Here he is, the June raffle prize.

“Woe is me ….”
(An explanation of why this has taken me two months to complete.)

It was suggested (a friendly warning) by a member here on these very boards to ‘beware the Windows updates‘. Although I am quite aware of some of the possible complications that can occur, at that point, I really had no idea the scope of how bad things could really get.

Indeed, I should have heeded their friendly warning.

Oh yes, I allowed the WIN OS system its necessary updates and of course, my various software programs started to battle each other for control.

As I watched the war escalate, and program after program started failing to work properly, I grumbled and raised my balled fist in exasperation to no one in particular. Though admittedly, I did curse Bill Gates like a seasoned sailor.

In my frustration, I was tempted to walk away from my PC and this thing they call the World Wide Web … forever. 🙁

All would have been lost, my PC, my sanity and most importantly, my pride, except that I had an ace up my sleeve. 😎

Enter the programmer fella to the rescue (who’s easy on the eyes if you catch my drift 😉 :wink:). Which upon his return from vacation, was able to rescue the system he created and remove the infiltrator(s), stopping them dead in their tracks; for a nominal fee of course. 🙄

A small price to pay for my sanity and my meger return to this thing I have dubbed, the Wild World Web.

Here he is in all his Lavender Blue glory, the June Raffle I won and playfully call, “The Purple People Eater.” 😆

P.S. I must have taken over 60 shots of this fella. Many of you have stated (and now I have experienced it first hand) Windstones are NOT easy to photograph! Not to mention that my perfectionism had to be maintained or else I’d never get this posted. 😉

Without further ado ….

Below, he looks like he’s about to fireball my woodpile in the background. 😮

Note the Lavender wall in the photo below. I told you all I was a closet purple lover!

I really wanted to include one more indoor shot with him posed with the white Lap Dragon. She looked so cute in it, unlike the above one where she looks mad. But for some stupid reason, although it was reduced (many attempts to fix the issue), it was still showing full sized here on this post, no matter what I did … Grrrr! It’s on Photo Bucket if you really want to see it.

And last but not least, only because Bardwing did it , the felt bottom.

As you can see, no, he’s not signed by Ms. Melody and although it would have been nice, it definately does not detract from the specialness of this item.

Now here’s the interesting part that I hope you all will be able to see. When Ms. Melody says test paint, she MEANS it.

This fella has some green envy coursing through him. If you look closely in the upper left of the screen in the below photo, above the felt pad, what you are seeing (I hope) is green paint. I see it in two spots on the underside and there was a smidge of it that got on the gold horns, which was easily scraped off with my finger nail.

I remember thinking when I first saw it on the horn, “Hey, how’d that get on there?” “Ooooh ….” “Ahhhh….” 😎

Thank you Ms. Melody!

Monochromatic he may be, but he looks spectacular in my Lavender room with rich, dark purple carpeting.

Not that there’s anyway for you all to know this … I actually painted both spare rooms Lavender and of course, they both have the same matching purple carpet.

I guess you could say that I’m ‘out of the closet’ now? 😆