Apologies to any potential customers over the past week. I am sad to report that there has been a death in the family; my great uncle, who had recently been diagnosed with cancer. This weekend it was clear he was going to pass away, and he did early Sunday.

Follow up:

This is the last family member of my mother’s father’s side (ie. maternal grandfather to me, this was his brother), not to mention a wonderfully buoyant personality. He was the joker of the family, and we’re all very sad to see him go. Obviously the weekend was not a fun time in my household, hence the lack of updates on the site and the hasty take-down of my products on Thurs night.

(For those who are wondering about the title of the post, it’s a Farscape episode, wherein one of the main characters dies. The title refers to life being one big wheel we’re strapped to, and just when you can’t handle being underwater for much longer, the wheel lifts you up into the air. … I don’t know, it seems appropriate right now)

… The following will seem slightly odd to mention here, but I will just in case: I’ve turned off commenting temporarily. I’m getting spammed once or twice a day now, and don’t have the time or patience to look for solutions right now. The best I can do is turn it off so I’m not bombarded by idiots with links.

I will also add that I will not be selling anything for a while. Because of the events over the weekend, I had to postpone starting my new job, and am also somewhat distracted right now, so making and selling stuff will have to wait. - Don’t despair though. I have managed to fix a lot of what I needed to in order to get SOP up and running, all that’s left is to re-edit the base content, press a couple of buttons, reset the viewer count, and then begin redirecting stuff from here to there. I’m glad to say that on Monday I should be posting new content to the site, as well as redirecting the old. My first post for the site is a little fire-starter, so all you impatient readers can rest assured it’s entirely new text, new theme, new everything and may spark some chatter amongst puppet lovers.

My great uncle and his de facto loved attending the theatre, and were always the first to turn up to my puppet shows (or shows in general). I’m not sure he would have understood the whole online writing thing, but I do know he would have loved seeing more of my work and would have liked the idea I was teaching others how to do it. Here’s hoping SOP has a long life, full of laughter and joy, just like my uncle.