As the pot of simmering turkey soup dwells in the kitchen, so new ideas and new dolls are simmering in my studio. Herbs and spices, calico prints and vintage ticking. Warmth and creativity. As the title of my last post reads, "the most wonderful time"...this is, for me, the most wonderful time of the year also in the dollmaking front. Another year draws to a close, and I get to do to two very important things: look over my sketch book at every single doll I created this year, count them all up, see if I can remember who bought each and every one (which I do, at least for the larger dolls, the bunnies are all a blur!), and close said sketch book and start a new one.
Yesterday I bought my new sketch book. It has less pages than the one I used this year, and maybe that just means that my hands have surprises for me. Maybe my hands were drawn to pick up a very large, voluminous, black-bound sketch book, with not so many pages, perhaps telling me that this year my hands will create less dolls. I do wish for less dolls, because I have so much fun creating them that I want to make more things for them. Less dolls for me means I get to make more toys. And if I learned something this year was this: that making toys gives me great pleasure. Don't get me wrong, creating dolls is my absolute passion. But creating toys for the dolls is almost such a guilty pleasure that I doubt my sanity at most times. Confession over.
I am savouring this end of the year so slowly, looking at all my sketches, almost not willing to create a congratulatory photo collage of my dolls, because to do so means to me that I really am closing this year, and I am not quite sure I am there yet. I want to have all these dolls in my open head, in my heart, just a little longer. To me, even though they all are in the homes that they were meant to be, there is a little part of them still here. I see them about in the bits of fabric lying about in a dantesque mess on my shelves, on the mismatched buttons that went on some outfits, on that little piece of yarn left over from the shoes for so and so. All those dolls are still here, and I am not ready to say good bye to them, to open a new book, and to start dreaming and drawing my next year. I know it is coming, but I wish to dwell on it just a little longer. Don't be fooled by this romanticism, these hands of mine will soon, very soon, get rolling wool, cutting embroidery lengths, laying fabric to be cut. And when that times comes, I will be ready. Oh! so ready. But for now, let us linger and simmer the new dolls a little longer.