Rose and Lavender were in the shop earlier today.
They have found a home.
There will be something new in the shop tomorrow.
This is the Easter season in the southern hemisphere, eggs and pumpkins.
Our one and only pumpkin for the year, self seeded and determined has come inside to join my little Easter decoration on the kitchen table.
Pumpkins are so photogenic don't you think.
All that fertile roundness and subtle colour changes.
I am enjoying what will probably be the last batch of granola until next summer. The mornings are getting chilly, porridge time.
I eat my granola with a couple of large spoonfuls of homemade yogurt and tell myself what a lucky girl I am.
You can find the recipe for the Granola here and if you look up to just below my header you can see a link to all my recipes.
Going through them I do seem to have quite a few repeats.
You will find the recipe for pasties, and Anzacs and rock cakes and several chocolate cakes and on it goes.
Renewal
This little one, Cathy, went into the shop today around teatime.
She has found a home.
The beautiful fabric in her dress is some my auntie gave me for my Kate.
I made a pinafore with it when Kate was about 3.
The fabric is old, given to my auntie when her own daughter was small, in the early 1950s and somehow never used.
It had a sticker on it from the Viyella factory in the UK
My auntie has been unwell the past couple of weeks.
She is in her 80s , she lives next door to mum, she is fiercely independent.
Hope she gets better soon.
There will be more dolls going into the shop, probably each day this week.
Can't bear to sit for hours doing the slow process that is listing dolls on Etsy.
I am finding I need to just pull back a bit at the moment.
Take a breath.
Explore new things.
Refresh myself and my mind.
For the past week really I have been just letting myself be.
It is so good for creativity, for renewal, for peace.
It's great to take the time to be creative in a different way, planting out pansy seedlings, writing letters, sorting through fabrics and enjoying the colours and patterns.
It's great to take the time to watch the hens making their way around the garden, to watch the butterflies flitting from flower to flower, to watch the amazing clouds and sunsets and sunrises we are treated to at this time of year, to watch the leaves starting to turn and take on their autumn colours.
sunrise
sunrise
Sputtering Internet
Good grief, our internet sputtered and stopped and started and then completely disappeared on Thursday night and then , as if nothing had ever been wrong it reappeared this morning.
The treasury expires on Sunday evening (US East Coast time), I have no idea how to put the picture here so if you want to see all the reed and aqua goodness you will have to click the link.
Hello kitchen sink
Got my kitchen sink back this morning.
It has been out of bounds since Saturday morning due to the continuing saga of the new cooktop.
Now the window frames have been repainted, the wet area has been resealed, the window blind has been taken down and washed and it's all looking sparkling.
We have been using the bathroom, the one with just a bath and handbasin, to get water and do the washing up.
You don't know how many times I have walked to the kitchen sink to fill the kettle and then had to turn and go to the bathroom hand basin instead.
Some journeys are just hardwired into our brains.
Oh, and remember when you were a kid and you were sure the water in the bathroom tasted different to the water in the kitchen - it's true.
A cosy way to start the day - with wool
Has anyone read the Rodney Hall book, Just Relations.
Remember the lady who knitted everything inside her house.
Though hers became full of dust and eaten by moths and mice.
And remember this exhibition by the knitters of Strathaven Aged Care Home that was on a few years ago and included in Ten Days on the Island.
Well, it's on again in May and this time I am going to see it.
Remember the lady who knitted everything inside her house.
Though hers became full of dust and eaten by moths and mice.
And remember this exhibition by the knitters of Strathaven Aged Care Home that was on a few years ago and included in Ten Days on the Island.
Well, it's on again in May and this time I am going to see it.
Inspiration and Trust
When I make a doll I draw on something deep inside me.
Sure I have certain handwork skills that I have developed and honed over time that make the process flow more easily.
But it's more than that , the impulse for the character of each doll comes from a part of that deeper me, my soul energy if you like.
Most dolls have to incubate until it's their time and then I know how they are going to look.
Even custom dolls that I work on in collaboration with a client still have to go through this process.
You can see this essence of soul in so many Waldorf/Steiner dolls.
