New Winter Poppets

Welcome to Winter at Poppet Planet!


We've unleashed this season's Poppets:









Gingerbread Poppets smell and look like cookies.
Don't get confused.














Winter Dreams Poppet is a numbered edition.
























Our Little Red Poppet ornament is the first
in a new series.





















Bah Hum Bug says what we

all say sometimes,
only better.














Cafe Poppet in shades of your

artist's favorite drink.

and comes with a little surprise.

On December 6th, this winter's original art

will appear, along with one of a kind Poppets

and other surprises.

oh--and there's a great sale on Little Red Poppets-

and other favorites as well. Check the store for

new stuff.

Don't worry. We'll send up another balloon.

It's a new season. We're in it. Poppet Planet

wishes you every good thing to be found in

Winter.

It's chilly! I'm going to get back into the studio. The fireplace is going, there's a little Bailey's in my coffee. Turkey casserole is but a day away. Then sandwiches. Then soup. sheesh.
Anyway. nearly perfecto.
I must go. Poppet is waiting...

Nov 27

Thank you

It's the evening before Thanksgiving Day. It's rainy and cool outside, there's a fire in the hearth. I'm thinking to take a break, breathe, appreciate the moments and all that is good for me.



The world is a sad and scary place. The world is full of beauty. The world is bigger inside than out.



Tomorrow is for family, and cooking, eating and resting. Because the world is a sad and scary place. The world is full of beauty. The world is bigger inside than out.



It's not an easy thing to live in, this world. But it's the only one we've got.



So we do the best we can, we don't worry and tomorrow, we enjoy all that's good in us.



Silly humans...



I send you all warmest thanks for watching the world with Poppets, and me.

Are we talking to walls?

There are nine televisions in this house. Nine. As I type this, I glance at one of my Del Rey copies of Fahrenheit 451. It keeps company with my old puppet, the one and only, the inspirer of dreams and Poppets. Above them hangs a Ron Brown angel in pencil.

but I digress.

Nine freaking TV's.

Fahrenheit 451. The original, the one and only, the inspirer of dreams and Poppets. Will we go there? It's a short trip, isn't it? Once our computers and televisions are married into one entity? And that will happen, you know. Sooner than later.

At what point will we begin to communicate with our walls?

I comfort myself (with an almost guilty glance at Bradbury's novel) by reminding me that all of the sets aren't for cable. Some are strictly for games or photography. One is for security.

The concept of Family Dinner and a Movie is very appealing. Last weekend was a long breakfast with "Ice Age." Conversation, Schmonversation. We talked and laughed together. Dinner isn't the time for family meetings. In this instance, we gathered around it. Besides, teens generally consider the casual questions at dinner to be on par with say, interrogations or firing squads. So the little TV in the dining room is quite the positive tool.

...she says, trailing off.

I dunno. I'll think on it a bit more. I have my reservations. Convenient and fun, yes indeed! No question. But still, it's sort of like having a weapon. It has its up side, but it's a dangerous thing and must be taken seriously.

Because television is a very dangerous thing. And it's in our homes.

And if we think our television isn't watching us, we're mistaken. It watches us. It watches us every single time we buy something. And generally, we buy what it tells us to.

sigh.

Otherwise....

I walked this morning, enough to sweat. I need to swim. I miss the water. But walking fast, in cool air....

is no substitute. Who am I kidding? Still, it's better than not moving.

studio work moves along. A bit on larger projects and new pieces for the store. Poppets for coffee lovers and ginger bread scented Poppets will be appearing in time for the holidays.

Some new gallery art too, a bit darker around the edges than most. Some long overdue gifts and thank-you's too.

Aubrey is sick and relegated to her bed, with soup and juice and lozenges, antibiotics and comfort movies. Zorcon has a new ball to hang out in. Pets in plastic balls. rolling around the floor. What would Ben Franklin say about that one?

And Orion reads really well now and is so very very tall. How did that happen?

and that's all I've got for tonight.

Hope you have a truly good Saturday.

Now Boarding

So. At last. The Poppets who missed their flights are on their ways to various destinations.

