Can I Hear a Wahoo?

 So, on June 29, the official announcement regarding this happened:

WAHOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

GOOD OMENS TWO!!!!!   SIX MORE EPISODES!!!!  WAHOO WAHOO WAHOO!!!!!!!

Okay, I may be just a little excited by this news.  

Of course, there will be quite the wait until it hits the screen, because filming doesn't even start until mid-October, and will run through around mid-March, and then there will be another 9-12 months of post-production work....GAH!!!!   CANNOT WAIT THAT LONG.  

Sigh.

Anyway, that made me happy.

The Hounds had no idea why I spent much of June 29 screaming with glee and trying to get hold of my other Good Omens fan friends for mutual bouts of gleeful screaming.  I'm sure they just stared at me and thought, There she goes again, being weird.  As usual.

The Hounds, by the way, are doing well.  Pippin went to his first ever professional grooming appointment, where he got trimmed and neatened and had his nails done.  Here is the pic the groomer sent me when he was done:

Such a handsome boy.

However, when I brought him home, Truman seemed confused at first because Pippin did not smell right.

He kept circling Pip, testing out every part of him, trying to determine whether I'd brought home the right dog.

This went on for several minutes.

Eventually Truman gave up and must have decided that everything was okay, though he still looked dubious about the whole weirdly smelling dog he thought he knew.

Pippin felt a bit put out by the whole affair.

Right -- moving on -- did I happen to mention that THIS HAPPENED?!?!!!?!?!?!?!?!??!?

WAHOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I need this second series, because I've run out of stuff to draw and paint from the first one.  I've been reduced to coming up with wackier and wackier ideas to keep the creative juices flowing, such as yet more silhouettes along the baseboard:

I did this strip in the kitchen, and used images from the historical scenes.

From left to right, we have Aziraphale and Crowley from 3004BC, gazing up at Noah's ark, then drinking at a tavern in 41AD Rome, then at the Globe Theatre in 1601, and next at the Bastille in 1793:

The second half continues with them in top hats from 1862 London, followed by the 1941 Blitz scene where Crowley saves both Aziraphale and his precious books, and ends with them in 1967 in the Bentley with Aziraphale handing over the thermos of holy water.

It complements the earlier silhouettes I put on the dining room wall, and when I am sitting at the dining table, I can see both that series and most of the new one at the same time.  Lovely.

As for our weekly sketch practice sessions, on Wednesday the group chose a photo of a tree that I didn't care for, so I rebelled and spent about half an hour doing a hasty watercolor of this lighthouse instead:

But then I felt badly about not at least trying the picture that I didn't like, so I spent another 40 minutes or so doing an ink and watercolor sketch of it:

At the second session, I helped choose the picture -- of a very colorful frog who had a nearly crystal-clear reflection as it emerged from the water:

It proved so challenging that I needed extra time after the 90-minute session to finish.  I quite like how it turned out.

Next, I started pondering that new promo photo we got for Good Omens 2.  Should I try drawing or painting it?  After all, it's a NEW IMAGE!!  Sort of.  I mean, obviously the actors did not pose for it -- they just came up with a new image using older pics, but still.  Surely I ought to do something creative with it, all the same.

Then one day while digging through my Closet of Forgotten Obsessions, I happened to open the storage bin containing my old needlepoint supplies.  And in there I found a lot of embroidery floss from a long-abandoned project.  It gave me pause.  

Could I recreate that promo poster using embroidery?

Well, no.  I failed to find a free program on the Web that would turn the photo into the kind of chart I needed.  Hope was not lost, however, for I did find a site that would turn it into a cross-stitch pattern!

The pattern called for 25,000 stitches, so I quickly decided to ditch the background and just do the main figures, and got a much more reasonable stitch count.

This marvelous (and FREE!) program (www.pixel-stitch.net) created the pattern in detail with all the codes for the various colors:

AND it produced a list of colors for DMC embroidery floss (DMC is the leader in the field).

Turned out I had about half these colors on hand.  I trotted on over to JoAnne's fabric and craft store for the rest, as they were having a sale (42 cents a skein!).  I also needed the cloth and some needles, though I already had the hoop and the magnifying lens, and all told I spent less than $20 on this project.

So if it never comes to fruition, I'm not out much.  But I'll give it a go.  So that was my week -- looking for fun new creative things to do...and screaming in glee over THIS:

WAHOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What can I say -- it's going to be a LONG year and half to two years.

May your coming week be as joyful!