2010

So far the year started off with a bang.

Alex and I went to bed at 9:30 Thursday night (seriously) but the dog was gracious enough to wake me at midnight so I could hear my neighbors celebrating with fireworks.  Even better, JG slept through the night in her very own crib and did not wake up until 8 AM the next morning, or if she did wake up earlier I don't know, because when I found her she was quietly playing in her crib.

Thanks be to Jesus.

However, she had to sleep with me last night, as she completely refused to be transferred to her crib.  You see, I nurse her to sleep in my bed and then move her to the crib before we go to bed.  This worked like a charm for months, however in the last month she has been more and more unwilling to sleep in her crib.

I should also mention that I am not good about letting her "cry it out."  It doesn't help that I don't believe in it, but I know that if I enforced the crib a bit better she would probably spend more time in it.  However, like Thursday night, she will sleep the whole night in the crib, so I think that she's been sleeping with us because she hasn't been feeling well.

Who knows.  Does anybody have any suggestions?

Anyway, 2010.  Goals.

--I need to figure out a way of getting out of the house without spending money.  Every time I leave the balance on my credit card increases, which is not good for a girl with no job and no income.  Hopefully the weather will start to improve and JG and I can think of something creative to do outdoors.

--I'm thinking of putting together a class on doll making.  I have no idea how that would work.  I've been pondering it for months.  Like, where would I start?  With the pattern?  Or have pieces sewn up and ready to stuff?  Or, let people design their own doll pattern with my help?

Also, I've been doing this for about six years, so does that make me knowledgeable enough to teach it?

--Find a teaching job for Fall 2010.

I think that's it... other than my obsession with how much cheese I will eat this next summer.  And ice cream, cake, doughnuts... anything I have not been able to eat for the last six months.  In five months JG will either be weaned or her protein-induced weirdness will have resolved itself.

Oh, sweet Jesus, thinking about cheese makes my mouth water.

And, happy new year to all you people.  Have a good one.

Failure & Success

Sewing Failure:

And sewing success:

Making a pattern for a doll is ten times easier than making the pattern for the doll's clothes.  I find it to be a very frustrating process, but I am slowly learning how it works.  Of course, it helps if I add the extra quarter inch into the pattern itself (second set of pictures) rather than trusting myself to do it myself later with the material (first set of pictures)...  

Hey, I'm learning dammit.  Also, working with knit is sort of a pain in the butt, however the dress/slip looks nice and hangs well.  And it fits her without being overly big or too too small.  

Random note: this is what my mornings look like:

Production

I have spent the last two weeks preparing for the Sisters & Friends Boutique (you'll find the address there) my mom is holding at her house in Ogden.  This means I've been making toys like crazy... or, you know, more quickly than I usually do.

Because it normally takes me two weeks to make one thing.

So, please awe in amazement that I made nine, COUNT THEM, nine toys for this boutique.  I know, I am amazing...

Or I just started to have fun making monsters:

These adorable little creatures are available for a $20 adoption fee, which will go toward paying off student loans.

When asked about their future homes, most monsters said, "Please, just get me away from that crazy baby.  She keeps shaking her head and grinning at me..."

I also have two dolls, but I'm trying to figure out their faces:  I think I'm going to have to unpick them and try something else.

They just don't evoke that "ahhhhh, cute" that I was hoping for.

Eh, try, try again.

Also, one last selling point.  If you're still searching for a special gift, and you would like to try and pawn off somebody else's creation as your own, feel free to do so with my toys!

I won't tell a soul.

Making some dolls

I've been making some crafty progress.  I thought I would demonstrate to my IMMENSE audience that I am doing stuff... when JG is napping, at least.

I think getting this far has taken me 6 weeks.  Embroidering the faces takes the longest, mainly because I hesitate about colors and what the face should look like.  Then I do the same thing with the hair, I want it to look right, so it took me a solid week of placing felt, removing, cutting, twisting, and then going with my original idea.

I am a seriously slow creative person, especially when I don't have a due date.  However, my mom is having a mini craft fair at her house in two weeks, so I've got to sew together a whole lot of toys... I wonder how quickly I can do that?  I'll post more about that in a little while.

