we interrupt my dollar store crafting...

I have to post this doll who I have finally completed after at least three years. I had made her parts but I couldn't seem to position her head and arms correctly, and she sat in a box until this week. 

She is mostly a pattern that I can't remember the author of and need to look up online... but her head is my original creation.

Her name is Indigo... but she is also Oshun, the Yoruba goddess of fresh water, who is also related to Erzulie, the Haitian goddess of love.

She's in an inner tube, which is a representation of a dream I once had:

A street in the town I grew up was instead a river that flowed down a steep hill. It was night, there was a full moon, and I was tubing down the river alone.
At the end of the dream, I had this realization that it was a Friday night and I was alone, and that this was the best thing that I could have done for myself.




And now that she is finally complete... maybe she will help me do further creating.

More pics - a closer-up, and one with my cat Yeti for size comparison.

................................

Rambling about blogger code:
aaaaaaaand... I'm still being driven crazy by this blog formatting! I know how to get rid of these black frames around the images, but not in an easy way, and I can't find what it is in the coding that's causing them, and the biggest annoyance is why on a post with no images, the writing has a different amount of space between each line. I've done lots of css, and html, and whywhywhy can't I figure this out? I feel so frustrated!
I guess I have to go back to my css studies. Blah.
And then I'll have to check it out in other browsers and on a PC as well as my Mac... I just want it set up right so I don't have to mess with it anymore! I'm making a list of everything weird that I can't understand in the posts. For instance, right now, there seems to be a space before the beginning of my first paragraph - for no reason!

(And I know that currently this blog has maybe two readers - someday when I'm a famous craft/art blogger, someone will look through my archives and be able to see what's in the code that I'm missing.)

Abundance Totem

I need to update more frequently! Sorry about that. Is there some easier process than the eight-million-steps that I need to do to get things from my camera to blogger?

Anyway. I made this Abundance totem several years ago now, when I discovered the Connecticut quarter. That's it, on her abdomen, that big, beautiful tree.

This is to remind me that Abundance comes in many forms.

And also, that every time I start a long bead embroidery project, by the end I swear I will never do another one.

They say it's my birthday/Good Dreams Angel

...and I'm getting a new CAMERA! So I will now be able to take pictures of my new stuff. But in the mean time, I thought I would start posting some of my older work that hasn't been blogged.

(I've been knitting a lot this winter, and haven't taken very good pictures, but I will eventually make an entire knitting post.)

So this doll is the first doll I made when I discovered that there were people selling doll patterns on the internet. When I was in high school I used to make dolls from the 1950s sewing books in the library, and corny patterns in Family Circle, but then I found that there were these awesome patterns online. I think this was probably in the mid-to-late 1990s? I discovered the mother-of-all interesting doll makers, elinor peace bailey.
This pattern is elinor's "Retro Guardian Angel". From the first doll I made starting then, I knew I wanted them to have a purpose, not be merely decorative or play-things, and this doll is my Angel of Good Dreams - she guards against nightmares. Her little bag is full of herbs for good dreams. I made her little slippers to go with her flannel sheep pajamas.

unfinished doll

This doll is in progress. It was meant to be a valentines doll, then I gave it green hair and decided it was a christmas doll, but now I'm thinking I might make it pink and go back to the original idea.

And it will get arms, which aren't there yet.
An original pattern by ME.

Suddenly I saw it.

Every time I do a craft show, someone (or several someones) comes up to me and says "do you know that all of the dolls you make look like you?"
Sometimes I am offended if they are particularly ugly.
I never mean them to look like me.
This one, when it was done, I kept looking at its face and thinking, MAN, I am so sick of this face I keep drawing.
Then I held it up to the camera - it had to be my webcam because the other camera was broken - and there it was...
um.
I saw it.
Yikes.

Anyway, this doll, which you are seeing backwards in my webcam, says "Bon Appetit" and is my Aunt Beast's 2007 Christmas present in honor of her redecorated kitchen. I would have liked it to have crazy wooly hair but I'm housesitting and there is no crazy wooliness to be found unless I shave the dog.

Busy busy busy

There is a lot of crafting going on over here, but I can't really SHOW it yet! Here is an older doll, I think from last year, for your holiday blog enjoyment.

Ok, I really have to get back to work. Things happening today are all coming from Instructables, for The Boy, things like a bike seat cover for protecting it from the rain, and a Cholula Holster (that one is sort of a joke, but only sort of), and maybe boxers made out of Patriots fabric I found at a tag sale, and I don't know what-all else.

And I want to decorate! And make little houses out of old cards!

All I want for Christmas is...

A Ravelry for sewing and crafting. Can't someone programming literate make a Ravelry-type website for sewing project organizing, pretty please? I have soooo many projects I want to do and I can't keep track! I like it that all the things I want to knit and crochet are at least in a list now, even if that list is, um, over a hundred things long.

Here's a picture to keep this post from being boring, even though she's from last year or the year before, I can't remember.

The next thing to work on with this blog is a list of links to other blogs, but there are so many that I read, it's hard to begin and I don't want to forget people I love.

too cute to poke!

This here doggie is a pattern from the awesome book Art Doll Adventures by Li Hertzi. He's a pincushion, but how could I possibly stick anything in this smiley guy?

I love this book - the idea behind it is to take images from other cultures and build them into new creations.... and do lots of playing and experimenting. This dog has beading, embroidery, fun fur yarn, an old dog license tag around his neck, and general wackiness.

I think (I don't have the book in front of me) that Li got the idea for the pattern from an African sculpture, and I just noticed that the yellow eye beads are beads that my uncle sent to me when he was stationed in Togo with the state department - how perfect!

A couple more views of him at my flickr.

Believe Angel

I sincerely apologize that my camera isn't working, only my webcam, so you're not getting any nicely focused and bee-yew-tee-ful pictures right now, just whatever I can hold up.
I made this angel for my Boy's mom Jo Ann. It looks huge in the picture but it's maybe five inches tall. It has a little hanger on the back so it could be a tree ornament or hang on the wall or I guess even get pinned to her clothes or whatever - she's an angel fiend!