It's all in the details

As I come to the end of the planning for my third year hosting Baystate Halter Live I realize now more than ever it really is tiny details that make any event great. Not only is my show only 3 weeks away but my wedding, after 10 years of us being together and more than a year of planning is a mere 10 weeks away. I realize now that hosting a show that would fall just 7 weeks before my wedding might have been lunacy. Well I've never said I wasn't crazy. I have also realized that I really love to plan events of all kinds. I might throw in a second show next year so I can host a performance show, or maybe I will make Baystate a weekend event. Maybe I will wait a couple of years to take on something of that size. Not that I am super good at waiting.

So these days I am all about details. And lists. I have several lists to keep me on track. Lists of addresses, lists of classes, lists of what still needs to be done for the wedding, what still needs to be paid for for the wedding and the show, lists of entrants and so many others. To me, having a list is a way of seeing what you have occomplished. When I finish something I cross it off the list. I have also rediscovered that doing anything well takes a large amount of time. But planning out details can sometimes make things easier or could end in disaster. I think some of the outcome depends on your attitude. If I expected my wedding to come off like a fairy tail I would almost certainly be disappointed. But I fully expect my son, Travis, to try to roll down the hill where the ceremony is to take place. He tries every time we go up there. Ethan says he is going to roll with him. I said they can have fun and I'll be the one not getting grass stains on my dress waiting at the top. If they really do it I might be surprised but I will probably laugh anyway.

I spent exactly 7 days, several hours a day designing, laying out, and conceptualizing my invitations. I roughly knew what I wanted them to look like but I am not a designer so I was not all that familiar with how to do what I wanted. But I have some really cool programs and I came up with something that I thought was really nice. Even my Dad likes it.

I also spent a good amount of time working on the booklet for the show. It didn't take me a week but it did take up a large portion of today. The top part of the picture is the cover. I had another, plainer cover designed originally but then I thought it would be more fun to make the fancy cover. It took barely any extra work.

The second part of the picture is a couple of pages of ads in the back of the book. The whole thing is still in the rough draft phase but it is my first printed draft. I am going over it to make sure things line up properly, nothing gets cut off in printing and things just look good overall. The process is so much simpler for the booklet than it was for my invitations because for the booklet I am just printing on paper that will be folded in half. The invitation pieces had to line up a certain way for cutting. And some of the pieces were double sided. I think the result is worth the effort though.

For the show booklet having something that is nice and looks professionaly laid out just makes me happy. I also hope that it makes the show entrants happy and all the imformation they need is in one place. There are so many other details involved in wedding planning as well as show planning but I wanted to share a couple of printed things that will add a nice touch to each of the events. As it gets closer to the show and to the wedding I might decide to share more about details. Maybe I will post my How to host a live show document. It was written on the same guidline as a wedding planning book so it might be interesting.

