Here is my customary end-of-year emptying of the memory card. 2011: strong in marmalade and chickens.

For my part I’m anti-resolutions, but I do promise to start emailing people back tomorrow since I’ve been avoiding logging-in for the past two weeks (which is to say, the past two months). 2011: weak in timely correspondence. All those other years, too. Also weak in that.

I’m spending my New Year’s Eve alone in my island fastness, as I like to do, complete with fire and onesie and a plentiful selection of bread items. Pretty pleased with myself, I have to say.

Happy New Year, guys!

I think stockings are the best part of Christmas. Certainly they are in my family – the finest and most extensive care package of the year. There are a few specific traditions that I didn’t need to list here. For instance, we always get a small box of Space Lego to put together before breakfast (to keep us occupied, so my parents can have time to wake up before getting to the bigger stuff – is it bad that we still need that?).  But we are sort of reasonable now. At least, we’ve taken up the practice of putting together stockings for our parents, too.

Anyway, mum, here is my list of specific ideas (most of which hardly need reiterating, but I like talking about them anyway).

1. So socks – never has the need been greater! My ideal sock would be knee-high, built to stay up well (some of us roll our pantlegs, you see), black (or dark grey or dark navy), very thin, and not 100% cotton (because I recently heard that this isn’t good for people who [like me] have strange circulation problems that turn their digits white and purple and numb – nice, yes?). Also, not likely to fall to pieces after I walk a couple miles in them. But all that might not be possible, so something more-or-less along most of those lines.

2. Underwear. I like getting socks and underwear for Cribbers – it’s like I was built to be somebody’s semi-neglected son-in-law. And not even fancy underwear (which personally I can’t stand), only the plainest and most boring of full-coverage cotton briefs (black and grey pack, 5), which I’ve worn since I was a teenager. I’ll never change my ways. You’ll have to pry them from my cold, dead… well, anyway.

3. Beeswax candles are always good (for fantasy ambiance, you see). The huge towers are the best, but I drew tapers because those are cheaper, stocking-wise.

4. The fanciest of marmalades. There’s no such thing as too many.

5. The fanciest of dark chocolate, same deal.

6. Tea works well, if you’re at a loss. Note: it does not have to be the fanciest.

7. A shiny! If you happen to be near Amethyst Creations on 4th and Macdonald, or The Crystal Ark in Granville Island…

8. A men’s fashion magazine. Lark would be a good place to look for one, or the place at the front of my building.

9. Finnska licorice. There may be some holy grail of licorice, somewhere away through the mists, but Finnska is the best I’ve ever found. They carry it at the Whole Foods near me.

10. A lock, for practicing my lockpicking! Just a regular five-tumbler doorknob lock, which is usually the most basic one there is. It should be inexpensive, but not the cheapest one (shitty cheap locks are harder to pick, or so I’m finding). Like, a Weiser (brand) would probably be ideal.

11. If you make an underwear order, consider getting me some men’s boxer-briefs as well. These are the best pyjama bottoms, I find, because they fit perfectly under a onesie – and I need to get some anyway.

12. Orange in the toe!

So look, my mum needs me to make her a Christmas list, and I happen to have this website which is all about things that I want, conveniently in need of an update. So here goes nothing. (I must warn you, mum, this list is not particularly practical – nonetheless, it’s the best I can seem to manage…)

Let’s start with the clothing, since gift-giving holidays are the reason I own garments enough to (more or less) cover my nakedness.

1. This is likely an impossible request, but it’s the thing I want more than anything, ever (I kept my finger off the caps lock, but great restraint was involved): the Engineered Garments FWK shoulder hoodie (in navy or black, if you please, but I wouldn’t turn down grey). I should have ordered this from Nepenthes back in the fall – and particularly in retrospect because it’s still an object of much fixation – but a bunch of things got in the way, like a credit card fraud-shutdown, and not wanting to overburden Justin (who would have had to drive it up from Seattle for me). It’s probably a good thing that they don’t ship to Canada, or I’d be constantly abusing the privilege (it’s not really a good thing, guys, that’s just me trying to mollify myself). Anyway, Hchom and christmas lists both are allowed some quota of impossible items, yes? This is the impossiblest.

