Thanks to serendipity, I got to have a fascinating chat with Brandy for the show!
As usual, this transcript reflects as faithfully as possible the content and tone of our chat, with some thoughtful editing to make sure things read smoothly.
Show notes are included after this transcript. This episode is hosted on The Incomparable.
Sandra Wong:
Hello. Hello. Hello! Welcome. This is We Contain Multitudes, the casual interview show with our favourite people, famous and accomplished guests who share the geek-outs, hobbies, and interests which they might not necessarily be known for. C’est moi, your host Sandra Wong. And today, I have the absolute pleasure of being joined by Brandy Schillace. Hi, Brandy.
Brandy Schillace: Oh, hello, hello. So nice to be here.
SW:
It’s so lovely to be here with you. So, friends of the podcast, you must know, Brandy is an expert in medical history with a dizzying and [Brandy chuckles] dazzling array of published books, journalism pieces, and TV and media appearances. Plus, of course, from her wonderful show Peculiar Book Club, which also has Peculiar Movie Club, right?
BS: Mm-hmm [chuckling]
SW: And one other..?
BS: Peculiar Mystery.
SW:
Okay, so if you’re like me, you also have a very healthy parasocial relationship with Brandy on Bluesky [Brandy laughs] where you [Sandra chuckles] you never cross any lines and you are always respectful of [Brandy laughs] Okay, so in fact, Bluesky is…is the reason that Brandy is my guest today. So yes, friends, sometimes social media is still a force for good. [laughs]
BS: That’s right.
SW: So the short story is Brandy posted a photo of some berries. I recognized them as saskatoon berries, which is what we call them [Brandy chuckles] here in Alberta in Canada. But I think in the States many people call them iuneberries.
BS: Juneberries, or service berries is another one.
SW: Service berries. Yes. That’s right. I think you said that.
BS: No idea why.
SW: Yeah I don’t know, I don’t know. Anyway [laughing] so one thing led to another and I sent a jam recipe. And then when I didn’t get slapped down, I sent an invitation to be a podcast guest. [laughs]
BS: I also made the jam. It was very good.
SW: Oh! Did you?
BS: I did make the jam, yeah.
SW: Oh, fantastic!
BS: I shared the jam.
SW:
Right. So you know friends, if you have service berries or juneberries or saskatoon berries and you would like an excellent jam recipe, I’m your girl. Just, you know, hit me up on Bluesky. [laughs] Anyway, I’m so thrilled to be chatting with you. I can’t believe you said yes [chuckles] From me, a total rando, like, literally in the DM’s: Hey, by the way, do you wanna be a guest?
BS:
You know, it’s funny. I leave my DMs open, which is a very rather sketchy thing to do and dangerous. I have like 50,000, 55,000. I don’t even know how many thousands of followers up there. And I write about, you know, like LGBTQ issues, and my last book was on trans rights. So, obviously leaving my DMs open, I, you know, I liked it—I’m a risk taker [both laugh] but…you can just ignore them too, right? So but no, I meet all kinds of interesting people this way. And then that way they don’t have to say like, oh, you know, I want to say something, but can I send you..? I just leave them open like, who knows what will happen?
SW:
Yes. Well, see, I have a small enough teensy tiny following. It’s small enough that I can leave my DM’s open and it’s like, not even, it’s not even a deal at all, of any kind. [both laugh] So. But if you’re going to DM, folks, please be kind. [laughs] If you’re gonna DM. Brandy, yes, please be kind, too. So. Yes. So you know, we know Brandy from all those wonderful things. But what do you want to talk to us about today?
BS:
Gosh. So. All right. Right before the show started, you had asked me that question. And I’m sitting there thinking, this is a problem [Sandra laughs] because I’m autistic, and as an autistic person, I, I live on special interests and I have so many. I’m even thinking I should write a book just about, like, hobbies because I have so many hobbies and…and none of them make any money, which is kind of the point of hobbies, actually.
SW: Yes.
BS: Hobbies—once they make money, then they’re jobs, right?
SW: Yeah.
BS: So I thought I could start off talking about the fact that I make miniatures.
SW: Oh! Ye-e-es?
BS: I do, I do. Yes.
SW: Oooooh!
BS: So. Okay, this all started—well. No, I’m going to tell you a lie, but it’s a white lie.
SW: Okay. [laughs]
BS: I’m going to say that it all started when I decided I wanted to do a stop-motion intro to the Peculiar Book Club shows.
SW: Ah, yes.
BS:
And if you go to YouTube, you’ll get to see—Like, there’s been four iterations and I’ve gotten better. So the first one is kind of clunky [Sandra laughs] and then they get a bit better. But I thought, okay, so I’m going to teach myself stop-motion and I’m going to use, you know, I’m going to make, build miniature sets and I’m going to do all of this stuff. And most miniatures are in a particular size.
SW: Yep. Okay.
BS: And it’s like, for six-inch figures. So I thought, okay, well I’ll work with six-inch figures to do the stop-motion.
SW: Right.
BS:
That’s real small, folks. [Sandra laughs] That’s real small. And I, I bought some dolls that—or some bodies anyway, that were bendable just at the joints. And I crafted my own clay heads for them, and I painted the heads to look like our various—myself and the various other people who run the show.
SW: Yeah.
BS:
And I started doing this stop-motion thing, and it was just…like, it was so much work and it wasn’t really…it wasn’t really working out. And I realized, I mean, it was, it was. You can look online, it works, clearly. But I thought, okay, what I really need to do is build my own dolls for this, my own, you know, puppets.
SW: Oh. Wow.
BS:
So then I thought, okay, I’m going to build my puppets from scratch, and it would be easier if they were a little bit bigger. But then [Sandra chuckles] the other problem is, that is not the size of the miniatures that you, that you can buy. Like, if I want a miniature chair, it’s going to be the wrong side. So then I had to figure out how to make miniature furniture, and then I had to figure out how to make miniature books and miniature tables and miniature… You know, there’s a, we do a cocktail
SW: Yeah.
BS: for each book that we do on the Peculiar Book Club. So then I had to make, like, a miniature bar, and I’m, like, making miniature lemons…
SW: [laughing] We see where this is going.
BS: Completely out of hand. So the white lie I told you is that I got into miniatures for my book club, but in fact, [chuckles] my book club was basically the excuse I had to explain why I was getting into miniatures. [Sandra cracks up] That’s the real way, I guess.
SW: Wow. There are so many avenues I could explore just from that tiny little story that you shared. So…when you…okay, why? What is it about miniatures that interests you? That grabs your attention?
BS: They’re so tiny! Plus. Okay, so I like to… If you went to my—if you come to my house, you know, you’re welcome. Come to my house.
