Below are the ornaments and pendants for today's shop update (see this post for details). I'm also trying to finish two figurines, and if I can get them photographed in time, I'll post them this afternoon.
~You can click on the photos below to see larger versions~
Ornaments
Pendants
I realized at some point yesterday that I hadn't been outside since Thursday - scary! Thank god I have Mr. L here to keep me from becoming some pasty, gollum-like creature, talking to no one but the dolls: 'One doll to rule them all!' Okay, clearly it's time for some coffee...
Sunday night we went to see two beautiful mavens of contemporary folk, Marissa Nadler and Alela Diane. They both have beautiful voices and are great songwriters, and Alela's concert was very stripped-down and pure, much like her c.d.. (It's interesting how some performers are very consistent live, whereas some do completely unexpected things in concert; I've seen Neko Case perform three times and each time was different; once she brought a Baltic women's choir onstage, once an eighty-year-old female yodelling champion. I love them both!) I hadn't heard much from Nadler before except one song which I loved called Diamond Heart. But having heard the recording didn't prepare me for seeing her perform it live, which actually brought tears to my eyes. She was very nervous and shy onstage, but when she sang this song, her voice was so clear and haunting, a word that gets overused these days, but is accurate in this case; it was perfect.
Here she is looking like an ethereal, gothy, desert fairy. I'll take that dress, please! And because I've somehow managed to delete my new playlist, to which I'd added that song, here she is singing it live so beautifully in what looks to be a pretty rinky-dink little cd shop; but still, she sounds amazing.
I'm busily working away on new dolls, ornaments and pendants for my next shop update which will take place as early in December as possible. But my back is starting to complain about all the sculpting and sanding of teeny tiny heads, so I can't push it too hard. Most of the new pieces are still in the early stages, but I have finished one little piece; this rather tragic-looking pendant:
She hopes you're all having lovely, song-filled days...
Thank you all so much for the kind words about my last update, and for helping make it such fun! All the dolls sold within two days, which was a huge - but lovely - surprise. There are some ornaments and pendants remaining, and for those who wondered, I will definitely be making more of the smaller (8-11") dolls for the next update, and will try to make more this time. My next update will be sometime in late October, but I'll announce the exact date in a week or so.
While the update involves a few crazy days of photo snapping & editing, listing and then packaging, I much prefer it to listing things here and there. This month, I finally took the plunge and ordered packaging materials in bulk from Uline, who recently opened a store in Toronto - oh, happy day! It felt strange to be so ecstatic over massive quantities of boxes and tissue paper, but ecstatic I was. It made life so much easier when it did come time to pack, and the crush-proof 'indestructo' mailers were true to their moniker; I tested one out by standing on it just like the dude in the catalog photo and by jove, it did not crush. (Yes I am, in fact, the world's biggest geek.)
At the same time that I was whispering tender endearments to my new packing supplies, my lovely man was in charge of a small assembly line of my handmade business cards in our dining room. He screenprinted, he clothes-pinned, he worked that little gocco like a modern-day samurai.
Thank you, my love; you are too good to me!
I've taken a few days off from the dolls, but did finish this little Miss, a pendant who has gone to live in England. (Her mussy hair well-tamed before departure...)
So all this talk of packing; who the hell is Maria Bamford?? Possibly the funniest person alive, at very least tied with Dave Chapelle and Ricky Gervais. No - she's funnier. A friend recently sent me a link to one of her webisodes, and I then watched all twenty. I laughed so hard I actually wept. People always say that, but how often does it actually happen? It happened. A warning: Maria's humour can be pretty dark and contains bad words; viewer discretion and all that.
One of my many goals for this summer and all the delicious time it promises is to update my blog every 2 - 3 days. I must remember that I can include short posts as well; sometimes the pressure of thinking up a full post causes me to avoid it altogether. So here is an attempt at a short (but hopefully sweet) post to get me in the habit of being a better blogger!
I have made my very first piece of jewelry as a custom order for a sweet lady in France. It was fun and not as difficult as I thought it would be to work in a very small scale. This pendant is only 2" x 2" :
Making the teeny tiny eyes and the eensy weensy wig was pretty fussy, but I'm happy with how it turned out and plan to make more.
And, apropos of nothing in particular (I guess I'm not yet totally at ease with the micro-post!) I'm working on a commission of a Shakespearean character. I won't reveal the details just yet, but as I've been looking through my husband's ancient copy of the Bard's Complete Works (mine was purloined while I was in university), I came across one of my favourite lines from King Lear. I used to teach Lear to high school students; you can imagine the sheer enthusiasm expressed by all the guys in gold chains and baggy pants and the girls whose hot-pink g-strings peeked out conspicuously above the lines of their track pants (g-strings and track pants?? What the what??) Anyway, what made it tolerable was getting to reread the language over and over. (That and the fact that we got to see Christopher Plummer as Lear in the Stratford, Ontario production...swoon!)
So here are the play's final lines, perfect for this grey and melancholy day:
The weight of this sad time we must obey, Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say. The oldest have borne most; we that are young Shall never see so much, nor live so long.
