As it closes...

Well, it's been a long time since I last posted - my apologies. This past year has been a struggle & keeping up a blog has been low on my priorities. Hopefully the coming months will see a change in that.

Gran's passing over back in January has cast a shadow over these past few months & I've been under a cloud of mild depression. What with the time I've had to take off from working, I've been feeling under an immense amount of pressure to keep on top of everything & make ends meet, which has compounded my bluesy feelings.

I've been feeling in a reflective mood the last couple of days, taking stock of where I've been & looking at where I want to go. Not totally surprising, as if one were to follow the pagan calendar, Hallowe'en/Samhain marks the end of one year & the beginnging of the next. Me personal spiritual beliefs are a mish-mash - I'm one of those who can see the truths in all the beiefs & religions, though none seem quite the right fit for me, so I do my own personal thing which keeps me in tune as best I can with the universe.

I feel like I can see the light at the end of the tunnel with work...I'm almost caught up with commissions & will be fully so by the time it comes to leave for my Christmas hols. It's a really good feeling, and a huge weight off my shoulders. The weight lifting is allowing me to look towards the future, too, to new styles of dolls & new techniques to learn.

For some reason, I've become completely entranced by the Japanese kimono & the looks of the geisha/maiko/oiran & have been spending hours researching construction, patterns, fabrics, history of kimono, haistyling & kansashi, the hair ornaments. The biggest obstacle is finding things in the right sort of scale & if one cannot, then one has to figure out how to make the things. Thank goodness for sites such as youtube that have videos on tsunami kansashi, the folding of fabric into flower shapes for the hair ornaments. I'm not aiming for perfect historical renditions, as that's not my thing...it will be my take on it all, but to imitate, one should have as thorough as possible an understanding of that which one is imitating.