Rag Time

Perhaps because I wasn’t allowed to play with a lot of dolls, I have always enjoyed them.  I had dolls of my own, boy dolls and a Miss Piggy doll.  But anything too specifically for girls was denied me by my parents growing up.  So as soon I was able to take a needle and thread in hand and make my own fortunes, I began to make dolls for myself.  These first dolls were puppets that I started making at the age of fourteen, and I thought I would become a puppeteer all through high school.  Later I allowed myself to make actual dolls.  Puppets have a purpose, but real dolls needed to be made for others, not for myself.  So I made dolls such as this one, which I made for my Grandma Alice:

As I grew, I began to make dolls more for artistic experiments and I allowed myself to keep them.  The patterns, such as the patterns I made up for my puppets, came from my mind and a vague idea about putting needle to material.  Usually I cut out a great many shapes from fabric without drawing the shape to see if it might work in actuality.  Most of my creations were skewed in small ways.  I began to make dolls with heads that were more shaped than the gathered circles of fabric I had been using for heads. 

I came up with a Granny Witch first.

And then I pulled out a fair bit of ribbon and made a Moon Goddess. 

Still refusing to follow any sort of a pattern, I came up with a folk doll inspired by a mythology that has heavily influenced not only me, but modern pop culture as well: Star Wars.  I made a twi’lek doll, inspired by the slave girl from Jabba the Hut’s lair in Episode Six: Return of the Jedi. 

Only in the last couple of years have I discovered patterns.  I ordered the “Kit, Chloe, and Louise” pattern from Wee Wonderfuls, Hilary Lang’s blog and made two dolls, whom I love:

Thetis

and Robin

These patterned dolls taught me a good lesson about drawing shapes and crafting the look of the doll before jumping into cutting and sewing.  Right now I am going through a few sketches to try to hone in on the look of my dolls before I forge ahead with making patterns of my own.  Hopefully I will have more specimens of my own creation to show everyone soon. 

TRAIL MIX, part 1: the Look

As I may have mentioned in my last blog, I am really feeling the pull of simplifying my life and moving it into a direction that follows the old pioneers and their westward expansion.  In my opinion, making do with what you had and living off the land wasn’t just what pioneers had to do, it is what we should do to make our lives a little greener and perhaps a little more worth living. 

I have been chatting about this idea with friends at work since I began there.  At least once a year I bring up wanting to move us all to Alaska or Montana to start a new life as ranchers.  I think we’d ranch herds of booze bottles really, but it’s a wonderful fantasy.  Well, this time around, while speaking of trying to immolate the old west and the settlers I began speaking about making sunbonnets that hearken back to Laura Ingalls Wilder.  She is absolutely one of my favorite American heroes.  By just living and recording her adventures, she has proven that people can and do have what it takes to make it in the worst and best circumstances the old west had to offer.  So, my friend Katie and I decided that yesterday was the day.  We were going to make sunbonnets!

I got the “pattern” from another blog.  The woman is a genius and I am going to start following her, and I’ll give you the link here so you can, too: http://howtodresslikeapioneer.blogspot.com/2010/01/bonnet-tutorial.html

Yesterday Katie and I went to the local quilt shop and found that we were overwhelmed.  We went all over each aisle looking at floral and gingham, paisley and prints.  At one point we were looking at very contemporary fabrics because the idea isn’t to become actual pioneers, but to immolate them in modern day, but then Katie and I saw the same fabric, floral, one in red and one in blue.  These were the fabrics for us. 

We cut out the shapes.

We sewed in the seams.

We flipped them around.

And now we are frontier-fabulous! 

Trail Mix

I often think of my life in terms of the old pioneers.  I’d like to think that Joseph and I have the skills that it would take to make it on the westward trails.  We might not be physically fit like those old folks who had to chop wood and carry water, but where our flesh is weak our minds are very, very willing. 

The idea that we can just pick up and move into the mountains is ingrained in us from the first day in school when we learned about wagon trains.  To make it on the trail, you had to know how to cook, build, care for animals, and be willing to learn a plethora of other skills.  The idea of forging a new home in a hostile world with little more than a frying pan appeals to me on many levels.

Joseph and I get creative whenever we feel inspired.  I took up knitting when we decided to move into an old farm house.  I learned to can jams and jellies on the fly when we found ourselves in a blackberry chokehold.  Joseph learned the science of fermenting wine when I thought we should make our own.  He’s better at details than I am.  He also does amazing things with wood.  One of my favorite Christmas presents from him was a rustic chair he made from scrap wood.  Our kitchen island sports wood inlay and a top with a polished finish thanks to him. 

I really want to try my hand at quilting!  That’s the next project. 

I know for the fact that there are modern day pioneers.  When driving home from my Grandma’s house back in the late 1980’s, my mom, brothers, and I passed a real covered wagon being pulled by six mules.  Behind the wagon was a boy about fourteen or fifteen years old on a horse.  They were on the highway!  When we got home, we called Grandma to tell her what we saw and she said, “I know!  They stopped here!” 

My Gram lives on the highway and she and Grandpa lived on a farm in a string of farms, and for some reason, the wagon family thought that it was the place to set camp for the night.  They pulled in, asked Grandpa for permission to keep their mules and horse in his corral.  Grandpa gave it to them.  They set up camp in the front yard and stayed the night.  In the morning we rushed over to meet the neo-settlers, but they had already gone.  Gram said they were heading to Alaska.  The mother and father had bought a plot of land up there and they were getting there the old fashioned way.  The boy was keeping a journal and thought he might publish his adventures some day. 

I don’t know if I’d ever go that extreme, but the idea of a fresh start someplace new is like a shiny little diamond of a dream.  I dust it off at least once a year and think about the possibilities.  Until the day I find my own homestead, I guess I can collect the skills and lifestyle choices that will translate well in a new frontier. 

The title of this blog comes from my friend and coworker, Charlie.  He’s an amazing musician and would be the first to tell you he can kick your butt at chess.  When my gang at work starts getting a little down about a hard day we play little games we make up to keep our morale intact.  The other night I decided we should play Oregon Trail, which consisted of us listing twelve luxury items we would take with us on the Trail aside from our supplies.  We even allowed ourselves to have modern day items.  Katie, my good friend and also coworker (see a pattern here?) and I decided that we would take laptops so that we could blog about our adventures on the trail.  I suggested the name of the blog would be “Trail Tales” but Charlie (who has a quick wit when it comes to puns) said it should be “Trail Mix.”