Story Dice for Ursa

Once upon a time there was a friend of Safiya's named Ursa who liked to make up stories and who was having a seventh birthday.

Fortunately, Safiya's Mama was blessed with a solitary morning. This was because Safiya and Mr. S. had gone to proctor an exam at the university (it was Safiya's job to hand out the exams and remind everyone not to cheat). Safiya's Mama enjoyed her blissful morning by gathering up some supplies and leisurely crafting a birthday present for Ursa, having been inspired by some ideas for story dice that she saw posted on The Crafty Crow, by The Small Object, and by fo`ne`tic`lee speaking. It involved using her rather rusty drawing skills, but she approached the task with courage.


A house, ant, hot air balloon, orange shoes, green cat, blue elephant, clothesline, hopscotch, tree, paintbrush, bicycle, wings, wheelbarrow, mountain, rainclouds, stars, red purse, and birthday cake (with seven candles!) later, Safiya's Mama was quite pleased. She added some beeswax polish, a little sewn book (made from lined paper and a wallpaper sample from Farrow and Ball), a draw-string bag and ta-da!


A little bag of endless story possibilities, just waiting to come out!

Hi There

A crazy number of people dropped by here yesterday - all thanks to the wonderful Sew, Mama, Sew blog. They accepted my excitement about the dresses I re-fashioned for Safiya and posted it on the latest Create & Celebrate post - how exciting! If you haven't already, go take a look at all the incredibly wonderful things that people have been makng - so much inspiration! If you've come by from over there, hi there, I'm so glad you came by!

So, to please your eyes even though my camera's broken, I'm sharing a couple of pictures I had from before of my latest crazy-couple-dollar-thrift-find:


It's so sweet and someone took a lot of time embroidering all those adorably happy animals (I love the squirrel!). My brother-in-law has finished law school and so now our other bedroom is empty. Safiya is excited about having a space of her own, but "not to sleep in". Nope, we're not going there yet.


But this may be a good beginning for a sweet room for a sweet girl.

Liberation

"If you post about that," said Mr. S. this morning, "you're going to lose all your readers!" That just seemed like a dare to me :-) But, out of respect for anybody's delicate ears, just a little warning that the next little bit might contain a too much information for some ;-)

Sewing merrily away, this morning, my thought was "Now that's liberation!" Not having to go to the store? check. Not having to spend extra money? check. Not having to throw away plastic? check. Making something extremely useful and reusable in very little time? check and check.

It's a pad. A reusable pad. Oh the horror, eh? Anyway, this morning I needed one 'cause I was out of the (environmentally friendly) disposable kind (which is a phrase that doesn't really make any sense), and the only reusable one I had was in the wash, so.....

Now, because I use a Keeper, (which is awesome, by the way) I rarely need to deal with anything more than a little spotting (also awesome). The reusable liner I had was one from Many Moons that I got from Grassroots a while ago, to see what it was like. It was fine, and I had been intending to make a bunch, but never got around to it. Necessity the mother, right?

Anyway, I used some left-over flannel and it was fast and easy. I like to sew, so no biggie. I could do it by hand if I had to. It's a skill I can teach Safiya. These are all good things. For more good reading, one of my favourite posts on the matter is Sharon Astyk's post "Everyone Talks About their Period, but Nobody Does Anything About it". Also, Crunchy Chicken (who I just can't. keep. up. with!) has challenges and everything for those of you want to live dangerously, you know, as far as your menstrual cycle goes. She also has started Good 4 Girls to counteract those stupid ads by a certain company encouraging people to buy disposable menstrual products and make whole generations of girls in other countries dependent on their products (how to dispose of them? build incinerators! that's good for the economy, right? and....the environment? sheesh). She's got patterns, too!

Even better than reading? How about getting your Mom a Keeper or a Diva Cup for Mother's Day? Crazy, eh?

Oh, and the title up there is a tongue-and-cheek, because in order to be liberated from something, you'd have to regard yourself as being oppressed. And, I'm sorry, but anything that enables me to have the privilege of giving birth to and then sharing my life with Safiya....really? I think a little blood and pain each month is worth it.

