Phantom Whispers

Okay...

 I have to confess...

I have an obsession. And it's not my granddaughter or food or books. Or rather it's something other than my grandaughter, food or books. I do love my grandadughter with a passion and hey, how can you live without food or books? But it is something I never, ever in my wildest dreams thought would happen...

I have an obesssion with dolls. Oh, no not just any doll. That would be way too easy. I am obessed with Blythe dolls. I had never heard of these dolls until a friend (yeah, I still call her a friend, but I wasn't sure if it wasn't a curse she laid on me. I'm still not sure.) Now, for those of you, like me, who hadn't heard of Blythe, it is like a cult almost. Back in the 70's (and I'm paraphrasing everything and will probably get my facts wrong) Kenner came out with this 11"-12" doll that had a big head in comparison to her body. The reason being her head had an eye mechanism. When you pull the string at the back of her head her eyelids would close and then open up to different colored eyes, looking in a different direction. Four colors of eyes and three directions, forward and to each side.

Kind of creepy, you say? Well apparently most kids thought so too and Blythe was well on her way to obscurity when she was photographed and but into a book by a gal named Gina Garan. You can read the whole story here.    This is Blythe/ History    It's kind of amazing.

Anyhow,there are a lot of different styles of Blythe with varying makeup and hairstyles to tempt the collector. It seems that Takara (the Japanese company that now makes them) comes out with several limited editions a year. But really stinks about itis that for the most part, you can't buy them in the States directly from an Asian store as they will not sell to North America. What???? It's crazy I know. I still don't get it or know all the whys and wherefores of it all but what it basically means is that if you want a Blythe you just about have to know someone who has one to show you the ropes of Blythe purchasing survival.  And for the most part, stay away from evil bay.  If you should ever decide you want to enter this world, let me know.  I'll hook you up.   The first one's free (the hook up, not the doll).

I have to tell you, when I first saw one I didn't think much of it but then when you explore the world of Blythe and discover all the amazing stuff done to and with them (search for Blythe on Flicker and check out the custom ones and the remarkable photos and videos) ....it called to my inner creative child.

Of course, I could fall for a Barbie or something affordable. But no, I had to fall for the collector big bucks kind of doll. You know, the kind I hide when my granddaughter comes over. Maybe when she's older, say 25 or so.

And the there is the whole world of clothing your Blythe....augh, the doll has better clothes than I do. Oh, and did you want to take pictures of your Blythe? Well then you are going to need props....

As you can see, the list goes on.

So, here is a picture of my first Blythe, Lola, a Frosty Frock, when I first got her.

Here she is after I changed her makeup and carved her lips and nose and added some freckles.

Her current incarnation. I played with her eyes, changed the makeup, touched up some of the carving and gave her new eyelashes as well as playing with her eyechips.

Who knows how she will finally end up. She may just have her makeup done over and over as I learn something new each time. You've got to love her patience.

Did I mention that I had to get another Blythe as well? Oh, yeah, the short blond thing isn't really for me. So I needed Nastasha, Tash, as she is known to her friends, a Night Flower.

I am crocheting and knitting small clothes that I should have in my etsy store once I have them tweeked to my satisfaction. Got to help balance out the outflow a bit. And I like making them. A lot. It's fun to make tiny things.

Did I mention it's an obsession?

Oh yeah, if you don't watch it, I'll break out the grandaughter pictures.

Trying to Find my Flow

You know those times when you just can't quite find your rhythm?  When you can't seem to find a groove to slide into the routine?  That's where I'm at right now, trying to find the flow so I can start getting stuff done.

I just hate it when the days roll by and I'm left wondering where all the time went and how come I didn't create anything cool.  It is my own fault.  I'm a terrible procrastinator, learned, apparently, from my dad (hey, he says I probably got it from him).   It really is quite amazing how skilled at this I have become.   That and the last minute dash to make it look like I have been doing something....sigh.

But in spite of all that, I'm not really a lazy person.  Really.   I'm not.   It's not my fault that the days are too short and the night just that much shorter.   It can take me hours to rev up to really start producing, only to find it is time to stop, to pull together dinner or do the laundry so that I might have something resonably clean that sort of fits or to vaccum up the ever appearing clumps of cat hair.  I mean, really, my cats should be bald with as much hair as I vacuum up.  Oh and let's not even start on the numbers of muy own hair I am pulling off of things.  Augh.

So, anyway...

