Progress, more hallway art and the nostalgia tour

     I get to school, most days, long before I actually have to be there. But it doesn't make sense to me to go back in the house after Travis gets on the bus. I would only have a bit of time to get involved in something and then I would have to leave. And if I got caught up in things I would be late and then my whole day would be thrown off. So I leave for school as soon as Travis is on the bus. And then I walk around the school. I am not the only one that does this, a whole bunch of kids do it too. But I am usually in nice empty hallways like this for at least a good 20 minutes. Most days I can easily hit 4,000 or 5,000 steps before the first bell rings (7:20) I get a lot of exercise inside Ludlow High School. 

     And there is a lot of art on the walls, a lot of it is even quite good. Just this morning I noticed that Maleficent was right next to The Lorax. How did I not see that yesterday? I really like this hallway. But it IS the art hallway and it should be really nice. There are paintings all over the school. I should share some more. 

     I think yesterday I mentioned the surprised lion. This mural actually takes up an entire wall but the hallways is narrow and it is tricky to get a picture of the whole pride. This one is in the B-wing hallway right outside of the office. Which makes sense because we are the Ludlow Lions. But I always thought that the male lion looked surprised. I like him a lot. 

     I am finally making progress on things and I am feeling accomplished and much more motivated than I have in a good long while. I managed to finish up this little youth doll right when I got home today. And I got photos of her...

    And this lady I finished a couple of days ago. Both were for orders and I am very happy to get them finished so they can be on their way home. I wanted to get started on the two dolls for another order that really needs to get done this week, but I had a very important para meeting to go to. And in the email I got it said bring your kids and grandkids if you need to. OK.

     So Travis and I went to the meeting and he was really good. Then we went on the nostalgia tour. The meeting was at East Street Elementary School, which Travis attended for kindergarten and I think first and second grade. I know, I should remember how long Travis was in each school and when, but he has had an odd mix of schooling. Like, he was in Ludlow High school since he was middle school age. He has never fit neatly into any group so ended up with kids that were hopefully close to his level of learning OR age. Not always the two together. Anyway, I used to end up at East Street to pick Travis up often. Sometimes to bring him to the ER to get stitches. I think it was only once for stitches (from school, I have had to bring him to get stitched a few times) but if he was sick or they thought he was sick. The nurse at the time was amazing though and wouldn't just randomly send him home. Still, he was pretty much nonverbal back then so they had to sort of guess whether or not he seemed sick. 
     So the nostalgia tour. After the meeting Travis didn't want to leave the school. We heard Miss Nancy was still there (she was his preschool teacher) and we went to see if we could find her. She was in a meeting but Travis was having a good time walking around the school. He brought me to what I am pretty sure was his old classroom. He brought me to a room that was marked conference room but he said was speech (could be, he has an excellent memory). He showed me a door that he said was the "restroom" but the sign said quiet room. Maybe he meant that was the room where he would go to rest sometimes. 
     East Street School has art in the hallways just like the High school does. All the schools in Ludlow have art in the halls. Travis really likes the silhouetted people. There was another one that he had assigned each of the colorful people names. "Travis" was there, "Daddy", "Mommy", "Abby" (our old dog) "Gram" and "Gramps" and so on. None of them are even totally person shaped and no one has a face or anything, but I do remember he used to name them years ago. 
     The silhouettes of the people playing sports was also always one of his favorite hallways. He likes to point them out and say what they are doing. It didn't occur to me to take his picture until he was already almost done with one wall and was moving on to the next. He seemed to really enjoy his visit to East Street School. And we found Miss Nancy and visited for awhile. Nancy and I became friends after Travis left preschool, though we have not spent an enormous amount of time together. I said we should get together this summer and have a barbecue or something. Or go play with her horses. Or both. 

     So while I had been hoping to get a little bit more doll work done today than I managed, I am not feeling crazy and behind on things like I have been. I am feeling somewhat productive and optimistic about my potential to get some things done to send to Breyerfest. And I am wondering if I should make just dolls or dolls and chaps. I don't have a ton of time left. I need to finish up an order for a couple of dolls and I have one more doll that needs to get done before Breyerfest and then I can do sales stuff every waking moment (but probably not quite that much) for a couple more weeks. Today was an interesting day. It was nice to be able to help some teacher friends at school, I went to lunch with Angelique, helped some more teacher friends, finished up a doll, saw an old friend and got to hang out with Travis. It was a really good day. And the weather was excellent.

