Yesterday has made me a bit behind on a few things. For a start, I happened to find some fantastic transparent paper to make a new shadow puppet - yeah, I know, I get distracted easily - and I’ve been building that, as well as finishing the head on my moppet pattern. The good news is that I should finish both tomorrow.

I’ve been trying to motivate myself to update the free glove puppet patterns post (here), which sadly only had one link in it. I know that’s a popular hit from Google, but I haven’t been bothered to getting around to it. So I’ve added two more links (one which is my recycled puppet tutorial), and will try to add a few more links over the next few days. It’s tough because my bookmarks list for puppetry is ree-dick-you-lously long, and hard to navigate. I really should start using the ‘tags’ option when bookmarking, but I can never remember to do it.

Anyway, yesterday: although it was my birthday, it was very puppet related. My sister and I took ourselves to lunch (or should I say, I took us and she paid ). On the way home, we stopped by a toy shop to pick up a present for her friend’s daughter. Unbelievably, this place was pretty awesome, and it’s going to be added to my list of places that sell puppets. Although I knew instantly that the place would be stocked by Folkmanis stuff, what I didn’t know was: they would also stock a New Zealand company’s knitted finger puppets (I know the company but have never seen their stock anywhere before); that they would stock calico glove puppet kits; that they would stock cut out shadow puppets (of the ‘make a figure with your fingers/hands’ variety); or that they would stock folding cardboard mouth puppets. Pretty awesome selection for your average toy shop. I’ve yet to find out what the name of the store is or whether they have a website yet, so until I figure that out, they will remain off the list. 

I’m also going to have to remember the place anyway: they had some amazing stuff, including a pretty elaborate wooden miniature treehouse, metal stilts for $40 (AUD), and lots of other fun and cool things, like earth magnets and magnetic strips. This place could come in handy!

For now, I’m going to chill out and finish some work. My parents and sister were kind enough to give me a DVD player and some DVDs (not the usual price tag for a birthday present, I was expecting dinner and a DVD, but not a player! ), so I’m going to spend the day working on all these builds and hopefully have something to show on Monday.