My first affirmative action this year was to participate in the Sketchbook Challenge.
Find out all about it here:
There is to be a theme for each month of the year. January's theme is "Highly Prized". I made a
chart of things I associated with the theme. One of them was mementos. One of my mementos is my corsage from my daughter's wedding nearly 11 years ago. A bunch of faded, dusty and dessicated flowers and leaves.
I
sketched it for the challenge, and as I worked on the piece of faded wedding finery I thought about Dicken's Great Expectations and Miss Havisham. Good subject for a doll!
Here is the description from the book, when Pip describes his first sight of Miss Havisham:
"She was dressed in rich materials — satins, and lace, and silks — all of white. Her shoes were white. And she had a long white veil dependent from her hair, and she had bridal flowers in her hair, but her hair was white. Some bright jewels sparkled on her neck and on her hands, and some other jewels lay sparkling on the table. Dresses, less splendid than the dress she wore, and half-packed trunks were scattered about. She had not quite finished dressing, for she had but one shoe on — the other was on the table near her hand — her veil was half arranged, her watch and chain were not put on, and some lace for her bosom lay with those trinkets and with her handkerchief, and gloves, and some flowers, and a prayer-book, all confusedly heaped about the looking-glass.
It was not in the first moments that I saw all these things, though I saw more of them in the first moments than might be supposed. But, I saw that everything within my view which ought to be white, had been white long ago, and had lost its luster, and was faded and yellow. I saw that the bride within the bridal dress had withered like the dress, and like the flowers, and had no brightness left but the brightness of her sunken eyes. I saw that the dress had been put upon the rounded figure of a young woman, and that the figure upon which it now hung loose, had shrunk to skin and bone. Once, I had been taken to see some ghastly wax-work at the Fair, representing I know not what impossible personage lying in state. Once, I had been taken to one of our old marsh churches to see a skeleton in the ashes of a rich dress, that had been dug out of a vault under the church pavement. Now wax-work and skeleton seemed to have dark eyes that moved and looked at me. I should have cried out, if I could."
According to Dicken's notes, she was not an elderly lady, but in her fifties.
2011 Doll Project number 1!
I've also signed up for the Angel Challenge in the Cloth Doll Studio on
Cloth Doll Artistry. Deadline 22nd March.
So that's two new projects on the burner already!