See how excited I am to have them finished?  Now all I have to do is take weeks to make them underpants and dressess... well, that took me a year with the first one.  So, I guess you'll just have to wait and see how quickly (or, in reality, slowly like frozen molasses) I can get these suckers completed.

Progress and Completion

As promised here are some photo's of what I've been doing crafty-wise. They're not great photo's, but I am pretty pleased with myself regarding the toys themselves.

Here's one Testy-Chicken, the other is on display at the Utah State Fair with a blue ribbon on him. That's right, I said BLUE-FREAKIN'-RIBBON. That means I just won myself three dollars. If you're going to the fair and want to see some of my hand-craftiness, he's in the Zion building sitting on top of Thomas the tank engine. He's blue and buggy. With a blue ribbon...

Anyway, I made these chickens thinking I could get the pattern figured out and make more to sell since I'm at home and penniless now... but they took me forever to make. Not just because I took my sweet time, but also because of all the embroidery. See?

That's called the "chain stitch." So, the price I came up with in my head to charge for one of these buggers is more than any sane person would want to pay, I'm sure. Therefore, I'm thinking I might make the pattern available for purchase. Does that sound interesting to anyone? Anyone interested in making a Testy Chicken?

Okay, and here is the doll I started making...oh, a year ago? I finally figured out a dress pattern (bigger than I thought it would be, but still in the shape of a dress) and feel like I'm making progress on making her look complete. What do you think?

(I really need better photo's, she looks really washed out here and... well, not as neat as I think she is. Maybe having a colorful dress on her will help.)

Oh, yeah, did I mention I'm a blue ribbon winner?

Back from the BRAIN DEAD

I am five weeks into student teaching -- only FIVE more to go!  Oh my god I can barely contain myself.  You may be wondering why it's been so long since you've heard from me... well, you see, when you spend all day with 14 year olds (who my adviser says are "all assholes at this age") when you get home, you're brain is literally DEAD.  

I get home around four or so and just sit for two hours.  I can't think about anything, I can't talk about anything.  I have friends and family that I haven't called because, quite frankly, I don't have the attention span for a conversation.  I do think about it (Jen, Min), but then I decide to turn the TV on and see if I have anything on the DVR.  Something that won't bother to teach me anything, or make me think.  

I think I've got another three weeks to go until I'm done teaching, then I need to start phasing my mentor teacher back into the class room.  Some students asked me when this will happen and then groaned when I told them -- they like me better... Alex tells me they're just "kissing ass" and probably don't care that much.  Who knows.

Okay, so, doll hair.  This is what I did on one of the experimental heads:

I used felt.  She has bangs now too, but to post that here would require me to take more photo's, and (quite frankly) that's just not going to happen right now.  

You know all those doll parts I've been showing you for MONTHS?  Well, I finally put her together, but she's naked and I'm working on some clothes for her now.  Maybe you'll see the results in a few weeks.  Who knows.  I'm pretty pleased with it though.  

You see, I have accomplished something.  It just has nothing to do with my masters degree or student teaching... Hmm.

  

HEADS!

When it comes to creating something, I deliberate like crazy.  I finished making more heads for the doll clear back in November, but then I had to figure out how to do the faces.  Paint?  Draw?  Leave blank?  Make silly/ugly?  Finally, after drawing one face (which I really wasn't crazy about) I decided to tackle embroidery, just to see if it looked right.  Amazingly enough it did, so this is what I did over Christmas break:

You can see the drawn face in front -- doesn't it look too "sweet?"  Yuck.  Then my first embroidered face is in the back with the blue eyes. It turned out so nicely that I moved on to practice on the face on the left, with the strange yellow eyebrows. 

Hey, I only had crochet string to work with at that point, so I didn't have many color choices.

What did I learn from that one?  Well, pink is a far too light of color to try to make a face with-- it looks sort of too "I lack pigment in my skin, therefore you can barely see my features."  Her mouth is funny too, but for practice sake it's not horrible.  

Finally, the head I will actually be using for the doll is on the right.  I really like how it's turning out... except now it needs a mouth and I'm not sure how to tackle it.  I should just bite the bullet and do it.  Booger.

Next post will be on hair for the head.  The one I've done has turned out pretty nicely, so that makes me happy.  Joy.