SW: Someday, someday.
BS:
So I’m in, I have a beautiful home, I have beautiful gardens. But…in my house, which looks just a little bit like a museum, and actually, one of my house cleaners asked me if I was a practicing witch, to give you some idea [Sandra laughs] of what it looks like in here. But—
SW: [laughing] Love it!
BS: But every room looks like you’ve just left it. Like, I have it, you know, it’s got like, there’s a teacup sitting there in a book—I like to build scenes in my real life. In my house.
SW: Yeah.
BS:
Except, you know, the house is only so big. And when you have miniatures, you have this endless propensity, this endless possibility to create these, you know, scenes, these scenes where you can go, okay, this is now, this is going to be the music room, and this is where they’re all, you know, and I’m going to have the musical instruments. And I made a very, very small, oh, it’s a, it’s a upright player organ. My grandmother had one, an antique upright player organ.
SW: Wow.
BS: And so I recreated this upright player organ [chuckles] for, for my miniatures. And then this becomes… So like, there’s all these cool ways of solving problems, right. So you’re thinking to yourself, All right, if, if I want to work at this scale, suddenly random junk becomes possibilities, right? So I go to the thrift store and I saw a—this is really a funny one, actually—it was a silverware drawer.
SW: Oh-h?
BS: But it was a fancy one. It was made out of wood. Like, somebody had a fancy silverware drawer, and I thought, okay… I think that if I turn the interior part of this drawer on its end…
SW: Oh,
BS: On its, you know
SW: Yeah, yeah
BS:
It’s basically standing up. It would make a great backdrop for the bar. And then the knife holder, I flipped upside down and I thought, okay, now this becomes the actual bar. And then I thought [Sandra chuckles] how do I make it look more like a bar? So I’m like, Oh! I can buy little pieces of copper sheeting and I can make a copper-top bar top. And then I thought, Oh! and then I could put, I could make some shelves over here where this, you know, spoons would have been. And I thought, okay, now I need to find little bottles that I could put [Sandra laughs] little labels on, and then I can stick them on the shelf. And then I have to make, you know, tiny limes and a tiny, like, knife set to cut up the limes in a tiny—like, it just it proliferates. But everywhere I go, it’s like, That’s a thimble. Or is it? You know [laughs]
SW: Yeah. Yeah.
BS:
That’s a plastic cap from a bottle. Or! Is it? [both chuckle] You know, and it just, I love that weirdness of the possibility. I think I always was attracted to that, even as a kid, you know, where you’re, like, building a mouse house, right? You think, oh, a thimble gets to be a table or whatever. Like, it’s just a very exciting. It sounds even weirder out loud than it does in my head now that I’m saying it.
SW: Yeah. We love weird. It’s good.
BS: Super obsessive.
SW: Bring it.
BS:
And then I want to think, well, how can I make this look more realistic? [both laugh] So I, so, you know, so what I’m saying is, there’s all these iterations you can see, but I’m building brand new sets right now. And I went to the Morgan Library in New York and took a bunch of pictures. And I’m recreating [cracks up] Morgan Library…
SW: [laughing] My God.
BS: [laughing] Oh my God, ’cause I’m insane.
SW: Wow.
BS: And, you know, I thought, well, I need a big fireplace in here, but I want it to look like marble. So what kind—? Oh, I need to get a clay that I can carve.
SW: Right.
BS: All this stuff to build this thing and
SW: Yeah.
BS: And I’m like, decided it needed a fireplace. And then I tried to actually light an actual fire in it. Some things do not work out. I just want to say.
SW: I’m… [laughs]
BS: That was not…
SW: …not surprised. [cracks up]
BS: It did work.
SW: Everyone was safe?
BS: Yeah. I got a little stone jewelry box, I thought it could work as the backdrop and I could light a candle in there, but like…fire is hot. Like, really hot.
SW: Yes. It’s true.
BS:
So it’s not that it set anything on fire, but me trying to, like, work in this space. I’m like, it is hot. [both crack up] Like me, still trying to do stuff. Okay, maybe that one, maybe that one didn’t work out. But. So then, I thought, oh, I need to chop wood. So I went outside and I gathered sticks, which I then, like, chopped. Like, I’m in there chopping little tiny sticks—
SW: Like, julienning.
BS: Yeah [both crack up] Kindling and…yeah. But I wanted it to look realistic. And I found all kinds of problem-solving along the way. Like, I wanted it to look, you know, the plaster facades you see if you go to some of these big old libraries and it’s a beautiful carved plaster. And I thought, okay, how, what can I do that that would replicate that in some way? And I thought, Oh! I went to a jewelry store, a jewelry making kind of supply place, and they had all these little, I think they were supposed to be bangle-y things for earrings, but they had kind of fun shapes. There were squares and there were sort of squares with cutouts and all that. So I got matching ones and I put them all along the, the wainscoting.
SW: Right.
BS: And then painted over them so they look like the raised panels of…
SW: [chortling] That’s brilliant.
BS: wainscoting. Right. So it’s that kind of stuff. Yeah.
SW: Yeah. Okay. So were you always, were you crafty as a kid?
BS: No. [laughs]
SW: Did you do crafts? Is it, so crafting is an adult-age thing?
BS: Yeah. I mean my grandmother was very into crafts. She, she did crafts, but I was never particularly interested in that. I paint.
SW: Okay.
BS: I’m also, I mentioned I have a lot of special interests. So I’m a painter. I’m, I’ve done illustrations for like, real things. I’ve actually done illustrations for newspapers. I’ve painted murals inside buildings. I do, you know, fine arts. You—there’s a painting behind me
SW: There is. It’s beautiful
BS: there. So I was more into that. I thought, oh, no, I’m going to go into the fine arts route. I’m not really into crafts and I couldn’t sew, either.
SW: Okay [chuckles]
BS:
But then… Okay then, the thing is, if you’re going to make tiny dolls that are not in the size that doll clothing is, you have to learn how to make doll clothes. So as an adult, not only have I gotten into miniatures, now, I’ve taught myself how to freaking sew, so I can make these tiny little outfits and, you know. And they’re made out of, you know, I’ve got, they’ve got velvet vests and they’ve got the jackets…
SW: Yes!
BS: you know, all kinds of pretty, like, big bouffant sleeves and all kinds of stuff [laughs] because it’s kind of goth. The story is a little goth.
SW: Yeah. Okay, so friends—
BS: …I made tiny little instruments.
SW: Friends, if you…really, if you want to see an example, you go to the YouTube channel for Peculiar Book Club and that opening sequence. It’s amazing. I just watched the one from a couple of weeks ago, I think.
