Nesting Robin

Well Spring has certainly arrived in my back yard. I have a pretty small back yard, just a few very large spruce trees where the birds love to nest, they are almost like apartment buildings for birds. Some birds like to own the whole building (tree) like the cardinals, they like their privacy.

It seems that the trees were full this year so this little Robin had to find accomodations elsewhere. She is nesting on the downspout along the fireplace and right next to the sliding doors to the deck. Most of the time when I open the door, usually to let my sweet little Lucy out -

isn't she adorable?

Sorry, I digress, anyway back to the Robin, usually when I open the slider she flies away - not very far of course - then comes back to the nest when we go inside. There have been a couple of occasions where she didn't leave the nest, maybe her hatching time is near, so I took the opportunity to snap a few photos.

Then yesterday when I was leaving home I noticed across the street where there are 2 ponds that 2 geese where standing by the road and they had a whole bunch of adorable little babies. The babies where so tiny and fluffy yellow so cute! I love watching the Canada Geese and their babies because they stay with their parents for a long time and it's great to watch them grow up. Ahhh, nature at its best.

New Doll

I had the pleasure of testing a doll for Colleen Babcock. Her newest doll is named Fathoms and she is a dark mermaid from the deep depths of the ocean, very dark and mysterious but classy. You can see pictures of Colleen's doll and get links as to where to purchase this doll pattern as an e-pattern or a CD on Colleen's blog http://www.themagicbean.typepad.com/.

As you can tell from my version of the doll she's not quite as "classy" looking as Colleen's, I just could not get her hairdo right so she's more of a goth-punk-rocker type of mermaid. I have to be honest here and say that I may not have bought the pattern based on the picture of her, but I am so glad I had the opportunity to make her. I learned so many things about doll making from this pattern, there were great techniques and ways of doing things that I never thought of, she was a really fun and wonderful doll to make.

Speaking of Colleen, I am so happy to say that she is coming to my doll club, Time For Dolls, the end of June to teach a 2 day workshop of her doll Finders Keepers. Everyone in the club is so excited!! We have a few other people joining us, a few ladies from another doll club in the area and 2 ladies are driving here from out of state. It is going to be a great weekend, fun doll making and fun people. I'll post pictures of course.

Next month I'll be attending Gala 2010 here in Ohio being sponsored by my other doll club The Doll Gatherers. I'll be taking a class with Adele Sciortino called the Witch Doctor Wears Prada. I've been gathering some great fabrics, I got a few from the Sewing Expo that was at the I-X Center in Cleveland last month. This doll is going to be so much fun, I've made the wire armature as part of my pre-work and it was so different than any armature that I have done, it was very cool. I am looking forward to learning so much from Adele. Again, I'll post pictures.

It was a rainy day today, not too bad though and now its about 4pm and the rain has passed, still cloudy but it is OH it's always cloudy! The weather people say it is going to be a fairly nice weekend, we'll see. NO RULES on Sunday, we are going to put our art journals together. We made 2 pages for each person including ourselves and covers. Pam has a machine that binds them together. We are also bringing doll blank parts from November's Cloth, Paper, Scissors magazine and we'll pick parts and embellish them. It's nice with this group that a lot of times with the projects that we do, we end up with work from each other.

Till next time....

Spring!

I haven't posted for a while, winters are so dreary I just can't seem to accomplish anything. I haven't even finished my Sherry Goshen person challenge doll, you know the Big Head. I did make another head and I did stuff it, that's as far as I've gotten, but I have decided how to finish her hat so that is an accomplishment of sorts.

I was busy making another doll, but that will come in another post.

Today it is all about Spring! Yes, Spring has arrived here in NE Ohio. The past couple weeks we have had some warm weather and even sunshine! It was well deserved after having the second snowiest February on record.

Well, while I was in the yard yesterday I saw that my Magnolia Tree was in full bloom. It usually blooms in April, but not this early I think all the warm weather helped that along. My Spireas have all leafed out and I didn't have a chance to prune them yet, I'll have to get on that soon. It's suppose to be in the 70's again next weekend, but it's really early in the week to count on that.

So I took a picture of my tree and I'm going to share my little corner of the Spring world with anyone who is kind enough to take a look at my blog. HAPPY SPRING EVERYONE!!