Hi everyone! Odd Sock here! Sorry it's taken me so long to remember to write my blog again! I've been up in Scotland with M and Buster, on a BIG adventure! This was the first Scottish loch (lake) that I'd stood by, and the mountains we saw on our car journey looked beautiful. When we got the tent out, I was glad to see that M had remembered all the essentials - like my chair! On our first night, I discovered that a big bag of maps make quite a comfy bed. Especially if you can find a nice fleecy hat to snuggle up in! In the morning, M and I ate a big bowl of cereal each. (Mine had a chopped up banana in it, as I love bananas. Someone once asked if I was related to the purple Minions, but I don't think I am.) Then we set off in the car to the start of our first walk, leaving Buster behind to guard the tent! From what M had told me about Scotland, I hadn't been expecting to need the sun cream out. As we started walking, this was my first amazing view. We'd be heading into the mountains ourselves very soon... More to come in Part 2! Bye for now, Odd xxx
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Hi everyone, Odd Sock here again! Well the 3 day free promotion has now ended for our Monster Poems Kindle book, so I'd like to start off by saying a VERY BIG THANK YOU! Thank you to everyone who has downloaded our book, shared our posts, written reviews for us, or has just made a comment to encourage us in our book writing and illustrating efforts! We had 90 downloads on day 1, a further 223 on day 2, and then a STAGGERING 660 for day 3! (We are all keeping our paws crossed that a few people may continue to download our book once the price returns to $0.99.) Now onto discussing my adventures over the long Bank Holiday weekend here in the UK. (That's a weekend where most people have Monday off work too, so get a 3 day weekend break.) On Saturday afternoon I popped to a quiet little quarry in Wales to do a bit of rock climbing with Melinda and her husband. As you can see I'm still struggling a bit with my "rope management" skills! But I did go up here... And, no, this is NOT a trick shot of me on a flat pavement, the photographer just zoomed in a bit too far! I'm on a very vertical bit of rock, clinging on with all 4 paws, as well as both of my ears! Please don't try this without a sensible adult in charge, kids! Melinda was holding me safely on a tight rope. We are still trying to get my harness right, though, as I'm a bit too small for a normal one... After climbing up rock for a while, I discovered that climbing up trees was fun too! I was keeping my eyes out for some pretty wild flowers - these were the nicest ones I found, but I'm not sure what they are. After a good night's rest, 5 of us then drove out to the Welsh mountains of Snowdonia on Sunday morning. We wanted to get away from the busy Bank Holiday crowds and find somewhere quieter to rock climb. I'm glad I was carried in though, as at this point the humans are just about to start battling through waist-high heather, with no paths! Hmmm...so we are supposed to be there now, but none of you look at all sure which bit of rock we are supposed to be climbing... Heehee...you'd have thought they'd have learnt by now that they shouldn't put me in charge of the ropes... This is at the top of the first rope length, while we queue behind our 2 friends who are climbing ahead of us. This is Melinda's husband starting to climb the next rope length . The funny metal bits hanging off his harness are for sliding tightly into cracks in the rock. You can see that the yellow rope is attached to one of these metal bits by 2 metal clips (called "carabiners"). This means that, if he slips, the rope will be held by the metal bit fastened into the rock crack. That will stop him falling far. We feed more rope to him through the special device below, which allows us to easily hold the rope if he falls. We climbed 3 rope lengths to the top, but we didn't hang around there for long, as it was VERY windy! We were able to carefully walk a different way to get back down to where we started. (More deep heather - I was carried!) Back at the much less windy bottom, and time for me to admire the view with a snack and a drink of water... The humans then climbed for longer, while I had a well-earned rest! Hmm...looks like they make an even worse mess of the ropes when I'm not there! That's looking a bit tidier... Heehee...here's one I did earlier! Time to play on a few rock boulders on my way back to the car... The mountain in the background is called "Tryfan", and it is one of the mountains in Wales that are over 3000ft high. Scrambling up... ...to get a better view! Ah, look, here come my 3 porters with all the heavy climbing equipment in their rucksacks! As we are over the border in Wales, all the signs are written in Welsh as well as in English. Met a couple of new friends on our walk back to the car! One last view of Tryfan before heading home! I hope we come back soon! Hope you enjoyed seeing what I did at the weekend! Bye for now!