Falling behind and catching up

I haven't posted in a long time and I could give any number of reasons for that. Both my kids had birthdays in the last 30 days, I had major house cleaning, I had nothing doll related to post about, stress, etc, etc. Probably the biggest reason for not posting is having nothing interesting to write about and being too tired to see at the end of most days. Not that I have been overwhelmingly busy, but I do have problems when the seasons change. Some people get seasonal depression and I guess you could give that name to what happens to me, but I don't get depressed. I get tired and unmotivated. I wake up tired and then have to run around keeping up with the kids, the house, planning birthday parties, my wedding, etc. But I promise this is not going to be a long post complaining about my life. I like my life very much.
I seem to have fallen into the trap that many artists in the hobby fall into. Though I am technically not an artist but a crafts person. I am OK with that, I can take a picture (of a doll) out of my head and make it real in miniature. I am finally realizing that not everyone can do that (or sew in 1:9 scale) so I am pretty proud to be a decent crafts person. But anyway, I have fallen into the trap of overbooking my time, falling behind and then slowly losing my mind.
Because I think I am slowly losing my mind.
I thought I had parcelled out my time pretty well. I would not book more than 2 dolls in any one week. That should have given me plenty of time to get the dolls done. But when there are wedding and horse shows (plural) to plan and birthday parties....time is all of a sudden a hot commodity. And then of coarse there is the fact that there is prep work before attending a live show. So the week (or at least several days) before a show is devoted to making sure tack, props and horses are not in need of repair, everything is clean, packed safely, etc. Between all the things that I have had to do recently (and the lack of motivation and being abnormally tired) I am not surprised I was falling behind.
So now the catching up. I am not catching up just yet but I am working on it. The other day I prepped several youth doll bodies (see my blog on youth dolls for full details) today I haired a pile of heads, glued hems on coats, cut fabric and so on. I have not worked towards finishing one doll today but several. It may or may not be more efficient but I have found that mixing up the way I do things once in awhile keeps them from getting boring. Every doll is unique but after making more than 100 dolls some of them are very similar to each other.
I won't try to guess at when I will be all caught up but I will keep working on chunks of doll chores at a time. I think I will do some more fabric cutting tonight (now if I could just find where I put that other bag of fabric we would be getting somewhere) and then maybe tomorrow will be a big sewing day. And if that (happens and) goes smoothly I will probably glue more hems. Boot day, whenever that happens, will not be my favorite day by a long shot. I love the all leather boots and think they are far superior to plastic boots, but they are somewhat time consuming and very dull. But I hate plastic boots so leather it is.
Sorry there is no picture today, I couldn't think of what would fit in with this blog (besides a picture of mangled youth doll bodies and a pile of heads) and didn't have anything prepared. Hopefully soon I can think of something interesting to write about having to do with the interesting world of doll making. If anyone has any suggestions I would love to hear them :)

Fun with pirates

Recently I asked Ethan if he wanted me to make him a doll. He's not a collector of horses or dolls but I asked him anyway. He's actually a tattoo artist and above his work station at the shop he has a wide variety of....stuff. Mostly weird things that you would think a tattoo artist would have, skulls, dragons, things like that. But I am me so I asked him anyway. He has given me tattoos (5 total now) but I have not made him any dolls. Why would I? But he likes my dolls so I asked and he said he would like a skeleton pirate. I got a decent reference photo and everything. Several months back I bought two 8" skeletons because I was asked to make "Death" from the 4 horsemen of the apocolipse. That was an interesting project since I had to build flesh onto bone and I am not a sculptor. I got 2 skeletons just in case I royally screwed up and needed a new start.
Well "Death" came out quite well and I had an extra skeleton. I told Ethan he could keep it until I needed it. Or if I needed it. So a skeleton for the skeleton pirate was easy to come by.
I found a nearly perfect sized lantern in the dollhouse miniature section of AC Moore. I used sandpaper to "antique" it. If I want to get really creative at some point I will try to paint on some rust. I may not be up to that particular challenge though, I am also not a painter. I got a sword from....it might have been a Jack Sparrow action figure. My son has a bunch of action figures like most boys do but he doesn't play with the accessories. So there are swords and all kinds of little things hanging out in the bottom of the toybox just waiting for projects, lol.
After I got my last tattoo (Tigger on my left hip bone) a couple of weeks ago I said I would try to get the pirate done that week. Well other orders came first so the pirate got pushed back. Tonight I decided I needed to finish that pirate for Ethan. I got the lantern in that pirate's hand just as Ethan was pulling in. *phew* and it made him happy since some lady hit his car in the parking lot of the tattoo shop. How annoying. If he had a fancier car he might care more. As it is it's annoying.
So anyway, skeleton pirate is done and I don't feel like a bum about not getting him done now. I think he is going to go live at the tattoo shop with the other weird things on the shelf. I get a kick out of that. And here he is in all his pirate glory :) Some day I might even get a good picture, lol!

