Happy Easter!

  Happy Easter! (for those of you who celebrate it.) We had a nice socially distanced day. We had lunch on the patio with Emma and AJ. We were outside and able to keep something of a distance, and still getting to see them. It was a bit drizzly while they were here, but not enough to deter us. After they left, the weather, typically, went sunny!
  Last night I stayed up VERY late making curried potatoes, for Emma. (Emma gave up eating eggs as eggs many years ago. It just bothered her. She gave eggs up completely for a couple of years, which is very tough. The world isn't built around vegans, or even near vegans like Emma was. She eats eggs in things now, but still can't bear to eat actual eggs.) I also made curried eggs from the cage free eggs for Ivy, and made curried eggs with the whatever eggs for Fuzz and Ken, who will eat most anything. In case you're wondering, I can't eat curried anything any more, but those eggs are delicious!
  I also spent most of the day working on finishing up Tammy World's new Easter dress. I found the fabric a few weeks ago, before quarantine started, when I was out doing my early Easter shopping. I thought it was cute, and would make a good Easter dress for Tammy.  I don't really sew, and I can't use a pattern. My method is pretty much 'sew it on the subject'. (This was quite a point of irritation for the kids when I made their Halloween costumes!) I sort of hold fabric up to the subject and cut it to fit and sew it, sometimes on the subject's body.
    I got the dress made all but finishing sewing and attaching the sleeves. I was having such a hard time, because sleeves are the part I still haven't managed to tackle in most cases. I had thought about having Tammy wear the little gray sweater from a Lori fashions pack anyway, and it was really late, and I did have to finish all those eggs... So, even though Ivy had chided me about not finishing the sleeves the day before, I was pretty much resigned to leaving the sleeves unfinished and covering it up with the sweater. That's when Ivy came downstairs and looked at my work. She asked me if I was going to finish, and offered to sew the sleeves on for me. I took her up on the offer.
  So here's Tammy in her new Easter dress.

It's printed with ducks and chicks and geese better scurry...Oh. Sorry! It's printed with ducks and chicks and Easter eggs!

 The sunshine lasted just long enough for me to take loads of photos. Then it went drab again.

With her favourite gift, a giant 'chocolate' bunny,and Fuzzy the Doll's Easter basket because I didn't want to dig hers out!

The dress without the sweater.

And with.

Tammy enjoyed a visit with the Easter Bunny.

In fact, they became quite good friends.

The part of the Easter Bunny was played by the bunny that came with a 2001 Madame Alexander doll called 'Easter Hop'.

She really liked that 'chocolate' bunny,which is not really chocolate. I'm not sure what it's made of.

I had some very tiny lace I bought at a miniature show that I used for her collar.

I wanted some nice anklets for her. I may have to make her some. That wasn't happening by Easter though!

I would have liked to have cuffs on her sleeves too, but let's not go crazy here!

This is pretty much the same picture, but the print of the dress comes out better in the one below.

  Tammy got tired of taking pictures. Her feet started hurting.

  I hope everybody had a nice day!

Snow,Easter,and A Pretty View

  It's COLD today! Yesterday we had SNOW! Huge, slushy flakes fell several times during the day. We were hoping to be able to get together with Emma and her boyfriend on Easter, by having our lunch outside,so still being able to keep our distance. It's supposed to be warmer by then, but they are predicting scattered showers. I hope the weather holds out for Easter. I would like to visit with Emma, but I do think we should stay distanced. Emma and AJ are still going to work. They are staying distanced from the public, but they are still close to the other workers. She assures me they wash their hands 100's of times a day,but the chances still scare me. I worry about her and wish she could be staying home right now.
  On another note,some people are considering attending church on Sunday. Please remember that even if you don't fear for yourself,you could be carrying the virus without knowing it and pass it on to someone who might not survive it. You could pick it up from someone at church, and then pass it on to everyone else you come in contact with. Remember, "The Lord helps those who help themselves".  So help yourself,(and others) not get Covid-19 by staying home.
  On a lighter note,the photo of my sister-in-law's view seemed to be enjoyed by some of you. Her yard, or 'garden' as they call it in England,overlooks a beautiful field with horses,and more beauty beyond it. I thought I'd post another couple of pictures from our visit with her in 2015. It gives you something pretty to look at while you're sitting at home in quarantine. 

Emma in Diane's garden.

  See you again soon.


