Where Are They Now?

At this point, I think I've sold twenty dolls. They have been sent to Vancouver and Toronto, Hawaii, Colorado, Minnesota, Alabama, Washington state, and several areas on the East Coast. One went to China (!!) and another to Perth, Australia (!!) There is one in London, England. Six more are floating around Israel. And I've given away at least four more.

They never have names -- not while I'm working on them anyway -- and when one doll buyer asked me the name of the doll she had chosen, I told her I didn't know because it wasn't mine -- and never was mine -- it was always to be Someone Else's doll and they would surely know her Name. And that is the truth.

So what names did they get? "Abigail" and "Rachel" are in Washington state. Rachel hangs out in a church nursery. Nan asked me to keep in mind that she would be played with a lot, so I made her bomb proof. She apparently got cold and a bit lonely so they gave her a sweater and a dog for company and here they are, cuddled together in the nursery --

 Janine wanted a super fancy party doll, so I had a blast hitting the wedding trim counter and fooling around with satin. Her name is "Sara" and she will belong to a young lady named Chloe. In addition to her party dress, she has PJs (had a wonderful time figuring out how to make a PJ hat with a tassle), a jumper outfit, and shorts and a top.  Oh yes, and matching shoes. Janine really inspired me to try new things. Here she is ready for a party. Check out that bling along the hem of her dress --

Eric from Alabama challenged me to try different hair colors. He wanted a blondie with a dark blue dress. No one has to ask me twice to go cruise fabric or yarn stores, so I had a lovely day "working hard" in the shops.

 

Then there is "Minou Deux," a replacement for a long ago lost doll. The original doll, "Little Minou" belonged to Hannah's sister when she was a little girl. But Little Minou was accidently sold at the family's yard sale -- quite a heart wrenching experience for a little five year old....This Christmas, Hannah will give her sister two dolls: a grown up version of what Little Minou might have looked like -- and my doll (!!) who reminded her of the original. She will be called "Minou Deux."  Here she is (with her matching shoes) --- 

 



My first cousin's daughter -- what does that make her to me? First cousin once removed? Anyway, for her birthday, they gave her this doll. Her Mom said the doll looked like her daughter (but Camille is a Whole Lot Cuter). Her grandmother, my Aunt Judy (are you getting all the family connections straight?) is an artist and she painted a picture of this doll who came to be named, "Coco." Here she is: Cami, "Coco," and picture of Coco -- 

 

 It's nice to hear about the dolls, and who they become, and it soothes my anxieties to hear they are holding up ok, their hair is still on, the child can manage the clothes -- and even more, that the child wants to play with the doll.  At one craft fair, it was sad to see child after child walk right by my dolls and show no interest at all -- not even stop to look for a second (even if just to make a face that they hated them) -- but instead the kids went straight for the tables with the plastic toys....

 

There is something about a cloth doll  that seems so basic and vital to childhood. Nevermind if I made them.

 

But other kids do get it, as in Cami above. I enjoy corresponding with  parents and grandparents who tell me they want something special and unique (and trust me, they are one of a kind -- I don't have enough skill to actually copy one). And then there are the adults like Janine who can design a whole wardrobe for a doll because they themselves never forgot how to play. Or Hannah who understands how deeply we can feel about dolls and how much they can mean. 

 

 

 



Playing in Traffic

I'd never leave home without knitting; this is true of most knitters, isn't it? There are always one and sometimes two projects in my purse, along with extra needles, markers, stitch gauges -- and I know I'm not alone in this. There was recently something posted about a "knit in public day," which I found odd because I always thought that was everyday.

It's good to make a few concessions though when it comes to public knitting. For example, using metal needles while knitting in the theater can catch the spotlights and distract the actors. So I always bring wooden needles for those occasions.

And I prefer round needles or double pointed ones for airplanes because it gives us knitters a bad name if you stab your neighbor in the next seat, although the last one I speared was incredibly nice about it.

But having knitting for the car is essential. And I mean if you're the driver. No reason to be bored at red lights anymore! There's always time for a few stitches or a quick cable. Traffic jams? I welcome them now. I'm in Israel, so the traffic can be pretty crazy. People honk here, as one person said, just to let you know they are alive. Jerusalem wasn't built for the numbers of cars we have, so it can take much longer to drive through town than to walk.

If the stress of modern living, such as traffic jams, can kill you, then knitting in the driver's seat saves lives. I think there needs to be some sort of public health campaign about this.