Youth dolls

I have had several people ask me why I charge a bit more for youth dolls. They are smaller than the adult dolls so should cost less right? In the normal course of things that would be true. Smaller things take less time usually. If you are prepping a horse it should take less time to prep a traditional foal than a traditional adult. Though painting might be a better example since how long it take to prep really depends on how much of a mess the horse is to start. So we will use painting for an example. And the color bay. It should (in theory) take less time to paint a Bay traditonal sized foal than to paint a bay traditional sized adult. Agreed? I thought so. Now we will move onto why youth dolls cost a bit more. Here is a regular Breyer youth doll. So far nothing has been done to her except for taking her out of the box and taking off the ugly, giant, out-of-scale factory clothes. So far not too bad, let's move on.

This is the youth doll after I have taken her apart and prepared her for surgery. What a mess! Well at least this one's head came off without the neck peg breaking or popping out. That is a rare occurance and one I am very grateful for. Or I will be when it comes time to put her head back on. But that comes after dressing and hairing.

Here are the basic tools I use to improve the Breyer dolls into something that can sit a horse properly and manage to hold her arms down by her sides so she doesn't look like a body builder (have you ever noticed none of them can put their arms down?) I use scissors, round nose pliers, wire cutter, wire, gauze (I happen to have 1 inch but if I can find narrower I am going to get it) and flesh colored medical tape. Oh yes and the class mate finish from Rio Rondo. I know it seems odd but it does have a purpose.

Next is leg rebuilding. I remake from the thigh down because I have found it leaves a better definition between the upper and lower part of the leg. Also when you bend the leg you still have somewhat of a knee so the doll looks more natural. I use the thigh to measure how long the wire should be for the new "thigh". You have to poke a hole through the leftover rubbery plastic on the lower leg (there should be some left even if you had to cut to get the thigh off) and I trim the knee so it doesn't stick out too much when the leg is bent. Then I wrap the top of the wire around the round stump that is left when you pull the legs offf. Yes, a lot of people think I am odd for what I do. Moving on though.

since my gauze is too wide I cut it down the middle. I don't have an exact measurement for how much I use, but I would guess 4-6 inches of 1 inch wide gauze per leg. I could be wrong though.I wrap the leg from the knee to the top of the thigh. I also wrap around the ball the original thigh was attached to. I try to make the top part a bit wider than the lower part so it looks more natural under the breeches. But you can't make it the exact size you want it to be because the medical tape takes up some room as well and will make your piece bigger.
Here's how it look wrapped with the medical tape. It looks just about like a normal thigh. The first couple of times it doesn't come out as well but most things will get easier with practice. I try to keep it as smooth as possible since breeches, even on kids, are tight and if your leg is lumpy it will probably show.Here's a quick pictures of the first leg done and the second leg wire attached. You want to be very careful that they end up the same size. Who wants a lopsided doll? You may not be able to tell when the doll is seated, but if it has to stand... Here are both legs done and they match up really well. That of course is a good thing. They are also just about the same size and shape. A little bit of difference won't be noticeable since the doll will have clothes on.
The arms are a special challenge of their own. You want then to be the same length they started out (no gorilla arms) the same length as each other, able to be held close to the body, etc. I work on both arms at the same time to try to keep things even. First I attach the wire to the first arm in the same way I put the legs on. I roughly measure with the old part of the arm to see if it is about the right size. I bend the wire down at the shoulder and then bend the other side down as well.

Then I attach the second arm. As long as they match up and still bend I'm happy. If there is extra wire, as there was with this doll, I cut some off. Wrap it around and try to keep the "arm" fairly straightNext both arms get wrapped in gauze like the legs did. Though you only need an inch or so of the gauze since the upper arm is so small. I keep the gauze in place with a tiny bit of medical tape until I am ready to wrap it. Here both arms are wrapped with the medical tape. Again, it doesn't take much because they are so small and you don't want the arms to be too thick. The coat sleeves are going to add a bit and you don't want a youth doll with giant arms. Another view of the finished arms only bent. They can be held close to the body and bent for proper arm position. Though right now the doll is just holding her arms close, her arms can bend a bit more. The next project is finding a way to replace those giant man-hands. Why does a little girl have larger hands than an adult? They also cause issues with dressing but that is another story.The last step is to brush the Class Mate all over the parts that are covered in medical tape. There is a method to my madness. I found that the medical tape when left alone is a tiny bit sticky, but when you brush on the Class Mate and let it dry dressing the doll is very easy. The tape that was once a bit tacky and would grab the clothes (especially fitted breeches) making it harder to dress a hard to dress doll is now super smooth and the clothes will slideright on with very little fuss. As long as everything is already made to fit a youth doll (I have an extra body I use as a model while I am sewing) and I've made the new arms and legs the same size as the old ones the dressing should go well.

