Not a very exciting photo, but this is an exciting project! We have been having a new run built for the chickens. My fantastic construction guy is building this to match the duck run with the change that the chicken run will have a solid cement floor to prevent any burrowing animals from getting in (like sneaky minks and weasels). I will finally be able to have some comfort that nothing will eat the girls if they are in here while I am out. As the construction guy said, if something gets into this run when he's done there was no way anyone could have stopped it! It is being lined with hardware cloth (1/2"). I will put sand down in there to keep the girls' feet comfortable and give them something to dust in (I will likely put an actual deeper sand box at one end) and roosts will be added in the corners for them to sit up on. It should be done by next Wednesday or Thursday. I'm so glad to be able to have this done! The chicken girls turned four a few weeks ago. They are laying really well for being older ladies. They make an average of 6-7 eggs per day from the 10 girls.
A closeup of the cement floor:
Spring appears to have finally arrived around here, after a lot of cold weather! I will have a new spring arrival in about a month; more about that later! Spring is the best time of the year!
This little girl is only 8" tall and is a Dianna Effner sculpt for Jo Flitton's doll shop. She is "Simply Jackie with Green Eyes" and arrived several weeks ago as a birthday gift. I haven't had time to photograph her till now! She is wearing a crocheted dress made by my friend Monique several years ago for Riley and Friends.
This is "I am Mong-a" from Dollmore, in her originals. She's resin, has blue glass eyes and a blond mohair wig. She is jointed more like one of my vinyl dolls: at the neck, shoulders and hips rather than knees and elbows. I am looking forward to seeing who she will share clothes with and making her some of her own!
This is Patty, one of the Beach Girls by Helen Kish. I have had Betsy for years and recently was able to purchase Patty and Cassie. I'm still looking for Buffy. I redressed Patty in a dress I made just for her last weekend from a Rosemary Ionker pattern.
Little Miss Bobbin has claimed the small birdcage in the craft room as her home! She is wearing a little knit dress from MyHeartforCrochet on Etsy. It's beautifully made and I love the little pointed hat!
I have had this beautiful girl for a full year and have not photographed her yet! She needs a different outfit, too, because it's way too cold around here for a sundress.
This is Rachel and she's 16" tall and joined my Classic Kish collection with Four Seasons Fall, Basic Brunette Jo, and Kathy. Rachel came wearing Jo's dress. My Jo is wearing blond Jo's dress and came that way, so it appears that no one around here has their originals! There's a full view of Rachel on my Flickr account (click through this photo).
This photo does not fully capture the sky's color. This was this past Thursday, Jan. 24th at about 7 AM. It was 0 degrees but I still grabbed the camera!
Princess said she wasn't so sure she wanted her photo done! I took this yesterday. She is doing very well and is quite happy that Edward is her new boyfriend. Status in male ducks is apparently conferred by the status of their lady friends, I think. Eddie went from being second-lowest to being the most dominant male duck because Princess is his girlfriend and she is the most dominant female.
Janie is wearing a dress we received in a swap from Sandy on the Our Little Darlings Yahoo Group. It's beautifully made by Judy LaManna and has a dress, pinafore, petticoat and undies! Sandy also gave me some candy (already eaten!), a gingerbread man in a stocking and a lovely bar of scented soap from Colonial Williamsburg. Lots of fun!
In other news, there has been a lot of quiet on the blog lately because I have had no sewing time! I have been spending every free minute making my duck run completely covered in hardware cloth and with no gaps greater than 1/2" in diameter. There was an incident involving a mink (during the day, while we were home) that I am still not feeling up to discussing. There are seven remaining ducks and the chickens have been on lock-down inside their coop with only supervised run time since Dec. 14 when it happened. A completely mink/weasel proof chicken run is in the works for the spring, but until then we are making do with what we have and being very careful. I cannot catch the mink in my havahart but I'm still trying. It has been a bad year for predators around here.
Emma is modeling a dress I made for the holiday swap on the Our Little Darlings yahoo email group. Hopefully my swap partner is happy with her swap! I enjoyed making the dress. It has a silk ribbon bow, seed beads on the collar and a hand-embroidered detail band on the hem.
