Happy Holidays!

Pirozhok wishes you happy holidays and much snow (or sun, depending on where you live)! He was very busy making delicious food but kindly posed for this doodle to share holiday cheers!

Frustratingly Beautiful People

...are so hard to draw >o<

Meet Atsushi Sakurai
aka
I Must Draw You Even Though I Won't Be Satisfied With The Results

Slightly Xmas

Our house is slowly getting decorated. ^u^/

October Reading: Monster Girls, Space Opera and Cats

A super belated post! ^^;; My October books are introduced to you by Pink Raccoon!

Art: Animals For Everyone! Round 5

An aye-aye for Dasha in Russia

Art: Animals For Everyone! Round 4

Even more animals tonight! : 3

A baby moose for Olja in Russia

Art: Animals For Everyone! Round 3

Time for more animal friends!

A hedgehog and a cat for Mitya and Sasha in Russia

Art: Animals For Everyone! Round 2

If you missed the beginning, it's here.

More animal doodles! Yay artistic productivity! ^u^/

A cat for Olesya in Russia

Art: Animals For Everyone!

The other day I had a Sudden Artistic Urge to draw animals, and because I didn't feel like drawing same old same old, I asked others to choose critters instead! So far, I've drawn 11 animals and got a few more requests. Today I'll post the first four!

A lesser panda for Simo in Finland 

Is That A Death Star In Our House?

We went to Ikea today (again). Although there were many...

… cute toys...

Päärynä, Sauna Owl and Japanese Souvenirs!

We have a new friend from my mother-in-law! Kiitos! ^u^

September Reading: Angry Birds, Shoujo Romance and Gods

September reading is introduced to you by Fluffy Swedish Owl!

Books

G. Willow Wilson “Ms. Marvel, Vol. 1: No Normal” [USA] 

Mel White “Angry Birds: ärhäkät linnut” [USA] 

N.K. Jemisin “The Kingdom of Gods” [USA] 

Kanae Hazuki “Say I Love You” vol. 1 [Japan] 

Kanae Hazuki “Say I Love You” vol. 2 [Japan] 

Kanae Hazuki “Say I Love You” vol. 3 [Japan] 

Sonali Deraniyagala “Wave” [Sri Lanka, UK] 

Short stories

Elizabeth Bear “This Chance Planet” [USA] 

☆ Urban fantasy story set in Moscow. It kept surprising me! And I approve of how Moscow metro was potrayed, seemed pretty accurate to me. Also, also an online friend from another country was mentioned, yay! It's so rare in stories when it's so common irl.

Amal El-Mohtar “The Truth About Owls” [Canada]

☆ Folklore, magic, war, immigration and owls in this beautiful story.

Ms. Marvel, Vol. 1: No Normal

August Reading: Tsunami, Agatha Christie and Cute Animals

My August reading is introduced to you by my friend Tiny Frog!

Geoff Tibballs “Tsunami: The World's Most Terrifying Natural Disaster” 

Sophia French “The Diplomat” [Australia] 

Liz Climo “The Little World of Liz Climo” [USA] 

Agatha Christie “N or M?” (Tommy and Tuppence #3) [UK] 

Moto Hagio “A Drunken Dream and Other Stories” [Japan] 

The Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami: A photojournalistic account of the first 10 days of the disaster [Japan] 

We moved!

In the end of September we moved to a new apartment! Now we almost finished unpacking and decorating the new place. Today I wanted to show you my work space. ^u^

Art: Gathering Strength

I've been drawing a lot this summer, and I think I've made tons of progress. ^u^

Here are a few of my recent drawings: seasoned warriors resting.

July Reading: Art, Utopia and Cuteness

My July reading is introduced to you by my lovely owl friend! 

Wolf Kankare “Kettujumala palelee” [Finland] 

Cristy C. Road “Spit and Passion” [USA] 

Ellen Forney “Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo, and Me: a graphic memoir” [USA]

Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (Begum Rokeya) “Sultana's Dream” [then the British India, now Bangladesh] 

Jeffrey Brown “Goodnight Darth Vader” [USA] 

Arthur Conan Doyle “The Hound of the Baskervilles” [UK] 

Ann Leckie “Ancillary Sword” [USA] 

Na Liu, Andrés Vera Martínez “Little White Duck: A Childhood in China” [China, USA] 

あずまきよひこ 『よつばと!』3 (Kiyohiko Azuma “Yotsuba to!” vol. 3) [Japan] 

George Orwell “1984” [UK] 

Milla Paloniemi, Anni Nykänen, Antti Hintsa, Karri Lehtonen, Joonas Lehtimäki, Tuuli Hypén “Höh! ...ja muita sarjakuvakertomuksia lapsille” [Finland]

Wolf Kankare “Kettujumala palelee”

Some stories barely need words, this is one of them.

My new exist†trace fan club card

I finally got my exist†trace fan club card! ^o^

Pink Vs Yellow

Yellow Saurolophus

A Moth Guest

Look who's visiting us now!

