Late Nights

An apple pie is in the oven, the fire place is spreading warmth in our house while the rain is pattering against the window.

Tomorrow we will have another doll making class, this time in Skåne, Sweden. We will work at Sunnanäng waldorf kindergarden here in Höör, a lovely and cozy little place, just a few minutes walk from us. I am so much looking forward this weekend, we will be a nice international group and I am sure we will have fun sitting and chatting and sewing.

And if you might think that I am baking apple pies in the middle of the night to have something for us as a late friday evening dessert - nope, that pie is for the class tomorrow ;-) So this night will be a short one, I need to prepare a bit for the course and to keep an eye on the pie (important, really important ;-). I have to weigh mohair yarn so that every student gets enough for a wig, I have to find the long needles somewhere at the bottom of my super-sized suitcase (didn´t manage to unpack it yet), keep my fingers crossed that the tubic gauze size 8 has made it to Sweden.

But all these preparations are great against the little dash of stagefright which I always have, no matter if it is about a shadow theatre class I have to teach or doll making... I love to teach, I really do - and what would work be without that kind of excitement?

I have promised you new stories and there are indeed lots of photos waiting for you, but it will take some days before I will have some more calm minutes to upload all the images and to write longer posts, but you are of course welcome to sneek a little peek with these photos now.

At the beginning of the week I will also have more time to reply to all the emails which reached me during the last days. But I am afraid the apple pie would burn if I would sit now and just type all the replies. And what would the students think tomorrow? Oh, look this crazy woman with burned apple pie, as black as the shadows under her eyes. She doesn´t seem to be very trustworthy, if already the cake looks like that, what about the dolls then??

Would you like that to happen? I guess not!
And that´s why I finish this post now, I can smell the cake already ;-)

Have a nice weekend - and see you within the coming days!

Warm greetings from late autumnal Sweden,

Juliane

Back on track

Thank you so much for all your warmhearted lines for the Queen of Paper, Pillows and Poupées! I have taken off that crown of sickness now and I am happy to be back on track, packing my suitcase for Sweden, giftwrapping cherries and birds and little girls in dotted dresses.The last days have been quite intense and I was very touched when I read your comments and emails about the 9th of November. We came home in the middle of the night, totally frozen after hours at checkpoint Bornholmer Straße and I sat in front of my laptop to read what you had written while the hot water in the bathtub got cold ;-)

Tomorrow on the boat I will have some calm hours to reply to all your emails (also concerning the Dutch courses) and requests, right now I am finishing some orders which need to be shipped before I am leaving. I am looking forward to spending some time at home in Sweden and to meeting some of you at the doll making class in Höör the coming weekend!

Warm greetings from Berlin,

Juliane

Twenty years ago

I was twelve years old when the wall came down. Still a child, but knowing what was going on. I grew up at Gaudystraße in Berlin, Prenzlauer Berg, only a stone´s throw away from the border.

The first wall memory I have is the following: I am two years and a few months old, my brother is a baby and our mother is walking rounds at Falkplatz with him in the pram. I prefer to stay at the sandbox which my mother finds a bit strange since I use to accompany her on her walks.

When I was two years and a few months old, I had big brown eyes and braided hair. And I loved chewing gum. People from West Berlin throw poisoned chewing gums across the wall an older child had told me. Oh, but what if I would find such a chewing gum? If my hand would go down to pick it up while an inner voice would say Stop! Don´t eat it! It is poisoned! and I still couldn´t resist and eat it?

So I decided - very scared - that since I was not able to withstand the temptation of a chewing gum on the pavement, it would be better to stay at the sandbox. And I had started to understand world politics quit early, I guess. Two years and a few months old.

***
Autumn 1989 was intense. Our parents were in the opposition, so these weeks and months were filled by long discussions with friends and collegues around the kitchen table, with demonstrations and prayers at church, with a lot of hope but also despair. And me - soon twelve years at that time - understood that we were in the eye of a storm.

