he he he.. I remember rotten puppets...nice to hear you have a daughter now.

Good, its nice to pass something on .

It's all about getting the angle right, with nice sharp leading edges, whether you use an oil stone, file, or even sandpaper. Try and follow the same angle as is already there on the scissors, and try and get the leading edge so that you cannot see and edge. I tend to use a file for quick touch-ups and getting a badly  blunted pair back into shape (after children have used them to cut wire or nails with! argh) an oil stone is good, and if you use sandpaper, put it down on a flat surface and move the scissors... keep the angle steady, and if you can see an edge on the leading cutting edge, it is still blunt.(light reflects off the 'rounded' edge. If it is sharp, less light reflects.) Some cheap scissors will not stay sharp no matter how hard you try, due to inferior metal. I wish you success.

I am like you Chris, Each pattern is in a large labelled envelope, and every variation on the pattern gets its own envelope. Smaller ones get a zip lock plastic bag, along with a drawing, or better still a printout of a photo of the final puppet, for quick identification. Card envelopes are used for frequent use ones as they last longer, as do plastic courier envelopes. During prototyping, I use paper pattern pieces, then when the design is solid, frequent use ones get a cardboard set. As soon as the prototype is looking close to finished, the patterns are transferred to A4 paper sheets (some need splitting for that) so that there is an official record of it archived, and it can be photocopied if necessary. Notes and assembly instructions go with those, and they get a section with dividers in one of those fat office archive binder folders, that I sometimes find on the street. Next step, if I have time, is to overlay a 1cm grid, so that I can scan the archived pattern and have that electronic copy, just in case I have to flee the country and can take them with me or upload them to the net for international access there. Finally , if I get time I will  record the shapes as  vector points like (1,45) (364,23)... so that they can be written down and be  stored, copied, or transferred as text documents and can be replicated  elsewhere. But that takes a lot of time , so  not all of my patterns are  done  like that. All the  Envelopes, and folders go on a shelf for  easy access, and electronic scans and text docs.. in the digital archives and  some up on the net.

pleease, if anyone gets to  meet him , tell us aaall about iut.

Well Na, that  was a very interesting read.  Thanks. Hope you do get to see how to train your Dragon.

This means that The Directors wrist is  healed and  back into action! say a big  hello  to  Arthur from all his kin  down here in the south.

Yes.. nice to see you around. Good stuff. A friend of mine just opened a 3d animation channel for kids. They made about 2000$us last year. I have tried to keep my main channel ad free, but youtube seems to be plastering them in there anyway.. so the writing is on the wall, we will all be forced to place advertising whether we like it or not, so it is becoming more tempting to take the money... My son went through the process last year... warning: it was at least a 10 step process including the trick of setting up a website where it must earn at least 10 dollars worth of advertising before youtube  would send a cheque. They really are notin  the youtube business to be nice.

Well thank you Millie. I hope your year is successful too. I do not know what this year will bring, but we hope it turns out ok. I am starting the year with some puppet builds, lots of frogs and variations on the theme sorta like little people. I did a  big worm for some friends already, but still need to do a reverse liposuction operation on their big puppet, and need to make him a wife, to go on the road. (they will probably need some children pretty soon after that...) Hope your year has got off to a good start.

mrbumblepants.. happy  holidays too....love  Dave's tooth.