introducing ilene

This is a doll I made for Miss Aveline for her fifth birthday last month. She sort of resembles Lady Alice, no? Raven hair, big night eyes and all? She was fun to make freestyle. With many projects, patterns and instructions can be burdensome and frustrating, it’s like they’re just there to show me what I’ve done wrong. I realized that I may have outgrown my perfectionism, because I’ve been preferring to make things from my own faculties, then it really feels like mine. (I guess I can consider ilene my brain-child, maybe now I won’t have a fourth child, just more brain-children!? Then I can have as many as George MacDonald, if I want!) Although, now that I think of it, I can’t even remember who first labeled me a perfectionist and maybe I never truly ever was one? Or maybe I’ve learned to see things more like my children do. To Aveline, ilene is perfect and beautiful, if she was any different, any “better” as I might be inclined to describe, she would not be ilene. Anyway, I do love ilene’s messiness, I like being able to see the way she was put together. And I love that Aveline named her ilene! Maybe I should spell it E-i-l-e-e-n, instead? You can click on the photos to see them larger.

Her dress was constructed from the excess of a shirred tank top I made for Miss A, pictured here.

Be encouraged to birth your own brain-child. A poem, story, drawing, toy, garment, meal or anything that’s been frolicking in the ol’ cranial streams and ponds. And if the streams and ponds seem empty, look closer . . . the Dead Sea is abundant with life! Just not in the way most bodies of water are.