Today I have many thoughts in my mind and we will now go out again into the dribbling rain, pass by Gethsemanekirche and Mauerpark, taking a walk to the former checkpoint Bornholmer Straße, lighting a candle, thinking back and thinking ahead. And we will cross our old playground at Falkplatz where I sat thirty years ago, brown-eyed and with braided hair and a weakness for chewing gum, the earliest wall memory have.

Do you remember the 9th of November in 1989? Where have you been that evening?

The Queen of Pillows, Paper and Poupées

Right now my bed is my castle and I am the Queen of Paper, Pillows and Poupées, reigning my country with a weak and cold hand. And no, I haven´t forgotten you, my true friends and fellows, but I can´t receive you in audience at the moment, I am truly sorry. The only exception the Queen of Paper, Pillows and Poupées does right now is to open her door for a few little maids who pretend they would never! catch anything else but a few freckles and rosy cheeks...

If you wonder what the Queen of Paper, Pillows and Poupées is doing all day long (and why she is unable to receive any audiences) - I have been badly sick now for about one week. Except to the doctor I didn´t take any walks, I am spending most of the time in bed, either asleep or in daze so therefore any blog updates and email responses take time and therefore I haven´t been able to take new pictures of several dolls waiting here to be shipped.The appropriate activities for the Queen of Paper, Pillows and Poupées are of course:

• packing a few packages for customers, writing some lines for little boys and little girls

• crochet little hats, tiny shoes and warm doll scarfs

• folding traditional German paper stars** (about 200 so far, if I have counted right, using pretty giftwrapping paper)

I found out that stabile paper stars are perfect for a loose fill in the packages and a nice surprise, too. Apart from all the other extra gifts such as crocheted mushrooms, hair clips, beeswax candles or lavender sachets which I use to add to any package and which to prepare I am happily spending my reigning-a-kingdom-from-my-sickbed-time with when I am not fevery asleep.I hope I am soon back on track - because next week we are going to have another doll making class in Skåne/ Sweden and I would be bitterly unhappy if I would have to cancel the course. So keep your fingers crossed that folding paper stars is a good treatment!

Warmly,

Juliane

...who will need some days to get through all your emails, but my laptop is patient and so are you, hopefully


**Footnote: I got three emails today saying that the paper stars are a Danish invention, not a German one. They are indeed very common in Denmark and have a long tradition in many other countries, but to be precise - it was Friedrich Fröbel who invented these kind of stars.

Fröbel was a famous German mathematition and pedagogue (one of Pestalozzi´s students) and has had a lot of influence on pre-school education. One of his mathematical excercises for children was this paper star. Therefore we call these stars Fröbelstern (Fröbel´s Star) in Germany and every year I get more addicted, especially when using paper such as the one from House Doctor (and yes, that now is a Danish brand ;-)

Some of you asked for a tutorial - just google paper star and I am sure you´ll make a find. If I manage, I will take some pictues and upload a some instructions for you, it is easy once you understood how to fold the stripes...

When it is raining cats and dogs

Not even with the warm coat?

No.

Oh pretty please, you promised that -
That maybe so, but -

And with a warm scarf and woolen stockings?
Nope!You are so mean! You are no longer our friend!

Well, you see, it is raining cats and dogs. That´s why we haven´t done it today and we won´t do it tomorrow either.

Wahaaaaaa whaaaaahaa (constant howling, crescendo)Wahaaaa whaaaahaaaaaaa (still constant howling, mezzoforte)

Saturday, not earlier, girls! And if you don´t stop with your silly conduct, there won´t be a bedtime story!(howling stops immidiately)

It is not easy to have two little girls at home who wait impatiently for a photo session. Saturday, says the weather forecast. Let´s keep the fingers crossed that the rain stops so that we can spend a sunny hour or so in the garden and to soon be back with a story about
The Sisters of the Dawn...

Lovely dolls (with a little help of Fröken Skicklig ;-)

Just a quick monday post, I wanted to share a photo today of two dolls NOT made by me...