Here's the full view, click to go to Flickr and see a bigger photo:
And here they are! Byuri (Birdie) by Iplehouse is on the left and Nami (Naomi) is on the right. I have found that they cannot wear most of my YoSD sized clothing that fits my Rosen Lied dolls and my Littlefee because their chest is wider. They do, however, fit into my Bitty Bethany Kish clothing very well. Naomi (right) is wearing a smocked outfit I made for Bitty Belle several years back and Birdie (left) is wearing a gingerbread dress I made today from an Ionker pattern sized to fit Bitty Bethany. The dress is embellished with silk ribbon and scale lace. They are very cute! Both have the "real skin" resin. I'm very pleased with their realism and find they fit better with the rest of my doll collection than most of my ball-jointed dolls. I usually display my bjd's separately from my vinyl dolls because the contrast is too great but these girls can be displayed with either. There are more closeup and single photos on my Flickr account.
It's been a little busy lately around here, so sorry for the lack of posts. My dolls have gotten no new clothes lately at all so I haven't photographed them! I have two new BID Iplehouse dolls, though, so expect photos of them soon.
This is the new duck run! It's fantastic and I cannot take the credit for building it. The handyman who built my goats' fence put this up in less than a week for me. It's sturdy and has a solid roof so no more winter snow shoveling for me! Hooray! The ducks like it. In the spring, we will put a new, big kiddie pool in there for them. The hose is frozen for the season for now so they are making do with their winter arrangements of buckets and rubber tubs to splash in.
Miss Little Duck says the accommodations are pretty nice. She likes that I put her log for sitting back in there so she can see out and make faces at chickens.
Poppy looks slightly angry in this picture, but she assures me she will not fly the fence again and is actually just shy about having her photo done. She's been fine since her day out in the swamp. I found a few of her feathers WAY down the road when I was walking the dog so I think she was a LONG way from the house. I'm glad she came back. I keep having recurring dreams where my chickens and/or ducks all run into the swamp!
And just for fun, Hattie cursing at Prudence and fighting her through the fence. Hattie is the little teeny 2 pound duck and Prudy is the 8 pound giant Orpington hen. Hattie sure can say a lot of duck curse words!
It's a miracle that I can still photograph Poppy. She got scared today when the tree that came down in the storm was being cut up. She flew out of the fenced area that she's never flown out of and beelined it into the dense swamp toward the beaver pond! I didn't think I would EVER find her and was upset all day. I kept going out and looking and we recorded her sisters making happy noises and played it on speakers into the swamp. At about 6 o'clock when it was dusk, I went for a last look out there with the dog and I saw her! She was roosting on a fallen tree behind the goat house. She was still afraid and ran away from me. I got bread and lured her closer and sat in the rain for an hour and waited for her to roost again. Once I was sure she couldn't get down because it was too dark, I came in and got a flashlight and went back out and got her down out of the tree. She was upset when I came near and puffed up and hissed at me, but once she realized it was me, she tucked down in my arms and let me carry her all the way back across the yard to her sisters. She's now wet, but happy with her sisters in the coop where it's warm and dry. It's a sheer miracle that I got her again because she is one of my wilder chickens and does not like to be picked up. The swamp she disappeared into is populated by foxes, raccoons and coyotes as well as occasionally the neighbor's bird dog. I'm so glad she's back.
So, there was one casualty of Hurricane Sandy around here and it was the duck run! No ducks were hurt, no chickens were hurt and neither was I, running outside at 1:30 in the morning to check on everyone when we heard the big CRACK! This old pine tree had been dead a while and we should have had it taken down. The duck run is mangled. The girls and Roger had to go into the bachelor pad with the boys and no one is happy about that! Roger and Hattie keep getting pinched by bullies and are spending most of their day inside the duck house which missed being crushed by a few feet. Today, the tree guy is coming to cut up the giant dead tree and a handyman is coming to give me an estimate on making a new run before winter hits. I'm not feeling up to rebuilding it myself!
The goats are pleased with this arrangement because they have been promised some log chunks to play on! They are the only ones that are happy! The chickens weathered the storm fine and are well and the other dead tree in our front yard did not fall down so we are having that one removed today, too, to prevent any more damage!
Mark is such an interesting color, I wanted to share this photo! The ducks are doing well. They tell me they want bigger pools for next spring! Their little kiddie pools are getting holes in them after three years of use, so I need to replace them, anyway, and if I can fit larger pools in the car, I'll replace them with six foot pools instead of four foot ones!