The mere fact that they take so long to make , that they can't just be thrown together, means that they will possess part of the makers soul energy.
So each doll maker has their inherent style, you can pick which dolls belong to which dollmakers, you can see part of them in their dolls.
This style develops over time but if you were to put their dolls on a timeline you would see the progress from beginner to skilled artist.
When you teach people to make dolls, in my classes, they all start with a doll body that I have sewn and the student has to stuff.
They are all lead through the same process with the same materials to craft that perfect little head.
Every time I take a class I am amazed by how different each doll is.
Not the outer differences like hair and eye colour but the little bodies and heads all turn out so different from one another.
They have taken on something of their maker.
Early on in my doll making career a much more experienced dollmaker said that we tend to shape the doll's head to be the same shape as our own children.
May be so.
Maybe we are making our own doll children.
It has taken me all these years, 13 years , to feel that I am a doll maker, a doll designer, an artist.
I am confident in my skills and trusting of my ability to make the doll I dream of , to craft her and dress her and make a doll that can speak to the heart of others.
I trust that my soul energy gives an unmistakable little jenny wren warmth to my dolls just as I see the individual energy of other doll makers in their dolls.
I love what I do and I love being a part of an international doll making community.
I am so grateful that the internet has allowed me to join them.
We trustingly share our dolls on our blogs, in Flickr as well in our online shops so that we can enjoy and draw inspiration from each others work.
We are inspired by the way another person's work makes us feel, we can see their essence in their dolls, we are inspired to keep on creating.
It really is a joyous freely given thing - the joy of inspiration and creation.
I want to share some of my current favourite dollmakers with you:
Fabiola, of Fig and Me
Meike of Starry Sheep
Juliane of Froken Skicklig
Berrie of Moonchild Studio
Micha of Puppenleisel
Anouk of Atelier Poppenoek
Maria of Mariengold
Enjoy.
Taken at dusk the picture is grainy but I love the colours.
The purity of the white Sweet Alice happily mixed with the lovely greens and burgundies of the oregano.
All self sewn and growing in the cracks between the large old concrete squares probably put down more than sixty years ago.
The concrete has the remains of where an old rotary clothes line was sawn off at ground level and moved from the middle of the concrete to where it is now behind the wash house.
I hated the concrete when we first moved here but what a blessing it has been.
It is in squares about 3' x 3' and all kinds of little plants, pretty things and nuisance weeds grow there.
I guess if you squint your eyes and look through your rose coloured glasses you could imagine they were large flagstones.
At least that's what I used to do but now I look and see weathered old concrete, softened around all its edges by uninvited but welcome little plants.
The concrete that separates the house from the garden is where the children learned to ride their tricycles, their scooters and their bikes, their roller blades and skate boards,
it provided a space for a basketball court, badminton, down ball, rollerhockey played with broomsticks, many many games of cricket,
a place to do large chalk drawings, play hop scotch and to paint on the long roll of butchers paper and let the painting dry in the sun, it's the place where the cats lie at dusk and the line that the chooks are not supposed to cross.
It's where we sit at the little table for breakfast, where we split the wood and where the barbecue lives.
I don't hate it anymore.
It's not a fancy deck or a trendy outdoor room,
it's just the concrete and it's friendly and useful and the softest grey
and it's just fine.
Orange light, pink sun and more tomatoes
We had a crazy orange light here this afternoon, like bushfire light but I don't think there were any.
Perhaps it was just the heavy humid air.
Just before sunset the sun was a bright pink ball, magnificent.
It wasn't colouring the sky it was just a perfect pink circle in the sky.
Of course I may be seeing orange lights and pink suns because of the number of tomatoes I have been eating.
Is it possible to suffer hallucinations from an over dose of tomatoes, they are from the nightshade family after all.
Is it possible to suffer hallucinations from an over dose of tomatoes, they are from the nightshade family after all.
I am just about over tomatoes.
Tonight I made something mum used to make on the rare occasions we had excess tomatoes when I was a child or when the tomatoes were a bit past their best. It has the exotic name ' Tomato Savoury' and it's actually delicious.
