30 Days of Dammit Dolls - Day One and Two

for a couple days last week i made several dammit dolls, one right after the other. As i was finishing one up i realized how cool it would be to do one every day for a year.

then i realized that doing one a year would be a bit insane and i dropped it down to one month. I really enjoy making dammit dolls, they're a great way to spend a morning or my shift at work when i don't feel like reading.

i'm not really sure why i want to do this, it seems a little bit like a journey... maybe a journey is what i need right now.

Anyway here's the plan: Dammit Dolls made the way i always make them. Each one will have all the features of a dammit doll that makes them loveable, from ugly fabric, to mismatched button eyes, to yarn hair. These 30 will be unique though.

Inside each one will be a secret. something that only The dammit doll and I know. Upon purchase the owner of the dammit doll will have the choice to find out what the secret is. It may be a note, or an object, or something else entirely. i am hoping that the secret will reveal something interesting about life, or just dammit doll thoughts - which are interesting on their own.

I am not sure if i will sell them all, and I definitely won't list them every day in my etsy shop otherwise it'll be over run by dammit dolls. But i will try to return to blog about the doll of the day every day, since that's probably an important part of the journey. If you see the doll you like keep an eye on my shop for it!

anyhow I have already begun.

Yesterday, May 13th was Day One. I used this tealish greenish flowered canvas fabric i found in the scrap bin to make Amy. She is stitched with lavender thread, her hair is shades of brown red, white and green. She has one wooden eye button and one that is plain white. She's the tall version of dammit doll, standing about a foot and a half tall. She is stuffed with a mix of fabric scraps and polyester fiberfil.

on her back is my signature, a pair of R's, and then she is numbered 1 for the day.

Today May 14th was day two, and I created Lenore from a thin white fabric with decorative embroidery at the bottom. She is stitched with red. her hair is peach, pink and blueish purple. Her eyes are a curved purple circle and a pearly white square with a fancy gold border. She is stuffed with a mix of fabric scraps and polyester fiberfil.

on her back is my signature, a pair of R's, and then she is numbered 2 for the day.

Come back for Day 3, and for the rest of the month to come!!

Robbery!

Want to hear the story of the robbery that happened when I worked at the Pizza Place the first time?

Sure you do.

I was the general manager at the time, I had just come in for my closing shift. Jay, my shift runner opened, and my assistant Anne was there too to help with the dinner rush. I also had the BEST instore pizza topper/phone answerer that I have ever worked with, Dee. I told him I loved him every single day because he was my best employee.

We had several drivers on that night, and I know the only one in the store was Ron. One of the foreigners was there, if not both, and I think the old man was there too.

When I had come in the door Jay had handed the safe keys off to me to give out money to the drivers. Our Area Supervisor had just left the store on his way back to the office and we were all settling into the dinner rush vibe.

If you walk in the door to our resturant you come up to a counter, to your right is the opening to let employees in and there are spaces for two customers to be helped at once, though we only ever used one till. Behind the cashiers was the cut table, and the pizza making station was to the left of the cashiers (as you face them). The pizza making station stretches along that wall putting the topping station right alongside the oven.

Generally, you cannot hear a thing when you are topping a pizza. Thats where I was about quarter after 5. I heard Jay say something, but couldn't make it out. I was topping a works pizza, putting on the ham, the second to last topping before the cheese. "What?" I call back to him, not lifting my eyes from my pizza.

"KEYS" he shouts, and I look over to where he is standing at the slap station and he points to the front door.

We only had like 10 orders in, tops. The vantage point from the top station to the door is nil on a busy night, the opening of the cut station gets filled with boxes and that night I could see straight through; just in time to see a not too friendly looking gentleman step around the counter and pull the phone away from Dee who was taking an order at the time.

I remember turning back to my pizza for a split second. I swore. I know I swore. I'm pretty sure it was just a simple "Fuck". I remember throwing the handful of ham into my pizza before walking over to the front of the store.