So now you know why I charge a bit more for a doll that is a bit smaller than average. It's because the doll on it's own is a pain, doesn't sit, or ride well and has to be almost totally remade. These things take time. It takes the same amount of time to make the clothes for a youth doll or an adult rider, almost the same amount of material (the difference is minimal) but the prep work is much greater for those youth dolls which have become so popular recently because of the Breyer pony, Newsworthy. So it seems like youth dolls will be on my books for a good long while to come. I'm glad I found a way to make them a bit better at what they do.

new dolls

Wow look at this new craziness, a blog post about dolls from the doll maker! not something you see around here every day :)

Honestly though, I don't have things to say about dolls every day. And maybe not even every week. Everybody needs dolls and that is a constant of coarse, but I think if I said it all the time people would get annoyed (I wonder how many people I annoyed at region X regionals last November since I said it all weekend, lol). Moving on....

Sometimes I get requests for some really interesting dolls. Like this Aussie guy. He's wearing what any good Aussie cowboy would, jeans, a button down shirt and a duster. He was pretty fun to make but also a bit of a challenge. He was not a super hard concept or design (not like "Death" I should find some pictures of him) but I did have to work up a new pattern for his duster. Actually there is a lot of that in my work. I follow reference photos if I can because the more of the real details you can put in the doll the better it will be. At least that is my opinion. I added a couple of extra things to the duster because Ethan noticed then in the reference photo and said they should be there. Like the armpit straps. It's just a couple of straps that go from the back of the cape under the armpit to the front of the coat to keep the cape from flying up. Not a detail that had to be there, but it did add a bit more realism.

I like to make new things and I like to make old things better if I can. I didn't make hunt seat dolls for awhile because I hate the plastic Breyer boots and I didn't want some giant leather boots. And if I could not make nice boots I was not going to make boots at all. After awhile I worked up a nice tight fitting tall boot pattern and now I happen to like making hunt seat dolls. The old style Breyer cowboy boots were nice enough for western dolls if they were painted to match the outfit (and cut down so the doll could ride heels down) but Breyer changed the boot style when they came out with the newer dolls. The new boots are more like clown shoes and are enourmous! They don't make for a refined look on the dolls. So then I had to make boots for the western dolls as well. It's similar to making the English boots of coarse. I trade patterns with my doll maker friend Joan Yount. it's nice to have 2 heads working on problems that come up when trying to dress a doll.

This next lady was not a tough doll to make but her shirt was another altered pattern. I am not even sure which of my patterns it started as any more. But now it is a short sleeved polo style shirt. This doll was pretty cool because casual dolls are just fun to make. She also has a removable safety vest so she can do cross country. I need to have one of those....and a cross country jump. Some day. This was the most recent doll. The lady that ordered him wanted a farmer. Not like a old TV show farmer but a real working farmer. At first she asked for an old experienced famer but I can't do sculpting. ("Death" was the exception of coarse) so I told her I could dress a Breyer guy and maybe give him gray hair but that was it. But she said she didn't care how old he was just as long as he looked like a real farmer. She sent me a picture of a group of real farmers as well for inspiration. Well this guy stayed young, no gray hair for him and I dressed him like a real farmer. Just jeans, a workshirt, a nice carhartt coat and some big rain-boot type boots. Now he's ready for even the messiest job. And look at all that snow! good thing he has a coat on. This guy really was a lot of fun to make. I thought he wanted a baseball hat but I have no idea how to make a nice one. That will be a project for later I guess.
Now I have mentioned my "Death" doll several times in this post. He was a very interesting order. The customer wanted "Death" from the 4 horsemen of the apocolypse. She sent me a photo of the Durer woodcut as a reference. She didn't want the typical skeleton "Death" that so many people have. She liked the way Durer portrayed him. She said she wanted him to be a really emaciated man with ripped and stained clothing. The first pictures I sent of him she said he looked too healthy, lol. I guess it was true. She said she wanted him to look like he had just crawled out of his own grave. And this is what I came up with. He scared Elecktra so I figured he was about right.