The end is in sight

     There are only 3 days left in the school year. I am tired and very ready for a break. I have 3 weeks to work on Breyerfest sales stuff before I need to ship it to Jennifer so it gets to her in time. I meant to have more done by now. But the track season is a very busy time for me. And now I am just so unmotivated. It really is a near constant struggle to make myself do anything at all. At least my cold is getting better.

     So my plan, if I can stick to it, is to finish up 3 more orders that I need to get out this week. One is just about done, so I am not concerned. The other 2 are not even started. *sigh* so I want to at least get those dolls finished. Saturday the kids and I are going to the Brooklyn Comic Con. Then Father’s Day is Sunday. And next week I am going to buckle down and start making as many dolls as I can in a week. That is my plan. I had lofty goals, and then life happened. And distractions and lack of motivation. I will do what I can.

      In case anyone is wondering, the above photo is one of the new hallway paintings at Ludlow High School. It is right outside Angelique’s classroom and I happened to see it while sitting in the chair of awesomeness the other day. The Lorax is my favorite Dr.Seuss book. And the painting is gorgeous! I should try to get more pictures of the hallway art at the school. The surprised lions are always fun.

The Evolution of Field of Dolls Studio

      I have been making dolls since September of 2006. The very first doll was this Arabian rider doll. She was not overly complex, had see-through pants and was wearing sandals (to ride???). I still think she was much nicer than what Breyer was offering at the time. Which I guess is not saying much. 

         I started this blog in November of 2008. Actually, November 30th, so nearly December. At the time the blog was even less refined than it is now. Having just reread that first post I see there were also a bunch of typos, that I sort of want to fix but I think I will leave that post as-is. It is historical now after all. 
         So way back then I was still very new to doll making, though I had apparently already switched to the name Field of Dolls Studio. Which is funny, because my name was not Field until almost a year later. Anyway, I was very new to doll making and making a new type of doll was still super scary. Even if it was just as simple as a type of doll I had not made before and not something complex. Way back at the beginning I did do some commissions, but not many. Making a random doll was so much easier than trying to make something that someone designed in words. Back during the time of post #1 I had made less than 100 dolls. Now I have made over 1200, but I am not quite sure how many (1241, I checked). In the beginning commissions were sort of rare and a bit nerve wracking, while random dolls were my norm. Now I easily do more commission dolls than random dolls. I am having trouble thinking of what to make. It's nice to have ideas, I have used up a lot of my own.
         Apparently it is not just my blog that has evolved, but my understanding of things. I was rereading bits of a post from 2009 where I mentioned that Travis has autism, but not severe. I guess back then it was still not clear how severe it really was. Or I was still in deep denial about things and hoping for a miracle. I am not sure when I really understood, and accepted, that Travis was going to be with me forever and would always need my help more than a typical kid. But just as I don't know when my mindset changed about the severity of his disability I also don't know when my sadness about it changed. When Travis was little I would often get sad when thinking about the future. I knew that Travis was going to have a very different life from most people. And I would cry. But at some point I just stopped being so sad. Most of the time I just have so much fun being with Travis that I don't think about the things he is "missing". And really, I don't know that Travis is "missing" them at all. I'll admit, graduation made me sad. I really would have loved to see him walk. But I also really think that would have been super rough for him. So much sitting quietly and waiting in line. He got to do the more fun stuff. I also usually don't get as sad about what I am missing. Because I am missing things that other parents get. I still don't get to hear about his day (still my goal), but he told me what he wanted for his birthday, and that is progress! I still can't just go and do an errand or 2 and leave him home. But it really doesn't bother me at all to bring him these days. I do wish I could travel to Breyerfest or destination shows. Some of that is lack of funds. Some of that is he would also have to travel with me. Which doubles the needed funds. But someday I will get to Breyerfest. And most likely Travis will be with me. I know a lot of people want to meet him! And I will miss out on seeing him move out on his own. Which I can't really say is a terrible thing. I love having Travis with me. And I get to keep him. That's pretty great. 
      Way back in the beginning of things the trickiest doll I made was Death. And back at the beginning of 2009, he was the trickiest and most complex doll I had made. I sort of want to revisit this doll idea and see what I could do these days. 

Oh have times changed...

     And some things have not changed. Like the fact that sometimes I have very little imagination, lol! I said so in this post that is also titled The Evolution of Field of Dolls Studio. When I thought of doing this post the other day it felt like an original idea. Alas, it was not.  I used to give all of the random sales dolls names, which I do not do anymore. That was to save me if I had several dolls listed for sale at one time and got a generic email asking if the doll was still available. It was a bit easier if they had names. Now I just rarely have more than one listed at a time. 

