The Seaside Angel

It is some years ago now, a summer of grief.
I swam daily in the gulf, my tears over the loss of a deep love, mingling with the waves.
I know I was swimming out too far, way over my head.
I could not touch the bottom of the sea, or my sadness. I knew I was in danger, but I did not care.
I heard a distant call from the beach, someone calling my daughter's name "Amanda."
It was this name and perhaps the frantic note that alerted me, as my daughter was not with me that day, I swam alone.
Perhaps it was the nudge of an angel, that made me turn back to shore, look over my shoulder to see her.
A little girl, maybe 5 years old...well over her head too, gasping and struggling as her Mother shouted from the shore.
I see her little head disappear under the waves and a shock goes through me.
I swim, already winded, though this matters not to me now.
I grab her arm. She surfaces, her little face drawing breath in a gasp.
I drag her to the shore, where her Mother, hip deep in the surf, snatches her from me, weeping, and angry.
I am spent now, but so is a part of my grief.
This brush with danger, this covering of angel wings has saved me from drowning too.
This Seaside Angel is a memory of that time and for someone who is recovering from a grief.
May she protect you, or just remind you to protect yourself!.
She is 12 inches tall, and is not pleased with your recklessness.
and this is actually a true story.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/152091549/the-seaside-angel

The painted lady Butterfly Fey.

I had to call my daughter this morning.

She's in Seattle.
My story maker had taken a break, I'd like to think not a break down, but none the less,
was in a deep sleep.
I woke her up, it seems that my story maker wasn't the only thing who was sleeping.
I told her that I needed help.
A different perspective on a story for a doll named the Painted Lady.
I described her, and I said that it looked like she had been out all night dancing in glitter,
we talked about places a person could go to have this experience...dancing in a field of Glitter.
So,
That is how the story was born.
A Collaborative effort...
I hope your wishes come true,
and even if they don't...
I hope we all get the chance or make the experience of a night filled with dancing in a field or meadow of places where the shooting stars have landed, and planted their wishes.
Maybe if you can't make your own wish come true,
you could pick up someone else's wish and grant theirs.

The Painted Lady Butterfly Fey

No mistakes!

Some folks have asked me at times
"Why do you coffee dye your dolls?
And why do you bake them?

There are a lot of methods for aging primitive creations.
You can find recipes for making your dolls look primitive or old, all over the internet.

I like strong coffee for this process of aging. and usually use it hot and right from the same pot that I am drinking from.

It takes a little bit of nerve to pour it over your freshly made creation...
and I sometimes think..."OH NOOOOO!"
"I've ruined it."
and truthfully, in the shaping process and rinsing process that occurs afterward, I try to redeem some of the colors that get muted.
I literally hold the face under the kitchen spigot and rinse it...and shape the neck and clothing. Wringing it out to get the extra fluid out...
I place the doll FACE DOWN on aluminum foil.
into an oven at 325 degrees.
I like to think and I do BELieVE that baking them gives them something I cannot.
It infuses them
with an unknown.
Turns them over to an in between where my hand creates and that of the unknown,
 where I think Magic happens.
In the TWEEN,
something Happens. I cannot explain it to you...other than to use these words...they are all that I have.
I trust this process.
When I paint the face,
and lay down the first color of complexion,
The coffee migrates to form a halo around the face itself.
Framing the chin, the eyes and so forth.

So,
Be fearless.
There are no mistakes.

The Butterfly Boss

 

The butterflies are very busy this spring.
I have not weeded my front garden yet and the Bidens attract the Zebra Longwings.
I think I may leave them, even though most folks consider them to be weeds.
I will consult my resident Butterfly fey, Vivian.
"I say, Vivian?"
Vivian is directing Butterfly traffic, buzzing about, zipping here and there.
"I've got an open Porter weed here," she yells to a monarch, who is apparently waiting to dine.
OK.
I can see this is not the best time for consultation with Vivian.
Butterfly Boss.
Vivian is made of muslin and calico. Her legs and arms are tulle. her trims are vintage. She has moss ribbon wings that are layered with vintage silk leaves, and butterfly vellum. There are tiny bells hanging from her waist.
She has been coffee dyed, baked and painted.
Vivian is 8 inches tall.

Winnie Fey

The mornings are still cool here in the Baggaraggs. Albert and I are up early and take the path behind the house to wander down the way. The birds are so busy, flittering about in the early light of day. I stop to watch them and see who is a visitor and who is a resident.
Albert waits for me, looking back, his brown eyes questioning, a gentle smile on his dog face.
I see them now. The Fey.
They have gathered for a spring wedding, all who attend carry a Bouquet of Rags.
That's right: Bouquets of Rags,
and they are just lovely. All the stolen scraps from the floor of my sewing room made into a lovely bouquet.
I catch Winnie's eye and she smiles a little at me.
I smile back.