There were two of them. The unfriendly gentleman was holding a knife in his right hand. Go pull the biggest knife out of your knife block, not the butcher knife, that fat pointy one. That's the knife he had. He held it below waist level, pointed at the floor and only once gestured with it.

Twitchy dude watched the door and kept telling his friend to hurry. I believe I conveyed my utter disgust for them in the one brief stare I gave each of them, but I never made like I wasn't going to do exactly what they told me to do.

I popped open till B, which we kept set with a particular amount of money, but never used. Then popped till A, which had *maybe* a hundred dollars in it because we had had a slow morning, it was midweek after all. I did not offer to open the safe, and he did not ask me to so I stepped back and let him have it.

He demanded a bag from me. In a fraction of a second I had three thoughts. "They're in the back," "I'm not leaving the boys alone." and "Dee is 17" and I said "We don't have any bags"

They make us get on the floor, Unfriendly gentleman takes Ron's wallet and they dissapear out the door. Anne follows them to the door and locks it behind them and I turn to Jay to see him pull a cellphone out of his pocket and stick it to his ear. "Are you still there?" he asks "Yeah, this is Pizza Place and we just got robbed"

"911." I think to myself. "Good, I don't know if I could handle *that* call"

Dee has returned to the phone that was torn from his ear and enquires if the party is still on the line. I pick up another phone and dial in my Area Supervisor's cell number.

Something you should know about this AS. The store I was managing was his baby. It was the store he turned around and put in the green before turning it over to me to take a promotion. He was a former marine and really a kind of rough guy, but sweet too (though I was the only one who said it, and i got *lovingly* beat on when I did). When he had been the GM every day was a riot on his shift, we were roudy and obnoxious and had a ton of fun.

So he answers the phone: "WHAT!?"

my voice is so much calmer than i thought it would be, "Hi Andy, how are you?"

"What do you want? I just left!"

"We just got robbed"

"Shut the fuck up"

"No, I'm serious. I think you should come back here."

"Fuck!" *click*

yeah, he hung up on me, whatever. I knew he was coming back. So the cops come and talk to everyone and I spend 15 minutes on the phone telling everyone that had ordered "sorry, we got robbed, i can't fill your order at this time, but i can give you a free pizza next time you order as a sorry" almost everyone was ok about it, was concerned about our saftey, and very graciously accepted the free pizza offer with well wishes for the night.

notice i say 'almost everyone'. The woman that Dee was rudly disconnected from, after being told that we had been robbed sighed in disgust and said "well can i finish my order now!?" one man talked to got angry with me, and a couple that i spoke to showed up 15 minutes later to pick it up, and couldn't understand why we wouldn't just make it for them.

Anyway, to wrap it all up... Dee told the police officers he had seen the two guys talking to a girl in hospital scrubs, and pacing up and down the mall (everyone else in the strip mall had seen them too and were all getting wigged - only we didn't notice them since we are set further back from our windows). The girl turned out to be Ron's girlfriend so Ron brought her back in and we all gave our descriptions.

They got dogs, and followed them up the hill, around a corner, and down the road a little ways. We went down one by one and identified them.

I later saw one of the cops in a parking lot and he told me that they had been put away for "a while" were his words. good.

Bub-z my Baby

Let me introduce you to Bub-z once again.

Bub-z likes to mark things, like many other cats like him. Most of the time I figure he does it just to pet himself because he is a whore for lovins', but there are certian things that he likes to rub more.

Like the toolbox. Bub-z knows when you're going to get the toolbox out of the closet before you do and he is sitting next to your feet, patiently waiting when you turn around. I think it's the smell, he does the same thing when we get gas on our clothes.

He is so intent on his rubbing that he doesn't even seem phased by the sudden appearance of my boyfriend.

This will go on for hours if I leave the box out, though he has to take several stops to clean himself because he doesn't like it when his fur is mussed. He's such a pansy.

The Books That Changed My Life Pt 4

Well, here we go again. Chronologically I have come to about 2005. I had been living in Madison for 2 years and I was working as a Relay operator and had a lot of time to read, though surprisingly only a few books have made the list in the time from then to now.