Yes. Packing and shipping these past weeks have been problematic. The main problem, it seems, is that your artist was doing the packing and shipping.

Hmm. Artists are not necessarily the most organized humans on the planet.

There are exceptions, but this artist is not one of them.

The good news is that now we have, once again, more capable humans to make sure every Poppet gets to its destination without major pandemonium.

That said---if you've been expecting a Poppet and are concerned about it and haven't heard from us, please do email to poppetplanetgirl@aol.com and we'll tell you exactly what your Poppet is up to.

(huge sigh of relief) Now I'm looking forward to a lot more time in the studio, where I'll cause less chaos and make more art.

Speaking of less chaos;

We're still discussing "The Anti Snowball" collaboration on the forums---(click on the "one of us" image on the sidebar.) It's just starting, so if you want a say in how we approach this particular project, now's the time.

Now. Miles to go before I sleep.

Once again, S. Cal is on fire. This time it's north LA.

We are helplessly hoping.

Here in the desert.

There are sheep. Sheep with very big horns.

Who shall lead them out of their own desert?

It seems a wasteland, a giant ash tray balanced on a broken table with termites at its legs.

Anda Child shall lead them.

or is it Poppet?

Then, where must they go? These sheep, with big horns, noise without substance?

Do Poppet shepherds finally go home?

Sheesh. Your artist is going to hide away and make things...

Poppets like Magic the Gathering, and Light Shows

This from Robert Johnson Jr.

Poppet as a 1/1 Red Creature, costs 2 mana. My favorite kind of creature. Seems humble enough, but distraction can be a powerful tool in any sort of Magic, the Gathering or otherwise.
I'd say, Creature Poppet is bigger inside and out.

Possibly somebody ought to let folks at Wizards of the Coast know they could use a Poppet or two around there.



We've resumed work on the Poppet video projects. I'm certainly glad to see it. It seems a good step toward regaining our forward momentum.

We invited a hundred or so of our closest Poppet friends to watch.

They seemed to to enjoy it.

But it can be hard to read Poppets.

Unlike rodents, who do tend to enjoy their sharp-witted sideline commentary. Smart-asses, they are. Adorable.

Zorcon is telling me he wants more carrots by biting a hole in my shirt.
This is becoming a habit, bringing him in for blogging.

After,we had snacks and a movie to celebrate.

The Poppets in this house like vanilla. I'll accept their sharing as approval of the work.

I've started the forum for work on the project I wrote about in the last entry. The forum (working) title is The Anti-Snowball. While you're there, you might find some other inspiration too, or an opportunity to inspire someone else.

It's still morning...I'm off to work.

Walk with me.

This is a bit from mail to Ben:

What I need, more than anything else, is time. I need time to rest and think and get over things. I need to clear my head so I can get back to meaningful work and have some life.I'm not even seeing a break for that any time soon. I'm on a wheel and I can't get off. I've gotta tell you, I feel pretty close to breaking.
Thanks for the email. Helped.


What I needed wasn't time, but balance. Balancing inspiration and obligation. Long term goals vs short term. Want to vs Have to. Which idea to act on? Which to write? Which might be lost? What's the right choice? So many decisions...so little....wait. maybe this is about time. Work? life? friends? family? play, love or art? The choices, the juggling, the running, the guilt ....the wheel and the tsunami of minutiae--the noise, the noise, the noise

the fear.

all that you love will be swept away

Silly human!

Right. So. Here's something I struggle with as an artist and a human being. I get out of balance and my inner gyroscope starts to wobble. Sometimes the wobble is mild, sometimes it can knock me right out of orbit.

All that said,
added 11/11
{I'm thinking that if this is an issue for me, it very likely is for lots of other people too, including you. I'm thinking we can try a group collaboration of a sort and explore this struggle (we can better define it together on the forums)

I'm hoping you might want to take a closer look with me. You can use any medium you choose in any creative discipline.
The only thing I ask is that you don't participate without fully exploring the subject. The most important ingredient in this soup is the human element.
Ravyn tells me we can make a place on the forums to post work and comments.

