Pony-heavy post

(skip at will, if you're not a pony fan)

I'm in a better mood now, for a couple of reasons.

1. I got my swap-box all packed up for my swappee. (This is a Ravelry swap for the My Little Ponies fan group on there.) Even though in the past I've been burned in other swaps I've done (not on Ravelry) and I've had a few tsuris with my package coming very, very late...I still do these.

Because honestly, I really love hunting down fun, unusual little items and packaging them up and hoping that the recipient is surprised and likes them.

While making up the box, I used two whole packages of brightly-colored tissue paper as padding...and then I thought, as I got the notecard ready to go in, "I wonder if I could draw Pinkie Pie saying "Tissue paper is awesome!" on the card envelope.

So I tried. And I have to admit, it was a creditable likeness.

So then I tried drawing Twilight Sparkle on the box:



Okay, that one's not as good; it's harder to draw them in 3/4 view than in profile. But maybe it will amuse the mail carrier.

2. On my weekly (I try to make it only weekly) jaunt to the Mart of Wal (disclaimer: if Green Spray carried every last grocery item I used, I'd do all my shopping there, because I don't walk out of there discouraged with humanity as I often do with the Mart of Wal. But they don't, so I can't.) I found something wonderful.

Something that totally made listening to a child scream the WHOLE 20 minutes I was in there worthwhile*:



I had heard of the existence of these but frankly doubted. (And when I was at Target this weekend, they didn't have 'em).

I squealed (inwardly; you never know when students of yours are lurking at the Mart of Wal, and I like to keep my eccentricity under a tight lid for at least the first six weeks of the semester). And yeah...I bought a couple of boxes. They were inexpensive enough.

(*I also found a copy of the newest issue of Knitscene. Which has an adorable bolero-type sweater knit of sport or fingering weight yarn, with a little scallop detail on it, and a lovely pair of fingerless mitts. And I bought some yarn Saturday precisely with the thought of doing fingerless mitts with it, and this pattern will be perfect. So that made it more worthwhile too.)

(And I have to admit: as much as I hated Valentine's day some years as an adult, when I think back to childhood and the silly little paper cards with pun-ny sayings on them, and carefully picking out just the right card for each of my friends (and some years, just the right card for that boy I liked, if he happened to be in my class), that was nice and good and fun. It doesn't have to be fraught with all the thoughts of romantic failure and questioning why I have not conformed to the general model of husband-and-kids in this society. It can just be a funny pastel card with "Have a sparkly day!" or somesuch on it.)

So, I am once again extending the offer I made (I think it was) last year: If you want a Valentine card from me - in this case, a My Little Pony valentine - e-mail me your address and I'll send one out (closer to Valentine's Day, of course).

(It's actually kind of interesting which characters they use in "heavy" rotation - there are more of Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, and Applejack. I suppose those might be the most popular with kids, I don't know. They had only one with Fluttershy (and in my mind at least, FLUTTERSHY IS BEST PONY) and NONE with Rarity. (poor Rarity.)

Actually, this brings up something I thought of the other day: it would make an interesting data set for a chi-square contingency table analysis to get different age-groups of fans (I was thinking of the Ponies, but it could be fans of anything that spans a wide age group) and ask their favorite character, and do an analysis to see if different age groups prefer different characters. (My gut feeling is yes: Fluttershy seems to be enormously popular with adult fans, but I suspect Pinkie Pie or Rainbow Dash is more "relatable" for a lot of children. And perhaps a lot of the kid fans don't like Rarity? I might not have when I was a child...she does seem a bit uppity at times).

(I also find myself thinking of "alternate" valentines, maybe more fanon than canon: I'd love to see a valentine card with Derpy Hooves on it. And one with Twilight doing that funny-weird dance she did at her birthday party, and the legend, "You're adorkable!" (What? "Adorkable" should TOTALLY be a word.) But, whatever - it is the kid base that keeps the show going, so if they want to put pinkish Celestias on some of the cards and have no Rarity cards, I'm OK with that).

At any rate: I have a whole mess of these, so if you want a Valentine's card from me, e-mail me your address.

***

ETA: And here's another little Pony-fied personality test (N.B.: You need to know your Meyers-Briggs "type" to do this one).

Surprisingly, I'm not Fluttershy.

I'm Zecora, the alchemist/healer zebra on the show. Interesting, it almost kind of fits with the traditional description of the INFJ...