We had it tonight with some of Scot the butchers beef sausages, some mashed potatoes and steamed broccoli.
And here's a link to the blog post that inspired me to make yet another tomato dish.
I found a recipe for you in my early 70s copy of the CWA cookery book. The CWA or Country Women's Association is like the Women's Institute in the UK and I don't know if other countries have anything similar.
The majority of recipes in this book are very brief, written for women who know how to cook and just need an ingredient list and a brief outline of the method.
And this little verse is in the introduction to the book ...
Mia's doll Sally
This little doll is for the second Mia who needed a doll this month to celebrate a special birthday.
Mia has called her doll Sally
Mia and her mum sorted through their stash of vintage fabrics and yummy yarns
and sent me a whole package of goodness and ideas for Sally's clothes.
Such a lovely little doll and a lovely wardrobe of clothes.
Let the games begin,
and the love and the cuddles
and the secrets and the stories.
A few of her faves
These are some of Kate's favourite things.
She keeps them on display in her room.
Bradley doll,
Snoopy ( mine from the 70s) ,
glass Coca Cola bottle,
Granny Square rug on the bed
- I'd say this child is trapped in the seventies .
She has been at music camp all weekend.
She is home now but boy is she tired.
This school caper is hard work.
Diva
Remember this movie from the early 80s.
I loved it so.
We watched it at the Valhalla cinema in Richmond, is that still there, does it still have those falling apart old arm chairs?
We saw so many great movies there and at the Astor in St Kilda.
Uh oh is that Memory Lane up ahead.
I've been doing the housework accompanied by the soundtrack ( on an LP, how's that for retro magic)
A soundtrack for my housework - what a neat idea.
Just listen to this magnificent voice
And just as an aside Dominique Pinon who is a baddie in this film
also appears in Amelie as the jealous cafe man.
Out the front
I sat in the front garden , round 11am, to drink my morning coffee and munch a piece of cake.
So still and quiet here today, no breeze and only a faint murmur of traffic and what I am pretending is the distant sound of a chain saw but is probably a whipper snipper.
I can hear Maureen's hens around the corner making a fuss about laying an egg.
No sound from my hens mind, they are keeping shtum , secreting their eggs away, who knows where.
No annoying blowflies today, too cold overnight perhaps.
I certainly don't miss them when they are gone.
Shackleton gets hassled out of her sleeping spot by her brother and jumps up on the old greyed wooden table to get away while he, Badger shinnies up the birch tree, dare devil.
Postie comes down the street on his putt putt motor bike, not much mail - news of a birthday fabric sale at the quilt shop ( and the notice that the shop is up for sale!), boring bank letter, that's it.
Coffee finished , visit the computer to write to you, know I should be answering emails too but instead I head back to my dolly deeds.
And with my lunch of left over pumpkin soup
I once again enjoyed watching and listening to Gay Bilson's version of a Good Life
Go and watch it when you have the time, it's a treat
You know I bought a copy of her book Plenty for my Mother-in-law for her birthday and completely neglected to read it before I sent it to her.
I'm sewing and listening to the sweet voices of Art Garfunkel and Paul Simon
Just listen to Art singing Bridge Over Troubled Waters
Watched a recent concert of theirs on the TV late last year - just loved it, Art has such a magical voice, can you believe he's almost 70?
According to Kate we ate the perfect food yesterday.
Breakfast was toasted and buttered fruit loaf eaten late so no morning tea.
We had freshly brewed coffee as well.
Lunch was freshly made pasties made by me, followed by blueberry muffins made by Kate.
Afternoon tea was a couple of Kate's Easter biscuits each and a cup of tea, good dunking biscuits.
And tea was pumpkin soup, some fresh buttered bread and apple crumble and cream for dessert.
Mmmm, not bad
Working in miniature.
Thinking of ideas for stock for the market in three weeks, Stephen suggested I make a smaller doll.
So I did.
This tiny one is 4 1/2" tall, she is being looked after by Kate's doll who is 12" tall
Here she is with one of my poppet dolls which is 6" tall
Oh my, it really is a jelly baby this time.
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