Western Showmanship

I love live showing. There is no way around that. I love preparing for a show when I make sure I have all the things I need to do the classes I want, the tack is in good order, and the horses have not developed any problems (or jumped of the shelf and broken). One of my favorite classes is Western Showmanship. I first tried my hand at the class a couple of years ago. I had no clue what I was doing but got a ton of help and the loan of some props from a showing friend of mine. Well I won the class and was so excited I had to do more. Here's a picture.

Now I can look at this photo and pick apart the entry. Maybe it was the best thing on the table, maybe not. I don't have photos of everything from that day. But off the top of my head, there should be no arena wall, the handler should be looking at the judge and her right hand needs to be higher on the lead. Oh well, that is why we take show photos. Besides the option of reliving the day and looking at other people's lovely entries :)

The next show I had almost completely forgotten how to set up the entry. And since I had not laid out the rules of real showmanship in my head, I could not duplicate them on the show table. So it was time to learn more. I had a different friend show me how to set up that day and both friends were super knowledgable but the more you ask questions, the more you learn. I don't have any photos from that show, I think I was too freaked out to take photos. Live showing in performance classes can be really stressful at times.

So then I was at a show without anyone to help me. But I really wanted to put up a showmanship entry. So I had to do it myself and try to remember everything I had learned. Here's my entry.

It only got 4th but there were many other types of Western classes it had to compete against. Too bad really since the set-up is pretty close to perfect. The doll in in the right place, she's looking at the judge, pretty much holding the lead correctly (I need to shorten the halter chain) and now all I need to do is get her to stand with her legs more together. But all in all I don't see anything wrong with this entry. But showmanship is not very interesting to all judges. Right now I am so excited about showmanship that I think it is going to be super fun to judge.

Here is one more live show picture. My entry did really well this day too. First I got 1st in the class and then I got overall champion. And that was under 2 different judges. So this was a proud moment for me. Though I see flaws in this entry too. I can remember a bit that was on the table besides my entry and I also recall telling another entrant that her doll was standing in the wrong place. She said it wasn't so I let it go. I am not an expert, I just feel if you help the showers around you do the best they can, then you have competition. Real competition. And beating the best is the best kind of win :)

Recently I talked a friend into hosting a show. I happen to really love hosting even though it does take a lot of work. You need to be organized and keep to a schedule and then things flow well and you don't lose your mind. Something I love doing is trying to get more shows in the region. We all want more so that means someone has to put them together. I host one a year right now but after my wedding I plan on having 2. I only have a halter show at the moment and I really NEED a performance show. I just love performance. So anyway, I talked the friend into hosting a show and we have been bouncing around ideas on things. She asked me if I would judge a couple of sections. *gulp* me, judge? I have only ever judged 3 halter classes to help finish out a show. And she wants me to judge in performance. So I figured I would study. I would study whatever it was she wanted me to judge. And I would not agree to judge anything I was clueless about. So one of the sections I am supposed to judge is the Other Performance section. Which includes showmanship. That means that I won't be able to show in showmanship that day, but judging holds some fascination for me. But I needed to learn more. So today while I was working at a friend's studio I asked if we could play with her real horses and she could teach me showmanship. She is known for her showmanship knowledge so she was the best teacher I could think of. So we went to play with her western horse. The horse was a little rusty but I was amazed at what I saw. I have never seen much live showmanship. So I paid attention, asked questions, had her slow things down when I didn't get what was going on. Then I asked some more questions and watched some more. It was amazing and precise. So now I am really excited about judging and I am pretty confident that I can do a good job. Now I just need to work on saddle seat....

