Mini Break and Sixth Anniversary Celebrations!

[Vulpes]

Wave, I love the style of the great expressions! Very Warhol.

And grey, what a clever take on remembering man - I just accepted it as typical of Finns (Lalli said he's not some kind of all-knower, which is similar) and left it. I love the idea of a physical forum, with posts on slips of paper!

I have no creativity right now, I'm busy with manual labour (home reno, preserving fresh produce) and haven't been able to sit down and think. But happy forumversary, everyone!

[Jitter]

Wave, great expressions! Crazy Emil is crazy

Grey, what a nice story! I’m glad someone took up on my urging to write about the Remembering Man, and you had a very unique idea! I also like to think there are survivors, maybe in floating cities somewhere?

Annuil, the photo is from Petkeljärvi National Park. But you are correct, it’s the same kind of formation as Punkaharju, a very narrow esker between lakes. Punkaharju is a bit wider, there is a highway on top of it, but it looks very similar with view of the water on both sides. In the area of my photo the view was a lot better in reality of course, it was quite hard to fit the water in both sides into the picture. But when you are there, it’s very beautiful!

Finland has lots of eskers, which were created at the end of the last ice age. An esker forms in a place where a river of meltwater from the ice flows as a river under the glacier, picking up soil scoured by the ice and then deposits it in one place. As the ice withdraws, the spot of deposition moves and a long esker consisting of graded sand and gravel slowly builds up. Most eskers are long hills on land, but in some special places they are standing in what is now lake bottom and therefore surrounded by water.

[Mirasol]

Wow, thank you all for the kind comments on my story! I didn´t expect it to be recieved that well.

And: Happy Forumversery everyone!

Wave, you chose some great expressions to recreate, I especially love Emil´s and Lalli´s, but all of them made me laugh!
And Grey, what a clever take on the remembering man. To be honest, when that expression came up in the comic I didn´t even think twice about it, but this backstory makes it infinitly better! :'D And the physical forum is a very nice touch.

So I couldn´t really come up with something artistic for the Forum´s birthday, so instead I recruited my youngest sibling and started an experiment on our beloved yet mysterious squirrel cookies, a.k.a. spent the entire afternoon baking:  *




*Do definitly not contain nuts as I didn´t have any at hand plus some members of my household are slightly allergic.

  EXPERIMENTAL SET-UP

Spoiler: (a.k.a. sort of how I made them in case someone´s interested) • show

I´m not aware whether there´s some universally agreed recipe on the cookies, so I just made the basicest of basic chocolate cookies (sugar, flour, eggs, cocoa, baking powder) and added chocolate chips for the crunchy bits.
Then I decorated them with icing and blue food coloring based on our lovely emote and the SSSS-logo.
Dark matter may be added, but I´m not sure when and how much, so I´d be careful. Also my local store didn´t sell any, so I guess none is in mine.

  CONCLUSION : The experiment successfully produced cookies that taste good, dough was sibling-approved too, yet the special ingredient the squirrels use seems to be still missing. Perhaps we will never know...

Despite my best efforts, shoving cookies into my laptop-screen didn´t magically send them to all of you, so I´m afraid photos have to be enough.

And lastly, thank you dear forum and mods and administrators for existing and giving me a place to share my dumb drawings and my dumb stories! And thank you for all the amazing people in it! I haven´t exactly been here for long, but I enjoyed every day!
Butter Good to all of you, and remember to do what cat!
Okay enough of my ramblling already...

[thegreyarea]

Mirasol, I'm very glad that you liked my story! Thanks!

So I proposed a physical Forum, but you did create real, physical Squirrel Cookies! It's a fantastic achievement, even if we suppose - one never truly knows - that the exotic ingredients aren't inside.

I love the anniversary photo, and just hope that you don't have any problem with the squirrels. They may not like having concurrence...

(as for shoving things in the computer I can relate. It became a lot harder to do since they abandoned the old and handy CD drive...)

[Vulpes]

Oh great, now I'm hungry for cookies! Those are brilliant, Mirasol. Where on earth did you find a squirrel cookie cutter, or do your skills extend to cookie cutter construction?

