I love the Organized Collection group on flickr. It’s like looking into hundreds of precisely arranged shadowboxes. Here are a few photos that have caught my eye from their pool:

Photos from:
(Top) loosetooth, irtroit, anaventura
(Middle) completely_cactus, bibbif, aviewto
(Bottom) knitalatte11, oliveonline, rosa.rot

#337 Oh Samosa, Tasty Pyramid

#336 Handsome Fellows

Sometimes it’s fun to work in a more realistic style! I’ve been meaning to draw some of New Zealand’s awesome native birds for some time, they are handsome fellows. Top: Kokako, Brown Kiwi. Middle: Takahe. Bottom: Tui, Fantail.

01) Missing the puppy cam? Here is something even better: kitten cam! People in the chat seem to know their names, which amuses me greatly.

02) A PDF pattern for sewing and embroidering “koinobori”, traditional Japanese flags in the shape of carp! Beautiful work from Aimee Ray.

03) I’ve been craving Pad Thai so often lately I thought I should learn to make it. I didn’t think mine would be as delicious as the version from my favourite restaurant, but thanks to Chez Pim’s comprehensive recipe it’s really, really close. Mmmmmmm!

04) A sweater with owls knitted into the cable pattern. Genius! I wish I could knit! (via CRAFT)

05) It’s rare that I don’t immediately click ‘skip’ on a website intro, but Zuny‘s is charming. Their products are also pleasing; chunky stylised animal-shaped paperweights and bookends made in leather.

06) ‘Sup.

07) A video playlist of little itty bitty pygmy animals. The baby pygmy goat in an office is my favourite! Pronk pronk pronk! I don’t really want a goat forever but I would love to look after one for an afternoon. (via BoingBoing)

08) I’m keeping an eye on San-X’s new characters for 2009 to see what will be available while we’re in Tokyo! Of the current selection I do rather like the animals pretending to be cactuses.

09) Tilt-shift-fakery is super popular at the moment, but how about some real miniatures? Behind the scenes of photographer Lori Nix’s phenomenal dioramas with Cool Hunting.

10) Neil Gaiman carries what appears to be a wolf (I know, I know, it’s just his dog Cabal, but he’s enormous!) down some stairs. This photo is highly entertaining to me.

#335 Space Walk Leisure Time

I’ve decided it’s time to integrate my blog and website, so hello from the nice new WordPress-powered Nut and Bee website! I’m going to be posting all my blog entries and the Sketchbook Sweeties here from now on, rather than on LiveJournal.

Everything should look much the same, but it’s all different under the hood so please do let me know if you find anything that isn’t working!

The main difference to the site setup is that the Sketchbook Sweeties will no longer have their little voting forms. I hope this doesn’t upset anyone! I have been paying close attention to the results, but to be honest most drawings get approximately the same number of responses, and each product type tends to get picked in approximately the same proportion, so I have to make my own decisions about which ones will become products anyway. Every entry here has a comments feature, so if there is an illustration you particularly like you can still tell me what you’d like to see me do with it :)

If you’d like to read this blog using an RSS reader, the feed address is http://www.nutandbee.com/feed/rss2/ – and if you haven’t tried an RSS reader yet I would highly recommend it! You can keep up with lots of different websites without having to check to see if they’ve updated or not, it saves so much time, I love it. Google Reader is my favourite but there’s others out there.

Oh, and I’ve imported most of this month’s entries from the old blog, so that the new site coverage starts with the new year, so do not be confused by those dated before this one!

#334 Llama Llama Hug

#333 Garlic and Ginger, Flavour Friends

#332 Slug Love

Lots of the blogs I read publish regular lists of interesting links, which I like so much I thought I’d start my own! Instead of setting a schedule (which I probably wouldn’t stick to) I’ll be posting them whenever I have ten nifty things. I’ll credit sources where I can remember, and try to get better about recording them in future…

01) Advice on Learning to Create Ambigrams, those nifty typographical designs that read the same word upside-down and right-side-up. (via Nubby Twiglet)

02) Paper illustrations by Yulia Brodskaya, who knew quilling could be so awesome?!

03) Fantastic macro photos of moss, lichen and fungi from Bonnie Matthews on flickr.

04) A 30m tall crossword on a building!

05) Speaking of puzzles, I just discovered KenKen. It’s like Sudoku but with more maths! Yay! Maths! The New York Times offers six free puzzles online every day.

06) NotCot is keeping track of the 50 amazing hand-crafted boxes being sent to bloggers to promote the upcoming film of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline.

07) I own a book called “Knitting with Dog Hair: Better a Sweater From a Dog You Know and Love than a Sheep You’ll Never Meet”. Yes, really! The $2 I paid to save it from the remainder bin was well worth the enduring entertainment value. It turns out you can also spin cat fur, and the video includes some amusing shaved cats. (via MAKE)

08) It pleases me that there are people dedicated enough to make precise replicas of Doctor Who scarves.

09) This video from Kirin Norebook makes me really sad about the demise of Gocco! I know, you could do the same thing with normal screenprinting gear, but it would be so much messier and more time-consuming.

10) Luca Turin, a scientist and perfume aficionado, talks about his controversial theory of smell. (That’s right, it’s 2009 and we’re still not quite sure how noses work!) Be prepared for some science, though it’s a less complex discussion than in the books by and about him, which I would also recommend. (via Now Smell This)