New original, one-of-a-kind art toys are sprouting up around here. This is Annie the Antelope and her new Sluggie friend, my first custom Hug Me Slug.
I have to admit, I was having so much fun making Annie, that I wasn’t paying much attention to making her too realistic. In fact, when she was done, we were debating over whether or not she might be a new species. My friend, M., suggested she might be a Huggalope.
My mom won out and named Annie after herself.
This Annie is largely hand sewn, with big brown, hand-embroidered eyes. She has pretty eyelashes too. Annie is a sock doll, made from pink and brown socks, with a pink calico skirt, which has an elastic waist.
Her legs are long and graceful. I think she’s studied ballet.
I love her tail. It’s springy and has a pink yarn tuft on the end. It bounces when she dances.
Sluggie is very excited about the birthday party he will be attending soon. I hear it has a slug theme. I’m sure he will enjoy it tremendously.
Today we got an exciting package. I made a Labor Day sale purchase from Staples and used my $30 coupon that I got from their ink recycling rewards program.
I needed some help getting it out of its wrapping…
Ah, a new office chair. Finally, something comfortable to sit in while I work. It had picture assembly directions, and I couldn’t figure out how to use the tilting lever. I could call and ask, but I don’t feel like tilting anyway.
I’ll probably be wheeling this around from one desk to another, until we get another one.
Last night, I had asked a friend, “How do you tell a duck to show up between 7:30am and 5:30pm so we can get him to the vet while the vet is in?” I was dreaming about catching the duck this morning when I woke up. I got out of bed, thinking I’d better check, just in case the ducks really were out there. They were! Right at opening time for the vet’s office!
I got a hold of my dad, who showed up still half asleep, and the two of us followed the ducks around the backyard for about half an hour, with a sheet, trying to throw it over the injured duck, which is what a wildlife rehabber had recommended. The only problem was that we had to avoid the duckling, and all three ducks and the duckling were sticking together, as closely as they could, for protection. The mama duck, the one who likes to talk to me, was the most loyal of all. She would not leave the injured duck’s side. Eventually, my dad got the injured duck to veer to the side, and I dropped to my knees and grabbed the duck, giving up on the sheet. If he hadn’t sat down to rest for a second, I wouldn’t have had a chance.
I wrapped his body in the sheet, with his head and neck sticking out, and I sat with him on the back step, while I called our vet. The mama duck was quacking away at me the whole time. She didn’t like the arrangement at all. I told her it was okay, and I wasn’t going to hurt him. She quacked some more, and then decided to leave him with me. She quacked all the way back to the pond.
I hadn’t been able to get the avian vet, but I had talked to our vet yesterday, and he volunteered to try to remove the fish hook from the duck’s leg. Because the duck is technically a domestic duck, even though he lives in the wild, he isn’t eligible to be treated by the wildlife rehabiliation groups. So, he had to be treated as a neighborhood pet, or that’s what the avian vet had called him.
He was a big hit at our vet’s office. Everyone loved him. They were not used to seeing ducks come in. He got lots of enthusiastic attention from the entire staff, and he seemed to enjoy it. I was told he was affectionately rubbing his head and neck against one of the techs who used to work at a zoo. Our vet gave him an injection to numb the area, and got the hook out. Yay!! Then he called the same avian vet and got some advice on an injectible antibiotic. I could hear him talking on the phone, but when he came in, he tried to deadpan that he was going to give me some medication to give the duck twice a day! Ha!
The staff said they wished they could keep the duck there as a mascot because he was so cute and nice. He had to go back to his pond though. Once we got back, I carried him down the hill, in the Pet Taxi, and when he saw the opening in the brush to the pond, he let out a big quack. The mama duck heard him and started quacking back. I released him, and watched him waddle as fast as he could go into the water. Then I saw the other ducks come running to him, and then the duckling too. He was busy taking a bath.
So, there they are, in the corner of this photo, bathing and napping. I’m sure they all feel better now. I’m so glad there are nice people in the world who are willing to help. I have no idea how those ducks came to live on the pond…they just showed up one day…but they sure aren’t well suited to the wild. They can’t fly, and they don’t migrate. They need some help sometimes. As I said before, I sure wish people wouldn’t leave their garbage behind. It seems like such a simple thing to pick up after yourself. I just wish they would.
On the way back from checking on the ducks, I snapped this photo of the purple Crape Myrtle that is in bloom all over North Carolina right now. So pretty. What a relief that everything turned out okay today.
I finally received my Kona Cotton Solids card this week, after ordering one from an online store last February and receiving the Moda Bella Solids card below by mistake. From what I understand, the Robert Kaufman Fabrics company was waiting to add the new colors, and so it took a long time to get the new cards in. It’s pretty exciting to see all the choices they both offer, and it is so much easier to match fabric for doll dresses or quilt projects from home, than it is to drag all your stuff to the store. Plus, no one gets freaked out when you pull a cat doll out of your purse! One quilt shop lady once gasped, “I thought it was REAL!” when I did that one time. That was kind of confusing, for me, since I don’t normally see cats wearing pantaloons and stockings. But, that’s okay. I think she recovered.