Number Ten: The Dark Tower Series by Stephen King

I actually started reading this series when I was still in high school, but since the last 3 books didn't come out until much later I decided to stick this one here, instead of earlier.

I don't know what to say about Dark Tower really. It's an epic. It has so much story and life, and at times is nothing the way Stephen King is known for writing. Roland is so lonely throughout, even though he has people around him and at times feels happiness. His relationships with Eddie, Jake and Susannah, and even Oy are put to the test countless times and the nearly always come out of it victorious.


The world moved on and I often wondered what the world had been like before it happened.

I'm sort of obsessed with this book. I have made a few pieces of art that are inspired in one way or another by the dark tower. I believe in Ka. If you were to hand me one of King's newer books that have the bolded titles for ones connected to the dark tower I would be able to tell you about the connection. I have all of the comic books and go out on the day they are released to buy them.






And the best part is that my dad and I have bonded hugely over this book and we talk about it all the time, still even though we have both long since finished reading it. I just bought him this print from a seller on etsy named magicandmayhem. The store has several other dark tower related pieces, but this was my favorite.

Number Eleven: Watership Down by Richard Adams

This is the story that made me realize that I was not meant to be human... not necessarily a rabbit... just not human.

Number Twelve: Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie

Normally, when I hear about a movie being made from a book I go out and read the book and generally never get around to seeing the movie. I had actually never seen the Disney version of the movie, but when the live action version came out starring Jeremy Sumpter as Peter and Rachel Hurd-Wood as Wendy, my boyfriend at the time wanted to see it. I sort of scoffed at the idea thinking "I don't want to see a kids movie" but I went anyway.

I loved it so much that the very next day I went to the library and got a copy. I think I read it in one day, I refused to put it down. I was amazed then to find out how close the movie had been to the book, in ways that I would later find out the Disney version failed to do.

I think the movie in this case actually made more of an impact on me than the book itself. It doesn't really bother me, because in the end I read the book and I love it just as much. I read it again just recently, as well as Peter Pan in Kennsington Gardens. It's just an amazing story, and though Peter never grew up its almost like he has all the knowledge any one of us every needs.

Number Thirteen: Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas by Tom Robbins

I could really say that every book of Tom Robbins changed my life, because they all have impacted me in some way or another. But this one was unique because it was written in 2nd person, giving me the chance to live a life in the mind of Tom Robbins. With all the crazy sex with strangers who talk non-stop about philosophy and their crazy ideas. Got to live through the rain in seattle, and all the other themes that pop up quite frequently in his stories.

I continued to think in second person for several weeks after reading the book and it got to be a little hard to concentrate after a while. I thought that was pretty cool.

The Books That Changed My Life Pt 3

Well, I'm back for more, I think this may be the last one. Maybe not, we'll see when i get a few more punched out.

Number Seven: A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving

I first read this book after hearing from a friend that it was the inspiration behind the song "goodbye sky harbor" by Jimmy Eat World. I knew John Irving from having seen the movie and read the book The World According to Garp when I was in middle school. I loved the book from the very start and devoured it.

The book deals with a lot of religious ideas, owen being a instrument of god. It was also set part of the time during Vietnam. It gave me a better insight into the world as it was during that time than any other fiction writer has been able to do.

The characters were so real, John Irving gave them such real personalities and let us into their lives. we really knew who they were. His meandering style told the story in such a beautiful way that, though I knew from the start that Johnny's mother would die, when she actually died it was almost like a surprise, you hoped it wouldn't actually happen.

I have read the book many times since the first. There is a lot to it and i forget things that happened between readings. John Irving is my god because of this book.

Number Eight: The Perks of Being A Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

Dear Friend:

is how it started. Letters to some unknown person that was at that party. Charlie doesn't know the friend very well, but thinks they will not tell anyone what he has to say. He bares his soul about his friends, love, his family, and his past. He realizes a lot about himself, some of it destructive, some of it positive. He learns how to be infinite and in a way he teaches the reader how to do so as well.

