowing with the arm direction and when the arm bent the feathers around the elbow were doing to kink horribly.  Not only that the flow of the tail feathers didn't make much sense given the overall shape of the phoenix.

Suppose that's what I get for trying for a cute fancy spray when the whole thing is a much more boring but much better flowing elongated S.

Perhaps it's a good thing that JJ walks around with headphones on whenever he's home and that the kids are just used to my weirdness as pretty much everyone else would probably have gone slightly insane at the sheer number of times I've been listening to True Colours by Artists Against Bullying (linked to a sign language one because it was adorable, this is the official clip and here's the original Cyndi Lauper one that they covered) and Here I Am by Bryan Adams (again linked to a Spirit one because I'm still not sure what to make of the original XD).

An unbelievable amount of crazy has been happening.

Comp season starting was just part of it (aka there went one weekend, spoiler alert 12yo did well).

We're now onto the last few tail feathers with the pink and purple.

Close up of the middle feathers (which shows I need to cover more grey in the purple section!)

Didn't take too long to get my hand in, so once I figured out what I was doing it happened reasonably quick (but not as quick as I would have liked partly because it's been a week and mostly because I have unrealistic and  generally unachievable expectations of myself).

Decided to do the tail feathers by colour instead of individually and the barby bits are kind of painstaking because the brush is tinier than 3dC wants to deal with, but we're glacially getting there.

So problem shoulder is acting up again.  It all started when I decided to have a shower with the extractor fan on (I'm aware it needs to be on but my need to be warm is infinitely more important than the need to avoid mould growth).  There was problems with the hot water system (we replaced the old one which finally died after possibly 40+ years with a cheap crappy new one instead of a good one because we thought we were going to be moving) or maybe it's a problem with plumbing, I don't know.  Anyway, I got too cold, I felt something twang while shivering (I'm aware it doesn't actually get that cold where I am but I have no cold tolerance.  None.), woke up the next day feeling sick (which I got over pretty quick) and getting dizzy spells when looking right regardless of what orientation I'm in (standing, sitting, lying, doesn't make a difference) which eventually fades but can recur randomly during the day which is tonnes of fun when I'm driving.  It's done

Sprat is up for a couple of weeks, so I've been a bit distracted.

On Friday when I was supposed to have been writing this, we played Minecraft for most of the day.  I used to play survival mode with the kids, but these days I just mindlessly build things in random locations (usually with plenty of supplies inside) for Sprat and the kids to find (they're all in survival mode), and laugh at the hilarious sound effects that happen when they encounter the hostile mobs.

And at Sprat who while trying to go to some mine 12yo had found, pretty much ended up everywhere including where I was building (I thought I'd flown far enough that it would take them a while to find me) but where she wanted to be.  Apparently she's amazing at finding everything except what she's looking for.

Finally finished the gloss map for the scales! The belly scales were fairly boring and straightforwrd but I was still glad to be done with  them XD Currently lighting the froof and am much happier as I like doing hair.  Quite pleased with how it's turning out so far too.