Hendrike was one of the lovely and creative girls who joined the doll making class in Berlin in October and with the advice and the help she got at the course and with the ideas and joy she already had, this was the result:

© by Hendrike Margraf

Aren´t these two girls pretty? Even if one (ehm, is that appropriate to show on a blog? ;-) still is without panties... I was so happy when I saw the result and I remembered the very first email from Hendrike who had tried to make waldorf dolls for her children before. We will solve all these problems, I had replied after I had read about dangling heads, strange proportions and matted hair. And isn´t it great then to see such a result?

I gave Hendrike a short call back before I wrote this post to publish this photo and we talked about what you can get from the doll making classes. Of course, I can show some of the technique, I can give good advice. But the rest is your part and it is amazing with how much joy people make their dolls. So much creativity to be awakened!

My mother is musician and I grew up with the settled conviction that immusicality doesn´t exist. Everyone is musical - and I am profoundly convinced that everyone can make dolls, too. It is just a matter of some help and encouragement, but the major part is your own joy and your own ideas.

Thank you, Hendrike, for sharing this photo with us!

And a monday smile to my dear readers!

Juliane

Update doll making classes in The Netherlands

After a slightly chaotic weekend with a lot of work in nice company, with one more hour sleep thanks to change to standard time, pumpkin soup and panna cotta, fresh flowers on our table and a vacuum cleaner bag full of needles, threads and golden buttons, I am sitting here right now and organise the 2010 schedule.Since you Dutch people seem the most crafty people worldwide there will be - as already announced - at least two doll making classes in The Netherlands in February, if not even three.

I received a lot of requests from The Netherlands via blog comments, Flickr mail, Ravelry, via phone or email which made me glad. Since I am the self-proclaimed Queen of Chaos right now, I would love to structure these requests a little bit better because some of them might have got lost somewhere in my little white box with the keys on.So - just in order to keep you updated it would be nice if all of you who are interested in the Netherland-classes would send a little morse code signal to my lighthouse at

frokenskicklig ** at ** gmail.com

so I could work against this little chaos. I try to label every email but since the ways of communication weren´t just through email, it is a bit hard currently to keep this structured.

Using the address above (even if you have contacted me in another way before) would be a great help and instead of browsing through all my virtual mailboxes on Ravelry, Flickr and Co, I could sit and finish orders and fill the boxes for the advent fair the 27-29 Nov.

So please, send me a short email, so I won´t forget one of you on the mailing list.
And then I could even take some more minutes time to enjoy a piece of delicious lemon cake and a cup of tea ;-)Hartelijk dank en lieve groeten! And warm greetings to all the non-Dutch readers, too!

Footnote: Thanks for all your emails from the NL which are dropping in, you´ll get a short confirmation. It will be so much fun to work with you!

True stories

I got several emails after I had posted "My little red Bird" and wanted to thank you for all your lines. It made me happy that you like to have a look and that you enjoy reading my blog. And after me and my friend Nina had a very interesting talk about children´s ways of solving certain situations with their phantasy as a tool, I wanted to drop you a little post about it.I wrote it already in the comment section - Ella is a happy little girl and her story was definately not inspired by a catastrophal family situation as some of you thought. It is rather the opposite - Ella lives in a warmhearted family, has a sweet little sister and parents spending a lot of time with them. When her family read the story, they understood the little hints. Ella had lost one of her best friends some time ago, a cat named Zachary. So that was which inspired me to create that story then...All of us know the feeling of being lonely, don´t we? I remember it very well from my childhood. The loneliness caused by the loss of a loved toy, of a loved person or of a loved cat. The loneliness after a beautiful family vacation. The loneliness the day-after-the-birthday-party. There are so many different ways of loneliness and so many way of solving it. So that story was more about loneliness in general. And for a seven year old child (like in that story) one hour waiting time can seem like an eternity.

When I am working on stage, I can often sense that especially parents think Oh, you can´t show this! or Oh, you can´t talk about that! These Oh!s occur very often when we work with themes such as death or sexuality or family problems. The funny thing is that children have a much more direct access and are much less afraid than their parents. Sometimes we even ask parents to wait outside so that their children don´t need to react the way their parents want them to react. These performances then are so much different from the ones with a mixed audience.Children get so much more between the lines than we often think they would do. And from my point of view it feels wrong to mask out certain parts of reality just because we are afraid of too many uncomfortable questions. Everything needs to be in accordance with the age of a child, sure. But I don´t like to show just a pinky-pink world and can see that even Fröken Skicklig gets sort of more realistic.