Mr. S. is threatening to leave inappropriate comments on this post. Hi dude! If you do, I'm emailing the link to this post to all your friends because, my love, what you don't know is:


He wanted more coffee, I wanted to get my pad done. He offered to help - Mr. S. really loves his coffee :-)

For the Soul

Sometimes you see a piece of art that makes your heart stop. And you know you don't have to defend your taste or choice to anyone, because very clearly the piece is somehow speaking directly to you. The above is "sheltered" by Shira Sela. Casually scrolling through Poppytalk a couple of weeks ago there it was. I took a sharp breath, and, using a little of my meagre Etsy earnings, soon it was framed and living here. And I'm glad. This I got for me, from my earnings, and those earnings supported an artist. That feels good.


When Mr. S. and I were Double-Income-No-Kids, we got for ourselves a piece of art from local artist Sheila MacDonald Roberts for precisely the same reason - we saw her work and it stopped us both in our tracks. This we considered a good omen, and it came home as a wedding present (for us :-)


When the beauty in our home comes from people that we know or local artists, it enriches us all the more, for these objects have those extra ties, that extra story behind them. I did the art-prints-of-all-the-artists-i'm-supposed-to-
think-are-important-and-reflect-my-true-inner-nature in university, and while I agree with an old professor of mine that prints of "great art" should not be frowned upon because they bring beauty regardless, wouldn't it be even better if the money from our hands went directly to those who worked so hard to create pleasure in this world?


I love Shaun Downey's work. Quite frankly I could never afford one of his oils, but a couple of years ago I went to the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibit with a mission to find something to commemorate a turn in my life. After a long afternoon I lucked onto his booth and after humbly asking him if he had anything in my price range, he kindly directed me to a box of sketches. I was stunned with the one above.

Someone else local whose work I love is Peter Schacht. He does these works with acrylics on wood:


Being a former farm girl, I'm really, really in love with the one on the bottom right. I ache for it, I pine over it...


The narrative in these is amazing, and I never get tired of looking at these little postcards. They'll be framed and hung, I think. It's the best respect I can give his work without being able to afford it. Affordability does not have to be a barrier to beauty.

And these days it easy to find. Think your local arts and crafts fairs. Think Etsy. There's Tiny Showcase, which supports artists and gives to charity. There are a million different places where you can find something to nurture your soul and support an artist directly...

Or hey, make it yourself, right? :-)



p.s. One of my friends is of the opinion that the art is our house is a little, well, depressing. But that's just the living room (and personally I find them comforting....). But anyway, there's plenty of thrift store flowers and landscapes in the rest of the house :-)

Seven Things

Eek! I've been tagged by the cool cat Becky of Sweetie Pie Press. And in honour of her bravery at posting a picture from childhood at the top of her seven things, I've dug out the above (not quite sure that's proper grammar...). So here are seven things, random but perhaps not so weird...and speaking of childhood:


1. never saw shapes in clouds or had an imaginary friend or believed in fairies (yes, i know they're dropping dead all over the place now - quick! ring some bells or something - clap your hands!...)

2. was enamoured of Christopher Plummer when I was a girl, due entirely to The Sound of Music...

3. can recite, at length (and, if you ask Mr. S. ad nauseum), my favourite childhood movie: The Princess Bride

4. i still have paper from a titration experiment in highschool, which i kept because i liked the colours. which tells you about my attitude towards chemistry... and colours :-)

5. have Gordon Korman's autograph

6. double-jointed, i think these days they can it hyperflexion, but whatever, it let me win that bend-back-eachothers-fingers-until-someone-says-uncle game...

7. i still have my wisdom teeth - um, not in my head...in a box...



And now I tag:

hmmmmm.......so, if you've been kind enough to leave a comment here in the past couple of months and you are new-ish :-) to me, and I haven't tagged you before, you are:

gretchen

lisa

florence

enthusia

katharine

jenny

kelly

rules:
1. link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog.
2. share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.
3. tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.
4. let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.


p.s. of course i believe in fairies now...
p.p.s. my Mom made that dress. it has smocking! i have so very far to go....

Anatomy of a Sweater

Remember these piles that showed up a couple of weeks ago? Well...


Can I talk some more about felted sweaters? It is almost Valentine's Day, and I do love them so... :-) From this wonderful stuff you can make blankets, legwarmers, armwarmers, scarves, mittens, oven mitts (particularly good as wool is not very flammable), the lining for tea cozies, clothes for children, stuffed animals, pillows, and the list goes on!