Now, here's my question to you for the moment: what will we call this place?



g'night

Two Little Guys from Vancouver

So... I'm working on what I think is a cool collaboration for us. I'll do my best to get it posted tonight. Today, I'm making sure everyone who ordered stuff gets it. I've made a list, now I'm checking it twice.

In the meantime---can anyone tell me who created these two little guys? I bought them from the art show at VCon and they're not signed. I've put them in my display cabinet but want to put a little card with the artists name. She had a whole bunch of these little guys. They're sort of Poppet-y----simple but with a lot of expression. Rubius? I'll bet you know.

'later

Blast Radius

Poppet learns a great deal about picking up pieces.

and...Thanks, Carl.

big poppet, little friend

Gotta big Poppet outside.

Gotta rodent inside. On Wednesday night I read from "Wind in the Willows" to Orion at bedtime, with Zorcon resting on my chest. Both boys were sound asleep in no time.

Rubius created the giant Poppet. The body is burlap and the head is paper mache. The ruff is very cleverly made of coffee filters.

and perfectly sized for little humans in weird clothes.

Tomorrow is Monday. Many Poppets will be sent traveling tomorrow. Then, it's back to the studio for me.

my own new year

Well. Another Halloween has come and gone and I've gotta say I'm not feeling very poppety. On the other hand, I'm fairly certain I turned the proverbial corner today. It can be a subtle thing, that. Impossible to describe, yet unmistakable. Like deja vu, or a hunch. I've always thought of Halloween as 'my christmas.' Possibly I should consider the beginning of November my new year. It often feels that way.
I wanted to say Happy Halloween to all of you. Since I started this blog, you've been shiny spots on even the darkest days. Very Poppety, you are.

So now I experience the last moments of Halloween. I sit in this big empty room. Soon the carpets will be ripped out and replaced with wood. The walls will get a fresh new color and the things that go in here will be thought out and cherished. Anything less will fall away. The drapes are coming down to let in the mountain views by day and stars at night.
Am I talking about a room or describing a metaphor?

Possibly it's the day. Or walking around tonight amongst such good spirited ghouls. I'm thinking that tomorrow, when I wake, I'm going to feel a bit better. Dunno why. But it seems quiet and sure. No fanfare. Just a subtle change in timbre. I hope so.

thank you. g'night

Return of the Dead....... FORUMS!

Hey guys! Ravyn again, and, just in time for Halloween, the Poppet Planet Forums have been brought back from the dead. And, appropriately for Halloween, the forums have come back mutated somewhat. Muah hah hah hah.

The user table, you know, the piece that holds all the user names, got corrupted and/or deleted. It has been partially reconstructed, with 'dummy names' in place of the original names. But since they are still linked with the posts, if you remember a topic that you posted about, or a comment you made, you can locate your 'dummy name' which will be "Sadly Lost User #X", email me (nora at ravyn dot com) with the dummy name and the ID name you want, and your email address. i will update your ID name and give you a temporary password so you can log in and change it yourself.

Another of the mutations is that the number of posts made by each user has been lost, which will be confusing i guess but we'll manage. ALL the posts are intact, you can go to the forums and view all the discussions. For those of you who are recent arrivals, there is a LOT of good information in those forums, i urge you to check them out!

Thanks very much Michael and DanGuy for your input. You ROCK!

So let's get back to the forums, and get back to sharing our experience and knowledge, and making PoppetPlanet our community again.

- ravyn

HALP! I can haz database???

Hi folks, Ravyn here, with a plea for help of the database kind. Earlier this summer the forums broke somehow, i hadn't done anything to them and wasn't watching every day like usual, so i have no clue as to how it happened.

We are using phpBB (2.0 i believe) for our forums, and if you go to the page you will see a table missing error. i know nothing about databases, and i didn't know that simply copying the contents of the forums folders on the server wasn't enough to save a backup of it. So while it looks to me that the database is mostly intact, i don't know for sure how all the data, more than a year's worth of postings, can be salvaged.

Any database-savvy folks out there, please contact me here or email me at nora at ravyn dot com. i'd love to get the forums back up and running so we can get this part of the community going again.