Hello

Have you ever had one of those days where you just feel large? Like a bass that ate too much and somehow managed to flip yourself out of your favorite spot in the river, and now lie on the river bank unsuccessfully gulping for air?

I sort of feel like that today. Large and tired. I'm sure being 20 weeks pregnant doesn't help anything either. I need better pants that let it all hang out -- my current pants kind of hold me in. Makes it a tad difficult to breath. Or overeat.

Anyway, more doll updates soon. I finally have a head that works, and I'm experimenting with embroidering the face. It has worked pretty well on two of the heads that didn't work for the doll -- so they're kind of this decapitated doll head with a bit of a cheery/smirking face. They don't understand that they're missing bodies. Silly stupid doll heads.

More later.

Later.

Disturbing Head

I tried messing with the head tonight, to see if I could get it to work the way I wanted it to.  I had thought I made it too small for the body... and I really did.  I figured I should needle sculpt it anyway, get some more experience making a face look like a face.  I drew on it with the awesome blue marker... but it looks so skewed and funky, not to mention too long in the wrong direction.  It's not wide enough either.  I'm in between being irritated with it, and accepting of the fact that the first head pattern I designed simply didn't work out.  It's okay, really.  So, now I'll probably have a doll head laying around until I make a better body for it later.  It's even funnier looking on the body, but that will be the next post since blogger doesn't seem to want to work with me tonight.  Poop.

Doll Arms, Doll Legs

On the right is the muslin as it originally came out of its tea-bath, and on the left is the arm turned right-side-out. It's three (?) shades lighter turned out, and I first I wasn't sure if I liked it -- but with everything stuffed it really doesn't look that bad.

The torso, arms, and legs all turned out fabulously. It's one of the first times I've designed a pattern and had it turn out the way I wanted it to. The torso shoulders are a bit pointy, but they may work out just fine once I've got the arms attached.


I sewed the knees for "joints." I was going to do it on the sewing machine -- yet that is somehow too complicated for my head to understand... So I sewed them by hand. I know, it takes longer but I had total control of where the stitches went.

I plan on tying the elbows by wrapping a string or something around them to create a joint. I'm not quite sure how it will look. But I didn't want to stitch the joint there too. It just seemed like too much.

The head pattern could use some work. It came out a bit too flat, so the face looks long and thin. It looks fine on the doll, but I'm going to take some time this next week and make a few head patterns, make them, and see what works out better. I think the nose worked out well. I want really big noses on my dolls, it just feels like it gives them more personality. I kind of have a big nose, so I definitely have an affinity to pass that bit on to the stuff I make. That just sounds strange.

Hopefully I'll have this put together by the end of the week. It may take longer since I want to try out different heads... Who knows, you'll just have to check back, yo.

Slowly, maybe surely

I have been wanting to make my own doll pattern for quite a while. I doodled something (because I don't draw, not well anyway) in class a couple months ago that I really liked and figured I would go after it.

I drew up the body, messed around with my sweet new compass, and then hesitated on the rest of it for a long time (read months). This is the head to the left. I literally had to talk myself into cutting the pieces apart today because I really like the design and didn't want to mess with it. Which sounds really silly, since I have to cut it up in order to use it. You may ask why I just don't trace it onto the fabric... well, my brain doesn't quite work that way. I like to put the pattern pieces on the fabric and use a pencil to trace them on -- from the thick edges of the pattern. Because I HATE tissue paper patterns.

I always feel like I can never use them again, and then what is the flippin point?

Anyway, I told Alex to tell me to get over my strange phobia and cut the head pattern already. So, I did. You can see the pieces here. It's going to be a relatively simple doll, and I'm thinking
the chicken fabric (behind the pattern) for the legs. I bought this forever ago because I thought it was hilarious (hello, chickens saying "bonjour") and haven't been able to cut it. Because I'm obsessive and neurotic. But, I know for a fact that other fabric hoarders do the same thing. You can love a fabric so much that you never bring yourself to actually use it. It's sad, but true.

Anyway, I hope to get started in earnest on this in the next week. I will get some more photos' up to show progress, so if you don't see any in the next few days -- please PLEASE nag me about it. I need that.