Little Rose Red, by Dianna Effner for Boneka, dressed in a fall jumper. Rose Red is rewigged by me (her original wig was an unnatural red color). Her outfit is from a pattern by Designs by Jude that was made for the 12" Chrysalis Bethany doll. It fits Rose Red perfectly!
The outfit will be the prize for a Fall Fashion Photo Contest on the EffnerVinylDolls list I moderate on Yahoo.
This is my 12" Tag-along Bethany from Helen Kish's Chrysalis Collection. Isn't she cute in her new dress? The dress is from a pattern by Designs by Jude and was very easy to make up. I combined the sleeves from the top pattern with the dress instead of making it sleeveless.
I have also never shown a photo of my little Kishlet that I got as a prize for one of the contests in the Kish newsletter. She's a little blond Kishlet and is much beloved by Allie (Bethany).
I have been on vacation since Sept. 10 and it has been very restful. I visited family last weekend but otherwise I have been just hanging around home, catching up and enjoying my sewing room and my pets. Yesterday was a big chores day! I spent three hours cleaning out everyone's house for the fall. The chickens got a good thorough cleaning, including dusting down all the cobwebs in the corners and cleaning out their nest boxes, which greatly offended Amelia, who walked into the yard and ba-GAWKED about it for ten minutes. She said she was going to lay an egg and it was very rude of the maid to be cleaning her nest box while she wants to use it. After it was clean, though, she laid a lovely brown egg for me.
The duck house got a good cleaning, too, but since it was smaller it didn't take so long. There is a paper wasp nest inside under the eaves that I need to take down but I will wait until winter when I'm sure the wasps are inactive. It's a BIG nest, about 6 inches across. I don't see any live wasps, so I think they might be dead or gone, but I'm not going to risk it.
The goat girls needed their house cleaned, too. It was pretty dirty since their favorite hobby is to leave any hay they don't eat all over the floor and lay in it. They were very "helpful" for the whole process, boinging from the wheelbarrow to the bales of shavings and then head-butting in joy that there was some activity. Anza got out when the gate was open during my last wheelbarrow run and capered around the yard and would not let me catch her. I tried grabbing her tail but she was too wily for me! So I got the jar of treats and she immediately came back in the pen. Naughty Anza! I took this photo after I locked her back in the pen. Notice her smirk!
Littlefee Ante and Rosen Lied Sage are modeling a little set of overalls and a jumper I made. The overalls are exactly sized for Littlefee, so they are a smidge short for Sage but I wanted to show both outfits together!
I had fun with creating some overalls for Littlefee Ante today. I also made her some little slipper-type shoes. Those were not as hard as I expected them to be, but I think I could use a lot more practice in shoe-making!
These dolls are beautifully painted. They are hand-painted Suchin (12 inches) and Sasha (6 inches) by Helen Kish, one of my favorite doll artists. They're just pretty! I admire them daily. I made Suchin's dress from a vintage hanky with instructions provided by Sissy Lingle (she has the directions for sale, send me a message if you need her contact info). Sasha's dress is my own design, also from a vintage hanky. I made it several years ago for Ellery Kish. Sasha is the same size as Ellery and I'm so glad Helen made her. I was waiting for years for more friends for Ellery, and it's great that Helen is offering these six inch all-vinyl babies as companions for her 12 inch girls. They look great as dolls for the 12 inch girls but also can go live in Riley's World whenever I would like them to! It's always a bit difficult to get good photographs on August afternoons. The light is so golden. It's lovely light but makes for yellow photos.
Sorry about the quiet blog lately! I've been busy settling a new veterinarian in at work. I have completed a few doll things that need to be photographed! I have a new plum-colored knit dress for my Pukifee Ante (Madeline) and I have a nearly-completed hanky dress on my Suchin. I am hoping tonight to have time to sew on a collar and button to that dress and then I will photograph it whenever I get a minute.
Pictured here is Bobbin (Realpuki Soso) wearing her wig from Beachgirl Nikita's Guys and Dolls ebay shop and her dress made by me. I scaled down the free pattern I used previously for Ante's dress. Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong when I'm knitting that the stitches don't come out nice and even? I think I am using different tensions for my knit and purl rows when I'm making stockinette stitch, but I'm too inexperienced a knitter to be able to diagnose the problem. Help?