Ella understood what I was writing about and I received such a wonderful email from her family. Since the story was her story it was most important to me that she would understand it. And I think she could read between the lines when I wrote about that little red bird.

Sometimes I get emails from people - often a bit too strict with certain alternative ways of upbringing and education - telling me I would take the innocence of children when writing about nasty big sisters, when I would make little bumps in the pants of boy dolls or when I write a story which isn´t just about chestnuts and flowers but also about sadness and despair or - like in Ella´s story - about a child who is lonely at times and who needs a little red bird to be friend with.

Honestly - I think, my way of protecting a child to keep its innocence is to encourage it to use the tool of phantasy. I try to listen carefully when children tell me about their needs and secret wishes. Often I can recognise myself in these talks as the little girl I once have been. Respecting a child means also to respect the world around - and that is always a world with both black and white, with love and disregard, with fear and joy. And to pretend that the opposite of what we like does not exist seems just wrong to me.

As an outlook I wish for Fröken Skicklig to find a way which is getting closer and closer to my theatre work. A little pinch of salt here and there to not show too many dots and flowers.When I sorted old drawings from my childhood today, I could see so many stories there and could remember so many precious moments, bitter and sweet, which had let me sit by my little table to make a drawing or to make a little book with a clumsy handwriting and some tiny illustrations.

Not everything I write or use or my stories is autobiographically inspired (yes, I do get these kind of questions ;-) just because I use a lyrical I. Of course it isn´t me who experienced Italian grandmothers, tomatoe juice penalties or grey clothes. But I like to listen to stories I get told, I am inspired by situations I see or just by a line I read somewhere, the rest is phantasy. Then I add some colour and fabric and voilà there is a story and there is a doll...

So, that was a little bit off topic today, I have to continue with my sewing (and thinking) and wish all of you a happy weekend!

Warm greetings to you from my chaotic desk...

My little red Bird

** For Ella **

When I come from school, there is always a little note waiting for me on the kitchen table.

Don´t forget to practise guitar!

or: Be nice! Pasta and vegetables in the microwave. Kisses, Mummy.

sometimes just: I´m in a hurry. Kiss!
***

I don´t like tuesdays and wednesdays and I don´t like thursdays either. On tuesdays and wednesdays and thursdays daddy has to work until 7p.m. and mummy has sittings or meetings or conferences.

Sometimes I play a bit outside in the staircase while I am waiting for mummy and daddy to come home from work.

Everything alright, my dear? says Annie, gasping with her two heavy shopping bags.

Yes, I say.
Fine, she says.
Bye, I say.

And I count the steps until I can hear Annie unlocking her door upstairs.

Then I make myself a hot chocolate. I warm some milk in the microwave. And then I pour a lot of cacao powder into the cup.

Then I flip through a book and try to behave as nice as I can.

Then I sit a little on the sofa.

Then I try to hold my breath for seven minutes.

But the clockhands do not move and mummy and daddy are still at work. I put on my coat and go out onto the balconny.

First I count the clouds. Then I count cars. Two red ones, a green one and several metallic ones. Then I count all the chestnuts in the trees until I start freezing. Then I go inside.

Then I sit a little by the window. I watch the neighbours in the house at the other side of the street. An old man walks his dog. Three red cars and one police motorcycle.

We live in the 4th floor and from here I can see all the treetops with all the birds. A lot of sparrows and crows and chickadees. And there is a little red bird, too. I put my coat on...
and I go out onto the balconny again from where I can watch all the birds much better. Especially the little red bird.

Guess how funny it would be if mummy would make me oxhorn buns in the morning, not just pigtails! Two oxhorn buns, like two little nests!

My little red bird could sit in the nest on the right side.

Or in the nest on the left side! How funny that would be!

