Hi everyone, Odd Sock here! Well, finishing the formatting of our Christmas book off proved to be a lot of hard work for M, but I can now proudly announce that it's READY! Here are the front and back covers... The book is now available for purchase on Amazon, just search for "Odd Sock Learns about Christmas." (Oooo, it even has my name in the title!) If you want to go to the book section of our website then you'll find shortcut buttons, and you can see some of the pages too. The eBook has Pop-Up Text, which means you can choose to see each paragraph of text larger, to make it easier to read. The text then looks like it does in this screenshot... That should help people read the text on smaller screens. I think it's also fun, and will help younger readers to concentrate on a bit of text at a time. I can't believe it's the 22nd of November, and M still hasn't cut my pumpkin for me! I hope she's going to have time to do it now. There've been 2 other exciting developments here this week. I got my first CHRISTMAS CARD!! (Thanks Fred, Jim and Gracie!) I've also made this new little friend. He was given to M, but seems to keep following me around. I guess all our US friends will be getting excited about Thanksgiving next Thursday. I must find out more about what Thanksgiving is. I'd better go for now. Love Odd xxx
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Hi everyone! I'm happy to announce that I can blog from the iPad again, as Weebly have made some sort of changes to help me! I'm ever so behind with Lundy Island photos, then Spain photos.(Some of which M says I need to remove from the website first page now, as I've made it a bit confusing!) We've even had a book launch since I was last here! Monster Poems is now officially available on Amazon, and we hope to be able to add a link to it on the main website now, too! (Fingers crossed that the website agrees, and doesn't crash our poor iPad again!) As I'm so behind, I'm going to show you a taste of what we are working on at the moment. This is a picture for our Christmas Book. We have already written and illustrated the main story, I'm now sorting out facts from my research into all things Christmas. Here we all are in our new vector graphic forms! Once I've added my Christmas facts section, I get to have some fun trying out different Christmas crafts for the craft section that I want to do. I've been saving up lots of great materials for my craft ideas! We needed to buy more printer paper after my snowflake cutting experiments! The book should be ready for purchase in eBook and paper forms by the end of November - giving us time to get a paper proof copy ordered from the U.S.. I was a bit disappointed that M bought me a pumpkin, but then had a bug, and didn't feel well enough to cut it for me for Halloween. To make it up to me, she just came home from doing the food shopping with Halloween costumes for me and Buster! Do you think I'll grow into my pumpkin onsie for next year's "Trick or Treating"? Better go for now, but I'll be back again soon! Love Odd xxx Hi everyone, Odd Sock here! Now we've sent off for our proof copy of the Monster Poems in paperback, I can turn everyone's attention to our next project - My Christmas Book! Yes, I know Christmas seems a long way off, but we've a lot to get done. Now we have our new paint-free "Vector Graphics" way to illustrate our books, I wanted to experiment with turning each of the Gang into a vector picture... TaDah! This is me! Right, I'd better get started on the others now! Bye for now! Love Odd xxx Hi everyone! Sorry I've not been able to show you more of my Lundy photos yet. I'm waiting for M to sort them out on the laptop, so she can then put some more photos onto the iPad for me to get at! Sadly she's not been too well for quite a lot of the time since we got home, so I've been busy trying to help her sort out our Monster Poems paper edition. I did get some exciting post from Tour Guide Ted, though! Another parcel as big as me! It contained my new Tour Guide Ted t-shirt! (These are all the rage - ALL my cuddly Titter friends are wearing them this season!) It also contained a very big, yummy bar of chocolate! What do you think? I knew it would be a bit big, but think that if I eat all this chocolate bar on my own then M won't have to alter it as much? The others don't seem to agree, though... Oh well, I did try! As far as our Monster Poems book, we are just tweaking the printing colours a bit at the moment. (I learnt this week that mixing the different colours of light we see on PC screens for eBooks is different than mixing print pigment colours!) The front and back covers are shown below. And here's a quick sneak preview of the layout for Poem One... The