Meet Katika, my first polymer portrait doll. I suppose Edgar and Oscar are also portrait dolls, but Kat is not a dead male author, so I figure she's the first in a new-ish category? Oh, I'm babbling...I just finished a 20-page paper on The Turn of the Screw that nearly killed me and now I can barely see straight.
Anyhoo, Kat kindly allowed me to post this photo, and so you can see how pretty she is. She requested a fish-bone braid, beaded jewlery and a matching purse, so those were all fun, new things I learned while working on her doll. I luuuurve the fish-bone and will definitely use it again.
Now, totally unrelated to dolls, I had to share this adorable photo that both makes me smile and breaks my heart a little. The short-haired, orange and white fellow on the right is my beloved Mr. F, also known as Monsieur L'Orange (he was born here in Montréal, after all!) Mr. F likes to spend his entire day outside in the summer, and, much like a teenager, only comes in to eat and sleep at night (even that is only because we force him...we don't want him getting mixed up with nocturnal, urban riff-raff like the raccoons and skunks that live in our alley. He gets grumpy when we bring him in at dusk, but he endures it.)
The long-haired, somewhat mangy-looking ginger character on the left is an alley cat who we call Foxy. He has roamed our back alley ever since we moved in just over a year ago, and we have been feeding him daily since last fall. He's so used to us now that he hangs out in our backyard; in this picture, he and Mr. F are chillin' on the roof of our shed. He comes right up to us, but we now know better than to try to pet him, as I once got a sound thrashing for attempting just that (well, really he just scratched me, but 'sound thrashing' sounds so Victorian). We have seen him get in to some wicked fights with other cats in the neighbourhood, and he is always the instigator - he's crazy as bag of hammers, as my stepmama would say. But he and F. seem to have an understanding, and scenes like this - the two of them sleeping side by side - are not uncommon. We've also seen them traipsing down the alley together, going in and out of other yards like old friends going for a walk. (And for pet-owners who might, understandably, find this troubling, F. has all his shots, and takes the top-of-the-line super-expensive internal medicine for fleas, heartworm, worms, etc..)
Anyway, I just think it's sweet that they're pals, and when money is not so tight, we plan to take Foxy to the vet and get him tricked out with shots and a general check-up. Recently, he has started darting into our stairwell if we leave the door open, and even came into the apartment once. I guess I dream that one day he might trust us enough that we could take him off the streets, at least for the brutal, Montreal winters. We'll see what he decides...