#nightweasel

[sinead-smith-3]

I fucking love nightweasel. I will die for nightweasel.

A while ago I woke up from a half dream with the words, "nightjar weasel" echoing through my head. So today I set aside time to paint something up!

It's just. So cute. I'm calling it a Nightweasel. Please enjoy, and if you like it enough you could buy it on a bunch of stuff at my Redbubble, Teepublic, or Threadless!

Sales go to support a broke art student, and reassure me that the messages from my dreams are worth spending time on.

[lightningcatcher]

hello i am gay i am here i am begging. nightweasel for hypokits.

Magpiekit

[shennycx]

Night clubbing

Writing about racing right now is a bit hard.  But I want to get some things down so that I can remember this season as a point of reference. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me right now, but among those who have been there and ridden and raced for many years more than I, there is a nod of understanding. This is all part of the cycle. Growth is not linear.  Struggles and coming up short do not take away from who you are as a rider or as a person. If you ride with passion and act like a decent human being, you're probably doing okay.  

Shane and I have been training together since we started racing in 2015 and for even longer than that, we've ridden together a ton. It's been such an asset to my growth and helped me to push myself in terms of power output and in building skill and finding courage. It's not because he's a man (note to my Boomer readers).  It's because he's Shane.  And he's been riding since he was a kid, pretty much non-stop except for that rowing thing in college.  He rode in the burly hills behind his boarding school in Ireland on 90s vintage mountain bikes.  That shit was real.

Old news: I got hurt this summer on a squishy bike that, compared to those 90s contraptions, takes zero skill to ride.  But now tis the season of riding the rigid, noodly bar bikes round and round in fields and over barriers and up slippery embankments.  In other words, the most wonderful time of the year.  Some things really aren't clicking for me.  Some movements are painful and I hesitate and doubt myself where I haven't before.  First race of the season was my first DNF ever.  But let me be clear: I am grateful to be racing.  From this vantage point, I can look back on July and August on the trainer and see how far I've come. So with that, I'd like to note a few things that are going well for me right now.

Midnight ride.  The first of the party vibe rides.  First race I was able to finish!  The sweeping corners in dry conditions.  I was able to drive and lean the bike!  Drank beer with friends on a Wednesday.  Wonderful event.  Note to self: never not do this race.

Night Weasels. More party vibes. More racers with disco lights and 80s glow jewelry.  More drinking beer with friends on a Wednesday. I love this race.  Couldn't ride the log addition in the back side of the course. Quelle surprise!  That made for an additional non-wrist/hand-friendly sitch, but otherwise the course was generally favorable for me.  I'm not the best climber, but I can settle in and get along.*  I had a surprisingly good start.  And when I was focused on bike-body positioning, looking through the turns, and staying loose, I descended fairly well too.  We closed down Ski Ward as Shane raced the Men's 1-2-3 (and held his own in a bananas field) and opted for two post race beers.  Thursday was a trick for both of us.

Minuteman. Sticking to my promise to focus on the positives -- cornering! Again, good on the sweeping flat turns in the low part of the course. Also, I kept pushing.  And sprinting (not going to mock myself here though it's tempting) out of the turns.  I was blown away by the strength and skill of the ladies in my field.  Every single one of them is a boss. And the 3 and 4/5 women who raced in the mud earlier in the day. So impressed. That was the most exciting race of the day, in my opinion. Many were caught off guard by the deluge and were rocking file treads and intermediates in true mudder conditions.  The handling and adaptability throughout the field was really inspiring to see.

Okay, so far this season, we have cornering and beer.  And friends!  I can work with that.  I hope that things will continue to feel more natural and that I will improve on my many weaknesses as we head into the meat of the season.

There are no peaks without valleys.  The next time I hit a peak, I am making a promise to myself: I will savor that view.

*I did get passed pretty much entirely in the climbing part of the course.

Both photos: Jon Nable for Night Weasels.

[epicstratton]

Hey folks. I’ll be at #nightweasels with this cute little monster tonight. Say hi bike friends! #rssfeed #peanutstratton2017 #raisingatinymonster #alwayshungry

[foldingfittedsheets]

i enjoy your antics so much that i forget i didn't follow you specifically for them

i enjoy your art so much i followed specifically for your comics

whenever you put your art on a post involving antics there's a second where my brain goes "woah, ffs the person with amusing life stories and ffs the artist with fun comics are the same person? :o"

this has happened a couple of times now

it amuses me every time

I fucking love how hard it is to categorize me, honestly.

I love when people look at different aspects of my art and go "That was yours?!" Or like, people have followed me for my writing and then see a comic and are like "That's you too?!"

It's a true a delight. I am an enigma. What a joy to my trickstery little soul to be so confounding.

[foldingfittedsheets]

I recently learned artists can submit to Tumblr Radar and now I’m frozen with indecision. I can only do single images, so unless I have a perfect panel in mind that rules out my comics.

What’s your favorite non comic art of mine?

[foldingfittedsheets]

A while ago I woke up from a half dream with the words, "nightjar weasel" echoing through my head. So today I set aside time to paint something up!

It's just. So cute. I'm calling it a Nightweasel. Please enjoy, and if you like it enough you could buy it on a bunch of stuff at my Redbubble, Teepublic, or Threadless!

Sales go to support a broke art student, and reassure me that the messages from my dreams are worth spending time on.

[a-blessing-of-ravens]

We love the nightweasel!!!!

A while ago I woke up from a half dream with the words, "nightjar weasel" echoing through my head. So today I set aside time to paint something up!

It's just. So cute. I'm calling it a Nightweasel. Please enjoy, and if you like it enough you could buy it on a bunch of stuff at my Redbubble, Teepublic, or Threadless!

Sales go to support a broke art student, and reassure me that the messages from my dreams are worth spending time on.

[lurkerwithcomputer]

Reblogging twice to add: I love "Nightweasel", it sounds like the pseudonym of a famous rogue, kinda like "Robin Hood".

A while ago I woke up from a half dream with the words, "nightjar weasel" echoing through my head. So today I set aside time to paint something up!

It's just. So cute. I'm calling it a Nightweasel. Please enjoy, and if you like it enough you could buy it on a bunch of stuff at my Redbubble, Teepublic, or Threadless!

Sales go to support a broke art student, and reassure me that the messages from my dreams are worth spending time on.

[foldingfittedsheets]

​Happy one years old to the nightweasel

A while ago I woke up from a half dream with the words, "nightjar weasel" echoing through my head. So today I set aside time to paint something up!

It's just. So cute. I'm calling it a Nightweasel. Please enjoy, and if you like it enough you could buy it on a bunch of stuff at my Redbubble, Teepublic, or Threadless!

Sales go to support a broke art student, and reassure me that the messages from my dreams are worth spending time on.