BS: Okay, yeah, that’s the most recent, but that’s not the best one because guys, I’m working on the best one right now. It’s not done yet…
SW: Okay. Of course, it’s always the next one.
BS: Yeah, it’s always the next one.
SW: [laughs] Yeah. So do you—wait, do you hand sew the little miniatures’…
BS: I got a tiny little sewing machine okay. But we’re talking the, the tolerances that I am working at require you to really sew it to the doll.
SW: Oh-h-h.
BS: So I make the doll from scratch, too.
SW: Yeah.
BS: So I start off with a wire, with an aluminum wire framework…
SW: Okay.
BS: …because it’s very bendable, but aluminum is not very strong. So then I wrap it, I wrap it in copper, two different directions so then that way [lowers voice in an aside] I’m married to an engineer, he explained this whole, you know,
SW: [chuckles] Excellent.
BS:
pressures of bending things. So, and then I learned, I created these tiny little, you know, wire hands, these tiny copper wire hands so the fingers could move. But then I had another problem, which is how do you put skin on these things? So I searched, I researched, I looked. I, I dove deep and the closest I came up with, people were like, oh well, you could—like if I was in production, right—you could create latex doll—or not latex…like, silicone rubber dolls and all this. And I tried and it was a disaster. Like, if you do not have that kind of equipment…
SW: [chuckling] Yeah.
BS: All you end up with is just runny schmutz everywhere. This is not a good idea. So I thought, okay, I gotta find out something else, right. So the bodies are wrapped, wrapped in felting wool
SW: Yes.
BS: and then I sew the clothes to the, to the bodies. So they’ve got structure, but then I have a self-hardening clay that goes under in certain places because they need to be kind of a little bit heavier, with
SW: Right.
BS: heavy feet so they don’t just fall over all the time. And they’ve got clay heads that I make,
SW: Yeah.
BS: and I paint the faces on. Which I’ve done all through, all throughout except the new ones have eyes that move. [laughs]
SW: [laughing] I love this iterative model you have.
BS: [laughing] I know, it just keeps getting worse. You know, like, I’m like, I’m going to be Coraline at the end of this. But…so I have the skinning problem and I finally, I got to thinking about, again, engineer…plumbing things. I thought, okay, what about putty, right?
SW: Mm-hm.
BS: They do make silicone putty.
SW: Mm-hm.
BS:
You mix two pieces together and then ultimately it hardens, right? But it has like a viscosity…you know, for a little bit, you can work it. So I thought, what if I found putty that was basically pink, sort of like, you know, a basic— Because I have, there are some tinting mediums which I’ve used, but I thought, okay, I need something that’s going to start off not white, right.
SW: Yeah.
BS:
That would be too difficult, too far to go. So I found this putty that’s sort of pinkish and I mixed it together. And then I skin the hands one finger at a time because it has to dry. [laughs] And then, and then I put the little palms on. And now they have little hands that can, like,
SW: Oh wow!
BS: open and close, and their thumbs can work because two of them are musicians, because that’s our—Charming Disaster, which is a band. And I do their dolls, too. And so I had to be able to, like, so they could play the instruments.
SW: Wow.
BS: Because—I know, because I’m obsessed. [laughs]
SW: [laughing] In the best possible way.
BS: Right, so yeah. That was good.
SW: I love this. I also love that the word, the verb skinned now means its opposite.
BS: To add it.
SW: Yep.
BS: To add the skin [laughing]
SW: To add the skin, not just to take it off.
BS:
I had to…put the skins on. So yeah, so they, their, their hands are made from the skins. And for Ellia who…her whole neck is exposed. So her neck is also made of the flexible skin stuff. And then everything else is the felting wool and then I sew the little tiny outfits, which are…the ones that are on… The current ones that you can watch…
SW: Yeah
BS: I didn’t, I didn’t make all of them. I made a lot of them, but I didn’t make all of them. But now I make them all and there’s so much better because I can [Sandra laughs] Well, quality control issues, right?
SW: [laughing] Of course.
BS:
Like, you don’t know what you’re getting if you’re buying it online. And the dolls are a bit bigger, so I can do more details and things like that. Like, Ellia, I made her—I actually bought leather to do this, by the way—I made her Doc Martens [Sandra gasps] little tiny Doc Martens that actually lace up because I’m…obnoxious [chuckles]
SW: I did not catch this. I did not catch this in the…
BS: No, that’s not in the current one. That’s, that’s in the one that is to be made.
SW: It’s coming. Oh my God. Okay.
BS: I need to find time in my life to actually finish, I’ve got half finished— The other nice thing about miniatures, though, is that they’re small. So, you know, I just have one small room. It’s not like it, you know, it’s not like having a garage full of stuff. It’s little.
SW: [laughing] Oh, sure…sure! [Brandy laughs] Okay, so one doll has how many…I don’t know because they’re all different, the layers of outfits on each one. So. Can you average it out? How long does it take you to finish one of your dolls?
BS: [musingly] They’re done in stages…
SW: Well, okay. So you’re, you’re creating the, let’s say, the skeleton—
BS: The armature, yeah.
SW: The armature. You’re wrapping it to make sure it’s sturdy. You have to create your feet. You have to create the head and paint. You’re doing hair, correct? What’s the hair made of?
BS:
The hair is also—it’s clay. I do the, so I use a Sculpey rubberized clay which gives a little bit of, has a little give. It’s not actually, I mean, it’s supposed to be flexible. It’s not. But it does give a little. And that’s the head, but the other parts of clay are actually a porcelain clay.
SW: Okay.
BS: So it’s almost like I’m making porcelain dolls, sort of. But so the hip joint, because I need something, I don’t want the legs to bend just anywhere, right?
SW: Right.
BS: I want them to bend at the knees and things. So I give them sort of a substrate…
SW: Yeah.
BS: of this porcelain clay. And then the felting goes around that and then the, then the clothes go on top of that, which I sew to them. Gosh, I don’t even know how long, but I also do them all—so I do all the aluminum frames, then all the copper wrapping…
SW: Yeah.
BS: then all the felting. So kind of, you know, I did all the heads at one time, so it just looked like I had a bunch of decapitated dolls because I’m painting them all at once.
SW: Yeah, excellent [laughs]
BS:
So I could make all of them and then bake them. And then I have to, and I have these tiny little, like, the super magnifying glass and this tiny little hairbrush to try and do things like eyelashes, which was a mistake. I don’t know why I thought that needed to be done [Sandra laughs] But, you know, and a little bit of makeup, a little rouge on the cheek and the whole thing and, and unfortunately…painting, there’s pros and cons.
SW: Yeah.
BS:
I’m using…not all kinds of paints are made equal. So I use a model paint because it’s a little bit more viscous. I prefer—back in the day, when I was doing all of this just with the clay, I would use a type of clay that was sort of skin-toned a bit to the person I was working on, to represent the person.