It was given to me by my boyfriend at the time. He had raved over it and I decided to read it. When, at the end, we find out who Charlie's aunt really was I brought up the topic to him so that we could talk about it and he didn't know what I was talking about. I explained to him what Charlie had discovered about himself in the last few chapters and he told me that I was wrong and that was not how it happened.

I eventually got him to reread it and I explained to him what had happened, and it really made me wonder how someone could love a book so much and not get it. Not realize the point of it all. I have since given it to 3 other boys to read and only one of them caught it so I wonder if it just doesn't click in a boy's brain, and I've always thought that was an interesting little occurance.

Perks was my bible for many years. Charlie makes a mix tape for his friend Patrick and I recreated that tape on cd and it was one of my favorites. Elton John's Rocketman makes me feel as infinite as Fleetwood Mac's Landslide does for him.

Number Nine: A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snickett (Daniel Handler)

I read this just after moving away from home and getting my library card. My then 9 year old couin recommended The Bad Beginning to me and I picked it up. The series is wonderfully morose and full of humor and wit. At the time I was nearly 20 but found this "children's" book to be more engaging than anything I could find at the fiction section.

I was thrilled to find myself learning, in each book characters used words that were generally unknown in the worlds common vocabulary. Each time he described the word in a way that made it's meaning so clear. I read through the first 4 or 5 in the first week and spent a lot of time waiting for the others to be written and wringing my hands waiting to find out what would happen to my orphans.

This series turned my head to the childrens section, causing me to pick up books that had fallen by the wayside when I skipped ahead to middle school books in elementry school and kept skipping along at that same fast pace. I finally read charlotte's web, the wizard of oz, pinnochio, alice in wonderland, all the classic childrens books that I had only seen the theatrical adaptions of. Lemony Snickett reawakened the kid in me.

Ok, so I didn't finish. Three seems to be my limit. I'll be back in a few days with 3 more.

The Books That Changed My Life Pt 2

ok, i'm back to talk about more of the books that changed my life. i spent the last day trying to figure out what the next one was after 5th grade and reading a dog called kitty. it turns out my next life changer wasn't until about 3 years later in 8th grade.





Number four: The Magic Kingdom Series by Terry Brooks

I think this was the first fantasy book I read. I mean I had read the lion the witch and the wardrobe in school because I had to (i wouldn't like it until later when i was almost 22) and there were plenty of fantasy stories and short kid books. This was my first Adult fantasy. And it was amazing. Terry Brooks has become my inspiration on fantasy. I have most recently read the first 3 trilogys in the Shanara series as well as the prequel and its the deepest most beautiful fantasy world. I love everything about it, and my own fantasy world i have created owes a lot to terry brooks. I loved everything about the Magic Kingdom world as well. The characters were amazing, the stories were awesome. I don't think I could have had a better introduction into fantasy than this. Number Five: It by Stephen King.

I read it during the standardized tests we had to take in 8th grade. As far as tests go, I have always been the first person done with a test, because I go with my first instinct and it left me with A LOT of free time for reading, and tackling this monstrosity was not so hard.

It was the second Stephen King book I read, the first being Tommyknockers. It was the largest, most advanced book I had read at the time. My teachers gave me weird looks while i was reading it. This book is the reason I love turtles, because of the great turtle that holds the world on his back. This has continued to be my favorite theme of stephen king's, also appearing as the god manturin in the dark tower series.

And of course, I've got to talk about Dark Tower now just a little bit, though a full description will be coming later. I was working up to the dark tower for my entire life, reading Stephen king's books. Having read It directly after Tommyknockers I found an immediate connection, causing me to look for connections between his books until present. And it was cool because my dad got to kind of control the way i read them, because he had read them all before me and could make sure I was catching it all.