As a textile, it comes with it's own peculiarities when you're using it, since of course it has had a previous life. Since I'm into recycling and closing the loop, I was trying to find ideas on how to use an entire sweater with nothing leftover! So, already accounting for using the arms and body as fabric, here goes....

Take one felted sweater. Let's pretend is has a hood, pockets, a front zipper, and buttons, just to make life complicated.

buttons: (easy...I mean, c'mon, they're buttons...)

the label: mine get cut up for the snippets bin, but if I were more ambitious and oh - way more talented, I could try something like the incredible quilt by by Terese Agnew called "Portrait of a Textile Worker".

zippers: very cool jewelry by Kate Cusak

pockets: cut out to make a pocket purse, keep for cool surprise pockets in blankets, add to other clothing (I'm thinking of adding them to a spring coat for Safiya), use for legwarmers...


hood: why mess with it? :-)


And then we come to the seams. The peculiarity with felted sweaters is the seams. Usually I cut out the seams, as they are too bulky to use for most projects. And so, for over at least a year, I've been accumulating this mountain of seams, waiting....and waiting.....Until one day the light went on, I sewed the ends of all of them together and ta-da!


It makes an awesome kind of yarn. I've started crocheting a rug:


However, I think I need a bigger hook! I worked in the round so that the differences in thickness wouldn't matter so much. This stuff works up fast, and is soooo thick and cozy - it's going to feel fantastic under the toes. Even better, it will be a wool rug that's also washable, since it's already shrunk! What's cool is that while I was working on this, Betz White had another great idea of what to do with the seams...

The only thing leftover that I can't figure out what to do with are the used sewing machine needles from all the sewing! I think they look pretty in a small glass jar by the sewing machine, but I'll bet someone has thought of what to do with them.....the craft universe, after all, is a very creative place!

got any ideas?

Pillows

Sarah left a nice comment about the pillow in our living room a while ago (the one with the red tree embroidery above). Which was lovely, and served as a reminder that there is a dearth of pillows around here (really just an excuse to make something :-). It is surprising to me that for people who like comfort (and who doesn't?) we had exactly two pillows in our living room (and both bought from Ikea ages ago). That is just wrong.


Having made some buckwheat hull pillows for ourselves, I snagged one of the extra pillows from the bedroom, cut it down (kudos to self for doing that outdoors - although it looked like I'd sacrificed a chicken in the front yard - good thing it snowed and covered it all up!) and recovered it in appropriate living room attire.


The back is a recycled sweater, the front a happy amalgamation of a thrifted tablecloth and pillowcase, an old pair of my cords, and one of Mr. S's shirts :-).

The ball was rolling, so I decided to try making my own pillow to cover. Beside the sewing machine is a container into which I throw all my snippets of fabric, thread, etc. (no old needles!). After a couple of months there is quite the stash, so I tried stuffing a pillow:


This is quite possibly the hardest and lumpiest pillow ever. I will have to cover it in something extremely soft to justify its continued existence :-)

And speaking of stuffing, Safiya and I have been cutting up plastic bags to turn into balls of plastic yarn (there's a net shopping bag in Erika Knight's "Simple Crochet" that I'm going to try), using gooseflesh's tutorial. But there are the tops and bottoms of the bags left-over, that don't make the cut (ha!), as it were....What does this have to do with pillows? Well, I inherited the pillow on the chair in the picture below from my Grammy, and given its rustley nature, I'm pretty sure it's stuffed with some sort of plastic detritus, and it makes a perfectly serviceable pillow, so.....why not, right? :-)


Oh - what are the colourful piles of wormy things on the table? Stay tuned!... :-)

Tag You're It

I've been tagged by the lovely Jen. So here goes (funny, I'm usually the chain-breaker...see, it's just that Jen's so nice :-)

The Rules:

1. Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog.

Done.

2. Share 5 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.

Random or weird. Maybe random and weird? You see, nobody thinks they're weird, but the nice thing is we all are, so let's celebrate a little weirdness, eh? And randomness...

1. If I make a mistake when I type (a spelling error, for example), I backspace all the way back to where the mistake was made, erasing everything in my path, and start over again. I don't know if that's weird or just a little obsessive-compulsive, but there you are...

2. Both polar-fleece and cotton balls are like nails on chalkboard for me. Serious goosebumps and icky-shivers. If you ever want to get me to confess something, just stick my hand in a jar of cotton balls...

