Pumpkin flower
My mum says this is a pumpkin flower (that is, a flower of a pumpkin plant), but there will be no pumpkin if there is no male and female flower on the same vine. I think she said this was a female flower. We’ve yet to see a fruit, so I guess the male flower was a no-show.
Pretty, anyway! I love how cheerful it looks.
“Moi? Get stuck? Never!” says the tubby cat.
This has been shamelessly taken from Cute Overload. It’s too precious! I just love how he/she finally gets out of the box.
Kaoru’s Cake House
Picked this up at a nearby bookstore. Glad to see that local publications are now being distributed quite widely — albeit a tad bit late.
Kaoru is dubbed on the back cover as “Malaysia’s famous manga artist.” Her illustrations are pretty, no doubt about that. Perhaps a little too pretty … I could barely tell the guys from the girls. Gender aside, I enjoyed the drawings.
The storylines, however, fell short. Wing, for example, was introduced as a pessimist who never smiles unless he’s in pain or about to do something diabolical. I expected something more for Wing, being the one who owns Kaoru’s Cake House. A bit more insight into his character, a bit more depth.
I understand this is a collection of stories, one with (as the artist herself admits) limited space. But I would have been happy to have had a couple of stories fewer, if it had been replaced with a bit more meatiness in the others. Some stories felt like fillers, and they were unforgiveably preachy to boot.
It would seem that this was originally written in another language — Malay? (There’s an English translator in the credits.) The English translation was not proofread carefully because there were … grr … grammatical errors peppered throughout the book. Having said that, I liked the fact that the translation had a bit of a stilted feel to it — you see similar anomalies in manga translated from Japanese to English. But the grammatical errors … gah!
Then again, this is two years old now. She has a new series out: Maid Maiden. From the sneak previews online, it looks promising. The art is gorgeous. The language, however … oh, dear. They must have used the same translator.
Honey & Daisy : sewing and other lovely things 