SW: Yeah.
BS: And then I would use actually, like…a ground up chalk that, what I would use to do a sort of subtle shading. And then you could bake the chalk right in, and that was much more, you could get a lot more sort of realistic shadowing that is harder to do with paint
SW: I see.
BS: but the paint works better with the type of clay. [chuckles] So every time I make a change, everything else has to change. [laughs]
SW: Yeah, there’s some domino effect.
BS: Yeah, yeah.
SW:
So then, like, have you literally, so when you were first talking about, like, all the things that went into it, I was thinking it’s very much like puzzling. Like, do you like puzzles? Because it sounds like you’d like to solve the puzzle of, How do I make this look more realistic? How do I make a bookshelf from a cutlery tray? [chuckles]
BS: I do like puzzles. So, I play…I’m a super geek for those kind of mind-bendy games, you know, the kind of games where it’s, you’re, yes, there’s a narrative, but it’s basically you solving a—
SW: Yeah.
BS: successive puzzles and having to work. My favorite one was the House of Da Vinci, because you actually go backward and forward in time. And so like, for instance, I realized at one point I needed to plant a tree [laughs] in time and then move forward so I could climb it to get somewhere. So it’s like, stuff like that. [Sandra laughs] I, I’m all about that kind of stuff, and I love that. I also have, I’m a mystery reader. I’m a mystery writer.
SW: Yes, you are.
BS: I write mysteries, also read mysteries. And I play these… I can’t, I thought it was within grabbing distance, so I was going to tell you the actual—oh, Five Minute Murders. They’re like little mind…kind of like math, I guess. They’re problem puzzles.
SW: Yeah, yeah. So I—
BS: What’s the name for those..? [laughs] It’s not leaping to mind.
SW: I’m sure, I’m sure we’ll figure it out. Logic puzzles? Are they logic puzzles?
BS: Yeah, something like that, yeah. Logic problems. Right.
SW:
Okay. So I also, I just love this because I, I do sh—Sorry. I was almost going to swear. Sorry, Erika, you can take, you could take that ‘almost swear’ out, or you could leave it in. [both laugh] Anyway, I love problem-solving stuff like that. You know, I’m not as crafty. I don’t do miniatures, miniature scenes, miniature worlds like you do. [Brandy chuckles] But I love, like, coming up with, Well, how do I, how do I make this weird thing…piece of furniture work for what I need it to do? Because it’s not made for that.
BS: Yep.
SW: I love stuff like that. I love problem-solving like that.
BS:
Well, and I love to, I like to retro-fab things. So we also we spend a lot of time, my partner and I, we go to a lot of antique stores and a lot of craft places because we…we just, we like to retrofit things, you know. We try to make them better or, oh, this is broken, but I know how to fix it and I’m going to do this. And then, you know, it’s, it’s wonderful stuff. And I’ve learned to do that with fabric and I’ve learned to do that with, you know, I can do basic upholstery, so I do, I re-upholster which is good—
SW: Basic upholstery? [laughs]
BS: because I’ve got cats. Yeah. They shred things all the time.
SW: Yeah. So I guess, you know, you’d be the one friend in your, in your large friend groups: Everyone’s like, okay, the apocalypse is coming. We’re going to Brandy’s because she knows how to do ev-ery-thing.
BS: You know, I’m on so many apocalyptic teams of people, like—
SW: [laughing] Are you?
BS: Because okay, so in addition, right—we might as well just, we’ll just do that. We’ll just go there.
SW: Sure.
BS: So in addition, I also garden and I have the, I have a yard, quite a large yard for living in the city. It’s about 200 ft. deep. I don’t know, it’s maybe not quite a quarter of an acre. And I have an apothecary garden in the back where I have things like valerian root
SW: Ohhhh
BS: and pennyroyal, you know. [laughs]
SW: Love it!
BS:
And poisonous things. And hyssop and rue and all this kind of, you know, fever few, which is good for headaches and all this other kind of stuff. So I have all that stuff back there. There’s some nightshade. I mean…not the really really bad nightshade. The less, the less-than-deadly nightshade.
SW: Just, just the mild.
BS: [laughing] The mild one.
SW: Just the mild nightshade.
BS: Well, anything’s deadly if you take enough of it. Like aspirin, right? I have a vegetable garden out there. I, you know, I made the preserves. I made the jam preserves. But I also keep bees, and I have honey.
SW: Yeah
BS: I know how to field dress a squirrel. [Sandra cracks up] I mean, not that I want to kill squirrels, but, like, if it was necessary, we could make it happen. [laughs]
SW:
Wow. Yeah. So, I mean, I think I just, yeah, I think I was right. [Brandy laughs] Everyone? The apocalypse, if you happen to be, if you happen to know where Brandy lives, you’re in luck. Just make sure you bring something to trade [Brandy laughs] and some skills that you can also contribute.
BS: I cannot knit, I cannot knit. So, you know, if you can knit—
SW: I would say yet
BS: because knitting is an important skill.
SW: I’m just going to say yet
BS: No, I’ve tried.
SW: because it sounds like [cracks up]
BS: It’s one of those skills: I knit not. I, I knit knots actually. That’s, that’s kind of…yeah, it did not work out.
SW:
Okay. So this brings me to, when you started with the miniatures, did you just—because also, clearly, you have a PhD, you are a medical historian. So you are excellent and an expert at research. So did you find out everything you needed to know, doing all your research first, and then you, like, tried some stuff and discovered, okay, that doesn’t work for me. I’m going to look some more. Or do you just, like, get a basic foundation and then you just go with whatever works for yourself?
BS: [laughing] No-o-o! [Sandra cracks up] I do not do any research at all
SW: Ohhh I love it!
BS:
for this kind of stuff. I don’t even use instructions to put bookcases together. Like, it drives my partner insane. [Sandra cracks up] No, I just dive in. I’m like, well, that didn’t work. You know? I think I can make this work. I don’t know, that didn’t work. Because [laughs] maybe it’s because I do research everywhere else
SW: Right.
BS: or something. It’s the one place where it’s just hands-on. I just let my hands figure it out, and sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t work. I’m like, I’m not even trained as an artist. [laughs] I mean, I do, I get paid for it, but like, I don’t, I don’t have training.
SW: You just, you just did it.
BS: I just do it. Which means, often I go the wrong way around and it takes forever and I do it wrong, like, six times. And everyone—Mark. Mark is always like, Brandy…you did finally look this up? If you had looked it up the first time, you wouldn’t have done all these other things. And I was like, that’s part of the fun!
SW: [laughs] Exactly!