Take that raccoons! ZAP! I have installed an electric fence specifically designed to keep raccoons out of my chicken and duck area. With all the other normal precautions (sturdy coops, covered and locked runs) we will hopefully never have another incident involving raccoons again.
In other news, Princess is settling in very well and is pals with Roger and Hattie. They swim together in the pool all day, monopolize the best straw pile to sleep on and make ugly faces together at Little and Pearl (this is the usual way of things with Roger and Hattie). Aaron says that Princess's name is really Princess Maisey. He insists on calling her Maisey!
Meet Princess. She came to live with us on July 28. Sadly, she is the sole survivor of a raccoon attack. She is related to Roger and Hattie and came from the nice lady who gave them to me. Princess has quite a personality! She already rules the duck yard and has claimed ownership of the food bowl, the best straw sleeping spot and the kiddie pool! She likes to fight the bachelor boys through the fence and has put Roger in his place quite nicely! Hattie is put out and pouts in the small shelter all day, Little Duck just ignores her and Pearl picked a fight twice but got walloped so she has decided to leave Princess alone.
In other news, we have ordered an electric fence to keep raccoons from going anywhere near our chicken and duck area. The fence arrives on August 2 and I'm so happy it's coming because I hope to be able to sleep better after it arrives!
This dress is from a pattern for Bleuette. The very kind blog owner, Beth, offered the pattern on her blog. I had heard Bleuette's patterns will fit Little Darlings, so I made one today. The crochet thread is Aunt Lydia's bamboo and it's so soft!
This dress and bloomers set is made from a pattern at the Ourlittledarlings yahoo group (a group for Dianna Effner's Little Darlings dolls). It originally was conceptualized as a top and capri pants combination, but I made mine into a summer sundress with bloomers.
I made three dresses for the Effner Little Darlings these past few days. I had two days off in a row and put them to good use! Anne of Green Gables is modeling a petticoat-style dress in vintage rose fabric and Willa is modeling a circle-yoked dress with tiny embroidery on the border of the yoke. Both are my own design. Emma is modeling a yellow dress with dark brown embroidery. I used a pattern in the Storybook Costumes for Dolls book by Londie Phillips to make this dress. It was a productive few days here!
Madeline, Pukifee Ante, is modeling a new little dress I completed last weekend. I will add it to the etsy shop soon. It will fit Pukifee, Pipos Junior Pi, Lati Yellow and most likely Alice Cherry Blossom. Edited to add: it definitely fits Alice. I just tried it on and it's super-cute!
The lovely Suchin arrived yesterday. I ordered mine with as a hand-painted set. Suchin is 12" tall (Chrysalis line) and jointed. She is sold with Sasha, a little 6" baby that will fit with the Riley line of dolls or can be used as a baby doll for Suchin. In the photos, they are both wearing their original outfits. There are a few more photos on my Flickr account.
For the girls' fans. This is what trouble they get into when they are allowed to eat the pine tree. Notice how Josie uses Anza as a step-stool and Anza tries to knock the tree branches down to her mouth with her front feet!
We've decided her name is Bobbin. She helped me finish up the monkey I was making for my nephew, Noah. The monkey is from the book Amigurumi World by Ana Paula Rimoli.
This is my new little sewing fairy (Fairyland Realpuki Soso). Her name might be Bobbin. We haven't fully decided yet. It was dark and dim in the sewing room so we went outside to explore the flowers on the deck! I also have the "sleeping" face which I will photograph soon.
I snapped the camera at just the right time. Miss Anza was not impressed with this bug! She turned 1 the other day! In August I will have had her for a whole year!
In sad news, the Bad Bandito (raccoon) from the photo in a previous blog post killed Bonnie the chicken the other night. It was dusk and I had not locked them up yet. I heard a commotion and the raccoon was in the coop. Bonnie was broody so she was not roosting on the roost. I feel very badly about it and wish I had closed the coop earlier. It was 90 degrees that day and the ladies were hot, so I left their door open for a little while longer. It just goes to show that in 15 minutes, tragedy can happen. So we are now extra vigilant with the ladies and they are getting locked in at 7:30 whether it's hot, cold, raining or what. They are good chickens and we want them to live a nice, long life and hopefully die of natural causes. At least Bonnie had a happy life and was much loved. It happened on May 28th, Memorial Day, at about 8:30 PM and only a few days before Bonnie's third birthday. I have been too sad to mention it till now.
