Inspiration

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"She who dies with the most
Fabric, Yarn, Art Supplies, Tools, etc. wins!"

Have you heard about this competition? I'm doing really well (giggle). Stacks of collected fabrics, baskets of yarns, tools to help me with virtually any task, 10 drawers full of thread in any colour imaginable; are just what I have in my home studio (we won't discuss my painting studio). Having lived a life filled with creation has left its mark. In addition, I have often been gifted with wonderful treasures from friends and neighbours. Then there was the 3 years that I worked at a major fabric store chain as an assistant buyer and could purchase fabric for my personal use at cost prices. I know that even if I live another 60 years and am blessed with working hands, eyes and grey matter, I will not be able to use up everything. I do not need to ever go shopping for supplies again, except for specifics, such as doll skin, doll-hair, eco stuffing wool. 

Yet inspiration can be such a fickle companion. There are moments when placing a hand on a piece of fabric a fully-formed image of a creation springs to mind. Other times it is an image in a children's book, or a conversation with a friend. Sometimes though, what is really needed is to fondle materials that are not yet mine – aka a visit to a yarn or fabric store. Mostly on an errand where I need just a little bit of something specific to compliement something I am working on – inspiration has a habit of jumping on me. 

I ran such an errand this week to Romni Wools, the largest wool store that I have seen. And, there is the basement! A crowded space with stacks and stacks of discontinued and coned yarns/wools. It is a heaven for my doll making needs. What started with the need to pick up a ball of specific hair yarn ended up with quite an inspirational haul of goodies.

Now there has been knitting for the past two days, instead of stuffing body parts – hats in glorious colours. For the 35 cm dolls that will be forthcoming.

Hat-knitting

I got a half cone of the lilac chenille – it is made with viscose and wool – super soft and so pretty. It is a designer yarn from Italy to boot.

When I design my dolls, I sometimes start with the knitted hat and then build an outfit around it. For the chenille hat and the one mohair yarn in the back, I know that some will be for fairy dolls. With wings. The red and green yarns I picked up because I knew they would match some of the fabrics I have in my stash.

I am a very tactile person – I think many of us are, especially our children. When I make an Olive Sparrow Child, I make sure that each one has a wide variety of textures for a child to feel and play with. Teaching our brains to recognize how different each material feels through our fingers connects us more intimately to our world. I would also think it makes us more affectionate and compassionate human beings. We have adapted the song "Four Hugs a day" to "Ten hugs a day". (Lyrics), and include our pets in there too (except the fish, they don't seem to feel the same way.

Talking about tactility – I'd better take my hands off the keyboard now and get creating.

Have a wonderful day!

 

Up-close and Personal with The Wild Things

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When our family heard news of the Polar Bear Cub at the Toronto Zoo (Globe & Mail) we immediately shelved our Sunday nature walk plans and decided to go to the zoo instead. We planned to be at the gates when the zoo opened, alas, we got there around 30 minutes after that.  

Baboon

Huxley said, that all he wanted to do was cuddle with the little bear – knowing of course that would not be feasible.  

It was good planning to be there at the early morning hour – for about half an hour, there were so few people that we got to hang out right up against the window. I shot all these pix with a 18-55mm lens, so the little fellow was never very far away.

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Baboon

Baboon

Baboon

 Making contact:

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He spent a good 2 – 3 minutes trying to engage with Huxley – ah, what a wonderful experience. 

Eventually though, we had to move on, the amounts of people multiplied and we also wanted to see some other wild creatures:

Baboon

The Lions we agreed that cuddling up with one of these would be the coolest thing.. except maybe the purr, which would surely keep you from falling asleep, as it would possibly rattle your teeth, if they could only safely be kept as pets.. (giggle)

 

Baboon

Just hanging out with a baboon.

Baboon

Canada geese flying very closely over-head.

Baboon

Pacing back and forth with a Hyena along the front glass wall about 10 times.