I appreciate the nice built in features for knitting in the car, too. The clip on the visor holds my patterns (at least it did before I broke it) and the transmission is a handy swift for winding balls. The coffee holder prevents balls from rolling away especially when doing color work. My car is home away from home and often warmer in the winter and coolier in the summer than my own house (no central heat, no air conditioning in my place). Everybody else might be seething at the wheel but I'm chilling out, working on the latest sock or sweater.

On Redheads and Ears, Dutch Chintz and New Sleeves

It seems like there is always one in any group that becomes my favorite and this redhead is it. I saw a picture of a ragdoll with ears and decided mine would have them too. I littered the floor with little bits of muslin until they came out the right size. Sort of. (You have to agree that throwing things on the floor IS one of the best parts of sewing, no?)

And I FINALLY found a red head yarn I like. Everything has always been too electric red or too carrot orange. The search continues for a blondie.

I want to make the faces more sophisticated so I saw a way to put in a "dart" on the side of the head to give the eyes some depth. I'm going to try it, so that's next. And noses. I need a better nose, a sculpted one. I've seen a lot of dolls with upturned "ski slope" noses and don't like that look....something more classic is what I want.

Then I found a quilt store in Texas called I Love Quilting which is the ONLY place which sells fat quarters of Dutch chintz fabrics which are reproductions of the chintzes that the Dutch East India Company brought back from the Coromandal coast of India in the 1600s. These imports electrified Europeans and had everything to do with the growth of the cotton industry. It is possible to buy these fabrics from the Dutch company which is making them, but they only sell them by the meter and boy are they expensive! And really a fat quarter is sufficient for a dress. The Dutch company is called Den Haan and Wanamakers and it is a treat for the eye to scroll over their selections. Yum.

The fabric is coming tonight by courier from the US.  I have been reminding myself not to rush this poor lady, say hello first, be polite and not act like a wild animal to get my package from her.

I saw a blouse with a cool sleeve on it the other day and decided to try to reproduce it. Here it is. I think the upper arm needs to be a bit wider so I'll alter that for next time. This fabric was part of my mother in law's stash and I've really fallen in love with it and alas, it is now all gone!

And here is a short sleeve version --

Someone needs to open a store which carries "out of print" fabrics. Occasionally I can find something older, but none of it is organized. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to find Bali quilt fabrics from 2009, say? Or Windham from 2008?

It's been a peaceful time lately. I do hope it lasts! There just may not be anything nicer than than the moments we can wander around thinking about what we love to do...watching for inspirations.....coming up with new ideas...imagining new creations. May we all have lots of those moments!

The new baby

Will you look at This!!??  I look into the room several times a day just to check on It..

I am fortunate that few people in Israel value the stuff I like. So far I've found a loom, a spinning wheel and now this Beautiful Treadle Machine for a song! When I called the phone number on the ad for the machine, the fellow said, "you know, the cabinet is not in good shape."

That's ok, I said, I don't care about the cabinet.

There was a pause. "What do you want this for?" he said, half wonderingly to himself.

The Machine, I told him -- "but you realize it is not electric...." he continued in confusion.  When we met later that day to clinch the deal, he studied me off and on. People just don't get us....

I dragged my friend Dina with me. She has a lot more toys (as my husband calls it) than I do, including TWO Berninas, one treadle machine for sewing and another treadle machine for sewing leather (also a spinning wheel, loom, soap and candle making equipment) -- when I first met her, I just wandered around her house in amazement. She has every book I ever wanted, too.

So I dragged her along and she obligingly crawled around the Machine, looked underneath it, rotated the wheel, squeaked the treadle (it squeaked then), examined the bobbin case....you know, kicked the tires on the thing. "It's good," she said.

And boy is it ever! It is so calming. You don't even need to use it to calm down. You can just sit next to it and feel its solid presence....it's quiet power....it's self-assurance.  I wouldn't presume to name it because it knows its own name (and I may never know what it is).

And it has lions. Two actually, one here and another on the base. Aren't they Fabulous??

Lions belong in Jerusalem. You know, "lion of Judah." And Jerusalem is known as the city of gold because of the colors of the buildings at sunset. And there they are -- Golden Lions.

What's not to like?

And finally after three days of saying he didn't want to, the hubby sat down to it. I had told him that sewing on it would be an experience like no other.  He had been unmoved by this comment. But last night, after I made a few more pushy remarks, and got a little (just a little) obnoxious about it, he sat down at it and he did it. And let out this cute little cry of delight! He's made a lot of noises in the past, but never one like this. "It is so effortless!" he gushed.