[Grade E cat]

Good thing I still have some of those Nestle Tollhouse cookies I made for the first house guest since lockdown, otherwise I'd be hungry for these...

[wavewright62]

Oh my goodness Mirasol, you have levelled up !   
 I also need to go read your story, and all of the other ones that have piled up.

Spoiler: kvetching • show

I am so wiped, I have worked five days' worth in the last 3, and it won't let up until the weekend.  I'm glad I managed to upload the pictures I did, even though poor Reynir didn't get finished, and none of them are up to the concept I wanted.  NVM.  Now I can include Onni as well when I revisit the project, since I am no longer tied to the number 6, so there's a bonus for me to look forward to.

My hat's off to JoB, you have outdone yourself with those head-scratchers.  Well-played!


Now, to assemble the next two posts, the prompt posts for October.

[wavewright62]

Attention all!  October is coming, and with it the drawing tradition of In*record scratch*      
The originator of the term "InkTober" has disgraced himself, being caught red-handed committing plagiarism in lifting the tutorials of another artist and passing it off as his own.  So, we shan't use his term.
*ahem*

Herewith are 31 prompts to use throughout the month of October to inspire you to meet the challenge of a fanwork every day.  The original concept specified ink-based drawings, from as simple as a ballpoint doodle in the margins of your work to as elaborate as a colour-registered series of prints.  While you can certainly do ink (I plan to), I reckon we needn't be so limited.  With so many gifted wordsmiths, we could have those as well.  Up to you. 
Many thanks to thegreyarea for contributing evocative prompts! 

SSSS, ARtD, CoH fanworks October Prompts

1. Do what cat
2. Return
3. Wings
4. Hunted
5. Tapio and/or Mielikki
6. Shelter in the rain
7. Sigrun (for this is her canon birthday)
8. Mask
9.  Food
10.  Guardian
11.  Improvising
12.  Sauna
13.  Bargain
14.  Character: Your Choice (canon, AU, OC, self-insert...)
15.  All I Wanted was a....
16.  Annoying
17.  Hannu and/or Ville
18.  Useful
19.  Bridge
20.  Cat Hat
21.  Ice
22.  Breath
23.  Emil and/or Lalli
24.  Paper, Rock, Scissors, Sheep, Gun
25.  Contact
26.  Umbrella
27.  Poke
28.  Childhood
29.  Empty roads
30.  Whole family / crew
31.  Onni and/or Tuuri

This list is about to be repeated in the Art Museum thread too.

[JoB]

Good thing I still have some of those Nestle Tollhouse cookies I made for the first house guest since lockdown, otherwise I'd be hungry for these...

[has to look it up to realize that it's indeed not "Trollhouse"]

My hat's off to JoB, you have outdone yourself with those head-scratchers.  Well-played!

[bows maniacally]
[erm, bows cackling maniacally]

The originator of the term "InkTober" has disgraced himself, being caught red-handed committing plagiarism in lifting the tutorials of another artist and passing it off as his own.  So, we shan't use his term.

"YoinkTober", then?
[sees self out]

[Jitter]

Mirasol, I love the cookies! Now I want to eat at least this many: 

Wave great prompts! I have loved the chapter break fillers, maybe I'll take some of the October prompts too. Is the idea to produce the work on that day or for that day? Some of the artworks I have seen were so intricate that I believe they have been in the making for longer than a couple of hours.

I haven't drawn anything for 30 years or so, so I'm not promising any visual art. But maybe something. I do have an easel somewhere, but...

[Annuil]

Happy late anniversary! (I was sleeping while writing last post, I suppose, so I have missed many things...)

Mirasol, these cookies are awesome, I can even feel the wonderful chocolate fragrance coming from them! That’s a great idea!
(Unfortunately, I couldn’t read your story cause my devices don’t allow me to open the Ao3 pages...sorry...)

Also, Jitter, thanks for that explanation! I wish I could visit the Petkeljärvi National Park! Those places and those kind of hills are amazing... I fell in love with the nature of Punkaharju hills, it really inspires me even now, when I’m remembering them

Oooh! Yoinktober! (I like this name) I’ve never tried doing Inktober (maybe once but I didn’t finish it) but now with this community I might be able to complete it! It’s going to be fun!