Winnie is made of muslin, and fabric scraps with a tulle skirt. her wings are upholstery fabric, vintage corsage leaves, and her lace crown is vintage. She has wire arms and legs. There are bits of moss ribbon on her wings and feet.
Her Rag Bouquet has been assembled from the tiny scraps lovingly gathered from the floor of the studio.
She has been coffee dyed, baked and painted. She is 13 inches tall.

Happy day from Dorthe!

I know I have been away for a bit.
I have been working hard none the less and may soon have good news to share with you. 
I am not sure if I am supposed to talk about it, so I will try to keep a clamp on my lips until I know.
hard for me to keep a secret of my own. I am a big blabber mouth.
Meanwhile I can show you what my lovely friend and soul sister across the sea (as we call each other) in Bornholm, Denmark sent ME.
 I love, LOVE, LOVE getting packages from her. She calls them packets. I love that too. She is a sweet and generous person. Dear to me. You will find the link to her Blog at the top right corner of my blog. She is, as you may know, a fabulous doll maker.
Ok so here is what I came home and FOUND!

 

Oh sweet Giggles.

 

I opened it up.

Beautifully wrapped up...I am doing the excited dance....

YUMMY....
and look at this fabulous package of BITs and BOBS!!!! I am near to swooning!
 giggles...

I can't wait to dive into this...imagination OVERLOAD!

Take a look at this beautiful COLLAGE!

I love bird stuff. (wonder why,

huh ROBIN?) and LOOK at these beautiful things. Sweet with the smell of Lavender. That's my favorite scent.
Thank you DORTHE!!!!!!!! Love you Dear one!

 

Oh and coming soon: a face tutorial on how I do my faces.
Peace out!

Tupelo

 

 

Tupelo follows the Path back to where the Butterflies congregate, back by the Bidens and the Tupelo tree, a black gum growing out back there. The bees hum the air and buzz by, speed mad in a desperate search for nectar. A Monarch, lands upon her arms, resting a bit, resting a while in the sweet sunlight that filters through the trees.
Tupelo is made of muslin and purple polka dot cotton. Her trims are vintage and there is moss thread sewn into her wool hair. A butterfly perches on her arms, held like a posey. Her wings are made from a child's quilt. She has been coffee dyed, baked and painted.
Tupelo has a lazy and sweet smile.
She is 11 inches tall and 7 inches wide.

The First Baggaraggs Bird Purse

So, there are so many times I just need an extra pocket, or what I am wearing has no pocket at all, and I want one to carry my Glasses, my keys,...my Ipod, my phone. WHATEVER.
I have as a result , created this Fabo Bird purse!
I have made myself quite a few and folks seem to like them...I thought maybe you would too.
This bird is completely lined, sewn with my trusty Elna in a 5 thread chain stitch over lock, and is made from a rust colored upholstery fabric. It is lined inside with heart fabric, so your hand will get some LOVE when you reach inside.
Well, that's the idea anyway.
There is a buckle on her wing that doubles in design as the purse flap to close it.
The usuable pocket of the bird is 6x6 inches. It is meant to be worn across the chest, and sits at the hip or ribs, depending how tall you are. The strap is 22 inches long on ONE SIDE. In total 44 inches. The strap itself is made of canvas duck, fininshed with a 5 thread chain stitch over lock too.
Her beak is burlap, and her primary wing is made from a vintage quilt scrap.
Buttons are vintage.
She has a black tassel tail.
Peace out!

The Fishes Tears

I quietly sat and read to the Fish,
and much they marveled at the Dish
of Keats,
They Leapt and gulped the air,
(Where is the sea bound catapult that slings you from the depths, I thought)
And from my rock seat saw them gather or
and round my throne,
they waggled their tails and mouths agape,
waited as I turned the page.
Keats they Loved and yearned for more,
Schools of silver, arrows launched from faraway, gathered to listen,
to tickle one an other's sides with fins of slimy transparent hides.
But as I explained his tragical death, their
leaping ceased, and how they wept!
Their tears,
 they flowed,
the ocean rose, and planted there upon my rocky throne
 I watched the tide of their despair.
And soon the shoreline disappeared, high tide it was and more I feared
these crazy fish would drown us all,
They wept and Wept!
And  then a minuscule crab,
 clothed in brown
sideways comes to quiet them down.
quietly stifles their tears and sobs,
sends them off into the depths,
 those Keats adoring, literate pets.
And the tide recedes, it backs away,
I am left understanding this day:
The Table of Tides and the Fishes tears,
Finally explained after all these years.