We all know Real Men aren't supposed to be cute, but the truth is the truth. It was cute. I made him tell me about it twice more just to enjoy his reaction again. He is obliging that way.

So the best I can figure, this machine was made by the Standard Sewing Machine Company for a smaller company named Phillips. The serial number would fit Standard's numbers for 1905. Ain't that somethin'? Later in 1934, Singer took them over (it seems Singer took everybody over) and Standard was no more. But they had been there since the 1880s in Ohio, turning out machines in more than 600 different names for smaller dealers. I don't think I'll ever know when it traveled overseas to Israel.

But now, this year in Jerusalem, it'll be back to work for the first time in many, many years!

Serious thoughts about cotton

Have you read Cotton: The Biography of a Revolutionary Fiber by Stephen Yafa?

Malca found it for me in a used bookstore and I've dog-eared it badly by reading it so many times. I've only been able to interest two friends in reading this book -- most people do things like 1) get very quiet or 2) become interested in something else in the room or 3) back away -- and sometimes they do all of the above. They don't realize what they are missing.  This 344 page book with notes, glossary and index is a fascinating read--and I heard it was on the NY Times bestseller list for a while.

In addition to fascinating, I found it very disturbing. In cotton's several thousand history - dating all the way back to Mohenjo-Daro in the Indus Valley at the dawn of civilization, cotton has been implicated in the slave trade, child labor, the invasion of India, and excessive use of pesticides worldwide. In ancient times, young girls were recruited to spin cotton into gossamer thread -- so that it could be woven into a gauzy-type of fabric only for royalty and it was said they went blind after working on it after only a few years.

The best known slave trade was to the US for work in the cotton fields. But Yafa also mentions slaves imported to Arab lands as well. The first use of child labor for spinning and weaving cotton in the factories was in the very first textile factory ever -- in Cromford, England. The practice quickly spread all over the industrialized world.

When the cotton gin was invented and cotton could be cleaned quickly, the slave population increased dramatically. We all know about the civil war. And the sharecropping lifestyle that followed it. Cotton spawned one of the most famous bugs in history -- the boll weevil. And when huge farm equipment and
sophisticated pesticides came on the market, thousands of sharecroppers were thrown out of work. He also says that "cotton has been responsible....for an ecological disaster of epic proportions in central Asia...."

The author writes that "no legal plant on earth has killed more people by virtue of the acrimony and avarice it provoked."

It was really disturbing to read all of this! Nobody that I know of fought a civil war with hundreds of thousands of deaths over sheep. I've never heard of vast numbers of people displaced and enslaved over merino or corriedale. Certainly no one has invaded New Zealand in order to control its wool trade. If there are bugs made world famous by sheep, I'm not sure what they are. Certainly sheep have bugs and I imagine there are pesticides used in growing feed for sheep and there is a lot of controversy over preventing fly infestations in sheep by  mulesing which is supposed to be phased out in Australia now. There are bad practices out there but sheep raising seems a lot less destructive.

I read that different varieties of cotton are found naturally all over the world.  Cotton would seem to be out there to make use of (religious overtones left out) but how exactly should we use it? Certainly not in such a destructive manner....which suggests we must use a lot less of it I guess. If we only use what we can grow without pesticides, the global crop would certainly be a lot smaller.

This book really changed my life. I decided I would only use organic cotton in weaving, knitting and doll making. Camomille Connection (http://www.chamomileconnection.com/organiccottonyarns.htm) sells organic cotton for warp for a very reasonable price and it is so much silkier than non-organic! And Dharma Trading Company (http://www.dharmatrading.com/) has a fine price on the organic muslin I use on my doll bodies. I am still using up left over dress fabric which is not organic, but soon I will be in the market for organic, printed quilt fabrics which are my favorites for making doll clothes. Any ideas where to find it?

This artisan/crafting business can certainly be serious stuff! 

The Astrologer

I've never been a big believer in astrology but I had my horoscope done once by a real astrologer. Her name was Katharine Merlin--really, no kidding--I knew her sister. I was in grad school at the time, studying research psychology, and she looked at her strange paper with all the weird symbols and then at me in a puzzled way. "I don't understand what you're doing," she said. "You're not a research psychologist. You're either a sculptor or a psychotherapist."

This was, of course, wrong.

Yes, I'd enjoyed sculpture classes at the Art Institute of Chicago (in the kids' division) but I was no artist. And I had already researched psychotherapy and knew it to be unscientific. It was not something I'd ever do. She pressed it for awhile, then gave up.

