Doll: Part 2 of however many it takes to finish her

Not a heck of a lot of progress happened today. Fridays are my hellish days, and today was especially so. First stop on the way back from taking my son to school is grocery shopping. Easily the most despicable errand for a stay at home mum. I've tried several things to try to make the task less arduous- listen to music on my ipod (which was stolen and insurance hasn't come through to replace it yet- sorry, sore spot), dressed up- hair, make-up, the whole bit, talked to other mums and their children, pretended to be a super hero spy who needed to gather the specific list of ingredients to make the antidote for the poison that was released into the air over a major metropolitan area and only I was immune to it's affects! Nothing works. It's just a boring task.

It's a rough life.

Anyway, then Steve and I took the dog for a walk up the hill. Steve forced me to take the zig zag track- so dangerous they don't even risk pulling the bodies of hikers who have died from massive coronaries back down the track. Ok, possibly not that bad, but it is steep. And then this afternoon I went on the Fun Run with my son's school. Whoever was sick enough to call it the "Fun Run" obviously has never done it with a slightly smallish boy child who is LAZY! Seriously, he laid down on the footpath (sidewalk for you Americans) so many times I was ready to leave him there! But we did manage to finish, and it only took us an hour.


So, you can probably guess that Periwinkle (just trying it out for now) didn't get a whole lot done. I did decide, however, that the gaping holes for eyes were getting a little too creepy to deal with. The problem has now been rectified:

Much better, don't you think?

 The eyes that were originally in the doll have been saved for future use. I never throw anything away which is probably why my "studio" looks the way it does. That and Steve leaves his paint stuff wherever it happens to be because it's a "studio" only he doesn't use the quotations.

Where was I? Oh right, eyes.

The original eyes were way too busy for the face with the addition of the swirls. So I grabbed some green glass pebbles I had in one of my drawers (the reason for not throwing stuff away). They were perfect in width and depth, but a bit too tall. No worries, I made two small incisions cuts in the plastic around each eye socket to allow the plastic to mould to the new eye. Then, using craft glue, I glued the stones in place.

The glue is still wet in the photo. It dries clear. And strong.

Then, after harvesting the crop from our garden, feeding and cuddling the chickens- so cuddly! I thought I would begin the process of attaching hair to Periwinkle.

I've decided to further the symmetricalness of the swirls with pig tails. Yes, I know that close up the anti-symmetricalness of the swirls is appallingly obvious- so just humour me, k?

One of my favorite styles with pig tails is the zig zag part- so that's what I'm attempting to do. I used the trusty white wax pencil to draw the zig zags down the middle of the crown of the head.




So now you're thinking, "Those are diamonds." And you'd be right! There, don't you feel good about yourself. You should. The reason for drawing diamonds is that it makes it easier to get the pattern even. I eyeball almost everything I do. Not because it's more effective. Not because I enjoy the humanity of imperfection in my creations. It's simply that...well, where do you suppose my son gets his laziness from?

It's important to note that the zig zag pattern really is just a guideline. I know that in order to have a zig zag part, I need that particular area of the head to have plenty of hair so that the girl doesn't have any unsightly bald patches.

Next on the list: devise a way to get the hair in the scalp without crippling myself. With Samantha, I used a leather thimble and an altered needle to push the yarn strands into the head. The result was stunning, but also ended with me having a few holes in my thumb and a fair amount of bruising as well. Plus, I started using my embroidery scissors to my a hole, which is incredibly bad for them and now they're quite dull. I'm much more upset about the scissors than my thumb, since thumbs heal, scissors don't. But I wasn't really thinking about that when I couldn't bend my thumb and it was swollen and throbbing. So this time I'm being smart! I'm going to use an ice pick to make the initial hole.

We don't own an ice pick and I've tried in vain for almost 4 years since moving to New Zealand to find one. I'm not really sure what New Zealanders do to separate ice, but I suspect it involves a hammer.

We do have a hammer. Several, in fact. And nails. So I got this great idea to use a nail and hammer to make the holes I need. I was even smart enough to use a longish nail so that I didn't have as big a risk of smacking my fingers.



So the current plan is: Steve will sharpen a stainless steel nail and attach it to a wooden handle for me, and we'll pray that it's an ingenious contraption that everyone will want.

Meanwhile, I will enjoy my scotch, while I decide if I want to work on a different project, or play solitaire on my computer.

These are the truly important decisions in life.