3. I haven't brushed my hair for a couple of years. What? It's clean, just not brushed! My Mom needed a comb once at our place and the only thing I could find (to her utter bewilderment and slight horror) was Safiya's baby comb. Don't come to our house if you've got knots in your hair. Well, you can come over, we just won't be able to help you...

4. When I was little, I used to hide places and read. Everybody did, right? I lived on a farm...where I was supposed to work. So I took my books and I hid - in the empty giant wooden bins that were used to ship peaches to the canners. In trees. In the family car, lying down, with the window cracked for air just a little so that it wouldn't be noticeable. In the upstairs of the barn, where the baskets were kept - I would burrow in, making tunnels in the baskets, and bring a flashlight..."Oh there you are!" My Mom would say. I was really good at hiding :-) I don't really think behaviour like that is applicable to adult daily life, but wouldn't it be fun?

5. I can eat an entire jar of pickles. Just the homemade kind. In one sitting. Ask my Grammy about what happened to her stash of pickles when I house-sat one time for them...

3. Tag 5 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.

I echo Jen's sentiment about this part making one feel shy, but here goes:

kate

sarah

shin

heather

h.

4. Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Done.

5. Don’t break the chain!

O.K.!

And p.s. if anyone ever wants to pass around a meme/chain for weird or random things about their partners, sign me up! I could do, oh..."73 weird and random things about Mr. S." Ha!

Stepping Back, or Scenes From a Basement

This is the large picture. My "workplace". It's in quotes because I've gone back and erased that word and re-typed it a couple of times because my real workplace has no physical limits. It is the house, it is the subway, the city, our backyard. Wherever we are. Funny, when it's written like that it sounds like it's (that is, the mothering thing) following me wherever.I.go. Ha!

As for the tidy table, lest you get any false impressions, here is the other side of the room:


My pile of projects. I know where everything is, really I do. By the way, that table in the first picure? Best idea ever. The idea was planted in my brain by Martha's oversized ironing board, and then watered by the hearty recommendations of my friend Johanna. Made it myself for all of $60 (adjustable legs from Ikea, plywood from the hardware store, flannel and cotton covering from my stash - I keep it loose instead of staple-gunning it because the fabric does double duty at craft fairs). Handy-dandy, man. And here's the floor:


Sweaters a-waiting cutting up and considering. The rug also had a former life as a sweater. And the leftover studs (painted by Mr. S. - thank you, honey :-) are oh-so-perfect for stashing and stockpiling:


It is difficult to make basements look cozy in photographs, but this little piece of concrete and bare walls has definitely made its way into my heart.

The Universe Can Be One Great Dame....

Our garden is growing strange fruit.....


And see? I did embroider that night....and it did help :-) (Oh, and next time I'm feeling that way, I think we'll have a Soulemama day...what a great way to switch gears...Amanda rocks)


It's supposed to be a hedgehog, since one of Safiya's favourite books is "The Hat" by Jan Brett. The pocket nearly didn't make it on because Safiya saw it and wanted to keep it as a pet...


So the only thing left to do on the smock is the buttonholes and buttons. And guess what?....I'm a buttonhole virgin. It's true! (And wouldn't that make a good band name? Hmm...maybe not? What's your vote? Anyway...) I'm saving making them for tomorrow...or maybe it's a weekend thing....



I hope you don't mind all the pictures...it's only the second article of clothing that I've sewn for Safiya, ever. Shameful I know, but true and hopefully, something that's going to change :-)

Yesterday and today have been good to me. Safiya and Mr. S. hung out yesterday evening and I sewed, and today, well today was sublime....

The day started out with Safiya running around the house excitedly, saying "Are our guests here yet? Are they?" That's a good way to start the day. Johanna, who I met at the Toronto Craft Chat, came over and we talked.....craft....all morning! Now, to put this in context, not any of my other friends sew or such, and so it's usually my Mom who is on the receiving end of craft-talk around here. Which is great and all, but it's, well...it's not the same (Hi Mom :-) We talked craft-room strategies, fabric, the "state of craft" ;-) all kinds of things that are so much better shared when the other person has that knowing, excited spark in their eye. Johanna is incredibly talented, and she brought her darling daughter (so the girls played while we talked - sweet!) and a bit of her work along, and look! Goodies pour moi! How very kind and thoughtful!