BS: [laughs] I want to mess it up. I want the freedom to make mistakes. Ooh! That’s a big thing for me.
SW: Yeah.
BS:
I want the freedom to—Oh, I’m not supposed to curse, right?—I want the freedom to mess it up. Yes, I want to be able to, like, make all kinds of, like, stupid, sometimes expensive mistakes. [laughing] And I want to do it with my hands. Like, I built a little free library and it was…my partner was like, Look, there are templates online. I was like, Shh! [both crack up] No! I’m not even going to measure! We’re just going to get… And I love it. It is the most wonderful like free— I, I’m in, I’m—Okay. I think in another life I might have been a cat. So. I like to put things on the edge of things. Like, when I get something out [Sandra cracks up] of the fridge, I like to set it on the very edge of the counter where it looks like it’s going to fall off. That’s like how I want, the one place in my life where I’m like, just living on the edge. I’m like, I don’t know if this is gonna work at all, but at least it’s very small. [laughs]
SW: Yeah, literally. Do you have a, do you have a photo of that little free library you made?
BS: Ah, do I..? No. I could go probably take a picture of it. It’s outside. It has become a chipmunk house…[Sandra cracks up] and a mouse house. So it had books in it, but I have it in my garden next to my big rosebush and all this other stuff…
SW: So, critters.
BS: Books turned out to be great bedding for lots of things. So yeah, it’s not really a little free library anymore? Now it just, critters live in it.
SW: Yeah, it’s a little free critter…house. [laughs]
BS: I opened the door one time, to see what was still in there. And like, all these little creatures were like, Aah! And I was like, Oh, sorry! [laughs]
SW: [cracks up]
We have a, we have a tool shed that we inherited from the previous owners of this house, and we have fixed it, fixed it, quote unquote, so many times, but the squirrels keep finding a way in and they literally use it to store [Brandy laughs] their pine cones. So like, okay, it’s the squirrel house now.
BS: It’s the squirrel house now.
SW: Good luck to you! You know, if anyone needs, I don’t know how many cubic feet. It’s got to be like 100 cubic feet [both laugh] of pinecones, just, you know, hit me up.
BS: [laughing] We’ll let you know.
SW: Yeah.
BS:
We have, we have a woodpile. So we heat our house with wood, and we have a woodpile by our garage, which the chipmunks also have used. And so my partner is just as bad as I am in some ways. So he’s [Sandra laughs] he’s developed a means of creating a sort of little porch. So there’s a piece of wood that sticks out and he’s, like, turned it into this little porch/patio kind of, chipmunk porch patio. And he feeds the thing there. And so he just puts food on this [cracks up] We’re very critter-friendly here.
SW: You are. So. Okay, getting back to miniatures, how many are you working on right now?
BS:
Well, I had to take a hiatus because I had all these book manuscripts that were due [Sandra laughs] so I haven’t worked on it in a while, which is unfortunate because I had gotten to the place where I had…I had two complete finished…of the puppets, and then I had the heads done and the body work done for the next two puppets. And I just had two more puppets that needed to be, needed to have the porcelain part done. And then, you know, I can start dressing them. And…I have the ballroom, ballroom-slash-music room-stage thing done and the bar done and the library done.
SW: Wow-w-w.
BS: But I still have to do the office and the, the lounge and the, there’s a garden house thing that [Sandra laughs] I’ve built twice. I built, I built a small version of it and was like, oh, shoot, that’s not going to be big enough now. And so now I’m building the bigger version of it.
SW: [laughing] Uh-huh?
BS: It’s like a big, you know, greenhouse-looking kind of thing.
SW: Yeah.
BS: I had to build new shelves [laughing] in my room so I could put all this stuff. And then I thought, you know, I should really decorate the outsides of these boxes because they’re basically like a three-sided box with a floor.
SW: Yep.
BS:
No top, because I have to put the light down and then use the front to film. And I thought, well, maybe I should buy siding, so I did, I bought little [Sandra laughs] So I’m putting tiny little bits of, of cedar siding, cedar-shake siding on the sides of, and now I need windows! So. So, where am I at with this project? That’s a good question. I think I’m about a third of the way through, finishing everything that’s necessary to make the next series of stop-motion videos, but then, of course, the stop-motion itself takes…forever. [laughs] It’s like, you know, to raise your hand,
SW: Yeah.
BS: it’s like, I don’t know, 200 frames or something. So it’s it’s it takes a really, really long time. And I have to set up a big light box and, you know [laughing] not use that room for anything else.
SW: Right. So okay, so—couple questions. One, where do you store all the old miniatures that you’ve created? Do you have, like, a whole separate storage area? Because they’re small, but there’s a lot.
BS: I tend to give them away.
SW: Ohh.
BS: I tend to give them away, so—which…I know, which [chuckles] makes some people faint when I tell them this.
SW: But I love that. I love that idea.
BS:
Yeah. So there’s a nice, a nice lady who is my adopted grandmother down the street. Sally. And so I made something specific for her, like, this cute little bathroom with like, a tub, and it’s got, like, fuzzy robe hanging on the wall and all that. And she loved it so much that I have, so I’m planning to give her one of the, the mini rooms that’s sort of self-contained, and it’s got a little light on the wall and stuff. And then I’m going to give the old greenhouse to her friend, Mary. So—because they come down to visit my miniatures all the time. [laughs]
SW: Oh.
BS: Which is adorable, so. Yeah. So I give them away, typically, and…one’s going to my mother-in-law and stuff. I mean, it’s, it’s kind of fun. I do reuse some things. Some things do get used. I tend to reuse things like windows and some objects…cups, saucers, things like that. But since I’m working with so much bigger dolls, a lot of stuff just didn’t work with the new stuff. So.
SW: Right. Wow.
BS: Oh, and then I also, I also got my sizing wrong—so, you can go too big.
SW:[laughing] Okay.
BS: So I tried to create a chair and then I—Like, I don’t know where I went wrong. Somewhere, I doubled something someplace. And it’s more like a Barbie-sized doll chair. And I was like, oh crap, now that’s too big to use. [both laugh] So I thought maybe I could give that to the chipmunk for his little den. [Sandra cracks up] He might like that.
SW: Yeah, maybe a cushion. [Brandy laughs] Yeah. So. Wow. And I even, like, I’m just like, Should I ask about the stop-motion part of this? [laughing]
BS: Oh! So, for that, I got really crazy and decided…
SW: And also self-taught, also self-taught.
BS: Yeah. So…
SW: Wow.