Three years later, I was on my first job in a community mental health center in the Colorado Rockies. I had blown off my Ph.D in research psychology, left with an M.A. and had been voted the happiest grad student in the department (because I was leaving). I worked in rural areas, including Wasilla, Alaska (!) and finally left it all to become a homeschool mom and run a kosher grocery store in the garage.

Off and on I tried sculpture, but nothing ever came of it. I can't do clay on my own. I need the atmosphere of a real sculpture class with lots of space, big tables, cement floors, garbage cans full of clay and a Chicago radio station playing in the background. Otherwise I just can't do it. So I figured, okay, she was right about the therapy but wrong about the sculpture.

Then my daughter had a baby, my thumb hurt too much to spin and knit, so I made a rag doll for my granddaughter. Yeah, people call that "soft sculpture," but that is way too hoity-toity a term for what I was turning out. So far I've made fourteen or fifteen of them and sold quite a few -- but they are soft toys, not soft sculptures.

Then last week I sat one of them up -- all by herself on the kitchen table. She wasn't leaning, propped or anything. She sat with her legs out in front of her, her hands on her knees and her head tilted, smiling at me.

I was stunned.

I walked around the table, studying her from the side, the back, the other side, the front again. She existed in the round (my early dolls had been pretty flat like a lot of rag dolls are). She had a presence. A point of view on life.

"Soft sculpture" is still too high-faloutin' for me. I can make a doll a kid can hug and sleep with. In a fit of pique it would probably survive getting smacked on the wall and stepped on. And really that is my goal -- to make dolls which can be used, socks people can wear, tallitot to wrap up in.

But she sat up by herself.  All by herself.  And it was an amazing moment.

Marking Darts and Pins in Your Mouth

Wow. I just got my sewing machine back from the repair guy. I had decided to get my money's worth out of the last oil job it received -- eighteen years ago -- and I must say it is like having a brand new machine! No jamming! The thread isn't breaking anymore. It sews zig zag again. Wow.

I can't sew without remembering how I learned. I was twelve and my best girlfriend's mother was going to teach both of us to make wrap around skirts. My eyes watered terribly in Vogue Fabrics on Main Street - perhaps it was something in the material that used to do that? We paged through Simplicity and Butterick, found our patterns, and tried to make sense of the bewildering array of fabrics.

I still try to make sense of the bewildering array of fabrics. I get cotton. I get canvas. I get lining material. But that's pretty much it. And now that I'm in Israel, all the info on the bolt is in Hebrew, so if I don't already know what it is, I'm not going to know.

Albie showed us how to lay out the pattern pieces. It seemed like part of that skill was to figure out how to put pins in your mouth and I was a dutiful study. She cut along the black lines, chewing her tongue as she went. She said it ran in the family. And although I wasn't family, I gave it a shot. Pin, baste, sew -- I got it. We went on to make sack dresses, skirts and shirts. And that was it. I never learned anymore from anyone else.

When my oldest kids were nine and ten, I became a homeschool mom sort of by accident. I was terrified by the incredible responsibility it involved and walked around gripping John Holt's Teach Your Own for support. He relates a great story about a man from colonial times who was a farmer, clerk, carpenter and I can't remember what all else. Holt pointed out that he didn't learn those things in school-in-a-building (as my daughter calls it) -- he learned it from others and by schooling himself. That story gave me courage to teach my kids. And homeschooling them was one of the most fantastic experiences of my whole life.

Here I am years (and years) later, sewing rag dolls for a living (sold five already!!). From Albie's lessons I learned enough to follow a basic pattern but also to embellish it. I can make up the dresses as I go (this surprised me).

And like the man in John Holt's book, I didn't learn it in high school or college. I was only twelve. My instruction was pretty casual; I learned by doing and watching. The whole idea of homeschooling and unschooling gets reinforced for me everytime I sit down and run that slickly oiled portable Brother machine.

And I see Albie. Pins in her mouth, chewing her tongue, making faces at the material. She was great. She sewed in the days when it really was cheaper to sew than buy new -- or used. There were patterns and piles of fabric surrounding her black Singer (with knee petal). The ironing board stood nearby and the room was comfortably cluttered with all the paraphernalia of a serious sewing woman.

With each of the skills I have there is a different mantra. I love watching violent movies while I spin. Knitting is always combined with visiting, talking and bitching. It's great in the car either as the passenger or driver (while stuck in traffic).

But sewing -- it's all about memories and snippets of conversation from long ago. When I see my sewing and my mess all over the house, I see her sewing and her mess. Pins in my mouth remind me of pins in her mouth. I can't even mark a dart without a memory.