robin ridener2013

Last year's curious crop
(the people of my mind)
have all been born.
carried into the world on a wave of thread and paint,
cloth and crochet,
lace and love.
The urgency of the maker leaves me now.
resting in the chilling hours,
sleeping long among the untidy bundles at the pedal of the Thread Pusher,
donning her nightgown and yawning loudly,
resting in the chilling hours.
 She sleeps.
and like a child who stands beside a parent's bed,
who hestitates to wake a Mother from a slumber,
my restless fingers poke the sleeping maker,
my imaginary friend.
"Lie STill," she says, "Rest!"
"REST!"
I fear its "Rust," say I. Knowing that fear will not wake the spring.
not wake the sleeping maker,
I must honor the waiting.
I wait to sew the curious crop.
(The people of my mind.)
They will be carried into the world
on a wave of thread and paint,
cloth and crochet,
lace and love.


Robin Ridener 2013

Chilling Hours

Not unlike the fruit trees that lie dormant far North of the Baggaraggs,
I too am dormant at this time of year.
After the initial serge of witches and bats and Halloween hats, to the final push of Christmas whimsy,
I now rest in chilling hours.  Like an apple tree. They require any number of Chill hours from 200 to 1000 hours. (Chilling unit in agriculture is a metric of a plant's exposure to chilling temperatures.) They require this time to set fruit and be productive again......

I am coming to trust this concept...that it is a natural part of my creative cycle. I am not saying that I like it. I am learning to honor it though and not fear it. It does not mean that I will not create, or that my gift has gone away.
It means I am resting.
I push and this is what I have made...
but it is not easily done

 

They sleep, waiting for faces.

 

 

 

Their feet will soon dance!!!

 

Hoping you are happy in your resting as Well...

Robin of Baggaraggs

 

 

Accomodation

When I was younger, I didn't think too much about pain or illness.
Before I became a nurse I worked in landscaping, did plant nursery work or Landscape maintenance. My body was strong. I had mastery over my Physical state. I could lift like Hercules in cutoffs, work all day in the hot Florida sun, and make things grow.
I was not concerned with how I slept at night, or how I would feel when I woke in the morning to painful joints.
I wasn't concerned about making concessions to low energy, or accepting limitations of my physical state.
As the arch of my Life spreads itself across my Sky, I have conceded that I am aging.
I think about this with some anxiety and also with some ignorance about what this will look like.
My Father was gone at 44. My Mom at 64.
They didn't leave much of a model for navigating older age.
(I just wrote  "Old age" and changed it to older age...HA!)
I am not sure how to navigate this particular passage of my life.
I want to write that I do not like it, but that is not really true.
Let me explain what I mean.
Some years ago, I think maybe 5 or 6 now, Maybe longer because my memory is obviously on a slippery slope...I went to my little nurse Practitioner about some symptoms I was having: Night sweats, low energy, irritability, lack of mental clarity and pain.
She said.
"You are in Menopause."
I asked her how long it would last. Like it was an unpleasant part of a journey that got ruined by bad weather.
She is young and pretty and perky.
She smiled at me and said..."Those symptoms don't ever go away, you just adjust to them."
Surely not.
I couldn't have been more shocked if she had Tazed me.
I think I might have said something like "SHIT."
Well, even though I work in Mental health and understand about COPING SKILLS that are healthy,
I reached for the first one at hand: Denial. This really would pass.
I would get my energy back. Surely. These pesky hot Flashes would fade away, and I would sleep again.
My joint pain....temporary. Estrogen ...who needs it? Ha!
I laugh in the face of FEAR....
sure.
I am 58. I do not like being in pain, having joint discomfort, Not sleeping, being irritable or having skin that looks like it needs a good starching and ironing.
No body likes that.
 Yesterday
One of the younger techs that I work with asked me what years of my life I liked best, or when I was happiest.
I said, "I am Happiest now."
 He looked at my grey hair...because I do not dye it, Looked at my lined face because I do not iron it, and said "Really?"
I said affirming "YES, NOW."
Even with the pain and the fatigue, and all that shriveling estrogen, dried up and blown away,
I am happiest now.
"Why? " he was obviously dubious.
"Because Now I know how to Be HAPPY," I said. "I choose IT, I CHOOSE IT."
This year I pray that you will choose Happiness. That your Journey will help you find it. That you will seek it. That you will have it even in Pain and Not sleeping. Make your accomodations. Accept. Accept. Find your way of coping, and in that
I pray that you are free From Suffering.
and That I am Too.
Merry Christmas