It, itself was terrifying, and hysterical, and meaningful, and disgusting. I remember that I was really astounded when the kids had sex in the sewers. I was 13 and knew about sex, but these kids were younger than me and actually having it, and it really made me wonder about Stephen King. There were times i laughed so hard, in class too. Trying to stop the laughing of course made it worse and people thought I was insane. I cried when they left eddie in the sewers after he died, and then forgot about him. They forgot it all, everyone they lost, everything they had done. That killed me.
But, I'm not afraid of clowns. strange huh?


Number Six: The Tomorrow Series by James Marsden

So I backtracked a little my sophmore year of high school and read something that was actually in my age range. I found the first book Tomorrow, When the War began, read it, put it back on the shelf and forgot about it. About 6 months later I found a book and i read the back cover only to find out it was the next one The Dead of Night. I then tracked down The third one A Killing Frost and read that one.

Holy Crap!! There's 4 more that i didn't know about!! Holy Crap HOLY CRAP!! I'm so excited right now. I never remembered the name of the author or the series so to write this post I had to do a little research and I am so stoked to find that there's 4 more books. I have got to read them!!

These books are about a group of teenagers in austrailia who go out camping into a cavern and when they come back to town they find their town has been invaded and everyone is being held hostage at the fair grounds. The then run amok blowing crap up, trying to get rid of the soldiers and stay alive.

The last one I read they got rescued, and I thought that was it, but apparently they're going back to blow more stuff up. This story is what has given me my love and revusion of appocalyptic, invasion stories. The reason why I love shows like Lost, and Jericho and the movie Mist and Zombie stories. These kids that were my age were surviving and I thought it was just so cool (plus all the explosions, have i mentioned how much stuff they blew up?!) Several characters died and I died a little bit with them.

I have to go now to find out how much i can get to books for off amazon. i can't buy them now cuz we're packing and i can't bring more stuff in, but i can look at them right?

i think i'm addicted to books.

The Books That Changed My Life

i was searching online for the peter pan book i have. it's packed away for the move right now and i don't know who did the illustrations, but i want to find out because i am attempting to find reference material for the tatto i'm designing. I want to get it with my rebate money. peter pan flying or standing over the prow of hook's ship on my lower back on the left.

as i was searching for this book i realized that this book changed my life. and i started thinking about all the books that changed my life and thought it may be cool to write them down because i've been spending so much time cutting books apart lately. kind of my way of repaying the book karma, recognizing all the greats.

so i'll start in chronological order. i probably won't get all the way through them to date, but i'll get them done in subsequent posts if i don't finish tonight. and there are probably going to be spoilers, so beware.

Number One:

Not actually a book, but a story. I don't remember the name of it, and it's packed. I will get back to you on the name later. It's in the Collection of Grimm's Brother's Fairy tales that I have had probably my entire life. When we lived at my grandparent's house my grandma read us those stories at night. There was one in particular that to this day I remember. It's a story about a bunch of kids (baby goats) who get left at home when their mother goes to the store. she warns them not to answer the door for anyone but her. The wolf comes along and pretends to be the mother but his voice is too low and the kids know it's not the mother.

So the wolf goes off and buys what i think they refer to as chalk, or putty, or something that he uses to make his voice higher (again if i could just find the darn thing i could tell you what term they actually use). i remember that many times while my grandma was reading this she would stop and tell us to never use the stuff the wolf had used to make his voice higher.

I always said 'ok' and made sure i remembered how much my grandma didn't want me to use the stuff. But to this day i have no clue as to what she had been talking about. In my adult life i have never once heard of anything that can do that. All my life i have been ensuring that i never use this stuff, and all for naught. this story changed my life, at probably 4 or 5 years old.

I also love the part in that story where the mother finds the wolf sleeping at the pond's edge after eathing her children, then cuts him open. she then fills him up with rocks and sews him back up. when he wakes up he feels very thirsty cuz of the rocks inside him, and he goes to take a drink from the water. The rocks knock him off balance and throw him into the water and he dies. to this day it's still my favorite fairytale.

Number Two: The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner.