book will be in a large 8.5" x 11" format, making it ideal for younger readers, or for teachers reading it out while showing the illustrations to a class of children. We hope that some of the fans of this eBook will consider investing in the paper copy too. Better go again now! Oooo, one last thing...if we can get M well enough, then I'll be going on an airplane soon! We are supposed to go to Spain in just over a week! Bye for now Love Odd xxx Hi everyone! I'm back from 6 amazing days on Lundy Island (in Devon, SW England). M managed to take over 1770 photographs during our week of sun and clear blue skies! I'm still looking through them all, but wanted to share a few here from our first couple of days. This first photo is of me aboard the MS Oldenburg, Lundy's very own boat. Our sail over to the island took about 2 hours, and I was very excited. This was the first time I'd been on a boat! Here I am ashore, making my way up the steep hill to the main buildings and campsite. The first building we saw was a big, very grand, white house. (I knew we were going to be camping, but couldn't help wishing we'd be staying there instead!) We made our way through the campsite and past this old lighthouse. We were heading for climbing cliffs on the other side of the island. I sunbathed by the Pilot's Quay area, while M and her husband climbed up a cliff. After their climb, M took me with her to explore the south of the island. I found lots of holes in the ground, but didn't spot any rabbits in them. We walked past Lundy's castle, and looked down at the South Lighthouse. Then we walked past the Post Box on our way to the campsite. Lundy has its own private postal service, and sells special "Puffin" stamps. These were first introduced in 1929. Back at the campsite, M's husband was busy sorting out all our gear. This had been brought up from the jetty for us by tractor. Buster and I studied our new guidebooks, to find out more about the island. It may be only 3 miles long and half a mile wide, but it seemed to have lots of interesting things to see crammed into that small space. Next morning, I got a closer look at the old lighthouse near our campsite. This one is simply called "Old Light". It was built in 1819, with its light a massive 567 feet above the sea. It isn't used anymore, as the light was often hidden in fog or low cloud even when the weather was clear down by the sea. Two more lighthouses were built at either end of the island in 1896. We now walked down a steep, stone walkway to The Battery. This was a fog signal station, built in 1863. A cannon was fired every 10 minutes here in foggy conditions. (An early version of a fog horn, to warn ships about the rocks.) Both cannons are still down here! I couldn't resist sitting on one for a photo! Time to properly try out my new climbing harness next. M carefully lowered me down a small vertical drop, so I could get used to the idea. We went right down to the bottom of this enormous sea arch, so the 2 humans could climb up the side of it. (My paws were too short. I hitched a lift on M's climbing harness.) M's husband in front of us, high up on the side of the sea arch! Back at The Battery, I found a fun place for a photo. Then we walked further north, past "Quarter Wall". This wall is one of 3 that are built across the island, and it is classed as an Ancient Monument! We saw these strange splits in the rock, caused by an old earthquake... And finally reached the North Lighthouse! Then we had to face a long walk back down this main track through the middle of the island! It was marked by big lumps of rock, so the lighthouse keepers could find their way in bad weather. That's enough about my Lundy trip for today. I've been very wornout since getting home. It may be a small island, but all the walking seemed a long way to my short legs! I got a lovely surprise this morning, though. A pretty card, and 4 of my favourite chocolate bars from my friend Rosie Bear! Thanks Rosie! Bye for now everyone! Love, Odd xxx Hi everyone! The day our holiday begins has finally arrived! I barely slept a wink last night, I was so excited! Yesterday, M and I were very busy with last minute preparations! I now have my own special climbing harness, as you can see below. We've also been busy making me some new clothes to take with me. M started by trying to make me trousers. Her attempt didn't end up fitting my bottom in at all, though, so I decided to have a go myself! I've now got bootees, a T-shirt, and a pair of dungarees! I've just finished packing my mini haul bag with all my things! M says there's no room for my deck chair, but I keep trying to sneak it in to the bigger bags! We set off in a few hours, as there's a long drive down