BS:
Okay. I did have to watch some tutorials to figure that one out, because my original stop-motion tools were relatively easy to use. They were Stop Motion Pro. If you want to get started super easy, that’s a great one to start with. And that one’s nice because it has a nice editing feature where if you want to edit something out, like your finger gets in there or something, you can kind of take it out. But everyone told me that professionals use Dragon Frame and I thought, I can be a professional. [Sandra laughs] So I went and got Dragon Frame and that is so much harder to use. But it has one feature that makes me not… Like, I didn’t want to use it anymore, but it has something called onion skinning.
SW: Oh.
BS: Which means you can layer over the last image with a new image. Because when you go in to move a tiny little doll, you have the option of accidentally moving the whole thing when you don’t really want to. You just want to move like…her finger or something.
SW: Yeah.
BS: So if you don’t, without the onion skinning, you might have her, like, doing a sudden jolt to one side without realizing it. And so that is really nice, because it means I can line things back up before the next shot, you know? And I usually take 2 to 3 shots per single movement because your,
SW: Yeah.
BS:
Your eye isn’t as fast as the camera. So three seconds actually works better. And then you can speed the three seconds up. So you can do the three seconds and you can speed the whole frame up. That sounds more complicated than it is. [both laugh] You know, you’re taking one, two, three of the same picture, then another change. One, two, three and then another change. One, two, three and then the change, one two, three. And then you can take the whole thing and speed it up. And it creates a little bit of a blur effect. So it actually looks more like movement.
SW: Ah-h-h. Movement.
BS: Yeah.
SW: That’s cool.
BS: And then your frames per second matter a lot too. So if you look ten frames versus 12 frames versus 24 frames… And now I’m in the 12 to 24 frames because I just…because I’m just never satisfied, that’s why. [laughs]
SW: So the the more, it’s 24—you said 12 to 24 frames per…
BS: Second.
SW: Second. [long pause] Okay. That seems like a lot of work, Brandy. [laughs]
BS: Yeah, it is. Yeah. So on average I’m taking, you know, thousands and thousands of frames to do our short little, what, it’s not even a whole minute of the intro video. Yeah, so.
SW: But okay. But of course—it’s worth it. What’s the feeling? How do you feel when it comes together?
BS: It’s awesome! I’m so obsessed. I will, like, forget to eat and stuff, like, I just, I just am so obsessed with it. I love it so much. And like I said, I pretend I’m doing it for the intro to my show because then that gives it a reason to exist. But I would just be doing this anyway.
SW: Any [breaks off laughing]
BS: I would, I would just be doing it anyway.
SW: [laughing] Yeah. Yeah. Well I, it’s just so great. Okay. But I have a sidebar conversation question, which is about your mystery novels. You mentioned having to write manuscripts and finish them. Are we talking about Jo, another Jo Jones book?
BS:
No. So Jo Jones, who I love deeply and dearly and is lovely, she had two books and I was preparing, I was, I have ideas for two more. But my publisher is less inclined to, to do them right now because, you know, it’s a, it’s a really weird world right now if you’re in, if you are in a traditional publication.
SW: Yeah.
BS:
So I’m with Hanover Square, HarperCollins. It’s a big publishing house and it’s traditionally published, which means, you know, they have to agree that they’re going to publish it. If you’re self-published, you just publish them. You just write them and they go out there. But I don’t do it that way. And so, I can’t give them something they don’t want or they don’t want yet. So even though the books did quite well.
SW: Yeah.
BS:
As a matter of fact, there is a screenplay and a company, a production house called Silver Lake Entertainment in LA is attempting to place that screenplay. And I think, if that happens, obviously, I’m sure my publisher is going to be like, actually, we do want more of those. [Sandra laughs] But, you know, it hasn’t happened yet. And so we’re we’re at that stage where unfortunately, I don’t know if there’s more Jo Jones novels coming up, but that’s okay. Like, I’m full of other ideas. I’m working simultaneously on two novels right now…on two different novels, two different genres. It’s hard to write in the same genre, two novels at the same time, but you can, I find I can do it if they’re in different genres. So I have a fantasy that I’m doing. So…romantasy is very popular right now.
SW: Yeah.
BS: I cannot really write romantasy. It’s, I, I don’t know, my LEGO bricks do not fit that way [Sandra laughs] but I can write fantasy that has romance in it, you know.
SW: Yeah, of course.
BS:
It’s, it’s just, it’s not quite as you know, it’s not like fairy smut in the same way that… It’s not like sex and dragons, quite, but, but yeah. So I’m working on a fantasy novel right now, which is a kind of, a retelling of the idea of a fallen star. So, you have a person from our world just sort of wakes up somewhere else, and there’s—our world doesn’t exist in this place. She doesn’t know how she got there, but that’s part of the mystery that you’re trying to solve. But you have this other worlds, so I’m working on that one. I have about half of that manuscript done, and then I have a new mystery that…I can’t give too much away about. But I can say that…it’s very hard to talk about mysteries and not accidentally—
SW: [laughs] Exactly
BS: give away more than you should. But it would be a Christmas mystery.
SW: Okay.
BS: It has things to do with Charles Dickens.
SW: Ooooh.
BS: It is not about Charles Dickens, exactly, but it’s, it’s, basically a Charles Dickens scholar is the main character.
SW: Okay.
BS: And it has to do with a missing book, a murder, and a 19th century plot. It’s happening in present day, but like, a 19th century plot that has bearing. I’m a historian, right? So there’s gonna be a history. It’s gonna be a historical angle. So a 19th century historical plot that has bearing on the current mystery.
SW: Yeah. Fantastic. Oh, I’m so glad I started this little sidebar. [Brandy laughs] I mean, I found that Jo Jones, I’m actually still reading The Dead Comes to Stay. So, it’s delightful. Anyway, so I was hoping for more, but that’s—maybe that screenplay, maybe there’s a production, maybe…
BS: Who knows?
SW: There might be more.
BS: The, the second, I really enjoyed The Dead Come to Stay, that one was actually more fun for me to write in some ways, because I got to make the mystery a little bit more complex.
SW: Yeah
BS: You might have noticed? [laughs]
SW: [laughs] No, it was great.
BS: I also had a thriller we’re trying to sell. My agent has my thriller out for— She’s trying to shop it around right now, and the thriller is called A Thin Black Seam. And it’s, it’s far more dark than my other, my other stuff.
SW: Yeah. Fantastic. Okay. Okay, let’s wrap up that sidebar. [Brandy laughs] And does this mean that you can start, finish your current miniatures project? Or…
BS: No. [laughs]
SW: Oh-h-h.
BS: What I normally do is, partly, my craft room is a bit warm this time of year. So I also tend to take a hiatus over the summer anyway, just because otherwise you just sweat your butt off up there. [both laugh] So yeah, I, I pick it up usually again in September, and I work on it through, over the winter, so.
SW: Yeah.
