Craft Day

Doll Pascha Goodies


Today I declared it to be "craft day" and we worked on all sorts of things. I still count it as school. As an adult, I earn way more money so far with my crafting skills than I do with my math skills, and it would be a crying shame not to pass on some of my vast knowledge to my kids.

So, I've decided to teach my girls to sew. We are sewing doll clothes, to save on cloth and to be able to do projects from my fabric stash. Why did I not think of this sooner? Maia is making a "hippie chick" outfit for her 18" doll, and Ariana, of course, is making the most complicated 18th century gown she could envision with lace and ruffles and the like, in THE most difficult fabrics (lace and satin) to be found in my stash. Oh well, she'lll learn to pin things diligently, then. Har har. Bethany is making her doll a flannel nightgown, but she didn't craft much today. (She's already very crafty) because her meds are making her sleepy and she's depressed.

And what shall Eric do?

He's not at all intersted in sewing. Or knitting. Or crochet. Of course. Those are "girl things".

Well, what does he like? Role playing games. Characters. Computer games. What craft would fit with that? Learning to model with sculpey polymer clay, perhaps? He got excited when I mentioned it.

He made a bird and a santa ornament, to practice.

Meanwhile, since we are dressing dolls (and I'm knitting doll tights), I decided to make some doll accessories out of sculpey clay. Today's efforts yielded the contents of a Pascha basket: Red eggs, a wheel of cheese, sausage and of course a kulich with removable beeswax candle. And grapes for transfiguration (or a snack).

Other ideas I have for sculpey doll accessories: Bowl of koliva, again with removable beeswax candle; Lytia bread, a birthday cake, roses for one's name day, palm frond for Palm Sunday, perhaps a cross on a tray with flowers around it for the feast of the elevation of the holy cross, etc.

Needless to say, I'm having way too much FUN with this. I'll be having craft days with my kids more often.

They all worked really hard. So hard that Eric was exhausted and grumpy during his piano lesson, and Ariana could barely keep herself straight at supper time.

And while the day was good and exceedingly productive, the evening was full of
bellowing sobs, crying, grumpiness and misery on more than one person's part.

And so, as you can see, the idyllic "good" degenerates into the realistic narshty of people just having been and done too much. Lord have mercy, once again!

P.S. I want a doll for Christmas. But I'd also like her, if she weren't so overpriced for a piece of cloth and plastic.

And I want to make hand knitted tights and cute clothes for my doll (it's all about the tiny-scale crafting) and then someday maybe I"ll be the coolest grandma ever, what with my nifty future doll collection and all.

Tomorrow I'll post pics of some of the cool things the other kids did with their sculpey clay: a praying nun, a bird, santa ornament, and an alien space ship.