It's been a long time since my last post, in part because I was away for nearly three weeks doing renovations on my aunt's house, which ended up taking all our time and leaving none for seeking out wireless connections. I did take some pictures though, so I'll be posting those over the next little while. But another reason for my absence has been the loss of my much-loved, very sweet and rather odd little cat. She was only three, so it was a huge shock when she became ill shortly before our trip. We took her to the vet and they seemed to think all she needed was stay over night and be rehydrated, but then they called us a few hours later to say she had died and they could not explain why. We were devastated, and I had hoped to do a little tribute to her here, but can't bring myself to go through all the photos I have (I'm a bit of a psycho when it comes to cat pictures! Every cute pose is recorded...) While we were away we were distracted by the overwhelming task of the reno, but now that I'm home again, I feel her absence acutely and it's been hard to get motivated to do much of anything, but I'm trying to keep myself busy. The title of this post comes from a beautiful epitaph by Helen Hunt Jackson with which I try to comfort myself: "Oh, write of me, not Died in bitter pains, but Emigrated to another star!"
Before I left I finished a commission the lovely Faye L. Booth who writes Victorian-inspired fiction. This doll, Thea, is based on one of her characters. This picture was taken before she was finished (hence the pin sticking out of her head) and with all the chaos before we left, I didn't manage to take any others.
Some people have asked about the dolls from my last post. They are currently on display in the Hands Dancing show at the
Inverness County Centre for the Arts. I had hoped to mail them into Art Doll Quarterly for the winter issue, but there wasn't time with the show, so I will send them in August and they won't be in the shop until sometime in September. Below is a picture of them in gallery (the colour was horrible, so I made it black and white!) 
Not a great shot, as you can see, so here are some of the originals:
The rest of my dolls are in the gallery gift shop until Christmas:
And here are some flowers from my father's garden. It inspired me daily to keep working on that hundred year-old house (empty for the past twenty.) Someday we'll move to Cape Breton and have our own garden, but in the meantime I seek solace in Led Zeppelin, Ghost Bees and Black Sabbath and dream of future flowers: white and pink roses, Valerian, Dogwood and Rhododendron. Imagine...