So... Books

How am I supposed to choose what to read next? 

Why can't I read all of them at once? T^T

(And that's just a tiny part of my huge TBR pile...)

Back from the library with...

So, today I was supposed to get just one book from the library and somehow three more jumped into my hands?! >w<

Here they are!

A Drunken Dream and Other Stories by Moto Hagio

Japan

“Forty years ago, the legendary manga artist Moto Hagio reinvented the shōjo (girl's comics) genre with an ongoing series of whip-smart, psychologically complex, and tenderly poetic stories. Here now, in English for the very first time, as the debut release in Fantagraphics Books' ambitious manga line of graphic novels, are ten of the very best of these tales.

The work in A Drunken Dream and Other Stories spans Hagio's entire career, from 1970's "Bianca" to 2007's "The Willow Tree," and includes the mind-bending, full-color title story; the famously heartbreaking "Iguana Girl"; and the haunting "The Child Who Comes Home"–as well as "Autumn Journey," "Girl on Porch With Puppy," the eerie conjoined-twins shocker "Hanshin: Half-God," "Angel Mimic," and one of the saddest of all romance stories, "Marié, Ten Years Later." 

A Drunken Dream and Other Stories is supplemental with a feature-length interview with Hagio, where discusses her art, her career, and her life with the same combination of wit, candor, and warmth that radiates from every panel of her comics.”

June Reading: Pride Month

Stuff I read in June:

Banana Yoshimoto “Kitchen” [Japan]

N.K. Jemisin “The Effluent Engine” [USA]

武内 直子 『美少女戦士セーラームーン』 vol. 7 (Naoko Takeuchi “Sailor Moon” vol. 7) [Japan] 

Malinda Lo “Huntress”  [USA] 

John Chu “The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere” [USA] 

 

All the stories I choose had LGBTQIA characters in honour of Pride Month. Unfortunately not all of them were pleasant to read...

Yoshi's Woolly World

Today we got a new game (and a toy!)

Yoshi's Woolly World for Wii U

Art: Pride and Equality

A little something I finished drawing today.

New Books: Fledgling, The Diplomat, Ascension

It's been awhile since I ordered books. ^^ Today new book friends arrived and I am very happy! Just look at them, so shiny and tempting!

Octavia E. Butler “Fledgling”

Sophia French “The Diplomat”

Jacqueline Koyanagi “Ascension”

Octavia E. Butler “Fledgling”

Plush IKEA

Today we went to IKEA and met...

Lots of lovely plushies there!

May reading: Central Asia, poetry and short stories

My May reading is introduced to you by Green Cone! I read fewer books than usual for some reason...

• Kat Howard “The Universe, Sung in Stars” (a beautiful science fiction short story)
• Yoon Ha Lee “The Contemporary Foxwife” [USA, South Korea]  (Author's note: “A music student on a space station befriends a lost foxwife. I may have spilled a lot of hazy memories of Korea all over this one.” It was so *adorable* :3)
• Соловей в клетке: антология женщин-писателей Центральной Азии - Nightingale in Cage: The anthology of Central-Asian women writers, In Russian and English [Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan] 
• Kameron Hurley “The Corpse Archives” [USA] (a body horror / science fiction short story)
• JY Yang “Tiger Baby” [Singapore] (another wonderful short story about a woman who... might be a tiger)
• Santōka Taneda “Стихи и проза” [Japan] 

Toys play jenga

Tonight my plush friends decided to play some jenga!

They were a little confused about building the tower at first.

A smiling owl

A year ago in the Helsinki zoo we met a lovely owl.

The owl was posing for everyone!

Toys cosplaying Twilight Princess!

Today my toys said to me, “Katya, we're gonna cosplay The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and you will take photos please!” Here are the results of our little play. ^^

Link and Epona.

Midna and Wolf Link.

Cute tiny squirrel

I had a lovely visitor today! Although it's almost summer, the squirrel was still wearing her winter coat. It's greyer and thicker.

We had rain in the morning.

A little bit about my writing

Sometimes you don't know you need something till you get it.

Writing is a solitary process. You scribble in the middle of the night, you daydream figuring out all the plot points and character development, you draw your characters, you edit... all of that alone.

And then you get stuck. And you try to find solutions to your plot problems but nothing seems to work. Or you lose inspiration and get distracted with non-writing things. Sure, reading interviews with writers or articles on writing is inspiring, it feels good and I often get ideas! But... I rarely do any actual writing afterwards... ^^'

A pheasant. Fasaani. Фазан

Phasianus colchicus that we met in Espoo some time ago.

For some reason he didn't have those long tail feathers pheasants usually have.

Grumpy Dog

We met a grumpy dog once.

It was adorable.

My old book friends

Whenever I have guests from Moscow I ask them, if possible, to bring some of my old books. Last time I counted my books – which was a year or two before I moved to Finland – I had ~260 books. I bought a few more after that, just a couple... Right now I managed to move about 100 of my old books, so we're far from done yet. ^^;

Here is what my father brought this time: