A new little dress

Mia's Babydoll from Dollmore, a photo by elizabeth's*whimsies on Flickr.

This little one got a new dress last weekend. It still needs the snaps sewed on on in the back!

Playing with Toys

Playing with Toys, a photo by elizabeth's*whimsies on Flickr.

What to do on a cold winter's day? Play with a castle playset, of course! Iplehouse Nami and Byuri are pictured playing with a Playmobil micro set.

Rachel by Helen Kish

Rachel by Helen Kish, a photo by elizabeth's*whimsies on Flickr.

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).

Sunrise in January

Sunrise in January, a photo by elizabeth's*whimsies on Flickr.

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!

Anza is silly

Anza is silly, a photo by elizabeth's*whimsies on Flickr.

Just a goofy photo to brighten your day!

Princess Gives Me a LOOK

Princess, a photo by elizabeth's*whimsies on Flickr.

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 in her Christmas Swap Dress

Janie in Christmas Dress, a photo by elizabeth's*whimsies on Flickr.

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 in Christmas Dress

Emma in Christmas Dress, a photo by elizabeth's*whimsies on Flickr.

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:

Birdie and Naomi

Birdie (Byuri) and Naomi (Nami), a photo by elizabeth's*whimsies on Flickr.

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.

New Duck Run

New Duck Run, a photo by elizabeth's*whimsies on Flickr.

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!

Poppy had a misadventure

Poppy had a misadventure, a photo by elizabeth's*whimsies on Flickr.

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.

Hurricane Sandy

Bye bye duck run, a photo by elizabeth's*whimsies on Flickr.

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

Mark - Sept 2012, a photo by elizabeth's*whimsies on Flickr.

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!

Rose in Fall Jumper

Rose in Fall Jumper, a photo by elizabeth's*whimsies on Flickr.

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.

Willa's Party Dress

Willa has a new dress, made of a pretty grey and pink cotton with a silk ribbon rose on a velvet ribbon sash!




Here's the full view:

Allie models her new dress

Chrysalis Bethany in blue dress, a photo by elizabeth's*whimsies on Flickr.

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).

All locked up

All locked up, a photo by elizabeth's*whimsies on Flickr.

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!

Stripey Sets

Ante and Sage, a photo by elizabeth's*whimsies on Flickr.

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!

Tricycle Fun

Tricycle Fun, a photo by elizabeth's*whimsies on Flickr.

Boy, was this ever hard to pose! She fell off at least three times!

Littlefee Ante

Littlefee Ante Closeup, a photo by elizabeth's*whimsies on Flickr.

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!