Spoiler: show

 I should probably do this, even though my drawing was on page 4 but I never got to answer if the guesses were correct (I think there was like one guess, maybe that’s why I didn’t say it right  away...)
So, yes, Jitter got it right back then!
Adventure I, page 412, Lounto

[Mirasol]

Thank you once more! Sorry for making you all hungry...

I love the anniversary photo, and just hope that you don't have any problem with the squirrels. They may not like having concurrence...

So far they didn´t come after me, but I hid the cookies in a box just to be sure... (Also helps against cookie-stealing siblings.)

Where on earth did you find a squirrel cookie cutter, or do your skills extend to cookie cutter construction?

I didn´t make it myself, I´m not that skilled... :'D This is actually one of our many, many, many christmas-cookie-cutters and we have owned it for several years. This sadly means that I have no idea where we originally got it. It might have been the small baking store in my hometown that sells fancy baking-supplies. I asked my mom whether she still remembered, she said it might have been part of a forest-animal-cookie-cutter-set she bought from IKEA once, but she isn´t sure.
I just was reminded of it while reading one of the older threads (I think it was the SSSS-addict thread?) where someone posted a picture of that exact cookie-cutter and I was like wow, I have this, I should totally bake squirrel cookies!

[has to look it up to realize that it's indeed not "Trollhouse"]

I totally read it as "Trollhouse" and didn´t even question it. :'D

Mirasol, I love the cookies! Now I want to eat at least this many: 

Oh dear, I´m not sure whether I even had that many cookies to begin with...

And for the Yoinktober (I agree, good name) I am totally on board, should I have the time! Last year I actually did finish it but started three days too late (I just spontaneously decided at some point that I wanted to participate even though I had already missed the beginning), so maybe this time I will actually complete everything (?) We´ll see how close I´ll stay to the prompts, I´d like to dedicate some of the drawings to my own unfinished projects again, like I did last year (a nice way to remind myself that they still exist, *cough, cough*) but a lot of them sound really good so I´ll definitly do those and possibly post them. I´m also quite a fan of the monster-challenge you also posted on the art-forum. Maybe I´ll mix some of that in...

[Annuil]

I didn´t make it myself, I´m not that skilled... :'D This is actually one of our many, many, many christmas-cookie-cutters and we have owned it for several years. This sadly means that I have no idea where we originally got it. It might have been the small baking store in my hometown that sells fancy baking-supplies. I asked my mom whether she still remembered, she said it might have been part of a forest-animal-cookie-cutter-set she bought from IKEA once, but she isn´t sure.
I just was reminded of it while reading one of the older threads (I think it was the SSSS-addict thread?) where someone posted a picture of that exact cookie-cutter and I was like wow, I have this, I should totally bake squirrel cookies!

Wait a second! I bet IKEA is the right place to look for those squirrel cookie-cutters because I remember having several sets from there and there definitely was the squirrel one! (Cannot check it now cause these sets are now far beyond the Atlantic Ocean for me...)

And yeah, squirrels are the worst animals in the world! They look cute until they attack your tent at 6 am with several pine cones and make crazy noises (we went camping with my family and we brought our dog with us which caused some wired squirrel attacks).. It sounds like a scene from a cartoon but it truly happened to us! Squirrels are mean...

[Keep Looking]

Happy (somewhat late) sixth anniversary, everyone!

I've been rather busy lately and haven't had the brainpower to interact with all the things that have been happening on this thread, but it's been super cool seeing all the writing and art and photos you've been putting here, as well as the different ideas and conversations that have come up!

Wave, those prompts look very good! While I don't think I plan on drawing the whole of October, I'll see if I can't draw a few of your prompts, I think it'd be quite fun!

Also, those cookies look absolutely delicious! I hope you enjoy them! I happen to be fortunate enough to live in a part of the world where we don't have squirrels, and thus can safely enjoy the squirrel imagery without being reminded of their questionable shenanigans.

[Róisín]

I suppose you have possums where you are? They can be a bit of a nuisance too, eating leaves, flowers and fruit. Not to mention getting into the roof, dancing on the ceiling at 0400, and peeing in places where they shouldn’t.