It is looking as likely as rain in England that Spring Miniatura will take place at the NEC.
Therefore I am working flat out dressing dolls. When I say flat out, it took me a week to rev up to speed. There is always a point in starting up an old endeavour when you really can’t believe you ever did that, if it is something difficult. It has been two years since I had my fingers on the tiny thin needles, it has also been two years since I last poked a needle eye or pointy end up between my finger nail and the finger beneath. I had also forgotten that silk, being the only fabric soft enough to bend round a limb as thin as a pencil lead, also has a mind of its own and a tendency to faint like a duchess and slide on to the floor with a hissing sound. You then stamp on it and leave a great big footprint, or bending down smash your head into the table, or, for fun, both.
This is also an activity posing great risk to health because you are basically just sitting, keeping yourself going with chocolate or sugar in some form, and, to save getting it on your fingers, shovelling it in, in one great lump. A week of this and you will need a couple of valets, one on either side. like Henry V111th essaying a new untried armchair, just to clamber on the scales. The OH bought new scales, weight watchers ones, which are horribly accurate. No more standing in the wardrobe with one toe on the scales, arm grasping the rail, breathe in, lift, take a reading, double toe loop and dismount. If they ever did cheat weighing as an Olympic sport, the field would be VAST. (So would the, for want of a better word, athletes.)
There is no point in the making of miniature porcelain dolls at which you can relax concentration without totally messing it up. From clay poured so thick it isn’t hollow enough to string, to entire rows of giant stitches in a garment that took half an hour to cut out and fray check, the whole undertaking is fraught with annoyance. Having spent the whole day getting in the zone, you then go to bed with yourmindbuzzinglikethis, and take two hours to get to sleep.
Nevertheless I am delighted to be doing it again. You would think after however many years it’s been (I think about 36) I would be heartily tired of making difficult, miniature porcelain dolls and trying to actually make them look like tiny people with expression and personality while still being very doll-like and not in any way threatening. But I am not tired or bored, I am still interested.
Interestingly, though it is my distant sight that has been mended, the cataract surgery has helped so much, that, with appropriate magnification, I can see every single mistake in great detail. Lovely.
So I’ll get on with this and when I have something to show you I will. I’m currently making 24th scale dolls because it is my favourite scale. I have a hoard of thin articulated ten piece porcelain under three inch dolls to be getting on with, so I’ll do that then.
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