A headss up: Saturday the 20th will be the last open day for the sim.

Some time in the next few weeks, I will be permanently closing the shop and getting rid of the sim.

If you want anything -- eyes, jewelry, pictures of the forest -- it's best to do so soon.

*blows dust off everything*

Hey, folks. Just a note to let you know that my computer died last week, and it won't be fixed at least until tomorrow -- maybe longer, since something appears to be very wrong with it. So if you send me an IM or a notecard, you won't get a reply for a little while, I'm afraid. The computer I'm using to type this can't run SL.

Heart of Love Limited Edition Necklace!

Designer Shir Dryke, of Ornamental Life, needs a heart transplant, without which she will die. Unfortunately, she can't afford it and has only three weeks to raise the necessary funds. So a few of her friends have started the Heart of Love fundraiser, which needs to raise around L$700K. They're trying to do this through donation boxes and charity items.

You can read more about this at Flutter Memel's blog.

I've put up a donation box in my store, and I'm also releasing a charity item. All the money will go to Shir. This is a limited edition: it will only be available as long as the fundraiser is running, and will never be sold or given away after that.

Heart is a simple, elegant necklace with a sculpted heart pendant and pearl. It's been made with care, designed to strike a balance between flowing like a real necklace and hugging the contours of the avatar (which is blockier than you might realize!). This is a classic design, perfect for Valentine's Day or year round.

It's available in five metal colors: gold, antique gold, black, silver, and a new color, rose gold. It's no copy/modify/transfer, so you can give it as a gift or pass it on if it goes unused. Because it is a limited edition, and because it is for charity, it's L$150 for a single color.

Demos are available for all colors. Simply click on the main sign.

Slurl to the store.

New from Miriel: Sculpted Holly Bracelet

Yes, a new release!

Holly is a Christmas bracelet featuring, well, holly! These carefully sculpted and textured leaves, accented with jeweled berries, wrap around your wrist elegantly. In addition, like all jewelry from Miriel, these bracelets are scripted: shiny and full bright can be turned on and off, for jewelry that looks good in every situation.

This bracelet is available in both gold and silver versions, and the berries come in diamond, jet, emerald, and ruby. (Gold and ruby shown here.) Permissions are your choice: copy/modify/no transfer, or no copy/modify/transfer.

Single colors sell for L$50, while a collection of all gold or silver pieces (four colors in all) is L$125. Each copy comes with both a left and right version. Demos available for all colors, so that you can know you're getting the right color.

Get it here.

I hope all my American readers had a good Thanksgiving!

As for me, well, I'm hoping I'll be able to finish in time. I spent a few days trying to perfect the tree branches. The joints of real branches are smooth; the joints of my sculpted branches look like tubes jammed into other tubes. Which is, after all, what they are.

I believe I've figured out the problem (roughly), but the explanation is long and boring, so suffice to say I don't think it's fixable. I recreated what was happening in Blender, and only managed to fix it by doing something flat out impossible with sculpties. Insert standard whine about meshes here.

So the bad news is that the branches can't be fixed. This is also the good news, because this means that (aside from a bit of tweaking), I don't have to mess with the things anymore.

So, I've had to cut back on projects. I'd hoped that I'd be able to push myself, but it was not to be. I'm only able to work for a few (non consecutive) hours on good days, and there's just not much that I can get done in that time.

I'm focusing on my plants in the time I have. Even just doing these, I won't be able to get all that I wanted done, but what can I do about it?

For the curious, here are the trees I've got so far:



There are still things about them that I'm very unhappy with (such as how the branches join the rest of the tree), but most of these can't be avoided. I could do a much nicer -- not to mention faster -- job if we had meshes, but we don't.