desktop calendars

I've made some little desktop calendars for 2013. They're pretty fast to make and fun, so I might make more now that I have the templates.

Auggie desktop calendars are up on the Auggie bloggie. If you are a subscriber to this blog or to the auggiebloggie, I'll let you know directly when the February ones are ready. The calendars are a free download and are formatted for standard home computer, iPad 1 & 2, iPhone and iPhone 5 — you can go to the auggibloggie to find them.

Marine alphabet (& a free printable poster)

From the Windy blog — Foggy & Cloud demonstrate the International Marine Alphabet (also known as flag semaphore). You can learn more about semaphore from Arthur Ransome's Winter Holiday or read this excellent student project by Susan Laflin.

You may download and print this mini-poster to help you with your messages. This is taken from the inside dust-jacket of Foggy.

2012: the auggie bloggie

One of my resolutions this year (otherwise known as a deadline) is to finish up a new series of books: Auggie in Colourtown, Auggie and the Counting Robot and Auggie's Garage. Every Tuesday I will be posting a new illustration as I work through the books, which are due to be released in September. Here is the Auggie Bloggie.

Launch at Kidsbooks

A few weeks ago we launched Foggy at Collage Collage. Now we are preparing for a second launch at Kidsbooks, as part of Simply Read Books' spring book launch. We will be there to present our book, along with some other new books, including Owls See Clearly at Night.

The launch will be from 7–9pm on Wednesday May 5th. You can find more details at Simply Read's blog. We hope to see you there!

Colouring page for Sunny

Here is a colouring page from our second book, Sunny.

Juice box boats and toilet roll binoculars

A party for Foggy wouldn't be complete without arts + crafts. We found a great project from Parents magazine via inchmark (which has a great tutorial showing you how to make your own juice box boat).

We also made toilet roll binoculars, which are quite useful if you get lost at sea.

Launched

Colouring page for Snowy & Chinook

Over the next few weeks we'll be putting up activities from Windy, Sunny, Snowy & Chinook and Foggy for you to download.

Here is a colouring page from Snowy & Chinook.

If you have any trouble with the link, please email us at windyandfriends at gmail dot com.

Windy snapshot

Looking at the bright circles from Sharilyn and Adelaide's sunshine collage made me nostalgic for our first book I did with Judith, Windy. During the shoot Judith took this snapshot. I don't think we'd even finished dressing the set. Even though it wasn't suitable for the book, I loved it and had it pinned above my desk for months (you can still see the hole from the pin in this scan).

Though Windy was set in the autumn, this image is very spring-like and fresh, as if Windy is just about to wake up...which she probably is....

Facebook

We have started a facebook page. In the true spirit of Windy, we really ought to dispatch updates about our books and projects by semaphore code or messages in bottles, but this is a bit simpler.

Foggy launch

We will be launching Foggy at Collage Collage on March 20th, at 3pm. It should be fun!

Sunny afternoon at Dandelion

Judith just sent me this old picture of us at a reading for Sunny at Dandelion in Vancouver. At first I was wondering, "who is that next to Judith?" And then I realized it is me with short hair. Now I have long hair, but a short memory it seems. Hopefully we can do some readings soon.