Everyone is working on recovering here too, since the past month’s hospital and illness upsets. I think the calm after the storm is actually when the feelings catch up with me. I think it is so important to handle everything that needs to be done, during any time of crisis, that you don’t have time to let yourself feel too much. You know you have to keep going. So, once everything calms down, you start to feel the stress and the sadness and the loss.
I also find myself thinking about my own bout of illness, now fourteen years ago, when my own life turned upside down. I think about how far I have come, and how lucky and grateful I am to have such a wonderful family and friends and pets who stuck by me through everything. I also think about how my life changed, and what those changes have meant.
This may surprise you, but the drawing below is not from my childhood. I drew it when I was in my twenties, and it was truly the best I could do. On the right, are my attempts to draw Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, and on the left is Lafcadio, the Lion Who Shot Back, both wonderful books and characters, by the way. I was not beginning to learn to draw or paint; I had already reached a professional level. This is just where I ended up. I needed to draw with a brace to keep my hand steady, and I could only draw for short amounts of time.
I can remember my parents giving me a coloring book and some crayons, to work on my coordination, and I could not stay in the lines. I remember holding onto book shelves so I could walk across a room, sliding down the stairs while sitting on the steps because it was too difficult and painful to walk, and I remember crawling across the floor sometimes too, all as an adult, recovering slowly. Year after year, I got better and better. And I know it changed me.
I became more acutely aware of other people, what they said or did. I saw the good and the ugly in them. I learned who was kind and who was not, and I appreciated the kindness tremendously, when I found it. It became harder for me to do my own projects, and so I focused more on what other people were doing and tried to participate. I lost some confidence, but I kept going, kept trying. This week, while I’ve been thinking about these things, I’ve realized I still need to put up more of a fight to express myself, to be who I am, and to do what I want to do. I am afraid I have not been trying hard enough. I’m not sure it ever becomes easy to be a creative person, or perhaps, to be any person. It takes courage and perseverance.
We watched Phoebe in Wonderland this weekend, and I was touched by it. There is a nice quote in it, where Phoebe’s drama teacher reassures her, that goes like this…
At a certain part in your life, probably when too much of it has gone by, you will open your eyes and see yourself for who you are, especially for everything that made you so different from all the awful normals. And you will say to yourself, “But I am this person.” And in that statement, that correction, there will be a kind of love.
I think it is that love, the love you must have for who you are, that makes expressing yourself and being true to yourself worth fighting for.
My workroom doesn’t always look this chaotic. I decided I felt like making some fabric art toys today and yesterday. I kept pulling out boxes of quilting cottons, combining them, cutting out bits and pieces, and fusing them together. Then I’d see another combination of fabrics that I liked, and I’d do the same thing, again and again. By the end of the day, I had sixteen toys waiting to be sewn. I had been aiming for twelve. It remains to be seen just how many of these I will actually sew. Of course, I plan to sew them all. I still plan to sew a lot of things I have waiting around. At the moment, I’ve resolved to work on this the issue steadily, or at least frequently 😉
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We will be posting our creations in our Ruffing’s shop, here on this website, and are in the process of moving everything here. If you are looking for something and don’t see it yet, please feel free to ask!
New original, one-of-a-kind art toys are sprouting up around here. This is Annie the Antelope and her new Sluggie friend, my first custom Hug Me Slug.
I have to admit, I was having so much fun making Annie, that I wasn’t paying much attention to making her too realistic. In fact, when she was done, we were debating over whether or not she might be a new species. My friend, M., suggested she might be a Huggalope.
My mom won out and named Annie after herself.
This Annie is largely hand sewn, with big brown, hand-embroidered eyes. She has pretty eyelashes too. Annie is a sock doll, made from pink and brown socks, with a pink calico skirt, which has an elastic waist.
Her legs are long and graceful. I think she’s studied ballet.
I love her tail. It’s springy and has a pink yarn tuft on the end. It bounces when she dances.
Sluggie is very excited about the birthday party he will be attending soon. I hear it has a slug theme. I’m sure he will enjoy it tremendously.
Today we got an exciting package. I made a Labor Day sale purchase from Staples and used my $30 coupon that I got from their ink recycling rewards program.
I needed some help getting it out of its wrapping…
Ah, a new office chair. Finally, something comfortable to sit in while I work. It had picture assembly directions, and I couldn’t figure out how to use the tilting lever. I could call and ask, but I don’t feel like tilting anyway.
I’ll probably be wheeling this around from one desk to another, until we get another one.