Mostly just the first two or three which i read several times between the time i started reading big books and 2nd grade or so. The first set of books that i read multiple times. I can't really remember them now, but every once in a while something will suddenly remind me of something in the book and i'll go... "man...that's from the boxcar children... i haven't thought about that book in years". I remember i loved violet. i don't think that i even remember the other kid's names. I don't know what it was, but the story affected me to the point that i still think about it to this day.

Number Three: A Dog Called KittyBy Bill Wallace.

I found this book in 5th grade and have read it probably hundreds of times, most recently about a year ago. Its about a boy who is terrified of dogs because he got rabies shots when he was a child because he had been attacked by a sick dog. He finds a stray puppy and eventually befriends him, naming him kitty because he comes when the cats are called for dinner.

To this day i still laugh out loud at some of the conversations between him and his father, and cry every single time kitty dies. it's a beautiful story and i don't think i would be the same having not read it.


And my boyfriend is hungry so i have to go cook now, i didn't get as far as i wanted to, but i got a start. more to come

My Boyfriend's Art

My boyfriend is what i guess we could call a graphic artist. He loves working with photo shop to create really neat stuff. He recently did an album cover for a local band - he used to work with the artist and offered to do it. http://www.myspace.com/fightingaurora is the band's myspace page where the album is featured.

He's been working on one project for some time now, and the other day he decided to take a break and began goofing around with a picture i had taken recently.

i sat next to him the entire time he worked on it and i was quite amazing to see the picture change into something so different. I even helped a little bit, doing the tedious erasing around edges and giving my input. I convinced him to sell it on etsy, where he has a shop also.

You can find his shop at FebruarySon.etsy.com to take a look :)

Word Binders

In my first semester of my senior year of high school (fall 2001) I took a class called Humanities. In this class we looked at art, listened to music, read poetry and prose, and talked about it. It was nearly impossible to fail that class. I don't remember any tests, or even any assignments...

Anywho - we got a lot of packets with all different types of writing that we were supposed to read and discuss. Some of the stuff I really liked and I cut the pieces out and taped them down onto the binder I was using for some class or another. Pretty soon the whole binder was covered in excerpts of all kinds of things, save for one large spot that I was unable to fill because of its shape. Shortly after that I was writing a paper when I got the Blue Screen Of Death and lost the whole work. I filled that space in with white paper with these words written on it: "white space left in honor of all the words that were ever lost". I covered the whole shebang with sticky laminating plastic and thus the first word binder was born.

More recent word binders have become much more artistic, not always just excerpts, but whole books with a design to go along with it, like the Edgar Allen Poe one I made quite some time back and sold on Etsy. The past week or so I have made 3 binders out of comic books.

The first two were just random pictures from comic books pasted on, but the one I made today is pretty darn cool. It's all the big sound words, the Onomatopoeia words. So cool!

My boyfriend likes the Onomatopoeia one the best :)

I also made this really neat Book of Shadows binder from a copy of "Wicca: a guide for the solitary practitioner". It's definitely something I would have loved to have when I was still studying the craft, but now I hope someone else will love just as much.

And finally, just a little randomness made from "Brave New World". There was no real pattern when I started this. It just turned out pretty.

Wonderful Book Ends

I love making book ends. Maybe its because i'm such a sucker for books so everything that has to do with them rocks my socks.

The original book ends i made were really awesome. They sold a couple months ago in my Etsy shop and it was one of those items i was sorry to see go. The day before they sold i had even put them out on a bookshelf of my own so i could take advantage of their end-ness and keep my darktower series from falling off the top of the bookshelf.

The flowers were made from broken pottery, but my newest book ends were made from a thinner glass used for mosaic and making suncatchers. I had bought the black gray and white glass to make a ninja plate much like my Flamingo plate, but never liked it once i started.

I'm moving at the end of march and trying to get rid of as many of my supplies as possible because it's hard enough moving all the books, not to mention all the crap i use to craft with. I decided to use the black, white and gray glass to make some book ends. I had no real plan when i started, and that was fine.

They turned out beautifully, and they have taken the place of the fairy statue and HD anntenna that i had been using to keep my gunslinger books standing, at least until they sell and i have to replace them.