Thank you, Indian Summer!

My morning glory vine and my petunias and geraniums and my SOUL are all thankful for the gorgeous 80F degrees and warmer the last several days here in northern Indiana. Warm and sunny is the forecast for the next several days also. It's sooooo pleasant!

Quest for Doll Heads Never Rests

A quick Halloween lunch stop in Union City, Indiana, not far from Dayton on the Ohio border, netted me this humongous old doll head. I placed the other ones for perspective, and even though the dark-haired one is four inches, the comparison really doesn't do it justice.

This old gal is a full five inches high and five inches wide at the shoulders. She must have made for a pretty big doll. It appears she was played with because the shoulder has clearly been broken and glued. The clerk seemed amazed I would buy it (it was verrry cheap). "You know this is cracked?" he asked. A statement so obvious I couldn't believe it was a question.

When I told him I liked to make altered art with doll heads, he disappeared for the longest time and came back with a box full of cloth and rubber dolls. A doll collector might have gotten faint, but since usually only porcelain heads do it for me, I couldn't even take his $2 box off his hands, although I probably should have, if for nothing more than to be polite.

In the car I noticed the hollow head was stuffed with something strange-either old wool or old doll hair-lots of it- and as I struggled to pull it out, I had momentary imaginations of either baby mice or a million dollars, neither of which fell into my lap while driving. The head does have an old tag on the back-stuck on at one time-but so old now it is almost embedded into it and impossible to read-even with my new Sarah Palin-esque readers. Not sure what I will do with this big head, but right now it waits patiently with its sisters.

But one head and a couple of pieces of old cold type later I was out of there and on with my work, proving again that "Wander Indiana" is an excellent state marketing campaign slogan.

Driving around all the time for work also lets me see all the campaign signage in my state-something I will be very glad to see gone and soon! Doing my part for that, I voted Saturday. That was a first: Saturday (not voting). The absentee voting process was smooth and convenient, since I will be out of town for election day, wandering another state. I was amazed to hear some states are even offering voting this Sunday-truly the sign of a landmark election. So, don't miss your own opportunity. Go vote.

Speaking of wandering-or shopping- you don't have to leave your house or your jammies to do some great holiday shopping. If, like me, you don't want to think about that, well don't! But when you do, there is an outstanding holiday gift guide from http://www.vintageindie.typepad.com at http://www.vintageindiemarket.typepad.com. There are tons of categories for all sorts of handmade gifts and gift ideas as well as discounts galore. I am proud to be a vendor member in this guide as well as a contributing editor for the wonderful Gabreial who runs VinatgeIndie. Vist my etsy or my Flickr for goodies to gobble up: from jewelry and altered art to Blythe doll clothing and furniture and publications for the collector. Even if I don't feel like shopping yet (when did summer end?), I always feel like selling!

Scenes from a Spring

You know it is Memorial Day in Indiana when the peonies are as big as your head. And even though Memorial Day has passed, the peonies were looking great on this warm sunny day. I stopped at the local public garden on the way home from the dentist to take some pictures. The garden smelled great, too, and the pond sound was refreshing.

The other items are some treasures I got this weekend. I found two great porcelain doll heads-the larged one in Schoolcraft, MI for $40 and the blond doll head in Nappanee, IN for $20. I now have six dollheads and can't decide if I want to display them or make altered art with them. I picture one under a glass garden cloche or 'bell jar.' The books are a couple I have ordered and hope to review for http://www.vintageindie.com.

The print is a lovely gift I received from ZNE's Chrysti of http://chrysti.wordpress.com for entering her caption contest. Chrysti also sells altered art supplies at http://www.alteredabbey.com and has fantastic outdoor photos on Flickr. She does it all. My caption was hardly worthy of a print, but you can check it out here http://chrysti.wordpress.com/2008/05/15/are-you-one-of-the-10-winners/. I also won a digital collage sheet of vintage doll parts from Kat at Altered Kat and Great Musings on etsy and http://alteredkat.blogspot.com. I must be living right!

A is for Asparagus and ATCs, B is for Banners, Boxes, BSU and Burt's Bees, V is for Vegas and Vacation, W is for Winter and Whining

Hello....I am typing this post with gloves on, so I will try to catch all the typos ahead of time! Why gloves? Two reasons: (multi-tasking as usual) I bought some cotton gloves and hand cream from Burt's Bees to work on my dry cuticles (it works!) and due to the slow spring and snow in Indiana and the loose storm window over my desk, it is freezing in my home office. It is also freezing in my basement studio. Yes, we have indoor plumbing and heating, but I refuse to set the thermostat ridiculously high in March! I'd rather whine!!

