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Spring Dollmaking: Tempest

May 14, 2016. April came. But what I think of as spring -- warm breezes, flowering trees, birdsong -- did not. Instead, we were treated to wild winds and icy spray blowing off the lake. I would not be gardening anytime soon, so I began the third doll of 2016. I knew immediately her name would be Tempest. Winter dolls were about coziness and woolly warmth. But spring was a wild woman.

One thing about art: you can have a plan in mind -- a vision -- but your hands have their own intelligence. While my brain was thinking about diaphanous spring fairies darting among the daffodils, my hands were thinking of stout, earthy peasant women stomping knee deep in mud.

As you can see below, Tempest's big feet are mud brown and her legs are mossy -- a creature arising from the fertile soil of stormy spring. Dolls made with my hands' instinct instead of from a pattern tell me something about myself: I don't have wings for flitting and flying in the air; I don't have fins for floating and diving in the sea. I have muddy feet for plodding, step after step, no short-cuts, slowly but surely.

Construction. Needle-felted in core wool on a wire armature. Her clothes are silk, hand-dyed, embellished with recycled sari silk cord. Her hair started out to be recycled sari silk, but when she looked kind of bald, I started felting in some dark red wool roving. Oh, that was perfect!

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