Happy New Year!

It's my usual resolution - write in my blog more often! I need to put more energy on my own creative projects and manage my time better. Less Zuma and mahjong, more doll-making and beading!

2011 was an interesting year.

1. I quit my "day job" and Peggy in Paradise is in full swing. 
2. I got really sick and ended up in the hospital. As a result, I figured out that the anti-acid drug I was on to control my GERD was probably causing 95% of the symptoms I was having - this after 5 years of being sick on an almost daily basis. It's great to feel well!
3. I lost 2 dear friends - my oldest best friend Brenda, and our cat Blackie - within one week of each other. I miss them both. I realized today that I'm still sad. I haven't gotten used to the new pattern yet.
4. I made a lot of fairies last year! And beaded a lot of snowflakes.
5. I started a new garden, which is still not completely planted. Many things intervened. For example, we had to cut down a big palm tree right in the middle of the garden because it was growing into the cess pool. I plan to hang upside-down grow bags from the trunk and grow tomatoes and beans.
6. I learned so much! Social media marketing, more about Quickbooks, how to publish a book, cascading style sheets. SQL programming to come!

I can feel 2012 shaping up to be a great year. There are so many interesting things to do and learn!

Peggy and the Begonia Stalks

I always water the begonias last, and not as often, because they sit on my old garden bench and I don't want water running out on it. It's plastic, it can't be damaged at this point, but it's a habit to conserve it and a habit to water them last.

As I slowly drip water into the pots, I have a chance to really look at them and they are showy indeed. There is a rex begonia so dark it's almost black, and an angelwing begonia that shines red on the back of it's speckled green leaves. The leaves are serrated and partially turn themselves over when the sun hits them.

4 feet tall and still growing

Angelwings were one of my first houseplants and good friends for many years. Then I didn't have houseplants for a few years, too much bother, I had a big garden outdoors.  I have no plants inside my home on Kauai. Many people do, but I find that they usually end up housing ants and the occasional centipede. I'd prefer to have those critters living outdoors where they belong, and there are plenty of plants right outside the screen door.

When the begonias sat on the ground, they were always being munched on by slugs and didn't thrive. Once I moved them to the bench, they put on a growth spurt that has gone on for months. Right plant, right place…

The center stalks grow so straight and tall, like Jack's beanstalk, reaching up and up through the filtered shade. They are full of potential, and hidden jewels.

Secret begonia world

When I look at them through the eyes of a professional gardener, I think "I should top these guys and then they'd bush out and have more flowers, and I could start the tops mixed together in the yellow pot." But then I hear them say quietly "Why? Why limit our upward growth? We have side shoots that will grow out naturally and make us bushier, we already have flower clusters. We are in balance."

Why indeed? Why limit our upward growth?

New Combinations for Linda

photo courtesy of Amazon.com

 When I started cleaning Linda up, her drawers were stained and sad, bloomers that couldn't be salvaged. I have so many lovely books to choose from on just about any subject to do with dolls, embroidery, tassels, or beads. I went to my library and picked out "The Doll's Dressmaker: The Complete Pattern Book," by Venus A. Dodge.

I particularly like this collection of patterns because it includes both old-fashioned patterns for vintage dolls and simple, easily adaptable patterns that can be used with any doll. She also offers 3 sizes of the same patterns and clear instructions about how to make them. Many line drawings inspire variations with tucks, lace, ribbon, and embellishment.

No fine lawn combinations for Miss Linda! No, she wanted fancy gold printed cotton, and red ribbon facings.

What Miss Linda wants, Miss Linda gets! This is the inside-out view.

Finished close-up and beaded edges. I had to put some 24K somewhere!

Now if I can just get her to stop rolling up her skirt and showing off!

I like this casual still life with dish drainer in background and Linda leaning against a roll of paper towels. I simply must get a proper photo area set up. And one day I will! In the meantime, Linda loves her new combis and will not be embarrassed when my nosy friends lift up her skirt to see if she has panties on. They'd best be careful! Linda goes commando without notice.

Cheery New Blog Theme

I haven't spent much time wandering through the design features until tonight. I chose my last design because it reminded me of the wide open spaces of Eastern Washington, where I was born and grew up. I like this one because it reminds me of crisp spring skirting fabric, and our lovely tidy-bowl blue ocean that surrounds Kauai.

Desks on the Way

Custom-fit for my plastic tubs and file boxes

Matt has started the first of 3 desks for the beadio. Two will go along the far wall and one on the side under the blue shelves. The two on the far wall will be joined by an 8x3 foot sheet of plywood, forming a seamless top that will be big enough (and sturdy enough) to hold my single futon. They are all pine, so that will be a lot of pine in one room! I love the way they're put together in a honeycomb for stability, and all the cubbies measured to fit my tubs and office file boxes.