2. I’m trying to think what FWK (best brand ever – all I want to wear right now) piece I can ask for as consolation. I have a curious attraction to this shirt, though I wouldn’t have expected the recent liberty print trend to offer any personal appeal. Goes to show. They’ve run out of my size, alas (though the lower one would likely fit as well), and it’s a bit pricey anyway, since it’s shipping from Ireland. I was also going to point out these as an alternative, but my sizes have sold out there as well, since I started putting this together… so that’s not very helpful, is it. I suppose I’ll have to poke around some more.

3. This bag has a pudding in it, just saying. Possibly also a kitten and a pony, and a large quantity of very expensive dark, single-origin chocolate.

4. Though I don’t really need them, I could always use a back-up pair of over-sized Levis 501s. Perversely (or not, as you prefer), I like the cheaply-made $30 ones better than the fancy vintage/heritage versions.

5. Socks, just for something to attach a number to. And because I’m down to four pairs, three with holes in the heel. But more on socks in Cribbers post #2, stocking edition.

6. These shoes are too pricey to ask for, but I want them and therefore I’m listing them. Plus, look, they completed the ensemble.

7. I was thinking about asking for one of those tiny, cheap computers, as a secondary laptop, then I decided that was silly, and of course I don’t need one (but I put it up anyway, because it was already drawn and scanned). So yes, ignore this. Most useless Christmas list ever! Moving on…

8. I’d like dad to make me a bench out of parallam (my dad invented this wood), for my hallway.

9. Gift certificates that provide me with tasty things are always good.

You can see I’m having trouble thinking of reasonable things to ask for. Reasonable just isn’t a strong suit. Tomorrow I’ll post a stocking list, which will be less overflowing with stuff that can’t be acquired by ordinary means.

My Skryim hype, boundless though it may be, lingers particularly on certain features of the game. So to please myself, and because it’s International Skyrim Week, I’m going to list them.

1. Many games have companion dogs, but Skyrim has Irish Wolfhounds. This is enormously exciting for me, you see, because my dog is an elderly Irish Wolfhound cross. Best dogs ever! Though I’m going to have to abuse the console command and make mine immortal, or there will actually be fits of weeping when it gets killed by a dragon.

2. Speaking of companions, incidentally, you can marry NPCs in Skyrim. And NPCs of any gender, which should be a “duh” thing, but since it’s been a big issue in other games, I’m really pleased that Bethesda incorporated this without fuss.
I plan to direct all my moves at the Argonians, naturally, but who knows where I’ll end up.

3. Guys, mountains. And have I already mentioned that whenever the BBC Planet Earth documentaries get to the part about the arctic (and the boreal forests, and so forth), I actually get a little choked-up and watery-eyed? I have absolutely no idea why. I’ve never been there. It just has that effect on me – like hearing live string music. I’ll stop now, before I further devastate my Bad Dude public persona.

4. The crafting element of the game is looking to be pretty robust, and I can’t wait to get at it. I’ve seen the perks for smithing, but I hope there’s also a leather-crafting component somewhere in there.

5. Lock-picking! Playing Oblivion, I never lost my desire to open every chest I came across, even though I knew they’d only contain a pair of calipers and a leek, or equivalent randomised mismatched junk. Also, my good friend Sachi has been teaching me how to pick locks in real life. I feel like this should improve my chances in Skyrim, though it almost certainly won’t.

6. And loot, of course – a game as big as this will have an enormous range of it. These sorts of games have trained me from a very early age to be soothed by the act of taking shiny objects out of pixelated wooden chests. Now it’s the only thing that keeps the cortisol at a manageable level.

7. The character creation system has a size-slider. As far as I can tell it doesn’t offer a very expansive range, especially for female characters, but it’s an option I’m always excited to see. It makes me a little more optimistic that future games will offer a fuller spectrum of diverse body-types (I know I mentioned this in my Crossing posts too, but it doesn’t get talked about nearly enough).

8. Houses, of course, filled with all my shiny things. Best of all will be the ones I mod for myself.

9. And I don’t know, everything! SKYRIM!

Also, note my implementation of the proprietary “When Dealing With Stuff” system (I came up with the name all by myself). The standard alignments never quite do it for me, so this is my version, with less emphasis on good and evil, and more emphasis on, uh, dealing with stuff.

