Bound for Maryland

No, not me.  But Virginia is.  The lady she's headed home to will maybe call her something new, but I always seem to need a name for dolls while I make them. 

This doll is just about the perfect size to work on...large enough that the detail work isn't hard, but small enough to display well and feel delicate in the hands.  I have enjoyed her immensely, and hope her new Lady enjoys sewing clothing for her.  Virgina wears wool boots with cotton laces, tailored to fit her little bare feet. 

I have a couple of business-related projects I have to work on over the next two weeks, and then I'll get busy clothing these six Izannahs (and a few of their friends.)  Hope your weekend is fabulous, dahlinks!

 

Little Lessons

I've worked on dolls all weekend.  (Yes, I worked on the studio too, and it's in much better shape.  But perhaps my declaration that it will be actually clean by Veteran's Day was...aiming a bit high.)

The remaining dolls begun last March (as we were listing our old house to sell) are now almost finished.  There are two completed 21" Izannah Walker repros, with clothing and all.  There will be three more by the first of December, as well as three 16" Izannahs.  I've got them all painted and assembled, ready for their second skin and new clothes!

I had to stop in the midst of it all because I got a commission order for an 18.5" Izzy, and she'll be headed to Maryland at the end of the week.  So why is this post called Little Lessons?  Because this mad rush to finish so much so quickly has had me sitting quietly while I work, oddly enough.  And as I'd posted last time, that quiet work allows me to think.

It's a scary job, living in my head, but somebody's gotta do it.

The newest Izannah Walker (18.5") and an Experimental Friend who needs eyelids.  See the one hanging by her toes in the upper right?  She was drying, not being tortured.  I promise.

Some things I've observed: small organizational efforts really do add up and help in the long run.  I've been afraid of this studio for months, overwhelmed by the immensity of what needed doing.  I made some good changes this weekend, and there's hope.

On a less philosophical note, there are two other things that might seem like a "DUH!" moment for some of you, but here goes.

A.  Clean your acrylic paint brushes with water and soap.  I keep an old sour-cream tub for water at my paint table to clean brushes as I go, but you'd be amazed at the paint that comes out with soap that water doesn't get.  That paint is what hardens at the join and eventually makes it less flexible.  I finally learned that if I'll take all the damp brushes to the sink at the end of a painting session and scrub soap into them, they stay flexible and smooth much longer.  

B. Get a new needle!  Being of a (cheap!) thrifty nature, I keep a hand-sewing needle as long as it's straight and has a point.  I've seriously had some of these needles for years.  My pioneer ancestors would be proud.  But it occurred to me--as I attached the 25th of 28 limbs using heavy button thread on heavy muslin--that maybe my fingers wouldn't bruise so bad if I had a sharper needle.  Eureka!  So I got a fresh needle, closed my eyes, and threw away the old one.  Those last three limbs were shockingly easy to sew, and I vowed to become an absolute spendthrift when it comes to needles! 

I have made another declaration as well, regarding the studio cleanup effort.  Rather than "It Will Be Clean" by a certain date, I believe that those little efforts--putting a bit of cleanup on my plate before the yummy desert of creativity--will get me where I want to be.

Happy Veteran's Day.

Taming the Time Panic

I realize it's self-inflicted, this sense of time running through my fingers.  Like so many of us, I waste hours and cry over lost minutes.  The hard part is deciding which tasks (blogging?) are important, and which are robbing me of time I could be putting to a better use.

Then again, there are those subjective chunks of time that might have been better spent in productive activities...but what if the reading/dreaming/gardening that was done instead is vital to the more "responsible" hours spent in productivity?  You'll notice I didn't say "surfing" in that list.

Not to knock surfing the web--I've spent hours on Ebay and Ruby Lane, browsing page after page of old dolls.  Pinterest?  They should have called it The Black Hole Of Time.  I tell myself I'm seeking inspiration.  But that always feels like a waste after I've done it, so I suspect my subconscious is trying to tell me something.  I end up with a gillion ideas--scattering what focus I've managed to gather--and very little EVER becomes of it.

One thing I have noticed is this: when I do chores with TV as an entertainment, I experience more general time-panic that week--even though I'm getting my chores done.  If I do chores with silence or with music, I have less.  It's as if the chore is more satisfying, or I was multi-tasking, only without the anxiety.  I'm thinking/dreaming/solving while I work, instead of letting the TV use that time for me.  But I love Madmen!  I deserve that mental junk food!  I do.

But as with food, too much of a good thing makes us...well, fluffy.  I don't want a fluffy body, and I REALLY don't want a fluffy mind.  So I will get out of this computer chair and into the laundry room.  There is ironing to be done, and thoughts to be thunk. And then doll parts to paint.  And a dog to bathe, and bills to pay, and floors to sweep, and...

What do you do to tame the time-panic?