Love Odd Sock xxx Hi everyone, Odd Sock here! OK, so my title for today's blog might be a slight exaggeration.... Our new YouTube video does include the whole of the Top of the Wardrobe Gang, and it also features quite a few MONSTERS from our latest book! I did help out a lot in making the video, though, and I'm quite proud of that. Click on the link below to check it out on YouTube. We hope it will make you smile! Despite a busy week doing "book things", I did manage to help hold the ropes while out climbing one evening... ...once I'd managed to get myself unravelled from them! I also enjoyed scrambling up and down some of the rocks myself... ...checking out the undergrowth for tigers... ...and even watching a beautiful sunset! I was very excited to get this lovely bookmark from my 3 bear friends in Whitby! I wanted to make "something" special to thank them for my yummy Easter choccies, so last week I did a bit of sewing... ...and I made my sock cousin, Snowy Oliver Sock! (Heehee...S.O.S.) I popped him in the post, and he is now very happily living with them in Whitby! I know this is a bit naughty to show, but it is very funny, so I'm hoping Melinda won't notice! I asked my friends to try one of their "Build-a-bear" outfits on Snowy, to see if they might fit me too....it looks like we are a bit too well stuffed! (I don't think Snowy was very happy about being asked to try a girl's dress on, so...sorry Snowy.) Well, our FREE 3 day KINDLE BOOK PROMOTION starts tomorrow! I hope lots of people will download our Monster book... Bye for now, Love Odd Sock xxx
Hi everyone! Odd Sock here! We've had a lovely couple of days of warm sunny weather here in NW England, and all I've really wanted to do has been to sit in my deck chair in the sun! We've also all been very busy helping Melinda with things for our Monster Book. We finally finished editing it, and getting lots of different people to read the poems out to us until we were happy with them. Then we had quite a few little last minute problems getting everything to look how we wanted it to in the Kindle eBook format. Melinda looked after a lot of that, and finally managed to get the whole eBook squashed up small enough for Amazon to let us charge only $0.99USD for it. I think squashing up the pictures was the biggest problem! Anyway, as this poster that I helped to make shows, to celebrate this new launch we will be giving the eBook away for 3 days. (If anyone is able to review it then, in return for the free book, then we'd really appreciate it.) As the poster also shows, we are holding a little competition, and the prize is a cuddly Odd Sock toy! This is where I'm a bit worried, as the picture is of the REAL me. I think I need to start making another sock cousin straight away, just to make sure I don't get posted to someone else as a prize!! It's a good job that my sewing skills are improving!❤️❤️ Bye for now! I'd better get off my deck chair and get busy! xxx
Hi everyone! Odd Sock here! I hope you all had a fun Easter! As you can see below, I had fun decorating the house with Easter decorations! I also had a go at making an Easter Sock Rabbit with Melinda's niece. He didn't turn out quite like the picture, but I got some great new ear warmers, and made a new friend! I also got sent these very yummy Easter treats by my Twitter bear friends from Whitby! And my new friend and I got taken out to some pretty gardens... Where I found a beautiful field full of daffodils! The Easter Bank Holiday weekend was even more fun! I got taken out into the Welsh mountains with Melinda... And even got to try my paws at a bit of rock climbing! At the moment I am trying to make a present for my Whitby bear friends. I do hope they are going to like "it"... Have fun, whatever you are up to! We will be in touch very soon, with some exciting news about our Monster Poems... Bye until then! xxx
Hi everyone, Odd Sock here! We just wanted to let you know that we have all learnt lots about writing poems over the last week! We are well into our second week of Rhyming lessons from the "RhyPiBoMo" event now! We are busy everyday reading rhyming picture books, writing different types of poems, reviewing our old poems with fresh eyes, and trying to implement new ideas into our first attempt at a rhyming Picture Book manuscript (which we plan to hand in for "critiquing" in a couple of weeks!) We are finding all our new knowledge very exciting, but also a bit overwhelming and confusing at the moment. I thought I'd share with you a little rhyme that Melinda has just written, which pretty much sums up how we are all feeling right now! Confusion...(An Acatalectic Iambic Tetrameter!) - / - / - / - / The perfect rhyming picture book
Is getting my poor brain quite shook! Don't drop a beat or mix your feet, But do not endlessly repeat? Each day I hope to understand, Though, so far, things don't run as planned. Perhaps tomorrow, or the next, I'll master rhythmic sense from text! Hi everyone! As chief writer in the Top of the Wardrobe Gang, I wanted to post today. We have just started the RhyPiBoMo 2014 Challenge today, and we are all very excited! Above is a link to our first lesson about writing Children's Picture Books in rhyme from Angie's blog. We've all been thinking very carefully about why we want to write in rhyme, and have decided that our main reason is that we have lots of FUN doing so! We have just finished writing a very long poem today, for that part of the challenge. (Though we did start this one yesterday. We hope that doesn't matter!) We've also met the 7 people in our Rhyming critique group now. We are so excited about that too. Bye for now, Love Burton xx
Hi everyone! I thought it was about time I did a quick blog post. Odd Sock has just headed outside to help Billy pull up some weeds in the garden. We have been reading through the 10 Fractured Fairytale finalists from the March Madness Contest this morning. They are all so good, that deciding which one to vote for was a really difficult decision! You can click on the link below to read the final 10 stories in Susanna's blog. You've still got time to vote, so why not head over there and take a look? The whole gang are really excited about tomorrow, as RhyBiBoMo (Rhyming Picture Book Month) will officially be starting! We can't wait to learn more about writing poems, and to get to work with others who enjoy writing in rhyme! I'd better go now. I think we're all supposed to be helping with the weeding. I guess that spring must really be here!
