Well, my long term craft project decided to be ready three weeks earlier than expected! This is my Miss Olivia Wren, born May 3rd. She's wearing the last craft project I'll have time for for a while, I think! The bloomers are from a pattern by See Kate Sew, and the little onesie is embroidered with a motif from Aimee Ray's Doodle Stitching Motif Collection. Miss Olivia is now almost four weeks old and we are getting along well. She's growing fast, which is good because she was teeny when she was born (only 5 pounds 9 oz). Hopefully I will have time for craft projects and doll projects as she takes longer naps!
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.