Some copies of Thread magazine (one of which I have coveted before, so what a lovely surprise), embroidery floss, really cute trim, and to top it all off, the coolest Alexander Henry fabric ever and I say that because:


With a name like mine, that never happens!

Caution: Math Talk Ahead (But if You Run Away You'll Miss All the Beautiful Pictures!)

The rhythm of craft seems to be peculiarly suited to mathematics, and in saying so, I'm kind of making an admission....I'm a bit of a math geek (it was one of my majors) - Ack! Don't run away! I'm not a true gets it math geek (is that better?). Those people who understand it like language I really respect, but I'm just a cool-isn't-that-a-neat-outcome kind of geek, and since having Safiya that portion of my brain has been poked into a back corner by some fierce Mama stuff, so it's been a while.

Until the Toronto Craft Chat, when Becky (who runs the Good Catch Craft Fair) mentioned she'd been crocheting hyperbolic space. I was soooo excited (inner geek just tore open the doors and embarrassed me.....), because last year Whip-up had a post on math and craft, and the connections between the two had been percolating in my brain for a while. Now, I haven't tried to crochet hyperbolic space yet (!), but I was thinking of starting with a small quilt, maybe using the Fibonacci sequence or depicting fractals, although it would take me a lifetime to be able to quilt like Rose Rushbrooke, whose fractal quilts are incredible works of art:

"Skating on Thin Ice"

"Fern"

For me, the beauty of mathematics is far better expressed and easier to understand when it's tangible, when I can hold it in my hand, which rarely happens. (To understand genetics, I used to make little DNA and RNA sequences out of playdough to understand replication and stuff. Staring at it on the page was not my forte.) Also, we are all programmed to recognise patterns, to try to make sense of the chaotic, and often it seems what pleases our brains pleases our eyes.

However, what's even more fascinating is when mathematics is art. So often in our culture it's regarded as merely a tool, a way to get more important stuff done, and the gracefulness of the mathematical language that many researchers and professors feel is lost to us. One of my previous (excellent) math professors Bill Ralph actually creates beautiful artwork generated by his algorithms:


I love that he describes his work as a process "much like creating a sculpture from a pile of leaves by blowing on them...Each piece is like a little window into an exotic mathematical universe that has never been seen before."

There are little bits and pieces of this around, people synthesizing, even just little things, like a potholder reflecting Leibniz's Theorem. Like another cool quilter who I met at the Toronto Craft Chat, Johanna Masko, whose beautiful work I think reflects her curiosity, as she says, about "organised randomness" and her ability to think around, through, and on top of, the box:



Maybe many of our reactions to mathematics or any other field about which we cringe is due in a large part to the manner in which we were taught. And the false idea that fields come in nice neat little boxes labelled "mathematics" or "science" or "quantity-surveying" (or "craft" for that matter) that the administrators hand us. Rejecting this is what I call believing in the great AND. Stuff always escapes its box and then gets into shenanigans with another box, and that's when the cool, unexpected sh*$ happens. But you know, other people have said and can say things like this much more eloquently than I...

Sir Ken Robinson speaks about creativity and how schools kill it.

His talk should be required "reading" in all of our schools....

In Which There is a Happy Dance

You know those times when the universe seems to actually be smiling on you? (Yes I know, now that I've said it the universe heard me and will promptly withdraw all of said benevolence, but you know what else? I'm figuring out the world is not a fifth-grade schoolyard, so pbthththth and I say yay! sometimes the universe is a lovely lovely lady :-)

We got home from a weekend at the grandparents to find a package on our doorstep (how exciting!). Safiya ran around the house yelling "A package!? I'm soooo happy! I'm soooo excited!" And indeed, there was reason to celebrate:




The lovely Sarah had sent me goodies in return for the package I sent her! And it was a package of awesomeness. Look at the ribbon! fabric! and the wool is sooo soft! and thrifted craft books! And for Safiya, this adorable reversible smock (it's green gingham on the other side, and the little button applique has a tree on the other side - oh good golly)!


All lovingly wrapped with little notes sprinkled throughout and did you see? did you see? my very own bookplates, which I know she gocco-ed herself, because I saw a sneak peek on her website a ways back (at the time I had no idea and was thinking - soooo cool - hee hee!).

But to top it all off? The awesomeness of this:


To match Mr. S.'s vest, of course.