I'm back from a wonderful time at the Newport Paper Arts Festival in Newport, OR.   It is always a wonderful place filled with some of my favorite folks (at least during the festival <g>).  There is something about having the ocean and the beach so near by that makes me want to deeply relax and at the same time feel wildly creative.   And this time the Mailman was actually able to come with.  He had a much deserved relaxing time while we were there.   I wasn't nearly so relaxed as I had three days of classes to teach but it was still wonderful.  The first night was a dinner at the Chowder Bowl with a group of friends who had never met the Mailman before.  It took a little bit but everyone warmed up to him as he pulled out the charm, trying to fit in at least a little with this delightful group of women.
It's not the greates picture as you really can't see most of the faces but he's not that used to my camera.   But the food and the companionship was wonderful.

And I only got a few pictures taken in my first class.   I was way to busy in the other classes to take any pictures and as I was I didn't take most of the pictures....the Mailman did.
And I was lucky enough to be teaching at Taylor Made Memories.   Nancy, the one standing, is the owner and she stocks some way cool items.  Lisa is her able assistant, a warm, funny gal who takes after my own heart.
 

So that's it for now.  Oops, I forgot to mentions that the Produce Guy (my youngest and father to my granddaughter, Ylaiza) turned 24 this week.   How did this happen?   But if it's a shock for me it is worse for my Dad.   His baby is turning 56 this month.....augh.

Quiet on the Western Front

So, I haven't yet figured out what day on which to do my blogging.  Usually when I make plans I must be asking the Universe to bring more stuff into my life.  I say this because it seems like stuff just comes up, severly stopping or blocking whatever it was I had planned.   Not that the stuff is bad stuff, it's just stuff but it sure slows me down sometimes.

And I had to start making lists beyond the daily to do list kind of thing.   Now my lists are more of things I might EVER want to do.  The reason I have to make the list is because I might think of something and then not remember it until some totally inappropriate time, say like when I should be asleep, rather that in the more when I figuring out the day's plans.  

So to more on to more interesting (I hope) stuff, here are some pictures of some recent work.   I call these Of Light & Dark.  Here are the covers.  

These are pictures of the spines and insides.  

 
Here are some different books- Fabulous Little Journals. 

The spines and insides.
The painted paper came out so yummy on these.  Look at the colors but I didn't  get any good detail pictures of the painted pages.  (these two books are in a gallery now -check here if you are interested) 
 

I hope you have a wonderful weekend!

Random Words?

I had this bag of word beads sitting on my table.   These jumped out at me.

This what they say on the other side.

Pretty cool, huh? 

An homage to food

I've been thinking about food a lot lately.   That's nothing new but I have been thinking about the quality of food and how it helps or hurts the body.

It probably has something to do with me dieting for a few months.  When you are really taking note of what you eat, you want it to count and do good things and make you feel good and fill up your senses as well as your body.

At least I do.

 I took this photo of an absolutely lovely red pepper.  I just wish my picture did it justice.   I just can't hold the camera still enough.  It was so pretty it looked fake.  And what does that say about me that fake is good looking, eh?  

Quality or what is happening to our food if we let it

Okay, I know I haven't posted for a while.   That's because big things have been happening with me.   And because I want to update and radically change the look of this blog.   That all means time and being the great procrastinator that I am (which, if you didn't know, they say is an offshoot of being a perfectionist - you keep putting stuff off because you won't be able to do it perfectly-   yah, right) you will notice that nothing has changed.  

Well, if all goes well, I hope to be bringing some of these changes around soon, maybe even today, after this post.  And I hope to pick a good day of the week to blog.   Believe it or not, it just never even occured to me to blog on regular days.   I don't know why this never entered my brain until I read another blog saying that Friday was her blogging day. Well, duh.  the lightbulb has finally gone off in my dust filled, badly cluttered noggin.  

Now I'm not saying that Friday will be the day but I will be picking a day...soon.  As soon as I figure out the perfect day.  Okay, I won't be waiting for the perfect day because that just won't be happening but I am going to pick a day that works for me.

Okay, now on to something that is important to me or I wouldn't post it here. 

Warning:  I'm off on a rant here, so if you just can't handle it, don't read it. I'll be back with lighter, less weighty stuff, really.   But I just have to say something about this stuff.

On March 3, 2010, the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture is planning to approve the use of genetically modified Roundup Ready (registered name- I just can't figure out how to get the symbol here) alfalfa without any limitations or protections for farmers, consumers or the environment.

Now, alfalfa may not seem that big a deal to you.  After all, when was the last time you popped some alfalfa into your mouth.   The real problem is that this kind of stuff shows up in beef, milk and probably pork and chicken as well.  

