Your Doll Love Just Gets Stronger
I have been making dolls for 17 years now, and I guess at some point I thought that by now my passion for them would be slightly faded, the corners of my sketchbooks a little torn, not much left in the bank of ideas.
But I was wrong.
If anything, the passion for them is deeper, more nuanced, it has matured so to speak. Like a good wine or an aged cheese, the flavour is now deeper, full of body, with a lot more stories to reveal at the first sip or enticing fresh bite. My dollmaking will become “of age” this year. There is indeed so much to celebrate.
But what does it actually mean? Does this ‘maturing’ means I have less excitement for working on a new doll? To the contrary, that excitement is very much there but my body and soul approaches it with more respect, more kindness and a complete openness to the process.
While I still anguish and spend hours in concern wether what I am making will or will not fulfill the secret dreams of my customers, there is also a wider trust in the way my hands work. Knowing fully well that even though I am making the doll, she is very much the authority and guiding energy in this magical process. All I need to do is trust the process, believe in serendipity and know that the world is full of magic and I am part of it.
That special magic in dollmaking is what has carried me through all these years. Every time I think “this is it, I will never make another doll more beautiful…or more special…” there comes along a new wool child to discredit such thoughts.
Every time I think I’ve reached the pinnacle of emotions, next comes one and steals the very breath off my lips.
Every time I think I have mastered a technique or know ‘fully well’ what I’m doing, there comes a doll with the explicit task of humbling me. To make me realize how much there is to learn and how, even though I have been making dolls non-stop for 17+ years, I am merely at the very beginning.
Having all these years of experience behind me has taught me that with every doll comes a new opportunity. A new challenge. A new personality to get to know, understand and call into being.
I have always being marvelled by what the dolls show me, and very thankful of what they teach me. They have shown me to be kind to myself, to appreciate the slowness of hand crafts, to become more understanding of those poor souls who cannot connect with their inner child yet and to speak to them gently, to bring them into this doll world with open arms.
They have taught me to sew, and knit, and sculpt and embroider, to make hair and doll shoes, to write stories, and edit videos to tell those stories, to teach other people how to make them, to be quiet in my thoughts so I can hear them, to trust the universe in its immense wisdom, to see craft through the eye of sustainability and art through the eye of playfulness.
Each doll comes with a very specific gift. At first, I was too young and excited to notice them. With time I started to see the patterns and hear the music. I have now started to write what each doll has given me, the thoughts they arise, the feelings they evoke, the potential I see going forward. Not just to give them credit, but so I don’t miss it.
I now write, not just their specific details and when I made them, who I made them for or who ended up buying them, but I also write what they taught me. My dollmaking sketchbook is turning into something quite wild, full of annotations (not of fabrics and notions as before, or potential new ideas) but of feelings, realizations, quotes and thoughts percolating in my head as I made them.
In the same way I consider myself a sort of medium to bring them forth out of the wool, I am now seeing the dolls as vessels of knowledge. As intermediaries for great life pearls thrown my way. The universe knows I love dolls and I am connected to them, so it speaks to me through them. It sends me opportunities, people, experiences, ideas and so much love.
And lately I have also started to talk more and more to other people about them. But not just about what they are made out of, or how I make them, or what seams I used on their clothing; topics I could talk about literally for days! But to also go into the ethereal subjects, the ones that have kept me glued to my seat with a needle in my hand, working hours upon hours, crafting a personality not just a doll.
Many years ago, I did all that through this journal. Kind people would read it, kin folk would comment and let me know, even privately, how much they identified with my feelings about dolls and doll making. But I never voiced this “out there”. I rarely told people in real life that I made dolls, almost nobody knew what I did for a living.
Not because I was ashamed or because I thought they wouldn’t understand. I guess dollmaking was such an inner part of me that I saw no reason to speak of it with others. Close friends and family all knew, and that was that. This journal, though public, was also like a private notebook where I wrote the stories the dolls told me and the happiness they brought into my life as they taught me to make french seams or use better needle felting techniques.
Now I feel this need to go wider and deeper. To excavate more of this knowledge the dolls are so willing to give me, to share it with the doll mothers that are taking my dolls into their homes, and with you all through this journal, my YouTube channel, my newsletter. Anywhere the world can listen.
It is not surprising, and least of all to me, to hear why people are taking my dolls into their homes, as I have now started asking them as well. The things they tell me, the secrets and dreams they share with me, it is all just so beautiful. Their memories, stories, current hurdles, their passions and the way the dolls form a part of their life, is giving me so much energy to carry on with what I am doing. It’s cementing the feeling that this is exactly what I should be doing. Not just because I love it, or because others need it. But because it is my journey. It is what I need to do to be who I am in this world.
If I can wish something for you today it would be that: to have that sense of purpose and security in your life path. No second-guessing, no doubt in your heart.
And while the road is never easy, especially for people who want to earn a living with the work of their hands, and life seems to be on a very weird cycle of “unfortunate events”, I do believe having that certainty on your side helps you clear out some of the mental muck that keeps you doubting, losing energy to nothing, and doom scrolling…when you could be dancing, creating, educating, supporting, traveling, resting or otherwise.
Yes, the gifts of Sara were many. I have written them all down and I am sure they will continue to come, even now that she is in the loving hands of the willing mother who is now in charge of her.
Sara taught me many, many lessons and is giving me a lot of food for thought. But I will leave you with this quote she brought me:
““When you start to walk on the way, the way appears”.”