Little bird, I would say. Be nice! I will make the two of us each a cup of hot chocolate.

Kriwitt!kriwitt! my little red bird would say. And that would mean: Great idea, great idea!

Counting clouds and chestnuts and cars would be much funnier with my little red bird. We would sit by the window and look into the sky and my little red bird would say Kriwitt!kriwitt! which means Two blue cars, two blue cars!

When we would sit in the cold staircase, my little red bird would hide under my coat.
And when Annie would meet me, she would say with the refuse sack in her hand:
Everything alright, my dear?
Kriwitt! Kriwitt! I would say.
Pardon me??? she would say.
And I would reply: I just said: Fine!
And my little red bird would hide under my coat until Annie is gone.
And then my little red bird would count all the tiny flowers on my dress. And that would tickle a lot!
And then we would climb up the huge gum tree in our living room and we would play expedition and name the country we discovered America. And my little red bird would get sad because he had no name. And then I would think about names from A to Z and then I would name him Zachary, because Zachary is a wonderful name for my little red bird, don´t you think?
And when we have supper, Zachary would jump into my pinafore pocket. And I could feet my little red bird with my sandwich.

So how was your day? daddy would ask.
Fine, I would say.
And neither mummy nor daddy could see Zachary, my little red bird. Because he hides in my pinafore pocket and nibbles all the little breadcrumbs I give him.

And then we would take a bath, me and Zachary.
But my little red bird would turn jeallous because of Betty, my bath duck. Come on! I would say, this is just a toy!

But Zachary is sitting outside the bathtub and is pouting.

This is the first time we squabble. But only for three minutes, then mummy comes to read a bedtime story to me.

I am happy Zachary is so tiny that I can hide him in my hand while mummy is reading...

Nighty night, mummy says.
Krrriwighty-krrrrwight, Zachary says.
Pardon me? Mummy says.
And I say: shhhhh!! (to Zachary)
and reply (to mummy): Will you work until 7p.m. tomorrow?
And mummy says: My dear, I am sorry, but yes we -
- That´s perfect, I say. Nighty night!

A 55cm tall custom doll for Ella.

It was fun to sew a little true fellow for five-year old Ella. Since she knows that me and Santa are well-connected, she let me know she wanted - amongst other details - chestnut-red hair and oxhorn buns. And since I had to figure out how to add oxhorn buns which you could take off for ordinary pigtails, I also got very quickly the idea of bird´s nests and voilà! the story was there. Thank you for the great help, Ella!

And a thank-you for my lovely friend J who gave me the keys to let me take all the pictures in his nice flat. It was much fun to use nearly every spot of your apartment, drinking espresso and making you neighbours smile in the staircase ;-)

I will have to find Zachary now, I guess he is hiding in our kitchen cupboard now to nibble some chocolate... Birds! Never leave them unattended!

Warm greetings from Berlin,

Juliane

Footnote number one: Some of you wondered about doll prices. A 55cm/ 21.7" custom doll as Ella´s costs 170€ plus shipping.

Footnote number two: It goes without saying that these pictures are - as any content of this site - under copyright. Please ask before posting my images on your blog.
©by Fröken Skicklig

A lovely start

Finally the sun has decided to pay Berlin a visit and people smile in the streets. I started the week with fresh flowers, several tulle skirts (not for me but for dolls), with digging out my turquoise vintage hat and leaving the umbrella at home, with nice music, a dentist visit and a new inspiring book: Tendence Vintage by Hélène Le Berre.

It happens maybe twice within four years that I buy a craft book, but this time I couldn´t resist. I don´t like to follow patterns but this book is charming and has a lot of lovely ideas which inspire you to start sewing instead of measuring and following strict instructions... So have a look if your local library (or book store) has it!

One more reason why I am happy that my dotted umbrella gets some rest: I was waiting for some more sunshine and will take some pictures of Ella´s doll tomorrow in the morning. Much nicer than in such a grey light at it has been during the last days. So see you tomorrow in the evening for a new blog post about My little red Bird...

Time now for an afternoon coffee and my new book ;-)