So enough of that! First off, thanks to Kris L. Hurst of Blissfull (sic) Elements http://krislhurst.blogspot.com/ on etsy and her website, for my beautiful new spring banner. The blog needed a facelift! So cheery! And, she is so talented; you'll see her work on many blogs.

Now, on to last weekend's art fest here (in said cold basement). I finished up two sets of artist trading cards for the ATC World swaps, and I randomly made another mermaid theme charm bracelet for etsy http://www.hpsgsmith.etsy.com/.

Plus, managed to squeeze in a traditional Easter dinner with ham, asparagus, et. al., two! naps, a couple of new articles written, magazines read, Blythes dressed and photographed and some thought given to what to pack for vacation (10 day countdown) and what to take to Art & Soul (36 day countdown). My co-workers are in Las Vegas this week but not me (zero day countdown); so I am grouchy.

I also got an email from my alma mater BSU about sending final exam goody boxes to students, and it made me cry. Why? When I lived in the dorm (back in the day and long enough ago so as not to cry), a dorm of four halls and hundreds of girls, the staff sent letters home seeking boxes of candy and gifts for all the students to open the night before Finals' Week. I was the only one who did not get one at the frenzied opening. I guess my letter got lost. It was traumatic to say the least. But, I'm sure I aced my finals for spite. That's how I rolled. I need to go send a box to someone....

I Paid for A Yodel, and You Should, Too.

The picture above is one I took of a cookbook I've had for about five years. I don't know that I've ever made anything from this book, but I have sat down more than once to pour over the photos and read the essays.
You see, the author, the late Elizabeth Coblentz, wrote from her home near Berne, IN, not so far from me and a place I travel to frequently for work. Most amazingly, Elizabeth wrote this cookbook as an Old Order Amish grandmother, with no indoor plumbing or electricity for starters. That certainly did not dampen her abilities in the kitchen nor did it stop her from writing a weekly newspaper column for many years.
Today, more than 15 years later, that column is carried on by Elizabeth's daughter, Lovina Eicher, and is syndicated in hundreds of newspapers. It is a column I look forward to weekly in my local paper, The Warsaw Times-Union.
To make the story even more rich, the cookbook - one of many in a series now- and the column were "cooked" up in 2001 by a then-high school senior, Kevin Williams, the founder of Oasis Newsfeatures, Inc., who was doing a school paper on the Amish.

So where does the yodeling fit in? In this week's column, editor Williams directed readers to his site for an opportunity to hear an audio-only recording of the Eicher family yodeling. Naturally, I had to tune in. Williams was criticized for charging a fee for the download- which is temporary to respect Amish practices. It will expire and downloads will no longer work after Jan. 31. Pffft, I say to any criticism. If one or one's teenage offspring will pay to download unintelligible rap lyrics, one can pay to download yodeling. Enough on that.

Williams explains: "Yodeling is a distinctive form of singing with rich roots in European culture. In the United States, yodeling is becoming increasingly rare, slowly vanishing in today's increasingly modern society. Among the Old Order Amish yodeling was never widespread. Most Amish have Germanic roots where yodeling was never a common cultural emblem. A few Amish churches, however, have distinctly Swiss roots (Sugarcreek, Ohio: Adams County, Indiana; and Webster County, Missouri). The Amish in these communities speak a slightly different dialect, a Swiss Bernese German. And among these Swiss Amish, yodeling was brought over to the New World. Even today in these small enclaves of Amish, the tradition of yodeling still persists."

You can click the link above to go to the site to register to read the weekly column and/or listen to the yodeling. In this time of listening to so much bad news and tempting tax proposals, the yodeling was a welcome treat. It is only about three minutes and includes a solo by Lovina's husband Joe and a duet with Joe and Lovina. Highly recommended.

ARTchix Sepia ATC Swap

Another early morning as I was so excited about last night's completion of my sepia tone artist trading cards for swap in my ARTchix group that I had to get up early to photograph, upload, edit and post right here!
Today was also the opening day for the CaaT Complementary Art and Things collage and altered arts theme week. So, I had to get my 6 different collage prints uploaded and listed. Just try dealing with photobucket, photo editor, ebay, ebay groups, scanner, printer and camera- all at 6 a.m. Please search ebay under hpsgsmith and buy yourself a signed, suitable for framing print and help me win my CaaT challenge!
But I am done, done, done and looking forward to an artsy weekend! Friday to Monday is also the annual Blueberry Festival in Plymouth, IN - one of the largest arts and crafts festivals in the state and nation, or so they say. Hope to find some great goodies for my swap gifts! And I have lots of projects on the weekend's front burner, including some altered domino pendants that I will list for sale. Also, what perfect weather for a three-day weekend! O, happy day!