thoughts from a Psych nurse

Some of you all know that I am a Psychiatric nurse. have been since 1978.
I started out with a kind of smart ass edge. It was all about the rules and Boundaries. There were the folks on one side of the nurse's station and the ones behind it. Kinda like the patients vs. The staff in a manner of speaking. I am not really proud of this kind of Black and white thinking but I was young and Stupidly Full of myself.
I spent years working on a residential adolescent unit, trying to figure out how to be the best nurse there was. The smartest. The fixer. I was relentless in trying to ferret out the Key to unlock the dark places of the adolescent psyche.
I wasn't particularly interested in the suffering of others, and I confess I wasn't a source of Compassion. I kept my own feelings about my patients safe, behind a stronghold of Pseudo Professionalism: that wore heels and pantyhose and make up and an impenetrable wardrobe of Emotional Steel.
 In 1998,
I went to work in an adolescent sexual offender unit, a residential treatment center, where kids who had sexually harmed others were placed.
I expected to be repelled. Repulsed even. Folks would say to me "How can you do that?"
Like some of the darkness of that place and what went on there to treat them would rub off on me and make me evil, or bad.
It didn't. It didn't make me evil or bad or anything like that.
Working there taught me about having compassion. It taught me about  human suffering. It taught me about the redeeming Power of Love and Forgiveness. It taught me so much more about Hope and Hopelessness then I ever thought I would know.
I gave a lot to that place. 8 years of my life. I did not create a single thing for that time. Didn't paint. Didn't sew. I had no energy to make a single thing.
But in some respects it was making me. recreating me.
I still work in Psychiatry.
I am older now. I see very little difference at times in those who are behind the desk and those who are in front of it. It could easily be me queuing in the line to receive the medication that it is my job to pass out.
I am grateful that it is not.
There are some patients that I connect with and some I just can't. I let someone else connect with the ones I can't. I cry with some of my patients. Some times I can't help it. I feel their sadness fill up my heart, I feel their grief.
I teach them the Metta and hope this is of some help.
That old wall, the old fortification that kept my feelings safely out of touching range is now a big Fat Marshmallow. Instead of growing harder, with age I have grown softer.
 Wiser but Kinder.
and Kinder is best. I think.

The Power of the Spoken Word.

"It is hard to know what to say sometimes," says Beatrix. Situations are sometimes made or broken with the power of a word. They stay with us those words, like a living thing; the praise of parents or friends, the words of lovers whispered to each other in the night, the expressions of grief spoken in times of anquish.
"I would guard against words spoken in anger, Guard against words spoken to influence others Against Humanity, for there lies the Path of Evil."
Beatrix is afterall and Angel.
She is made of muslin, and has a coffee dyed cranberry taffeta dress enbellished with vintage lace and vintage trims. She has multiple rusted bells hanging from her person. Her wings are made of cedar and painted green. Her hair is sewn to her head and she has a crown made of Baggaraggs Ribbon.
With her hanger she is she is about 12 inches tall.

Happy Birthday to me!

Ok, so its my Birthday.
I am 58 now.
Here is what I like about being 58 years old.
I feel more accepting of myself. I am less afraid of failing, it doesn't feel like that big a deal to me because I am JUST Relentless with Persisting anyway...so I believe that I will succeed eventually.
I really do believe that.
This is part of getting older or maybe I have developed a Delusion that finally is of some benefit to ME!
Another thing about being 58 is feeling stronger, and I mean this in an emotional sense; I have more mastery over my temper (which use to be mercurial, explosive and Injuriously Impulsive)
and more accepting of Others imperfections. I am less attached to what I think should happen.
I guess that enough of all that sappy stuff.
My friend From across the Sea
Dorthe Hansen of Den Lille Lade
sent me a fabulous Birthday Packet. First let me tell you I love that word Packet.
Dorthe uses it...and has taught me to anticipate the arrival of a "Packet" with great Excitement...like Christmas coming.

( and it does feel like Christmas)

Look what she sent me for my Birthday.

              

 

 

 

                     This beautiful angel is MINE!!!

 

She is too wonderful for words. Dorthe thank YOU!

 

 

            

 

This OH so beautiful LOOK at IT Scarf!!!

 

It is amazingly soft and snugly. And it is in my favorite Colors.

 

There are always the numerous and so beautiful Tags and doo-dads that LOVE so much from Dorthe. Unexpected treasures.

 

 

 

Look at that Fabulous Ribbon and those OH so Tiny specimen VIALS!!!!

 

I am undeserving!

 

But so very thankful.

I love my Dorthe!