to Ilfracome today. We then have to be at the dock at 9am tomorrow, ready to get onto the ferry.. I'll have no wifi until I get home at the end of next week, but will take lots of photos to show you when I get home! Bye for now! Love Odd xxx Hi everyone! Wow, I can't believe it's so long since I wrote my last blog post. I've been very busy, and lots of exciting things have been happening! One thing that's happened is that I now have this amazing new panda jumper. My Twitter friend, Reddy, has a very clever mum, who knitted it for me. I got a tape measure out to workout what size I was, and she then knitted it to fit me exactly! I love my new jumper, and don't ever want to take it off! Another lovely thing to happen was that my friend Destiny sent me this great drawing of the 2 of us together! (Destiny and her twin, Faith, have books written about themselves. Checkout "Destiny and Faith's Summer Adventures" on Amazon!) I've also been very busy drawing things with M. We've been learning to use a drawing app on her iPad called "iDraw". This means that I won't need paint to colour things in now, so I won't be leaving little paint footprints around the house anymore. Billy's mum is delighted! We found some great YouTube lessons on how to use the app, and lesson one had us playing at drawing the little monster above! We then learnt how to draw this amazing 3D ball! Now we are experimenting with different cover designs for our Monster Poems book. This is one of them, but we've not decided which new design we like best yet. We hope to soon have a paper version of Monster Poems available for people to buy on Amazon. We will be completely redesigning the inside of the book for this, in order to make better use of the larger, full-colour pages. And my MOST EXCITING NEWS... We will be heading off on our holiday to Lundy Island in a few days! We've already started to pack, I'm getting very excited! I will get to sail in a big boat, then we will camp on this wonderful island for nearly a week. M and her husband plan to go rock climbing on the island's sea cliffs, but I plan to go off exploring! With 3 lighthouses, a castle, a cannon, and lots of interesting ruins and buildings (not to mention lots of seals), I think I'm going to have plenty of places to explore! I can't wait to show you photos, and to tell you all about my holiday adventures when I get home again. Bye for now! Love Odd xxx Hi everyone! The last two days have been rather hectic, and I have been helping M to do lots of tweeting about our free book launch. Thanks and hugs to all those of you who downloaded it! I just wanted to pop on and tell you about a lovely surprise that the rest of the cuddly toys here arranged for me this afternoon. They'd been teasing me because I dressed up in my best new dress for my new book launch. So I took it off again, and was a little bit sad. They asked me to go upstairs and put it back on again today. I was wondering what they were up to. Oscar Rabbit even gave me a pink ribbon for my ears. When I came back down, they'd arranged this lovely little red carpet for me to walk along. They all lined it and cheered, and I felt just like a movie star going to her film premiere! It was wonderful! I'd better go again. I'm so excited that "Got to Dance" is on the TV later tonight! Billy and I have been practising our dance moves! I'm not very good at spinning round quickly yet though, I keep getting dizzy and falling over. A bit like Gus and Glenda in our Monster Poem about the Monster Carwash! Bye for now! Love Odd xxx Hi everyone! To help launch my new book, we are giving it away for free today and tomorrow! If you've not already checked it out, please grab a copy while it's FREE! (If you enjoy it then PLEASE leave a teeny review for us. Thanks!) I'd better go. I'm supposed to be helping M with promotion today! Love Odd xxx Hi everyone! Just a very quick post today, to let you know that our latest ebook is now available from Amazon! *happy dance*😊😊😊 ***New Book Launch***Odd Sock Adventures - Book 2This is another Fun Early Chapter Book, for ages 5-8. It follows me and M on a trip to the Welsh mountains of Snowdonia. I learnt lots about the local King Arthur and Merlin myths, and you'll have to read it if you want to know if I found any dragons! Like Book 1, this book is packed with stunning colour photographs. The book is currently $0.99 or 77p to buy on Amazon. I'd better go to bed now! Good Night! Love Odd xxx
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AuthorsThe Top of the Wardrobe Gang: Oscar Rabbit, PD Monkey, Odd Sock, Burton Bear, Terry Tiger (TT), Burton Bear; helped by Melinda Kinsman Archives
October 2018
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