Hitty is a sweet little doll and main character in the book Hitty, Her First Hundred Years. I haven’t gotten hold of the book yet, but from what I picked up Hitty starts out as a bit of mountain ash and is carved by a family friend in Maine and given to a little girl and over the next hundred years she changes hands, meets famous people, and goes traveling the world until she winds up in an antique store window, which is where she narrates her story.

Of course our library wouldn’t have a copy, so it’s on reserve and I’m eagerly awaiting the call to tell me that it’s here.

hitty doll progress so far, just a hint of her nose has started to emerge

I don’t have any rowan handy, so I decided to make my Hitty from poplar. Google provided me with a few blank patterns to use as reference, so I drafted my own Hitty body but for the sake of simplicity I’m using Sara DeGroat Cole’s arms and legs straight out of the box.

Right now (as you can probably tell), I’m at the whittling stage. No fancy carving knives, no gouges, no rasps — just a nice simple pocket knife, some quiet music and a bit of time.

This is one of my purchases (and my absolute favorite!)

Visit RemiRings and check out the beauty!

It was a pleasure to meet Dana, her rings are not only beautiful, but absolute originals and very affordable, she also has pendants and other jewelry.

• Day jobs aren’t for sissies when your day job is art. ~Winnie (water color artist, woodworker, song writer)
• Work on your art every day for an hour, at the end of the year you have 365 hours of just art.~ Christopher Jespard (oil paint, tattoos, mixed media)
• Prep more than you need. When an idea strikes you’re already there.~ George (water color, pen and ink)
• Squint at it. ~Jessica M (interior designer; explaining how she studies composition)
• Walk the walk. Walk the walk. Walk the walk.~ Jonas (mixed media, explaining how to be an artist instead of a starving artist)
• You can bum a cigarette, borrow butter from your neighbor, get an extra 5 refills on coffee. But no one ever offers paint. Buy paint.~George (again)
• Don’t get more involved in playing an artist than working on art.~Mrs. G (Art teacher and motivational speaker)
• Everyone’s a f*cking critic. Live with it or enroll in accounting.~David M. (mixed media, songwriter, guitar; talking about criticism.)
• Do what you hate the most, do it first, get it out of the way. When you stop hating it is when you’re really good at doing it. Then you have to find something else you hate. ~Mike (guitar, pen and ink; talking about commercial art)
• A professional back up plan is to starve and die homeless. Plenty motivation there.~Jonas (again)
• Insecurity is normal, that’s why anyone does anything because they are compensating for existing.~JT (water color, 1972-1995)
• With enough practice anything is second nature~Josh (speech pathologist, comedian)

And with that, I have to go to work. Thanks for indulging my trip down memory lane.

Worked like a charm. The one on the left is where I left the translucent slices a little thicker (and didn’t dunk it in ice water to clarify) and the one on the right is where I sliced much thinner and did dunk it in ice water.

I managed to get a good photograph of the translucent effect by propping some acrylic sheet (plexi-glass) at an angle and shooting one of my work lamps onto the paper and the other lamp over the baubles.

I don’t know the technical term for the plain baubles. I’ve heard them called garden glass, or flattened marbles. I use them for weights on my cutting mat to hold down pattern paper for smaller pieces. Putting clay on them doesn’t really serve a purpose other than to make them prettier.

I do very much like the set up. It’s larger than your average jewelry bench and there’s no wedge to slam my face into when I reach towards the back of the desktop. Since I’m not focusing on precious metal work there’s no real reason to have a collection tray at the bottom (although, I do save my scraps to send in should I have a few ounces build up.)

Yes, yes I know. I’ll never make it through all the stages of grief if I’m stuck in denial. Someday medical science might make a major breakthrough and all my problems will go away. It said so in that film they showed us in the 6th grade. They don’t just make things up for those educational films, I trust Mr. Narrator, and you should too.

Here’s some of my finished pieces of jewelry. For some reason when I had the camera out it didn’t occur to me to grab the matching earrings.

Obviously, I need to add a flocked jet board to my shopping list because this was the best of the photos, and it’s a pretty poor representation.