 

What I've Been Up To:Custom Mini Figures

  I hope you're all social distancing and managing not to go insane doing so. I feel bad for those of you who live alone. I know I'd be pretty insane by now if I hadn't had people here to talk to. I don't do well for long stretches on my own. I tend to start talking to the cats too much, and then to myself!
   At least now there's the internet and cell phones. We can stay instantly updated, constantly entertained, and always connected. My sister-in-law called from England yesterday to wish Fuzz a happy birthday,(25!),and she is all alone,social distancing and attempting to stay safe. She missed her grandson's 9th birthday party yesterday,and I think she was feeling lonely. At least she has this beautiful view to look at from her door.

 Fuzz chose not to have a birthday celebration and cake, but to just visit friends. I baked a cake anyway. Nobody is going to turn down cake,even if they don't want to blow out candles.
  I ventured out into my own yard to do some yard work last week. I raked up all the twig things that fall from the walnut trees,which I missed doing before the weather got bad last fall. I was working,as you may recall, on Ivy's room then, and my back was out for a while. So I cleared up all of those so I can mow the yard soon. I raked the hosta bed because I noticed the shoots were starting to come up. When they get to about 6 inches tall we'll eat some of them. We had them a couple of times last year, and they were pretty good.

Last year's sauteed hostas.

  My lilacs are budding, but they still don't have any leaves to speak of!

My side yard daffodils bloomed and are on their way out.

As you may have noticed in my post on the Daisy Kingdom raincoat, my short fencing has seen much better days. I'll probably be replacing it with a plastic one this summer. I have a similarly made regular sized bit of fencing that was in the ceiling of our garage. It's ancient and still in great condition. This stuff is modern, and thus, crap.

But my daffodils at the back,down the little sidewalk to the side yard,didn't get one flower this year. The flowers that grow on the ground cover vines are growing full force though.

Yes, I do need to rake in the back and sweep my sidewalks.

The yard is also full of wild violets.

There are also these little white flowers that I have only otherwise seen growing in the woods.

It was good to see that with all that is happening, that nature and life goes on.
  I have been working on a project you will see later this week, and there's a long post you'll be seeing soon,connected to that previous post on Our Dolls,Ourselves. But today I'm showing you something else I have been working on.
  After Christmas there were lot of things clearanced at our local Kroger store. One thing I found was these little Lego type figures.

They were only 30 cents a box. There were policemen and rescue guys in hats too,but I needed the guys with hair. I had an idea for a project,but I needed four of the ones with hair,so I had to get four packs of the action heroes. I worked on them the other night,painting their suits.

Then I had to paint the hair and put faces on them.

I'm hoping you can tell who they are supposed to be now!
 

 I got the idea because there are Yellow Submarine Beatles Legos. Yellow Submarine is probably my least favourite Beatles thing though. I wanted some earlier Beatles. So when I saw these guys with this hair, I thought,hey! I'll make my own!
 

  It sounds easy. But painting those very narrow lines for those tiny faces was harder than you'd think. It took a couple of days of trying. That's why you didn't see this post yesterday! For one thing, I thought I could just turn the heads around and use the blank backs, instead of trying to paint over the faces that were already there.

But as you can see in the above picture, that didn't work because the heads were shorter in the back. Once the hair was put on, it made the faces so short there was hardly any room for the faces. So I had to paint over the prepainted faces,and then leave that to cure for a while.
  Then there were a million tries at painting the faces. I practiced before hand by drawing a few million caricature faces on paper. That gave me a false sense of security, because it was a lot easier to do with a pen on paper, than with the world's tiniest paint brush and a needle, on a rounded, tiny plastic head. So this is my semi finished product. I'm still not satisfied with them. I still have some heads,so I will probably keep trying until I get it right. I haven't put any fixitive on them yet either, so, as you may have noticed, the suits need touched up. So they're not finished anyway. But here they are. This is what I've been doing. 

Doll Book of the Month Club: Missing Melinda

   The sort of second part of the Our Dolls, Ourselves post will have to wait a little longer. It's the first of the month, and time for the next entry in The Doll Book of the Month Club.
  This month's book is "Missing Melinda", by Jacqueline Jackson. It was first published in 1967. The illustrations in mine are by Irene Burns.

Mine is a somewhat grubby ex-library edition.