"According to the EIS (USDA'sEnvironmental Impact Statement) consumers who ingest Roundup may experience "general and non-specific signs of toxicity from subchronic and chronic exposure to glyphosate includ[ing] changes in liver weight, blood chemistry (may suggest mild liver toxicity), liver pathology, and weight of the pituitary gland."

The EIS warns that, "Based on upper estimates of exposure ... infants consuming fruit and all age groups consuming vegetables may be at risk of adverse effects associated with acute exposure to glyphosate residues."

Yeah, doesn't sound good does it?

And, I'm just not a big fan of a huge, huge, I can't stress enough how huge, company, having a free rein to play with our food sources so that they can sell more of their pesticides.  Let's not forget that they will own the alfalfa seeds as well, which if all goes like it did with their soybeans means that Monsanto crops will be polluting the crops on other farms making it darn near impossible to not have genetically engineered or modified crops and seeds.   Monsanto is evil in my mind.  See if you don't agree after watching some of the stuff on YouTube (just type in Monsanto in the search box).

So for more information on this and something you can do about it, click on the link below.

Take Action with the Grassroots Netroots Alliance.

Thanks for listening.

Warm Wishes

My heart is filled with joy and love this holiday season.   I can't help but count my blessings at this sometimes hectic, can be stressful but shouldn't be time.   I've made some wonderful new friends and relished continuing friendships.   Our house is well worn and well loved and has sheltered us for many a year.   The family has grown and flourished,  And we are blessed with our much beloved granddaughter.  She has a way of letting everyone know that they are loved and wonderful.   It really just doesn't get any better.  I am truly a lucky gal.

I want to share a book I have done for over 12 years.  It's a quick and delightful little book that has a ton of variations.   When I first designed this book, I had never seen my particular take on them.  Now you can find numerous site with folks saying they designed it.  And you know, I think they did design their book because it si a wonderful logical extention of an idea.   And just because I had never seen it before doesn't mean that someone else hadn't also come up with this before me.   There really are only a few new things under the sun and great minds do think alike.  So without further ado here is my holiday gift to you.  If you click on the link following the picture it should take you to a pdf file.   Please let me know if it doesn't work.  I'm still teaching myself how to do some of this stuff.

Have a blessed holiday and may you be filled with love and joy!

The Ornament Book

Here is the book closed

Here is a close up of the cover   

  

  The book opened

And  another view of the book opened 
Download Ornament Book

Fourth try

This is my fourth attempt to post.   It's kind of wearing me down.  

So here are pictures form JournalFest.  An amazing event put on by Teesha and Tracy with the perfect mix of people and size.   It was wonderful and I had a great time.  I got to take a class, too, form the awesome Stephanie Lee.

Here is a picture on the way to Port Townsend.  Nothing fabulous here, I just love the drive.

There was a huge rainbow.  Looks like it ended at my car. Now where is the pot of gold, eh?

Karla, Joan and Vivian (popping her head in between) at Thursday night's journaling party.

Vivian hamming it up for the camera.

Sally Peters sewing away on a journal at Saturday's journaling party.

Katie, Vivian and Joan at the journaling party.

A great time was had by all I think.

test run

 1 <a href="http://www.teeshaslandofodd.com/1/journalfest.html"><img src="http://i395.photobucket.com/albums/pp37/tiphoni723/journalfest_bug.jpg" /></a>

I am hoping that the line of computer-ese above translates into what I know must be a cool image to signify Journal Fest, a venture put on the marvelous Teesha Moore.   I am so looking forward to it.  It will be a small event with some absolutely amazing instructors.   I'm going to get to play there with a workshop with Stephanie Lee.  I have loved her stuff for a while now and her book is pretty darn cool too.   Anyhow, I hope you will check out Journal Fest.  As usual with a Teesha Moore production it promises to be wonderful.

And lest I forget, I am also very psyched for the upcoming Art & Soul in Portland, OR.   Glenny is putting on another fabulous event.  I am so in awe of the work and love show organizers have for their events.  It's not a job I could handle and I am so very grateful that these wonderful folks take on the job and handle it with such loving grace.  

and just to give you something to look at:

Phoenix here I come

Okay, I've meant to write but it has been very busy around here.  And I don't have a lot of time right now either but I wanted to share what I've been working on.  So I'm going to give you pictures.   I'll write when I get back from Art Unraveled.

 

 

 

 

 

See you soon!