One of my favourite stores that I love to have a window shop around is Mudhoney. I’ve always loved the design ethic, and always been particularly enamoured by the construction of the furnishings as well as the textures deployed. If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand, million, squillion times; texture is all. (There’s just no excuse for shoddy workmanship in Second Life anymore, you can buy cheap items that deploy fantastic textures in their creation, so seeing furniture from 2006 is just not an option anymore. I’m not a design snob, but come on..it looks *shite*)
Anyway, back to Mudhoney, and I could have squeed a wee of joyous excitement wandering around the store. So many treasures popping out at me from every direction…so many pretty knick-knacks. Stunning rugs, sets that are familiar to me because I already own them, tee-hee, but also lots of shiny new things. And none more bloody beautiful than this glorious ‘Winter Living Room’.

It comprises 29 pieces of living-room happy; details that we take for granted such as cupboards opening and closing (Question: do you put anything IN your Second Life cupboards? My answer: erm..yes!) and candles that light.(You can NEVER have enough candles in Second Life. Jus’ sayin’) Touch the books or the bolster cushions for a novel to wear as you recline, and there are also menu-driven sits in the sofa, bolster, pillows and stool. I LOVE the textures on this; the woodgrain on the mirror is just sexual chocolate to me; it’s so beautiful (as is the imagery therein) I love the photo frames and the pictures they hold, I adore the branches and the light fitting and I really rate the textures deployed on the fabrics and on the books. The blind is perfect too…there’s only one thing I dislike actually, and that’s the stool.

There’s nothing wrong with it per se, it’s just me being a picky old moo because the shape reminds me of the kind of furniture you’re find across the grid in, erm, 2006 . Don’t misunderstand me; the texture on it is lovely, but I’d far rather an ickle chair or something more substantial for the price of this set, which is, wait for it…L$2100 for 197 prims of happy. This translates into (at today’s rate) $8.73 or £5.44.

Is it worth it? Well, yes because there is no doubt in my mind that this has taken hours to craft and develop, but in today’s economic climate spending over a fiver on virtual furniture is a tad beyond me, and I fear it’s going to be beyond many other patrons too. This is a shame, because it’s a super- stylish contribution to virtual home furnishing that is totally deserving of all the praise I have bestowed upon it. I just fear that at this price not many avatars are going to be able to enjoy it:(
But don’t let price put you off if you can help it, venture over to Mudhoney and see what you think. It’s definitely a beauty!

Sometimes in life you need to take a step back from things, before coming back refreshed, reinvigorated and renewed.

And that’s what I’ve done. For various reasons I needed to step away from Second Life for a while. And here’s the thing; I didn’t miss it. It shocks me to say that; Second Life for me became an obsession that then changed into something completely different. I began to resent logging in; how strange is that?

Then I began to feel that my blog was a worthless contribution to metavirtual journalism, I got myself completely bogged down by the brilliance of the blogs that already exist out there. How could I compete with the Strawberry Singh’s, or The Rumors, or Shopping Cart Discos of this world? I don’t have the technical nous, I don’t have the artistic ability, I don’t have the connections…I don’t have the time.

And then I realised that I’d forgotten EXACTLY what Kittywitchin had all been about.

I established this blog to serve as nothing more than a record of the adventures that I have in Second Life, and to feature the amazing items that I find on my travels, created by the most inspirational creators on the grid. Some well known, some not so, but all worthy of featuring on these, my pages; because I love the creations they make, pure and simple, and feel they are worthy of praise.

I’d lost my blog focus. Now is the time to get it back.

I’m never going to be in the elite of the Second Life blogosphere, but is that a pressure that I really want to have? Nope; it’s not. So I’m going to stop trying to make this blog into something extraordinary, and I’m just going to keep it humble and happy in its approach to all things Second Life. The way that it should be, and always has been.

We live in a wonderful virtual world that has faced some amazing challenges in recent years, and It will continue to do so as it changes and develops into..well, I just don’t know.

But I do know that my real life is enriched by it.

There’s no pressure..that was my own non-virtual creation.
From now on this Kitty is just going to exist in a state of joyful bliss, surrounded in a plethora of prims and enveloped in the myriad of mesh that enables each of us to turn our dreams into reality.

And at a time when real life is a bit sucky for most people at the moment, that is something to be thankful for indeed:)