And some more translation, for anybody who doesn’t care about Skyrim, but is nonetheless good-naturedly reading through these posts: “Bosmer”, for comparison, are sort of like the Wood Elves of Tolkien. And “Evening Star” is the Elder Scrolls iteration of December. Oh, and “Argonians” are lizard guys. They look like this and I LOVE THEM.

Finally, for anybody who (like me) doesn’t care at all about their public image (or their shellac), and wants to fill out a totally unironic Skyrim character sheet, here is a blank version.

For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, Skyrim is a videogame which sets you loose in an enormous and exactingly detailed fantasy world, within which you can do very nearly anything (here is the trailer). It’s the fifth game in a long-spanning series, and its predecessors were largely what I had in mind when I was writing my posts about The Crossing.

Guys, I’ve been waiting for this game a long time.

So for my first SKYRIM WEEK post I’m planning my larder – both imaginary and realistic. On the 10th of November, to kill time and suppress anxiety before the midnight launch, I mean to make a serious larder pilgrimage, and collect enough tasty things to allay starvation while I play the game for roughly a week straight uninterrupted.

The ideal larder would be, you know, ideal. Even though I couldn’t actually consume all of that food before it went bad. But the realistic variation is nothing to damn well sneeze at. A comic artist’s budget means a nearly meatless existence (at least for me), but I have this $20 gift certificate to Oyama Sausage – a gift from my BFF – which I’ve been saving for a rainy Skyrim. I’ve been thinking about those roast beef sandwiches for weeks.

Tomorrow night I’ll dive further yet into murky nerddom, and post a (speculative) character sheet. Just you wait.

Thank you very much to everyone who ordered a package, and also to everyone who hawked them around for me. The gnomes and the big packs are all sold, but I’ll offer Northlanders pages and small packs until the end of October for anybody who wants to get in late.

And since I’m up to my nose in sketches and package-making, here are some of the various tasty things that I found on my camera’s memory card. I blew my whole food allowance for the month (don’t worry, it wasn’t much) on the opals above, so I’m looking at those summer muffins with more than usual yearning. You know I never regret a good shiny, though.

I’m also selling Northlanders pages on the cheap. I put more-than-usual energy into these pages, I think – I could draw rustic medieval subject matter forever and not get tired of it (plus, I was feeding off of my bottomless Skyrim hysteria, Viking-wise).

There are three gnomes available. I might have gone a little overboard with the gnomes (like for instance,  inventing a runic gnome alphabet… )

This month feels timely for an art sale. Brandon and I have both been trying to work as much as possible on our personal projects this year (and next year as well, we hope), so I’m trying to get some bills paid, and ensure our survival in general. How that ended with me sewing gnomes for a week straight, I’m still not entirely certain…

Also, our friend Robin McConnell runs a website where he sells Brandon’s work and my larger, fancier stuff – Beast pages and comic covers. If you buy something from him during October, I will happily include a coloured sketch of whatever you like.

The selection isn’t definitive, so if you have a specific request for a Beast page or King City page, or anything like that, feel free to ask!

If you have a question, or would like to buy something, send me an email at:

I should add: I’m taking payment via paypal, if that works for people. Canadian funds are ideal, but I’ll also accept US dollars.

I’ve added a couple new models this time around. Some time or other, I’ll make an expanded creature list for the goblin world – but here, besides my goblin self, we have a lady nymph, and a gangly male troll to whom I’ve relegated all the dresses.

If I could have one item from this lot, I would probably opt for the survival onesie, designed with a certain videogame in mind. Plus, you know, my apartment is just really cold.

And here again is the inventory.

Here is my Autumn/Winter ’11 collection for the imaginary Hchom line. Arriving, now, as if it were just making its way into imaginary stores.

I actually decided to do this very much at the last minute, but I figure that I need to post something non-videogame-related before the Skyrim hysteria begins to mount past containment. October and the first ten days of November will have, ahem, something of a fantasy videogame flavour. And the second half of November will be crickets chirping.

As usual, I’ll put the “runway” drawings up tomorrow.