Recovering ...

It's now been a little over a week since my surgery. The procedure went well, although my gallbladder was so inflamed that I came "dangerously close" to being opened up the old-fashioned way, according to my surgeon. The first night was horrible. Shooting pains in the shoulder and abdomen bad enough to make me scream and/or cry. But things got better after that and now I'm moving around pretty well.

The surgery has kept me out of the garden (and barely any of my tulips or daffodils bloomed this year), but it hasn't kept me out of the doll studio (not for long, anyway). I finally got another message back from Colonial Williamsburg. They now want to see an example of my work, so I am shipping off one or two dolls tomorrow or Tuesday. The other dolls elected George Washington as our envoy. He seemed a suitable choice on so many levels, so George got all primped and polished for the journey. He's now mounted on a stand, with a walking stick and a rolled up copy of the Constitution clutched in one hand. I also made him a little decoupaged tag to complete the presentation. Now I'm working on a little girl from one of the portraits in the Abby Aldridge Rockefeller Folk Art Museum. My version of the girl is about 10 inches tall. She's wearing a periwinkle silk dress circa 1830-1840. I find that children's faces are hard to capture -- their features are far more subtle than adults (who aren't all that easy either, btw). So I reworked her face a couple of times before I was satisfied. She still doesn't look exactly like the portrait, but I keep telling myself she's my "interpretation" of the portrait--not a replica. Anyway, her dress is still in progress. I spent hours on it yesterday and finally decided to call it quits and watch a movie. The skirt has two tucks, each of which is topped by two narrow bands of white ribbon. Even at this small size, it was a lot of tedious hand work to put those details on. The bodice is fan folded at the bosom and tightly gathered (smocked?) across the abdomen. Still need to create the sleeves, which are double gathered just below the shoulder, then have a large puff between the gathers and a wide wrist cuff.

Right now it's only 7 a.m. and the rest of the family is sleeping. I've been awake since about 5:30, so I finally decided to get up and make some coffee.

More later,

Nina