Hi everyone, Odd Sock here! A nice lady called Susanna has a competition starting today, called "The March Madness Writing Contest". We are supposed to write a Fractured Fairytale in less than 400 words. Our entry is below, but we've read a few of the other entries this morning, and aren't really sure that ours is worthy of even standing beside them. Oh well, we are still learning! I hope the humans will be nice to us... Goldie Locks-up the Three Bears! Young Goldie spies her chance, And dives across the floor; She doesn't stop to glance At who's coming to the door. Her tail wags high and proud, She's heading to explore; Her woof says "Bye" quite loud, She finds the house a bore! Down to the docks she'll run, She loves it round the boats; The sights and smells are fun - A busy town that floats! Mmmm....sausages are near, She tastes them on her tongue; Hmmm...mixed with smells of beer... She'll find them before long... A forest of tall masts, Sway up above like trees; Sweet smells, in tasty blasts, Are carried on the breeze. Not thinking if she should, She hops from boat to boat; She sniffs out all things good, And leaps each watery moat! She lands aboard a ship With nobody around, The deck's a messy tip, Of crew there is no sound. So nosing down below, She finds the table laid; There's porridge out on show, Three steaming bowls, just made. She licks to try to test From each bowl she can see, The smallest one tastes best, She gobbles that for tea; She next eyes up three chairs, And thinks she'll take a rest, And as with the three bowls, She finds the smallest best. CRACK, CRASH! She feels it break! She lands upon the floor; Still sore from her mistake, She noses round some more... Three neat bunks are found, Each built into the wall, And so this naughty hound Tries sleeping in them all! As you'll now have guessed, The smallest is just right, So having found the best, She curls up for the night. The three bears, who'd popped out, Have now returned to eat; The small one starts to shout "My food!" and "My poor seat!" That naughty hound then woke To see an ANGRY face; She ran before it spoke, To flee that scary place! She now made one great sound - She HOWLED to call for help; Some Policemen soon came round, On hearing that loud yelp! A hoard of jewels were seen Stashed in the broken chair; On asked where they had been, The bears said, "Here and there..." Those bears, they went to jail, While Goldie, she went home; In shock, she hung her tail. She does no longer roam. Click here to edit
Hi everyone, Odd Sock here! Sorry we've not been very good at writing our blog recently. I just wanted to let you know that we have all been keeping busy - with writing rhymes, drawing pictures, and playing with Billy! It is St. Patrick's Day tomorrow, so today we have been making a green hat and ginger leprechaun beard for Billy to wear for school! (We are hoping he will win the class competition for the best costume, and bring home some sweets for us all to share!) Last week we had fun writing something called a "Fractured Fairytale" in rhyme. We'd not heard of them before, but, apparently these are traditional fairytales in which you can change the story round a bit to add your own twists. We will publish our final rhyme here in a few days, but it's secret until then! (We are entering it into a competition when we post it.) Today Melinda has also signed us up to participate in the above. RhyPiBoMo is short for "Rhyming Picture Book Month", and we will be very busy in April trying to keep up with daily lessons in writing rhyme, and trying to complete everything in the below pledge! We are all really looking forward to this, and think it will be great fun! Bye for now...I need to go and help finish off Billy's beard!
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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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