Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Bob and Carmen



Bob is a school maintenance man. He is in charge of changing light bulbs and keeping the floor shiny as well as a number of other things. Bob cares deeply about the environment which is why after he sweeps the floor, he picks up bits of paper from the trash pile and puts them in the recycling bin. But because it is better to re-use than recycle, he takes the special bits of paper, like the hand-written notes and takes them home. Then he uses very expensive scissors from Germany and clear glue to make elaborate, beautiful collages that portray his deep thoughts about the meaning of life.

Do kids still write notes on paper or is it all electronic these days? That would be a really shame if all they did were tweets instead of taking time to hand write a note. My friends and I were really big into writing notes and then folding them up in fancy ways. I remember filling side margins with flower vines and inventing fonts! It was great, but it probably would have served me better to pay a little more attention in class.



Carmen is a snow artist. She spends all summer long waiting for the leaves to turn, and when they do she is practically climbing trees and yanking off the leaves to usher in the winter. The first snowfall, for Carmen, is better than Christmas, but when they happen simultaneously she gets so excited that you can hear her heart beating from another room. When the snow completely covers the ground, she treats it like a blank canvas. She gathers all her equipment: paint brushes, squirt bottles, brooms, and powdered koolaid, and then she gets to work transforming the powdery white stuff into a masterpiece. Sometimes her neighbors commission her to transform their yards. However, she prefers to be paid in hot cocoas.

Monday, October 25, 2010

Playing Around With Faces


Friendly Car Wash Employee


Convict



Embarrassed Guy


School Maintenance Man that writes poetry on his off-hours

One of my favorite parts of softie-design is figuring out where to put the facial features. It's pretty incredible how drastically the personality of something changes with a slight rearranging of buttons and felt.
My little monkey is crawling now. He is not earning any points for form. In fact, Joseph thinks it looks like he has one leg stuck in a bear trap. He is very speedy however. And man, this kid is attracted to everything dangerous and gross: outlets, camera cords, and Albert's chew toys (the kind that you put peanut butter in!). If he had to choose between playing with a furry fake pony that dances and sings or a phone charger he would pick the charger.
I am sewing quite a bit. I have a lot to blog about this week. 10 more to go until I am ready for the Bloomington Handmade Market. This week I am working on upping the cute factor. I have a lot of middle-aged man softies finished, so it's time to work on a younger, furrier crowd.

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Homer


Homer startles easily. His therapist thinks it may have to do with being the youngest of ten brothers. If someone were to tap Homer on the shoulder to ask him where the cheese shop is, Homer's heart might stop. He lives near a railroad track, and though he has the train schedule memorized, the choo-choo noise makes him scream and tear up. He has written letters to the President of the United States requesting that trains have a universally quieter toot, but the president must be quite busy because he has yet to receive a response. In the meantime he has started watching Hitchcock films in an effort to train himself to startle less. He usually is too frightened to make it past the opening credits, but is proud of his progress thus far.

It has been a great week for instant watches on Netflix! I watched Mary and Max, a claymation about an Australian girl who becomes pen-pals with a man in America who has Aspergers. There is a special place in my heart for claymation. You know so much love and time goes into those and I love that even the tiniest detail has been sculpted by human fingers. Besides the clay, the story is beautiful and sweetly funny---my favorite kind of beautiful. If you have time to watch it, have a hankie ready for the end.

Then, I put on the documentary, A Man Named Pearl, on a whim and ended up really loving it as well. Pearl lives in a teeny town in South Carolina and he taught himself the art of topiary sculpture and turned his yard into this magical garden straight out of Edward Scissorhands. His garden is so magical, and he's just this down-to-earth, regular guy. My favorite part was about how he sculpted a topiary for his local Waffle House, so they let him eat for free whenever he likes. Every morning he gets the "Pearl Special": a single scrambled egg, a spoonful of grits and one piece of buttered toast. Come on Pearl! Eat some waffles, they're free! He is incredible. My mouth hurt after watching it because my jaw dropped so many times.

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Nora and Mona




Mona keeps secret like Burt keeps bees. She is so careful with them because she will not, on her watch, let anyone get stung. Everyone feels like they can confide in her and tell her dark and embarrassing confessions and Mona is happy to let people get things off their chest and lighten up their load. For creative relief, Mona takes people's secrets, changes their names, and bases elaborate screen plays off of them.

Nora has a voice that is tinier than a baby ant. People often can't hear her. It is a shame too because she is quite certain that she has solved the current economic crisis.



I have been drinking my tea out of this ridiculous mug that my brother got me for Christmas last year. Before, I was just using it as decoration, but out of desperation to not wash dishes, it became my tea mug.
The Bloomington Handmade Market is just around the corner and to reach my goal, I need to sew 14 more dolls. I also need to sew Walter's Halloween costume which puts a lot of pressure on me. Writing that is kind of hilarious. I am so grateful to only be feeling pressure for such a mild, ridiculous thing like turning my son into a Frenchman for Halloween. Although, this Frenchman costume has been my husband's dream ever since his nephews were babies, so the stakes are pretty high.
Did you see Mavis Staples on the Colbert Report? I think this song is so beautiful.

Monday, October 11, 2010

Ophelia and Thomas


Thomas is a pleasant fellow who has a thing for sugary pastries. He eats them for breakfast every morning, thinks about them most of the day, and at night he dreams up new carbohydrated-concoctions not yet out in bakeries. When he is old enough to use the oven he will make these concoctions a reality. Until then, he makes detailed sketches in his loose-leaf notebook and he colors them with scented markers. His latest involve various takes on the "whoopie pie".