BS: I’m hopeful that by, you know, this coming spring, I’ll have the, have everything wrapped up and at least be filming. I might not be finished with the the stop-motion, but I’ll at least be filming. Try, try to get it in before the next hot wave. [laughs]
SW: Yeah, that’s, that’s going to be so great.
BS: It’s fun. It’s so much fun. And especially now. Oh, and I also decided this time that they needed to have more than one expression. So I made multiple heads for each doll.
SW: [laughing] Of course.
BS: So like, there’s a surprise head and there’s the ooooh, you know…the eyes move and various, the eyes open and shut and you know.
SW: This, this is, like, the tale of the best kind of escalation.
BS: [laughing]
I know. [Sandra laughs] Yeah. I am a person of escalation. This is, this is just true. This, this happened. I’m going to have a little garden. I’m going to have a yard in which there’s no lawn. It’s just, every year there’s just more—there’s just more. Actually, I said that once during a job interview, like it was going pretty well, and I stopped in the middle and I was like, look, I just want to, I just want to take a pause, you know, take the temperature here. Like, I don’t know how you’re feeling about me, but there will just be more. [Sandra cracks up] This just gets to be more over time. [laughs]
SW: Well, there—that’s the title of your memoir.
BS: Yeah. More. [chuckling]
SW: There will just be more.
BS: There will just be more. [both laugh]
SW: That’s so wonderful. I can’t wait to see the new animation.
BS: Yeah, me too.
SW: Do you, like, do you do you entitle them for yourself?
BS: Not really. I mean, since I stick them on different seasons. I used to do one every new season, but this new project is taking so much longer that obviously I’m like, well, I’m not going to get that done in a year. But…they…I lost my train of thought. My train went somewhere.
SW: Yeah, do you give them titles? Is the question.
BS: I do not give them titles, but that [chuckling] the word ‘title’ made me think of something else. [Sandra laughs] But then another train came into the station and bounced that train and so I lost it. [both laugh]
SW: It’s funny, this is what casual conversations are like between friends.
BS: Right.
SW: Okay, well, I’m, I know that you’re moving on to something else today, so I’m going to start our little wrap-up.
BS: Sure thing.
SW: Is there anything else you want to say about miniatures for anyone who wants to get into them?
BS:
Wow, oh..just do. Just do it. One of the great things—Oh, go to Etsy and or go to, you know, or there’s a place called Miniature Crush that, that sells miniatures. But people will make their own stuff and sell it. And I found some really cool things where people make tiny little things out of clay, and people are just so handy and so interesting. And there’s people who rehab dollhouses. I actually follow a father and daughter on Instagram who, they got into it, I think, because he was having some anxiety or PTSD or something like that, and they just rehab these doll houses and turn them into like, like, this is our Halloween dollhouse and this is our Christmas dollhouse. You know, just how fun is that? You can you can find reasonable ones. You can go to, you know, your average craft store often will have, like, bits and bobs, and it’s just…even if you just get stuff—I don’t actually build from a dollhouse. Mine are just boxes, like shadow boxes, kind of. It’s so much fun. Like, it’s totally worth doing.
SW: Awesome, I love that. Okay, so then we’re going to segue into Small Joys. So what is something that you have or you do [laughs] in maybe a small way [Brandy laughs] that brings you joy, that you, you know, when you need a little uplift?
BS: I, I love my garden. I spend a lot of time in my garden, and I have little benches everywhere so that, you know, I can… I don’t just work in the garden, you know.
SW: Yeah.
BS: I sit in the garden and I listen to the birds and I listen— We have a very bird-friendly yard anyway. And so, you know, we’ve got little wrens and we have robins and we have cardinals and we have orioles and we have catbirds.
SW: Oh wow.
BS: The catbirds moved in this year, and they have been hilarious because they’ve reared several chicks who, you know, follow around the yard and we’ve got doves and it’s—and screech owls, little screech owls.
SW: Oh, wow.
BS:
Yeah. And so, you know, I just sit in my garden just…surrounded by flowers all, all sort of blooming at different times and, you know, just, just I—sometimes if you sit out there long enough, you can swear you can watch stuff growing. You’re like, that literally got bigger this minute, like I watched it. And it’s such a place of peace. And I’m in the United States where, like, we need some peace because stuff’s on fire. And so I spend a lot of time out there, just kind of deep breathing and just experiencing kind of, it’s like garden mindfulness, I think.
SW: Yeah. Oh, I love that. That’s so lovely. And I think where you are there is winter, right? You do get snow?
BS: Oh yeah, there’s all the winter there is. I also, so in the wintertime, I move a great number of plants inside [both chuckle] so, in my office starts to, like—right now my office looks like an office. In the wintertime, my office looks like a small jungle that you have to kind of, like, peer through plants [Sandra laughs] to find me in.
SW: Yeah, great.
BS: So I just move my joy inside. [laughs]
SW: Yes! Even better. It’s your winter joy. [laughs]
BS: And I have a lot of orchids, too, so I grow a lot of orchids.
SW: Oh, that’s so cool. That is so cool, thank you for sharing that. So I did promise you, Brandy, that we would end the show with my world famous Speed Round. So this is where I ask you silly questions
BS: Oh!
SW: and you give me whatever comes to mind.
BS: I love this, okay.
SW: There’s no no judgments, no stakes. It’s all fun.
BS: This is lovely, I love it, all right.
SW: So this season we’re doing favourites. So this means you can say your absolute favourite for an answer or a favourite for an answer. Okay. Are you ready?
BS: I’m ready.
SW: Favourite ways to eat potatoes?
BS: Chips.
SW: Ha! [both laugh] That was easy. Okay. Favourite pizza toppings?
BS: Oh, pepperoni. Oh, yes.
SW: Yeah. Okay. We are friends. [Brandy chuckles; hopefully, not uncomfortably] Favourite—
BS: I’m a meatarian.
SW: Yes. [laughing] Favourite comfy outfit when you’re just schlepping around at home?
BS:
I have the most amazing wardrobe of shlepping-around clothes. [Sandra laughs] There are these long gowns from, they’re called the Eden Collection, and they’re from Supesu. And they’re like, silk-like, and they’re long and drapey. And I get matching [laughs] I get matching over, like, house coats to go with them. And I have these in red, black, green, blue and like a purple-y mauve and I’m looking, oh, and amber. [laughs]
SW: Wow. Okay. What was this? What was the site, what was the retailer?