     I didn't read all the blogs from the beginning, but I skimmed a bunch from the beginning. It is definitely interesting seeing what is the same and what is different. I still get seasonal depression, and this time if year is apparently always extremely hard for me. Part of that is, as far as dolls go, this time of year is also the busiest. In the beginning some custom dolls were intimidating to me and I worried that I would not be able to get them quite right. Now I am basically fearless and I know what I can do and I know that if I am not sure of something, I can probably figure it out if I think on it long enough. I still love my kids and I still think they are excellent. Though neither of them is a "kid" anymore. A lot has changed since I started making dolls and since I started this blog. In 2007, my first full year of doll making, I made 23 dolls total. Now I think I average about 100-150 a year (depends on the year). This is my 13th year making dolls. Historically, I am really bad at blogging. My best year previously was 2010 with 39 posts for the year. With this post, I am at 94 for 2019. And it's only June. In the beginning making a doll would take a lot of concentration and it would turn out OK at best. Now I don't have to concentrate all that much on most of the dolls and I am very happy with the outcome. 

     I still plan to keep making dolls in the future. I enjoy it, though I am annoyed with myself to see how little I have managed to accomplish in the past 2 months. I enjoy a good challenge and I have one more really interesting one coming up. Fairly soon I will hit 1250 completed dolls. If I work hard and don't slack off too much I may even hit 1300 before the end of the year. I will keep looking for new ways to make dolls look less like dolls and I will keep trying my best to make my customers happy. And, as I have been asking since the beginning, if anyone has any ideas of things they would like to see in the blog, please let me know! If you are new to the blog, thanks for reading. If you have been here since the beginning, thanks for sticking with me :) 

     

Struggles, broken things and goals

     Recently I got an email from The National Autism Association and they had this shirt available. I had to have it. In case you can't read it, it says Love needs no words. Which I think is very cool. I am sure Travis loves me. I don't know that he has ever said it to me, or that he ever will. Some things you just know. 

     In other news, I wrecked my second sewing machine pedal. It still sort of works but it is iffy and frustrating. So I replaced it. Again. After all, I can't not have a working sewing machine. Breyerfest is coming.

     So this is the new sewing machine pedal. It works perfectly, but today was super frustrating. My thread kept on breaking and knotting and I can't figure out what is causing it or how to fix it. My machine is working, but it is frustrating. It took awhile to sew the two outfits I got done this morning. 

     I am currently working on a variety of English dolls. I have a youth doll and an adult hunt seat lady that I need to finish for orders and then I have several others in the works as sales pieces. But I have been struggling to do anything recently. I am unmotivated and tired. Yesterday I managed to cut out two outfits. That was it. That is, I think, as much as I managed to get finished this week. The seasons are finally changing, and that always messes with me. It is a really inconvenient time to be so unmotivated. 

     I have some order dolls that absolutely need to get finished soon. Then I am hoping to focus on some sales pieces for a few weeks and back to some order dolls that have no deadlines. I was considering being a para for the summer programs, because the hours fit into Travis's hours that he will be at his summer program, but I think I am going to pass on being a summer program para. It could be incredibly interesting and I would likely be put with a younger kid, potentially with a very severe disability (because I can handle it) but I think I need to recharge. I need time to work on dolls and read and watch things on all of the streaming services I am currently paying for. And I definitely need to work harder at keeping up with the blog. I have goals!

19

     The other day (the 6th) Travis turned 19. Every one of his birthdays I teach him his new age while we are waiting for the bus (or in the morning if it happens to be on the weekend). It usually takes sort of awhile before it sticks, but this year I just needed to correct him once and he had it. I know to some people that isn't a big deal, but for me it is a sign of immense progress. It seems for quite awhile Travis was sort of stuck where he was developmentally and in the past 6 months to a year he has made leaps and bounds in so many areas. It has been amazing to watch.

     Unless this is the first time you have read my blog, you probably know that here we are all doing a low carb way of eating. And I like treats. A friend of mine actually likes to say I lost a bunch of weight by eating cake. Not entirely wrong actually, lol. This cake is called "birthday cake" and is out of the Keto Cravings cookbook by The Hungry Elephant that Ethan got me for my birthday.