Ophelia does her hair up nice and tall. She is inspired by both French and 1950's fashions. She calls this do, the double beehive. She is very modern and artistic as well. She has a teeny, tiny camera, the size of a pencil tip that she puts behind her ear. She uses it to capture people's reactions of her hairstyle as she walks the street. She then develops the film and scribbles on the photos with a black permanent marker. She is making a dark and mysterious statement that she can't articulate yet. She is pretty sure it will make her famous.


I have whoopie pies on the brain. Last Saturday the family and I went to the Farmer's Market and bought some pumpkin whoopie pies from an Amish couple. 50 cents each! The Starbuck's equivalent would be around five dollars, I'm sure. They were so delicious. I have been thinking about them all week. I have always been a little envious of the Amish, but this has taken that envy to a whole new level. Not only do they get to lead quiet, simple lives---but they have whoopie pies sent to them straight from heaven.

I am now the proud owner of a Japanese sewing book. I have been admiring the things Meg from Elsie Marley makes her children from Japanese sewing books and so I jumped on the chance to buy one from the Little Sprout shop. Otherwise I wouldn't really know where to get one, but Little Sprout's Sara blogged about getting rid of some and put them up for sale in her cute, cute shop. All the directions are in Japanese, which I am okay with because I am more of a picture learner anyway.


Just by glancing through the book I had a major revelation of the softie variety. Like a fool, I have been spending all my softie-sewing years (2) stuffing legs before sewing them on. This in general makes the entire shape of the form a teeny bit wonky. But, as pictured below, there is this genius solution to that problem: Leave a space for stuffing the legs, turn them right-side-out and then sew them into the inside-out form flat. Now I feel a little bit wiser.


The leaves are staring to turn. October is pretty great as far as months go. With Little Walter around I feel this urgent need to establish traditions. I didn't grow up with too many. In fact, my mom had a fake Christmas tree that we decorated once and then would push into a closet with a garbage bag thrown over it during the non-holiday season. When Christmas came around we would take off the garbage bag and scoot it into place. Badda-bing, Badda-boom. I guess that is sort of like a tradition in its own way. It makes me smile when I think about it, so that works. But I want to be a tradition extremist, so I need to hurry up and get my apple orchard on so that Walter beans and I can make some homemade applesauce.

Thursday, October 7, 2010

Darrin and Lucinda



Darrin collects toys. As a child he was never allowed to play with violent toys, video games or watch violent tv shows. This rule was highly stressed and Darrin was not one for rule-breaking. Even at slumber parties when the rest of the boys were in their jammies watching highly intense, action-adventure shows with grenades and other explosive things, Darrin would excuse himself to another room to work on a crossword puzzle. Now that Darrin is an adult, he can't get enough of violent toys! Because adults aren't supposed to play with toys, he keeps them in their packages. They line all of his shelves and adorn every inch of dresser-top and coffee table space. He admires them all while drinking his Dr. Pepper, which he couldn't have as a child either.



Lucinda has a passion for fall fashion. In the summer-time while her friends are splashing around in the pool, Lucinda is in her basement, where it is nice and cool. Down there she knits hats and draws sketches of herself in pea-coats and listens to sophisticated news programs. When the weather finally cools down she'll be able to head outdoors in her fashionable hats and discuss politics over coffee in outdoor cafes.

Darrin and I don't have much in common except that I too wasn't allowed very much soda as a child. I remember fantasizing about being a grownup and thinking that all I would do was drive around in a car and drink cokes. "That would show 'em," I thought.
I know I am not the first to have this happen to me, but I have been a little heart-broken lately. I have had this idea dancing around in my head. It's one of those really great ideas that require lists, and sketches, and months of dreaming, and serendipity, and tea with honey and milk, and the purchasing of some special equipment. It's the kind of idea that forms in tiny bits when your driving around or taking quiet, morning walks with your son. And then, at 2 in the morning when you are clicking around the internet in an effort to wind down after tending to your baby that woke out of the blue, you realize that it is the kind of idea that someone else already had, ages ago. Also, this person already executed this idea, only they executed it better than you thought up in your own head. It's not exactly the same exact idea, of course, but it is so beautiful and really quite similar. Oh sigh. I have to share it with you and let you see too. See? Isn't it awesome? The funny thing is, I don't even remember how I clicked around to the site, it was such a blur. But, I am happy it exists because it looks so whimsical and whimsy is important for the world. But, at the same time, "darn-it!".

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Norm, a Buttonhole, and a Functional Hat!





In Norm's early twenties he led a life of crime and landed himself in the clinker. He blamed his bad choices on the thrill of being chased. He liked the loud noises of the police car sirens, also the flashing of their light-bars made running from "the man" feel like a night at the disco. Prison was not for Norm, however. Everything was gray and lifeless, even the food. Now freed, Norm works for a traveling carnival. Everything is very colorful and shiny there and he is making up for his years of mush-food by maintaining a diet consisting solely of elephant ears and deep-fried twinkies. When Norm feels the urge for a thrill, he rides "The Zipper" until he gets sick.



I learned how to sew a buttonhole! I just dusted off my sewing manual and did it. Manuals in general make me want to hide under a table with a soft blankie and a glass of warm milk, but I decided to conquer a fear. It was ridiculously easy, so much so that I feel embarrassed that it took me so long to work up the courage to learn how. My machine even has some strange "button sensor" electrical part which I didn't use, but is really intriguing. I love how much it adds to a softie to have a functioning bit of clothing on them. Zippers---watch yourselves, you're next!

I was so excited about learning a new skill that I decided to do something else on my list and make Walter-beans a winter hat. I used a pattern from Lotta Jansdotter's book Simple Sewing for Baby:




I love it! Also, Walter loves it too, or rather he hasn't taken it off his head and he keeps holding the ribbon and staring at it. His ears will be so warm now.