Welcome, Wilkommen, and all that jazz.

I don't know how the Critters got inside my head and clicked. Come to think of it, a few days ago I tried to figure out, suss out, pin down, haha, the precise moment when sewing crawled in and made itself at home in my brain, but such moments are never easy to find.

This is what's clear: these are all I can think about these days. I just think of them as the Lares and Penates, the Small Gods, the gods of the hearth and home, the ones responsible for making the bread rise and the water boil. The gods that orchestrated the thousand little daily miracles that science has so neatly compartmentalized for us. Gods that have survived, however imporobably, into the present day: brownies, sprites, spirits, fairies, leprechauns, and the domovoi of eastern Europe. They are absurd, they are impractical, the are occasionally downright frightening.

I just can't get enough.

Maybe this is how obsessions start -- that quiet fascination with a singular topic that slowly erodes our resistance and creeps into every aspect of our creative lives.

Maybe this is how careers start.

Whatever you're going to call them -- lares, penates, or domovoi -- this is our space.

A note about the names:

I don't know exactly where the names come from. Somewhere inside our heads, there is a tiny engine cranking out the sort of names that were old-fashioned forty years ago. Names that went out of style somewhere in the indeterminate past, like the colors Harvest Gold, Avocado, and any shade of Olive Green. Names crafted out of shag carpet and dark wood paneling, spun from the hose of a thousand housewives, tinged with poverty and religious intent, beaded like a flapper's dress. Eugene, Donovan, Virgil, Gus, Cosmo, Bubba, Darryl, Gulliver, Harvey, Oswald, Gilbert, Chester, Harold, Rodney.

(and all of them sensible, everyday names)

This is what I do.

When I make a creature, I know what its name is the moment I turn its head inside out. Usually.

PS: I'm not sure why there are no girls yet. Not a Margaret, a Mildred, Louise, Ingrid, Irene, Iris, Abigail, Betsy, Catherine, and many other such. There just aren't yet. The females of the species are evidently much shyer than their male counterparts...

This is the Mad Milliner,

Signing out,

Namaste.