Crafty Thursday: Autumn Themed Dolls

For this week's Crafty Thursday post, I am pleased to present four autumn-themed dolls photographed with autumn trees by The Enchanted Cupboard and wooden flames by Mamakopp:



The four dolls in the photo are a Lantern Walker for Martinmas(shop link will added after the doll is listed), Salamander King fire elemental, Night Queen, and Guitar Player. Here are pictures of the backs of the capes for the Night Queen and Salamander King:


Night Queen's bat


Salamander King's creatures

As I wrote in my shop listing, the legend of the fire-resistant salamander may be inspired by the species that hibernate on logs. When people threw logs on a fire, the salamanders woke up and fled the flames.

Nursery Rhyme of Innocence and Experience

The first song on Natalie Merchant's album Leave Your Sleep is Nursery Rhyme of Innocence and Experience, by Charles Causley, a title evocative of William Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience. I'm abashed that this song is my introduction to Causley's poetry. I don't know how to write about poetry in a way that isn't choked with cliches. I'd rather just read it, think about it, and appreciate it anew when it's set to music. However, if I had to choose one word to describe Causley's poetry, it would be the German sehnzucht, which roughly translates to yearning and longing. Here is a video of Merchant performing "Nursery Rhyme of Innocence and Experience."



This essay by Dana Gioia mentions Walter de la Mare as an influence. Yes. Causleys' work immediately reminded me of Mare's work, whose poems appear at first as if they are meant for children, but resonate with adults as well.

Crafty Thursday: Two Little Witches

I recently made two witch dolls inspired by the books I enjoyed as a child. An Amazon recommended book-list helped me remember that one of my favorite books was Little Witch, by Anna Elizabeth Bennett. Other books I really liked were The Resident Witch and The Witch Who Saved Halloween, both by Marian T. Place, The Wednesday Witch, by Ruth Chew, and The Witch Family, by Eleanor Estes. I was also fond of The Witch Next Door, by Norman Bridwell, and am sad that this book is out of print while Bridwell's large rouge canine continues to thrive.



Blue Witch Doll
Purple and Black Witch Doll
Trees and fly agaric mushrooms: The Enchanted Cupboard

Paper Doll Art

Bede is going to have two art shows at local venues this winter. One art show will be at the coffee shop 3 blocks from our house. Lucia is planning an art show, too, and has already started hanging her pictures over the fireplace. I hope that some of her paper-doll art inspired by Elisa Klevin's The Paper Princess and sequels will make it into the show. Here is a scanned reproduction of one of the paper-dolls:

The Big Ship Sails...

I had two good gigs last Friday and Saturday. Here's what makes a gig good:

1. I like my stories and songs.
2. Other people like my stories and songs.

Bede and Lucia came to my Saturday gig, and afterward Bede said that my performance style had become a lot warmer and less formal. Lucia pretend-snored during the final song, because she is seven years old and she thought it was funny.

The last song I played was a Travis-picking version of "The Big Ship Sails" (also known as Illy-Ally-Oh, and Ally-Ally-O) inspired by Kate Rusby's version. I even managed a simple guitar solo with suspended chords.

The lyrics of the original song are much more interesting than the version I played. I'm in the wrong time period and part of the country to sing to preschoolers about ships sinking to the bottom of the sea and staying there. My lyrics:

The big ship sails on the illy-ally-o...
The big ship sails and it's rocking on the sea...
The big ship sails and the clouds are racing by...
The big ship sails and it's coming home again...

Like many folk-songs, this one has 3 chords and follows a I,IV,V chord pattern. However, the suspended chords give the song more texture and helps to evoke a daydreaming mood. That's why my daughter pretend-snored, the stinker. I'll try to put together a simple recording (of the song, not the snoring) for the blog.

After both gigs, I heard people singing "The Big Ship Sings" as they gathered up their books and children. That was good to hear.

Waldorf-inspired Nativity Set

Here is my first Nativity set of 2010:


Listed on Alkelda: Dolls for Storytelling

This is only my second year of sewing dolls for the shop, and I am not used to thinking of the winter holiday season this far in advance. I'm posting the first set here to help it be more easily found in internet searches.

A favorite song from (not too) long ago

My favorite Duran Duran song is "Secret Oktober" which was the B side of the single "Union of the Snake," back when singles had sides. The song was written and recorded in a twenty-four hour time period before the "Seven and the Ragged Tiger" album tapes were sent off. In the 1983 original, only vocalist/lyricist Simon LeBon and keyboardist Nick Rhodes are on the track. Recently, I found this cover by musician Michael Aaron, and I like it better because I'm predisposed toward stringed instruments. The rapid images of the video itself are distracting, mainly because I want to see what the guitar chords are. You can listen to the original here.

Some of you (like my mom) will say, "I didn't like the band then, and I certainly won't punish myself by listening to one of their songs now." Fine. Go ahead. Disparage away. When I was 14, I officially threw over Top 40 for heavy metal but quietly kept most of my old music. When it comes to musical preferences, I tend to acquire new genres without losing my appreciation for the old ones. The one exception may be modern musicals a la "Les Miserables" and "Phantom of the Opera." I remember listening to one of those musicals while I washed the dishes only to have my mom enter the kitchen and say, "You know, I preferred Motley Crue to this."

Interview on NaturalKids

I've got a Friday Feature on the NaturalKids Blog! Here it is:

Friday Feature With Alkelda

Crafty Thursday: In praise of green

Earlier in the week, I provided a collection of favorite green items from my fellow NaturalKids Team members which was posted on the Natural-Kids blog.

Beneath the Rowan Tree added my Weeping Willow Princess to a collection of green favorites for their Waldorf Friday feature, which you can see here. Today, I listed a Luna Moth Fairy Queen:





I've never seen a luna moth in person. They are supposed to be quite common, but because adults only live for a week and come out in the evening, they can be hard to spot. My introduction to the luna moth came from chapter five of Then There Were Five, by Elizabeth Enright:

Floating out of the dark, knocking against the overhang, came something so beautiful, so fairylike that Oliver hardly dared to breathe. The thing was a moth, but like no other moth that he had seen. Its wings were as wide as his two hands opened out, as frail as a pair of of petals, and colored a pale, pale green: a moonlit silvery green.

"Gee," whispered Oliver. He sat there staring. "A luna! I never thought I'd see a real luna."

Luna moths are significant in the books The Woman in the Wall, by Patrice Kindl, and Luna, by Julie Anne Peters.