Author Illustrator Blog Tour... excuses, excuses

Dear Internet,
I know I promised you (and Carin Berger) I would post answers to five questions on a Virtual Author Illustrator Blog Tour on this blog by Monday, but as you can see, I didn't.
Instead I cut out a lot of pieces of frisket.

And I did very neat cardboard recycling.

I picked these flowers in a meadow and sent them in a virtual sort of way to my mother who is having surgery in Australia.

I fell in love with this postcard of Stonehenge; the marks on the grass reminded me of the marks on a sperm whale.

 And while I was thinking about sperm whales I found this picture of a model of Moby Dick which was apparently at the London Zoo in 1955.

While I was thinking of Moby Dick (I'm pretty much always thinking of Moby Dick), I did a painting of Ahab and the Whale for the Housing Works Moby Dick Marathon NYC fundraiser, which could be yours by simply clicking the link and forking out $200.

The rest of the time I was hard at work finishing one book, (A Fine Dessert, written by Emily Jenkins) well nearly finishing (if I'd finished, I'd have been able to answer the blog questions),

and drawing and researching and drawing and researching for another one, (Finding Winnie, written by Lindsay Mattick) both of which are consuming my hours and filling my head with beautiful, complicated, puzzling, thrilling details.

And visiting the folk at Union Square Cafe, who are celebrating 30 years as a farm-to-table institution and who have asked four illustrators to mark this important occasion with postcards, one for each season. Those four are Milton Glaser, Maira Kalman, me and Roz Chast. I'm completely in awe of all of them. (You can pick up the postcards at the restaurant!)

 And because I'm some sort of idiot I suggested making an enormous Baby Tree to install in the window at Books of Wonder next week, so I have giant half painted babies at my feet right now.

So I'm very sorry I didn't answer any of the following blogtour questions,

(1.what am i currently working on?

2. how does my work differ from others of its genre?

3. why do i write what i write?

4. how does my individual writing/illustrating process work?

5. who are the two author/illustrators that you are passing the interview to?)

and I didn't necessarily mean to make this a girls' club, but I have handed the baton to the wonderful Dasha Tolkstikova and Lauren Castillo, both of whom have really beautiful new books out now or nearly!