 

This was the first time we visited the zoo outside of the busy summer season and it was a wonderful experience. Most of the animals were much more active than during the hot summer months. A large tiger was playing in it's cage like a kitten, rather than just lounging around. We got to chat with an elephant keeper and a polar bear keeper. We also watched one feed some tiny monkeys and had them clambering up her legs and back. Walking was easy because there is no snow on the ground. 

The orang-utans are as always a pleasure to see. There was a little tumble, as one of the older females slipped and fell ontop of the littlest monkey in the enclosure. The little one, named Nazir, was luckily not hurt, but he promptly ran to his mother to nurse, which he still does at age four. 

I hope that we get a chance to see the polar bear cup again in a few weeks/months. 

And for fun, here is the Polar Bear Cub playing with a barrel:

  

A fun Challenge

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My niece is turning 11 tomorrow. When I met my husband she was a scant 5 months old. Over the years she has spent many sleep-overs at our house and I love her like my own daughter. She is my girl-energy, my connection to the young women generation.

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This is L. in 2008, the year we started a tradition:

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Crazy-cakes for her Birthday at the beginning of February. This one was a very healthy, all organic vanilla-flavoured Gugelhopf, covered in a totally insane, and of course totally unhealthy amount of candy and blue-dyed, organic lemon icing. Inspired by Tessa Kiros' "Apple For Jam" cookbook– the Pandoro Birthday Cake on Page 417.

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As you can see, it was swiftly munched up. 

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Resulting in a pack of high-sugar strung children. Huxley was a sweet 3 and 3/4 in this shot.

The cake was such a hit with L. and her friends, that it started this crazy cake-making tradition. 

For the past two years we made a pop-rock cake with white chocolate. (It was eaten too fast for me to even take a picture). This idea came through a word game (don't ask…)

A few weeks back, in mid-january, I got a call from L. asking me if I would possibly be able and willing to please make her birthday cake again. I immediately said "Sure thing! Count on me!". Upon which followed an e-mail with this:

  Cake-idea

First I swallowed hard a few times – I am no cake decorator, I can bake an edible concoction, bake a cake with no recipe, but looking pretty – not so much. Could I possibly tell my niece that it was not possible? I would have felt bad. So some R&D was in order. After spending upwards of 5 hours zooming around the world wide web and hence taking a theoretical crash-course in cake decorating, I decided that it should be doable (somewhat). I had made plain marzipan many times and growing up in Switzerland, marzipan was sold in every bakery shop in the shape of cute animals and fruit. I learned about fondant, how to make it, how to apply it to a cake and how to make animals out of gum paste. I looked up addresses of suppliers in Toronto. Luckily just before I got into the car to buy me some gumpaste, I read a comment that called it edible, yet not palatable. So back to the idea of marzipan I went. 

L. came by for a visit a couple of weeks ago and we dyed the marzipan with gel food colours (something rather against my eating philosophy, but hey, can't always be perfectly adhering to my life manifestos.) Yesterday I baked a simple vanilla cake from a PC' Choice Organics cake mix (I needed to recoup some time, and considering how much other stuff was going into the cake I figured it wouldn't make a huge difference). I baked 2 8" vanilla cakes with some added white chocolate chips. Once cooled, I  added some butter-cream frosting, sprinkled the bottom layer with fancy white chocolate chunks put the second layer on it. The whole cake was then heavily frosted with all the butter-cream frosting I had left (this is why the cake looks so soft and cushy, rather than tall and hard-edged (note to self, add less butter cream next time). After I made the marshmallow fondant, L. helped me dye it to just the right shade of pink. 

This is what the final result looked like:

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Some detail shots: 

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L. made the bowl and the sleeping bag by herself. I helped with the pillow

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L.'s slippers, with flowers of her own design


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I made this little marzipan bear

This box is what L. left with:

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Home-made too. 

 

Here is the note I got from my Sis-in-Law today:

Thank you so much Monika!!!! Your cake was amazing to look at and soooooo delicious! The girls loved it! That was very generous of you. As usual, L. was the belle of the ball with such an amazing cake and got to show it off …I took the paper off of it as soon as we got home and it sat in front of them for 3 hours before they got to eat it! Thank you...

