Oddments, Vol. III
The Pet Cloud
In this edition of Oddments, you will find brief discussions of fortune-telling canaries, the Island of Lime Trees, Emperor Maximilian’s beard, treacherous antique shop owners, and the like.
You can read Volume I here!
You can read Volume II here!
Oddment, n. According to the Oxford Dictionary, a “small piece of cloth, wood, etc. left after a larger piece has been used to make something”, which is exactly what most of these entries and art will be: odds and ends, left on the cutting floor on the way to more substantial work, but not wasted.
News
Backwards Spell
STORYVOR, a new platform for literacy launched a few months ago, and has been steadily growing its mailing list and reach. It’s the brainchild of a group of people who care deeply about literacy and reading, including me, and who want to do what we can to promote it, in this case with teaching resources, tip lists, book lists, and more. If you have ideas, want to contribute articles or art, do get in touch with us!
Also, the new special edition of Howl’s Moving Castle is out in the world, and was an indie bestseller in the US for several weeks, which is very cool. In honor of that, I thought I’d share some unused sketches from it.
Considerably too dark.
I wanted something a bit heavier and bolder for the decorations, so ditched the curlicues.
An unused sketch for the title page decoration, showing the castle’s feet.
A brighter version, but still not quite right.
A very rough sketch of Sophie making her approach on the castle.
Comic Corner
I’ve been practicing my character drawings of late, so here’s a wee comic from Greenwillow Books’ 50th Anniversary newsletter a few months ago.
“Anyway, I wouldn’t be caught dead in a bank.”
Curious Things
Maximilian I of Mexico and his supposedly red beard.
Maximilian’s beard: I was invited to a wedding in San Miguel de Allende in October, and since Mexican weddings can be very formal, and tuxedos aren’t optional, and I never wear tuxedos otherwise, I found myself in dire need of cufflinks. I thought an antique shop might be the best way to get a pair for cheap, and so off I went to one.
The shop was small and old, and run by an eccentric old man. I was looking through a box of metal things, hoping to find cufflinks in the shape of tiny hands like these (I definitely did not find tiny-hand cufflinks, alas), and while I was at it, the eccentric old man told me a story about how, when he was young, he had a red beard like mine, and one time he cut a chunk of it and put it in an antique box and sold it to a foreigner for 25,000 pesos (which is a great deal of pesos, something like 1,000 dollars). The reason he was able to sell it for so much was because he told the foreigner that it was Maximilian’s beard, the Austrian emperor of Mexico from 1864 to 1867, who was later executed.
I thought this was just an amusing story until the old man suggested, very forwardly, that he cut a piece of my beard, so he could sell it to the next person who came along and tell him it was Maximilian’s beard as well.
I laughed because I thought it was a joke, but it wasn’t a joke. The scissors were ready. I bought my cufflinks and fled. I guess he asks every red-bearded person who comes into his shop if he can do this, which kinda makes sense. A lucrative business, this Maximilian-beard-impersonation scam.
2025 as a whole: It has been a very busy year, and a nice one, but also a strange one in that it passed very quickly and a lot happened. For some years now, I’ve been doing a lot of work outside of writing, and have my fingers in all sorts of pies I never thought I’d have anything to do with. For the sake of this blog, all will be whimsy, drawing odd things, and writing odd stories, but I think I will remember 2025 as quite a corporate sort of year. I’m hoping to make 2026 less so.
Drawing in color: As with writing, I’m finding that the more I draw, and the more I learn about drawing, the more confusing the process becomes. There are so many styles, so many mediums, so many things one could do. I’m beginning to wonder if the trick is to find one’s way back to the point when one was really only capable of doing one thing, namely, your own personal thing, and just do that, but more skillfully. If I could, I would just draw charcoal-y black-and-white scenes forever, but I do want to learn more about color. A lot more.
The little foil packets you see behind the bird contained my fortune. To the right, you can see the partially opened drawer, which I assume contains the fortunes of all the universe.
Getting your fortune told by a bird: In Mexico, there’s a tradition where a bird, preferably a canary, will tell you your fortune. It works like this: the bird picks little envelopes of colored foil out of a drawer filled with many hundreds of such envelopes. Inside the envelopes are snippets of paper telling one’s fortune. The snippets of paper I got were fun because they were all very dramatic and pot-stirring. Things like “You’re not sick, someone is cursing you” (I have been sick recently, so cursers, stawp), and “Someone in your family is jealous of you. CUT THEM OUT.” Would a canary lie to me?
On a side note, I was wondering if the quote “A little bird told me. . .” comes from this fortune-telling tradition, but after digging a bit, it doesn’t. The quote — generally used to hide the origin of secret information — is thought to come from Ecclesiastes, which warns against speaking ill of kings because “a bird of the air shall carry the voice, and that which hath wings shall tell the matter.” Creepy.
The soundtrack of Hamnet: The movie only comes out in Mexico in January, so I haven’t seen it yet, but I’m looking forward to it. The book was great. In the meantime, the soundtrack supplies all the gentle tragedy one could possibly want to listen to over a chilly December.
This cactus at the succulents house in Zürich: Have you ever seen such a magnificent, swirly cactus? I have not.
Lindau: Last Oddments I talked about doing a marathon, which is now done. The marathon started on the beautiful island of Lindau, which is right at the meeting point between Switzerland, Germany, and Austria. The island is called “The island of lime trees”, and is all medieval buildings and winding cobbled streets. Here is the lighthouse, which for semi-obvious reasons is the only lighthouse in Bavaria.
(On the subject of lighthouses: I think it would be fun to live in a lighthouse one day, and renovate it, and have a different room with a different function on each floor. Healthy, also, with all the stair-climbing. In lieu of this ever happening, I think it would be equally fun to write a book set in a lighthouse. There’s something about the idea of living in a cozy tower while the sea rages outside, and the waves rattle the windowpanes, and distant ships cross the horizon on mysterious journeys, that seems inherently enchanting.)
And that’s it for 2025! It was a busy, full, good year. I hope it was that for everyone reading as well, and I wish you all a Happy New Year.