Do you remember what I said about knitting miles and miles of stockinette? (That I might have some kind of genetic mutation because I don’t mind, I find it soothing.) The same thing applies to making my own jump rings and links. Repetitive work like stockinette is soothing, and so is making jump rings. The nice thing about jewelry is that I can warm up by making little components and then when I’m feeling energetic and awake, I can start designing and assembling.

Even though there’s something sweet about making fairly worthless metal and glass into lovely jewelry, there’s a certain joy that comes from using a precious metal. The links are sterling silver, the jump rings (which I didn’t make) are sterling and the chain is sterling plate (which I’m not exactly happy about, when I buy more chain I think I’ll get the full sterling and replace it to make it proper) you can’t see it, but there’s a nice lobster claw clasp that is also sterling.

See? I can adapt.

Most of the candles are the baby-food jar kind. I like them for two reasons; they ship well, and there is no need for them to be overly scented. I can’t stand over-scented candles. Actually I can’t stand over-scented anything any more.

I usually add some steric acid and glosser to the wax. The steric acid makes the candles burn slower and longer (because exploding baby-food jars and flaming wax is bad) and the glosser when cooled quickly (say– in my freezer) makes cool cracks and features in the wax.

I add the essential oils and color last, I never use scented oils at the craft store. It’s a small snobbery and I’m sure no one notices but me, but I know and that’s good enough. It’s not really the same as acrylic vs. wool, since the preference du jour of the public is for the artificial scents. I have a theory that is based on the function of scent, scent is (and this is not just my theory but pithy physiology) the sensing of small particles combusting or evaporating and releasing gasses, so when you’re sniffing an orange you’re actually sniffing up the gasses being released by the orange.

Anyway, my theory is that by using artificial smells all the time we’re burning up our sniffer nerve endings without thinking of the long term consequences. I’m a smoker and I know that deadens smell and taste, but one of my best buddies is a non-smoker and uses every imaginable smelly thing in her home from air fresheners, to highly scented floor soap, to fabric softener, to artificial candles on a daily basis and she can’t smell a darned thing unless she’s right up to it. Her palate isn’t nearly as sensitive as a non-smokers should be either. Whereas I can smell a single unpeeled banana or orange from across a room and locate it without actually seeing it.

So it’s just my theory, and I’m not saying cigarettes are okay because they don’t seem to do the same amount of damage as air fresheners and fabric softeners do, and I’m not being very empirical about studying the effects of artificial scents on a large population of sniffers, I’ve just noticed a trend. I’m sure there’s other factors involved as well so I won’t be applying for a research grant based on my sniffer theory any time soon either.

And the old favorite “justify your existence” games with potential customers. Ooh– another one– I don’t sell my display pieces which just gets people twisted up in knots. Like people are so desperately uncreative that they can’t assemble their own little vingette or display at home, they must use mine? Actually I just lied, I’ve been known to sell displays if the price is right and it’s the last day of a show, but in general I don’t.

Fun justify your existence questions are beyond the typical “Why does this cost so much?” My favorites are “Where did you find the instructions to this?” (This is my absolute favorite– primarily it not only implies that I’m incapable of doing something truly unique and creative, but also implies that I’m violating someone’s copyright.) “You made this?” (No. I leave milk and bread out for the pixies, they make them. I inflate the prices and sell them to you.) “How much did it cost you to make this?” (I had to perform a blood sacrifice– does that include the cost of a live pig or just the thread and hot glue?) “Where do you get these?” (See pixie answer above.) “Do you make this in ______ (fill in the blank)?” (If you pay me enough I’ll make them in human skin.)
I really wish I could give my snarky answers, I wish I could– if for no other reason to spare fellow artisans the pain of hearing those questions or their endless variations. Now despite what I wrote above, 99% of the people that go to craft shows are nice people with fairly well behaved children and husbands in tow– I’m only referring to a small but vocal irritating minority.

I’ve also learned to do things like put chunks of representative wax in front of the candles so people can mark them with thumbnails to their hearts delight, keep baby-wipes handy for light colored soft goods, and smile indulgently. The indulgent smiles (and a quick mapquest search of all the local bars within walking distance) are essential.

The indulgent smile is one part “Really?” one part “Ah, oui?” with a good splash of “Oh boy!” and a twist of lime. One must not include “STFU!” with the indulgent smile or the happy facade that the smile presents will be shattered.