     I have tried a few recipes out of this book so far and they have been very delicious and super simple to make. A lot of low carb recipes are very tricky to make, have a ton of very weird and expensive ingredients and just drain you to put them together. The Hungry Elephant recipes so far have been insanely easy to make! This cake for the instructions literally says to whisk all the ingredients together. No fancy tricks, just dump everything in a bowl and whisk it. Done. Super fast and super simple. It's also incredibly delicious. I feel that it is the closest to "real" cake I have had in low carb cake. My treat testers at school say it is a bit denser than regular cake but it is super delicious. And did I mention it's easy to make? It is. So if you are interested in the book, I posted a pic below. Mine was off of Amazon.. But I did look up the birthday cake recipe and it is on The Hungry Elephant blog and I am totally fine with sharing it. Though I do recommend buying the book. If we support people in their efforts, they will keep creating for us!

     Not only was Thursday Travis's birthday, it was also the end of the year banquet for Unified track. Here is is getting his certificate for completing his third year of unified track.

     He also got a birthday card from Coach Bedore. She was one of Travis's teachers years and years ago. They have known each other for a very long time. Our Ludlow community is actually quite amazing and incredibly inclusive. 

     And speaking of that, all of our seniors that were on the unified track team brought their caps and gowns so they could get photos together. I had already donated Travis's but Ken, one of the amazing parents, brought his tall son's cap and gown for Travis to wear for some photos with his friends. I was so touched by that! Jill was one of my students for a couple of years and Savannah and Meaghan are my track daughters. I love all of these kids so much!

Jill, Savannah, Travis and Meaghann

    After the banquet we went home for cake and ice cream and birthday gifts. A week or two ago, Elecktra asked me what Travis wanted for his birthday. I asked him and he thought about it and said he wanted Funko Pop Izma and Kronk. It was a real answer, it was something he didn't already own and that in itself was amazing. Elecktra of course made sure to find and get them for him. He was super pleased with them.

     I got him a computer drawing tablet. I was and am still, looking for the best program to use this with. Travis has done a lot of drawing on the computer, just using the mouse. So I thought he would really like a computer drawing tablet. I wrote "Hi Travis" on it to show him how it worked, and he made this. I found a better program yesterday that works much better for actual drawing. This will take a bunch more experimenting before we have it all worked out. Hopefully he actually loves it. If not, I have been having fun with it, 

     I have been a huge slacker with the blog lately. I think the last one I posted was last Sunday. And I didn't post the link to my doll page on Facebook so almost no one has seen it. I was hoping that sooner or later I would be able to stop with the links to Facebook. Maybe some day, but today is not that day. 
     I am really tired and sort of burnt out lately. The end of the school year is really hard, even though I have a lot less to do most of the days. I also can't think of much of anything to talk about. I am open to suggestions though.

Lazy Sunday

     This morning Travis and I went to the track to run. It was actually turning out to be a fairly nice day, which I was not expecting. I ended up taking this selfie because my friend, Sarah, texted me. She said she was watching American Ninja Warriors and the thought popped in her head that she figured Travis could do that. She very well may be right, he’s pretty fearless. 

But today we just ran. It was still fun. Maybe I should find him a ninja gym and see how he likes it.

     In other news, I worked on prepping a horse. The rain held off completely and it was a lot warmer than expected. I should have done more prepping. But I just didn’t want to.

     So what did I do today? Not much. For once. Other than rehairing a head yesterday morning I have actually done almost nothing all weekend. Well, I did lots of things, just mostly not any doll work. And it was nice. I actually watched some shows AND read this weekend. Weird. Tomorrow is back to work. 10 more days of school. Next week I need to take a bunch of half days because Travis has half days. I imagine I can get a lot more doll work done than I have managed in awhile.

quick updates

     I think I've mentioned, the end of the school year is sort of wild and very tiring. Track is now done, so I do have a little bit more time in my schedule. I had to do another version of these haired heads. But they are done and sent off and now I can work on moving on to other things. I also dremeled a bunch of dolls so I can work on a variety of hunt seat and youth hunt seat dolls. I have several in the works.

     Yesterday I took this guy out for breakfast. He seemed to enjoy it. I enjoyed that the place had ice coffee as an option and one of my students came out to say hi. I forgot he worked there. And so many of them don't acknowledge me in public so that was a nice thing. 

     It was a good mail day and I got a variety of miniatures in. The tennis balls are way oversized for 1:9 scale, but the rackets are, I think, perfect. They do make giant tennis balls so I am thinking I might put those in the jester scene. But they might just look out of scale, not extra large novelty things. The teddy bears are adorable and the beach pail is a bit undersized. But I got a bunch of miniatures in the mail and that is always a good mail day. 

     I have no idea if I will do any doll work at all today. It is cloudy and threatening rain again, so it is not a good playing outside kind of day. Though maybe Travis and I will go to the track for a bit before the rain starts. That might be a nice start to the day.