Denise and I like to play with Spoonerisms. I think it's because of a piece I used to perform in my storytelling days, Loldigocks and the Bee Threars. The line "She rocked and rocked until it [the littlest chair] pell afart" still slays us. As it did my four-year-old listeners. (Oddly enough, littler kids didn't like it. Two and three-year-olds have very fixed ideas of correctness. You're telling it wrong! one sobbed to me once.)
So we're prone to calling the bears, who often accompany us to art fairs, tuft stoys.
Okay, roll forward a couple of years. I'd been painting puffins on pots for a while, using source photos from an old National Geographic, and an Audubon day planner from 2005. After a 5-year hiatus, I finally got accepted by the Anacortes Arts Festival, so thought I'd do some coastal sea-life paintings on pots to take along. I got out my photos...
And discovered I'd been painting Atlantic puffins.
Oops. I should know better. I've seen tufted puffins. I've drawn them from life at the Oregon Coast Aquarium. So I drew some from memory on pasta bowls, pie plates, a couple of dessert plates. Loved the results, so you can to see expect more of them flocking to a show near you.
Just ask for the pufted tuffins...