I can go to bed and sleep well, then worry about what I might need to create to trump this years cake…

Recipe Links

Marshmallow-fondant

Best butter cream Frosting  

Instructions to apply fondant: youtube, search for: applying fondant.

What this exercise has taught me is that no matter how challenging something looks, with dedication, RESEARCH, patience and courage, anything can be accomplished. And no, I won't be studying cake decorating and no!, I also won't be for hire to make cakes… (not to worry hubby!).

 

Suzy and Baby Jo

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I finally am ready to let Suzy and Baby Jo go into the world. I listed them in my Etsy store today:

To the store

Blogged about here.

On other news, I am working on a series of five new Olive Sparrow Children. They will be in the following sizes: one at 54 cm, one at 44cm, two at 35 cm and one at 31 cm. I will post details as I move along. 

January has been a recuperating and re-grouping month for me. I worked on a painting commission at the studio, finished another painting that I had to re-do, (thanks to a product that was sold to me as a professional art product, but didn't behave as such), did a lot of work on Huxley's knitted bed spread, submitted a course outline to Loyalist College for a wet-felting course I'm scheduled to teach in the summer and mostly went to bed at a reasonable time every night. The downstairs studio is all cleaned up, the pantry and the fridge have been completely cleaned out and re-organized. Now I'm working on my desk and next up will be the chest freezer downstairs. I have crochet all the doll caps for the dolls I'm working on, so from here on their becoming will be swift. I always find it amazing how at a certain point the babes almost create themselves.  

I also picked up quite a selection of wonderful fabrics and clothes to be made into doll clothes.

Today Astrid was sent of to her new family in Rochester – she was one of my favourite babes that I created before the holidays and I had her sit with me for a while before I was ready to list her on Etsy. Now I am so happy that she has been adopted and can't wait to hear how her trip was.

Okay, before it is too late, I am going downstairs to get the new babes further along their journey.  

Cleanliness is a good thing…

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Today is the day that I am getting my sewing studio back into a semblance of order and workability! Wish me luck (for not stepping on any errant pins), and perseverance (for staying with the job instead of getting side-tracked with a spur of the moment project)…

When I stopped working on Olive Sparrow goodness just before the holidays the sewing room had entered a catastrophic state – this is not unusual for the busyness the ensues in the 3 months leading up to the holidays. After a few last minute gifts for friends and family (all undocumented do to their JIT production schedule), it was time to relax and enjoy the festivities. Then there was that week we pretend that didn't happen between the end of last year and January 9th, which I designated as the official start of the new year for me. (that week was plain evil and I have decided it never happened!). 

Last week I was busy getting a painting ready for a client in Kingston, saddly missed her leaving for an extended winter down-south by a day, but was still able to deliver it to her home (300km's away one way) on Monday thanks to the generosity of her cleaning lady that helped me hang it.

Going to Kingston was a good trip though, as I had a chance to pop into their Chez VV thrift store on a day where I got 50% off. This always means that I stock up on lovely clothes to turn into dolly-goodies, and goodies I got this time. On the long drive back home there were many a great idea and inspiration swirling through my head – of course, these ideas will not come to fruition overnight, but the seeds have been firmly sewn. Lets see how they grow.

In the weeks ahead I am planning to list a few other dolls into my Etsy store, as well as redesigning the pattern of my 35cm doll. I also have plans for a much smaller doll, as well as a life-sized baby doll – all my own patterns. There will also be listings of doll clothes coming up. I am currently working out the most efficient way to photograph and document them. One thing that adds to the price of goods sold on Etsy is that if they are one-of-a-kind items, they take a lot of time for photography, processing the images, writing the descriptions, calculating postage, managing them in the store, etc. So I need to spend some time up front on making the process more efficient – otherwise I would have to pass those costs on to my clients, which I'd rather not have to do. 

This year will be full of plans and new ventures – I'm sure the ride will be bumpy at times, but I hope you'll come along for it… It's sure to never get boring!