Dear Sarah: to sum it all up; genius, sheer genius.

Spring in the Air...

I think I've caught a mild case of spring fever (that pun is for Mr.S, who knows I'm terrible at puns and before whose punniness I bow down...that was a pun, right?) from the lovely Sarah, who is behind cloth.paper.string, and who was kind enough to leave me my first comment (about which I had to call the aforementioned Mr.S at work because I was soooo excited - maybe a bit blog-geeky, eh?) I find her blog soothing, somehow, and I plan to visit it often. She mentions that something-spring-on-the-periphery-feeling in her latest entry, and here, well here it's sunny and warm (above zero, anyway) and the birds are chirping.

You see that? That is the snow retreating...

All this means that today, of course, I am compelled to clean. Thoroughly. Nothing like warm air and a fresh breeze to make me stay inside chasing dust bunnies and scum dragons out the windows or into the bowels of my vacuum.

While I was vacuuming upstairs, this is what Safiya was up to:



Can I just say again how much I love her? I think I'll leave them there for a little bit...
I think today is for mentioning people who are loved, and so I'll say hello to my littlest brother (who, like most little brothers, now towers over me at 6 feet) and because I know he'll be reading this today, I say to him to check out Kerri's 100 ideas (see post below) and see where #33 and #56 take you! Have fun!

On Not Being Someone Else

I have to say something about Amanda at SouleMama.

It's her two year blog anniversary. This is someone who I do not know (which is not just an oddity of the blogasphere - think of all the writers on paper who you don't know), but who has generously shared though her blog. Shared her love of craft, her family, and a genuine appreciation for the world around her. There is something about the ease of her writing, a rhythm to what she says that very often resonates with me for the rest of the day. Amanda manages to inspire in such a way that my reaction isn't "oh, I wish I could be her", it's "I wonder what will happen to me if I make my own path..." She is who she is, and so lets you be.

At our house, we enjoy a little book of poetry by Arnold Adoff called "Black is brown is tan", and my favourite lines are:

"this is the way it is for us
this is the way we are"

Unapologetic, just living.

Thanks Amanda.

In Which Everyone Gets a Colour of Their Own

Last night, during that inbetween time after dinner and before bed, while Safiya and her Babo (that's Dad in her other language) were playing "going to the tea-store" and "going to the hot chocolate store",

I made this little guy:

A little while back, Safiya noted that her baby microbe (who is actually a pimple: propionibacterium acnes) was in need of a Babo. In her world, there is heavy emphasis on completion of the family these days, and while she is aware that there is a wonderful variety of families out there, to her two-year mind, if there's a baby, there'd better darn well be a Mama close by and yes, a Babo too would be nice. Her Mama microbe (ear ache: s. pneumoniae) was a gift, and one day we saw another of its kind in a store which she promptly declared was the baby. The baby is a beloved stuffed...animal?...and they both hail from this line of toys (genius idea). And, trying to stay in the crafty (and frugal) spirit, I thought..."how hard can it be?" Well, now we have the whole family (though the Babo's looking a little rough around the edges):


Why does the Mama have a blue elastic around its neck? Simple. She's a Mama and so she's blue. Everyone in Safiya Land is assigned a colour. She (and any other baby) is pink (obviously), I'm blue, Babo is green, her Granny is yellow (my Mom has blonde hair), and so on...the interesting thing is that now she remembers a lot more people than colours, so there has been some sharing of colours, some learning of new color names (maybe Auntie Mel can be fuchsia?), and some demotion (if you go from a primary or secondary to a tertiary colour you've been demoted).

Stuffed animals don't usually get me all warm and cuddly - I've always been more of a book and blanket kind of person (of course, that changes when you have a child and you consider building an addition so that the stuffed animals and dolls can live in the comfort that they deserve), but Hillary at Wee Wonderfuls makes probably the most charming stuffed dolls and animals (her picture, not mine):


and she is a generous crafter: there is a toy make-a-long, and free patterns - I highly recommend going and having a look. I also like Florence's Flying Star Toys, and if you're looking for a fair trade doll, check out Nova Natural for Waldorf style dolls (Martha has her own version).

The Babo microbe was immediately accepted with delight, and the first thing Safiya said was "But Mama, he has a pink mouth. He doesn't need a pink mouth, he needs a green mouth!"

Obviously!