Fiddling with Dolls While Norway Burns

Lolana of Nanakuli

 A great disaster happened in Norway yesterday - a young man killed many innocent people, most of them teenagers who had been attending an island retreat just a few minutes by car from where one of my friends lives. The killing is believed to have been politically motivated.

When I first heard the news (on Facebook) I felt horror, shock, dismay, helpless. Then I remembered that we are NEVER helpless in the face of a disaster. We can always send healing energy to help those in need, and strengthen the helpers on the ground.

Serena

Serge Kahili King has written about this on http://huna.org/html/911.html.

"Each time you become aware again of what happened and/or what's being done about it, here are some specific suggestions of what to do:
1. Pray to a higher power to help the helpers (which includes healers and peacemakers).
2. Imagine the helpers being surrounded by healing light and/or being assisted by angels or other spirit helpers.
3. If you know how, do an inner symbolic journey to help the helpers.
4. To the best of your ability, take the time to bring your own spirit to a state of peace by meditating on the beauty and goodness in the world, and practice positive expectation no matter what happens that the work of the helpers will be successful, in this world or another. This may be the most difficult thing of all to do ... and the most beneficial." (bolding mine)

Does suspending our own joy in life help others in any way? No, I don't believe so. Does our joy and happiness increase the "happiness quotient" of the world? I think it does. If we can truly achieve #4 above, then we are free to go about our daily business with joy. My spirit comes to peace most readily when I play with dolls or garden, so that's what I've been doing.

Bless Our Happy Big Island Home

Linda's Make-Over

Yesterday I went on a "play date" over to another doll-maker's house. I haven't really hooked up with other doll-makers that much in person, but I'd like to. We didn't play dolls as it turned out. I helped her understand her new Mac computer a little better and we got to know each other better, too.

I've been so busy that it was stressful to even figure out what to take to play with. Doll-related? Too complicated. Beading? Always an option, but I didn't think Helen was too interested in beading. I finally picked up Linda, my tried and true friend since I was 5 years old, a cleaning toothbrush, a big book of doll clothes patterns, and my paint pens and sketchbook, just in case.

And then I hauled it all back home and put it away. Except Linda, who got a thorough bath and a bob.

Linda ready for her bath

I got Linda when I was 5 years old. We were visiting relatives in Texas, a world away from the little town in eastern Washington where I grew up. What a beautiful doll she was! Long BLONDE hair, which I cut off almost immediately. Oh my goodness, was my mom ever mad! She told me that now Linda would be bald for the rest of her life, and it was my fault. I'm amazed I wasn't scarred for life, but in fact, I wasn't even that upset. It was worth it, I loved cutting hair.

She was bald for 5 years.The Christmas I was 10, my mom and grandma gave her an entire make-over, including a waist-length brown wig and a new wardrobe. They did this without my knowing a thing in advance, which is pretty incredible. Unfortunately, Linda went through the same fire we did, about 5 years ago.

Waist-length dreadlocks and dirty dirty shoes

Linda's truly bad hair day

She got smoked and superheated and her eyes clouded over. I did give her a washing, but she certainly needed another. Her hair was really nasty, all gummed together.

53 years old, cataracts forming

 Her eyes still open and close, but she's lost eyelashes on her left eye, probably because of stress                 

I took her entirely apart. Her head is stuffed with cotton batting. I did not take it out, I was afraid of disturbing her eye mechanism. I found a salad dressing cap that exactly fit the opening, and then put her head on the bottle out of the way while I washed her limbs. I read on a doll hospital website that Formula 409 works well to clean up old vinyl dolls. It sure does! It strips the gunge right off and doesn't take the paint off.

First they took my legs off and they threw them over there...

Then they pulled my head off and stuck it on a salad dressing bottle

There was no combing out those long dreads, no matter how carefully I went at it with the cat flea comb. She simply had to have a hair cut. Even short, it took almost 2 hours to comb out and trim her hair. And then there was the matter of that bald spot...

Linda's new bob

So happy to be clean

These are her original shoes

Even her eyes came clearer after being swabbed gently with 409.

No longer just a dirty doll

Do all my posts have an underlying Huna moral? Well, maybe so, because Huna is the spiritual philosophy that underlies my daily life. I try to live an intentional life. What does that mean? It means doing things with an intention in mind, holding that intention firmly during whatever it is I'm doing, and believing the energy of that intention will manifest in my life.

As I carefully cleaned her, I held the healing intention of graceful rebirth and positive change for myself and all who need this energy. Linda is a happy dolly today!