  This book has been sitting here waiting to be read for years. We bought it at the library sale, where the books are donated by the library and regular people, and sold to raise money for the library. I always meant to read it to Ivy, but never got around to it. We bought so many books at the book sale and from school order forms, as well as the book store. We couldn't read them all! So I finally got around to reading it myself a couple of weeks ago.
  At first I wasn't sure I was going to like this book. I didn't think much of the writing at the very beginning. It got better quickly, and I ended up enjoying it. Beware though! The very first few pages give away the endings of several doll based books, including "Miss Hickory",(which you can read my post on HERE.) and "The Dolls' House", by Rumer Godden,which I recently featured as The Doll Book of the Month. You can see that post HERE.

Edited for your protection.

  "Missing Melinda" involves a pair of twin girls who move into an old deceased relative's loaded house. They venture into the crowded attic the first day there, and find a very old and beautiful doll, who they name Melinda. 

Finding Melinda inspires them to write a book. "Missing Melinda" is actually the book they supposedly write about their adventure.

  The adventure really gets going when the girls take Melinda to the park, in a wagon. The girls decide to climb a tree, leaving Melinda below in the wagon, lest they break her. When they come back down they discover that Melinda has been stolen.

  As I said, the book is 'written' by the twins, who alternate chapters. They're a colourful couple of kids, who have developed the habit of quoting Shakespeare, and using his flowery speech, from their Shakespeare addicted father. (The girls are even named Cordelia and Ophelia.)
  The twins set out to find who stole Melinda, and get her back. Along the way they get help from the boy next door, Jimmy, who insists he doesn't want girl neighbours to play with,(but could they play with him, please?).
 

He helps the girls as they try to solve the mystery of Melinda's disappearance. Jimmy actually knows quite a lot about dolls himself, and introduces the girls to one of their suspects.

   They have a list of suspects to investigate. The suspect that Jimmy introduces them to is a lady who knows a lot about dolls. The author must have known quite a bit about dolls, because the character, Mrs. Otis, reels off loads of doll makers and names, as well as describing various dolls. She gives them a tour of her doll filled house and takes them to a doll hospital. Both trips are filled with descriptions of dolls, and doll mechanisms. There's so much to take in! You'll see many names you'll recognize if you know anything about dolls yourself. Mrs. Otis and the doll hospital 'doctor' even go into some history on dolls, and it's all quite interesting. So much so that I wonder if kids would enjoy this book as much as a grown doll collector! It's all enjoyable though, even if a child might feel somewhat  bogged down with 'boring' information at various times.
  That's not to say a child wouldn't enjoy the book. The twins are likeable. There's mystery and humour. The girls visit some interesting places and run into memorable characters.

The ending, especially, is exciting. It's a race to catch the culprit before Melinda disappears forever.

  The only age recommendation I could find said 7 to 10 year olds, but there was also a review by someone who said it was their favourite book in middle school. (I think middle schoolers read more mature things these days, which isn't to say some might not still enjoy the book.)
  I found that Jacqueline Jackson is a local lady! She was born in Washington, worked as a professor of English at the University of Illinois, but at the time "Missing Melinda" was written, she lived in Kent, Ohio, and taught Children's Literature at Kent State University. (Kent State was the site of the famous 1970 shooting, where the Ohio National Guard opened fire on students protesting the bombing of neutral Cambodia, killing four, and injuring nine, students. The incident was the inspiration for the song "Four Dead in Ohio" by Crosby,Stills,Nash,and Young.)
  Here's the inside of the "Missing Melinda" dust jacket.

 So her daughters reading interests, and actual requests, inspired "Missing Melinda". Other books by Jacqueline Jackson include "Julie's Secret Sloth", "The Paleface Redskins", "The Ghost Boat", and "The Taste of Spruce Gum".  According to Good Reads she considers "Stories From the Round Barn" and "More Stories From the Round Barn" to be her best works.

  Ms. Jackson is still writing! She writes a poem every week for the Illinois Times. She and her helper commented on this post, which you can see below, and I have been in contact through Messenger on the blog's Facebook page. Ms. Jackson has a webpage, for those who are interested. You can see it HERE. You can read an interview with her HERE.
  I enjoyed "Missing Melinda", and I recommend it for kids who like mysteries with a bit of humour, people who are interested in dolls, and kids who like a good, interesting read they can really get into. The book appears to be out of print, but a used copy can be found on Amazon or Ebay. Some of them can be quite expensive, so shop well!