Thanks!

- Ravyn

Slow, but here. And there. We move forward.

We've had some internet problems and are a week from installation for the new service. So....I'm stuck with dial up until then. Yes....I remember dial up.

How quickly we adjust to high speed. How quickly we take it for granted. sheesh.

On Friday I did an art presentation at Cielo Vista Elementary School for Orion's first grade class. I'm looking forward to more of these and some

workshops. I truly enjoy teaching art. I've always enjoyed the process of creating as much as the creations. And yes, of course, we talked about brains, and thinking, and all the kinds of thinking (like math) that are part of creating art.

We're still in sort of a state of flux. Lots of orders to be shipped out, lots of moving large objects around. Lots of logistical considerations with two studios and more artists.

Still, these are exciting times in many ways. I sense a whole new growh phase artistically.

When the work is good, everything else follows. In my universe, this is true.

Have a good Sunday.

more poppets pretending to be cats, Zorcon

Today was mostly all day in studio, with a bit of sitting Zorcon, (belongs to Aubrey) He tells me he inherited his name from Jordan's late kitty. Then he ate carrots and the corner of my book, very quickly, when I turned my attention away for a moment.
note: book chewing can sound a lot like carrot chewing, if the chewer is a Guinea pig.

I am now extremely tired. Time for food and no shoes.

g'night

Poppets in Fake Pants, Alison and Logan, My Favorite Novel, again and Poppets on Neil Gaiman

POPPETS in FAKE PANTS have arrived for Halloween.



Here's the first line up. More will join us in the next couple of days.


Poppets in Fake Pants are a collaboration of joyful abandon with Alison Tawney and Ben Warren.
I love rubbing brains with these two!


Alison, who is also my daughter, hopes to have her own for-real-bricks-and-mortar-Poppet-emporium one day. I can imagine it. Then again, I can imagine a lot when it comes to Alison. She is, well, of the magical sort.

I also must especially thank both Nora Wright (AKA Ravyn) and Mimi Ko (AKA MimiKo.) I'm not sure anymore which contributed exactly what, but I do recall many ridiculously fun conversations about Poppets in fake pants, and that both of them had great ideas. Thank you!


Poppets in Fake Pants. The more fake, the better. All bets are off here---these are for fun.

Here is Alison, with Logan, who just turned One and who inspires her every day.

And, recently, in other parts of the world:

POPPETS AND OTHER STUFF!

Photos of Neil and Poppets by Mimi Ko.

Titles by Lisa.

Evil Powers by Neil.

(no poppets were actually harmed.)

And lastly, we've sort of started this conversation in comments for the previous post. My question to you---What novel (or story) have you read and re-read at different points in your life and how do you think these perspectives affect the whole experience/meaning of the work?

Or, if you do revisit a favorite novel or story, why?

Hope you're enjoying your October.

g'night

Mad Poppets, mashed digits, Willows...and Yaks

What was today like?

Dunno yet---it's still going.

So far, there's been an awful lot of yak shaving. It happens that way sometimes. It means that things are getting done, but not exactly the things that were on the list.

We got loads of photos of "Spencer's Brain" which showed itself at VCon.

There's so much going on in this one. It became one of those collaborations where the work happens in shifts and where the artists must be flexible and open minded and where the finished work is different and more than either imagined.

The piece is a bit over 15" tall, has lots of lighting and( of course) mad Poppets in weird glasses.

This morning I dropped a very heavy blender jar. I was sure it would shatter when it hit the tile counter, but fortunately, I broke its fall with my right index fingertip. Yes---my 'main' finger is out of commission, with a nail somewhere between black and purple.

Ben brought me a copy of Wind in the Willows before he even knew I would incorporate it into the Neil Rat piece. Now I'm reading bits of it to Orion every night at bedtime, attempting to end with a cliff hanger and resisting the temptation to read on long after he's sleeping.

It's always good, I believe, to read favorite books at different times in one's life. It can create a rich mosaic of memories and layers and understanding. It certainly has for me.

It's nearly eleven and the house is quiet. I'm heading back to the studio.

g'night