BS:
Supesu is, and it’s the Eden collection for their—they’re actually dresses. You could wear them as dresses, but I sleep in them [both laugh] So you can wear them outside. They have a nice drapey neck and they have them, and they’ve got them in all sizes. So they’ve got—no matter what shape you are, they’ve, they’ve got a version of it for you. And then I buy, I went to Woodstock, New York, and I found this place that had, a purveyor of all these different, like, sort of silk robes. And I just went around going, that matches that one and that matches that one. [laughs]
SW: Perfect. Love it. Okay. [laughs]
BS: Sorry, that wasn’t very speedy, but.
SW: No, that’s totally, I just call it the Speed Round, but it often devolves. Anyway! Favourite holiday?
BS: Halloween. I am—this goth girl’s heart is in Halloween! And by the way, Halloween is an entire month long and it starts on October 1st. I don’t know why people don’t understand that.
SW: Okay [laughs] Well, you spread the gospel [Brandy laughs] and someday it will be true. Okay. This one I think is going to be hard for you. Favourite tree or flower?
BS: Oh, my.
SW: Right?
BS: Oh. Favorite tree or flower?
SW: How about a favourite of each?
BS: A favorite? Okay, well, I love bee balm as a flower. I think bee balm is a— though I love my orchids, too, but bee balm is just… It’s got that wonderful bergamot smell and everything, and I have a lot of it growing right now. Favorite tree? I’m a, I’m a big fan of oaks, I have to say.
SW: Mmm. Do you have any on your property?
BS: Not big ones. We have, we have some squirrel planted varieties that are [chuckles] ones of almost as tall as I am right now.
SW: Wow. Yeah. I don’t know if, if… Here in Canada, we call trees that sprout like that, volunteers. Volunteer trees. Do you say that?
BS: I call them the squirrel garden because [Sandra laughs] I have at the moment, I’ve got a chipmunk that plants sunflowers everywhere, and a squirrel that plants oak trees all over my yard.
SW: [laughing] They’re just helping you out there.
BS: They’re helping me out.
SW: Yeah. Okay. Let’s see…what have I, have got next? What have I got next? Oh. What is your favourite or a favourite kind of movie or kind of TV to wind down with?
BS: Ah, so I don’t watch a lot, but when I do, it is a BBC mystery. I am a big fan of Brokenwood, which is a mystery series set in New Zealand.
SW: Oh, I don’t know that one.
BS: It’s fabulous.
SW: Okay, I’m just going to take a moment [laughs] to butt in and say, my kids, home for the summer, they’re 19 and 22, and we are rewatching the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes.
BS: Ohh yeah. I actually own the whole collection and
SW: Yes, so do we.
BS: and we do watch that fairly regularly. [laughs]
SW: So do we. We’re just doing a rewatch this summer. It’s so, I just love it.
BS: I have a secret, one of my other obsessions. I am a Sherlockian. [Sandra gasps] And so, I have, I’m a Sherlockian, and I actually have a friend who is in the Sherlock, the actual Sherlock Society. Now, I’m not in the society, he is, but I’m one degree of separation.
SW: Yes [laughs]
BS: But I know all the stuff. I have read all the books. I’ve also read all the books that have followed that are not written by Arthur Conan Doyle. And I think I’ve gotten to all of them, which is kind of amazing.
SW: Wow.
BS:
At least all the ones that are written in English. I have the giant annotated, the gigantic tome, Annotated Sherlock Holmes. I’ve, I actually used to run a program which was like, “try to stump me on Sherlock Holmes trivia,” which is impossible. [Sandra laughs] And I dressed up as, I used to dress up as Sherlock Holmes to do a program at the museum that I worked for. I make a very convincing Sherlock Holmes. [chuckles]
SW: I can, I can see that. I can actually see that.
BS: I’m also, like, deeply autistic and therefore…yeah. [both laugh]
SW: Okay. That’s wonderful. Oh, I love that. Okay. But I will check out Brokenwood.
BS: Brokenwood is great. It’s actually like Midsomer Murders, but actually well written.
SW: Oh, excellent. Ooooh…[laughs] I don’t think anyone’s going to dispute that. Okay, so.
BS: I mean, I like Midsomer Murders, too, but someone got killed with a block of cheese. I mean, come on.
SW: Yeah, yeah [laughs]
BS: Actually, I, there’s some really well written ones. I can say that because I have friends who have written for Midsomer Murders [laughs]
SW: There you go.
BS: and some of them are really good.
SW: Some of them are excellent. [both laugh] Okay, but let’s be honest, it’s such a loooooong running series. There’s got to be, there’s going to be—
BS: [laughing] It’s gotten a little bit silly here. The last, the last year I’ve been, like [makes funny noise demonstrating doubt]
SW: [laughs] But overall, we love those BBC mysteries. Just putting that out there, friends, it’s official. Okay, we have a couple more. [laughs] What is your favourite kind of chocolate?
BS: Dark. Very. All the way.
SW: Yeah. Excellent. Okay. And this is the last one—
BS: Like, from the void. [chuckles]
SW: [laughs] Void chocolate.
BS: Void chocolate.
SW: That’s a great brand name. Could someone just do a whole line of dark chocolate? Just call it Void.
BS: Void. I need Void.
SW: Yeah. Okay. This one, I know it’s going to be hard, so you can just say a favourite, but: word. A favourite word or your favourite word.
BS: Today, skullduggery. [Sandra laughs in delight; Brandy chuckles] Tomorrow, probably be something else.
SW:
Yes! That is a wonderful word to end on. [Brandy laughs] I guess we’re doing skullduggery today about miniatures. And thank you so, so, so, so much, Brandy, for joining me today, just a rando who reached out to you. [Brandy laughs] You were very generous to say yes. [both laugh] So, friends, as always, I will pop all the relevant links that I can find and remember in the episode show notes. So thank you for joining us, Brandy.
BS: Thank you. Thank you for having me.
SW: Have a wonderful, wonderful summer, and thank you for joining us, friends of the podcast, my lovelies. We will meet up again soon. And in the meantime, create joy for yourself and others, however works for you, because we contain multitudes.
[jazzy jumpin’ music]
SW: We Contain Multitudes is on The Incomparable network of smart and funny pop culture podcasts where members can access exclusive podcasts and a wonderful community. Find out more at theincomparable.com.
Special thanks, as always, to Erika Ensign, our editrix extraordinaire of Castria Communications. Award-winning excellence in podcast production and media solutions. Check them out at wearecastria.com.
[music fades]
Robotic voice: The incomparable podcast network. Become a member and support this show today. theincomparable.com/members
[digital blip sound]
SHOW NOTES:
Brandy’s website
Check out Brandy’s cool handiwork at Peculiar Book Club on YouTube
Charming Disaster
Sculpey
The House of Da Vinci
5 Minute Murder
Stop Motion Pro
DragonFrame
MiniatureCrush
EDEN collection by Supesu
The Brokenwood Mysteries