Travis

Well I said I would probably post a blog about Travis so here we go. I am sure Elecktra will get a blog eventually as well, she is as horse crazy as I am. But first Travis. Travis is a special challenge in my life. No one wants to hear that their child is different and has problems but that is what I got.

When Elecktra was little she talked fairly early. We had words before she was a year old and sentences by the time she was 1. So when Travis was not talking or really saying words by the time he was a year and a half I started to wonder. So I talked to the doctor about it. I got nothing and nowhere for a long time. Finally when he was over 2 and a half years old and I had seen every specialist under the sun and found out his hearing was fine and anything else that might cause a speach delay, I got the diagnosis. Autism. So I did what any normal parent would do and I instantly went into denile. I couldn't have an autistic son, it couldn't be true. Anything else, ADHD was more likely in my mind. But even through my denile I was getting him as much help as I could. We have speach therapists and groups come to the house to work with him. We joined play groups with peer kids. But I didn't want to believe it. Who wants to belive their child is different and might not fit it?

Eventually denile fades with learning. I studied and realized that Travis does have autism. There is no way around that. I can't change it by saying it is not true or trying to pretend it isn't true. But it doesn't define him and I won't let it. What I learned was there are many many differnt types of autism. Some are more severe than others of course as with any other disability. I still have trouble seeing it as a disability though. If you know Travis you understand why. I'm sure a lot of people would give anything to be like Travis. He has limitations but he doesn't seem to notice. And it isn't because he isn't smart, he is. But he is almost always happy. He gets sad like any other person but he is happy more often than not. He plays like other kids and has a good time getting into group play. And everyone likes Travis. Some people don't know how to act with him or around him, but they still like him. Now how many people wouldn't love to have everyone like them? It sure would make life easier.

I of course have had trouble because of Travis's autism. Or more rightly because of ignorant people. I had to go get an x-ray after Ethan and I got in a motorcycle accident. I told the nurse that someone would have to sit with Travis to make sure he stayed out of the way and she was very rude when she asked why a 3 year old couldn't sit where I told him too for 5 minutes. So I looked at her and very calmly told her he was autistic. She said sorry but I was not sure if she was sorry that he was autistic or because she was being a bitch. Who can tell. I have a lot of people give me weird looks because Travis will sometimes make weird sounds, loudly, in public. He does talk now, but he still likes to make noise. And some people take that as a sign that I am a bad parent. So let them think what they want, just because they think it doesn't make it true.

So life goes on. Travis improves all the time. Sometimes it isn't really noticable, but sometimes it is. Either way he is a great kid and life is never boring with him. Life is never boring with either of my kids.

For his birthday last year Travis's grandparents gave him therapeutic riding lessons. Now Elecktra is a bit jealous because she has wanted to take riding for a long time. But she takes piano and she doesn't want to give it up and she can't do everything. So maybe some day. But Travis has a very good time at riding. Can't you tell?
His horse friend is P.R (Pacific Redeemer) and he is almost as old as I am. But he is a good boy. I volunteer at the riding school (for the adult riders while the kids are at school) and I have worked with P.R a lot. He is easy to lead, easy to groom and saddle, even easy to catch. You just walk up to him, he stands there, put the halter on and go. He's a good boy. And Travis loves him as you can seeIn general I think I am a very lucky parent. I have good kids. They are not perfect, they do bad things, lie a little, are messy and sometimes annoying, but they are good kids with good hearts. Elecktra is sweet and really doesn't want to make anyone upset and Travis is cute and cuddly. Not many people have a cuddly 8 year old boy. So I will deal with the bad and enjoy the good. That is all anyone can do really.