I was away for a few days and when I got home, a nice pile of mail was waiting for me- The highlights were my calendar from Camilla and my “prize” from the Vintage Cloth Dollmaking list challange. It is a Yahoo group that I belong to. There are regular challenges- to do a doll in the style that the group is interested in, or from a particular vintage pattern. People donate “door prizes” which are distributed by choosing names out of a hat. No winning or losing. Sometimes there are enough prizes donated or few enough dolls posted that everyone gets a prize- that makes it lots of fun! The Fall challenge was to do an old style Santa. I made the wool Santa which started me off on the whole group of wool dolls. Here is what I got in the mail-

It is a button box- from Ike Putney. What a treasure trove! I have been enjoying going through all the goodies. My personal challenge will be to find some way to use the really big buttons- they are fantastic, but not suitable for the dolls I’ve been making.

I have been doing the boring stuff since the sale and being away- trying to get my studio usable again (what a mess!) and the rest of the house in some order enough to start getting ready for Christmas. Now that the kids aren’t little, I just don’t care that much about it… As usual, I am running very late on all the Holiday prep. I am thinking about cards or ornaments though and have been fooling around with a mini sweater baby-

I tried it out of fabric and now I’m trying paper and card stock. You’ll see if I get anything I’m happy with.