Dolls and Miracles?

Like you wouldn't believe...

To the right is the culprit in this story -

the first Santa I ever made back in 1990.

As tall as I am and still going strong.

© L P King

Why do I call my dolls miracles? Well, a few years ago I was forced to call a cab to deliver a life-size Santa. I sat with Santa in the back seat and summed up the cab driver… overweight, attitude written all over him, smoker… and that rosy glow sure didn't come from a daily brisk walk in the sunshine. I expected him to bark at me and then jettison the cab off into outer space when he found out I wanted to go right into town during peak hour.

Yep, I was right. He winced around when I said where I wanted to go. I'm sitting there thinking, Here we go again. Why do these people bother to get up in the morning? I prepared myself for a barrage of reasons why the dear soul couldn't and wouldn't venture into town at that hour… about how there was a truck overturned on the freeway, blah, blah, blah…. I knew once I was inside the cab the guy was legally obliged to take me to my destination, but I still reached for the door handle. I'd take my chances and call another cab. It wasn't worth the hassle and it wasn't worth the rough ride the guy was going to make sure I'd get.

Then the silence spoke to me. I looked up at this rugged cabbie, with a face that looked like it had been kicked around a football field, and I saw the strangest thing. The corners of his mouth started to turn up and pretty soon the biggest smile I've ever seen just lit up his whole being. I remember thinking to myself, Yes!

Since that day I have been reminded many times of the effect that dolls can have on adults. In refusing to let a part of us grow up, dolls have the power to bring out our raw emotions. They make us deal with our inhibitions. They make us feel good. They bring back memories. And what's more, when we use dolls as decorator items in our homes they can have a calming, stabilizing effect in our lives, the same way animals do.

I'm the lucky one. I get to experience all of that and more. It is a buzz to make people feel good. It is also a buzz to be able to create original character dolls who speak to people in different ways. Just the mere fact that I do what I do is a miracle since I wasn't really into dolls as a youngster and I couldn't even hem up a dress. I was good at academic things but hopeless at everything else. Then something happened… How many of you have discovered you can do things now you'd never have dreamt you could do years ago?

I have no idea why I started doing craft. When I started I knew how to do old-fashioned hand embroidery because my mother taught me; but the complexities of a sewing machine were all too much for me and I barely knew how to turn one on let alone how to operate one. I remember the first thing I made was a little country mouse from a pattern that was popluar at the time. I sewed it all by hand. It was late at night and I suddenly saw this little mouse taking shape before my eyes and I got such a shock! He was literally coming ALIVE. Well, that did it - I was hooked and slowly, slowly, I learned to use the sewing machine. People who knew me couldn't believe I was actually SEWING. It gradually snowballed - I made appliquéd tablecloths and started getting lots of orders for them. I did these mostly by hand though... at first. Miracles in the making....

It wasn't until I became enamoured with making Santas that I really started to give the old sewing machine a run for its money. The Santas sort of evolved; I suddenly could see all sorts of potential and all sorts of designs starting popping into my head, so I bought a book on designing your own patterns and started learning that as well. About this time I started to work on my computer skills. My computer professional husband used to pretend he didn't know how to do something when I'd ask him so I had to learn myself the hard way. That's the best and most thorough way of learning, isn't it? Goodness, if I could teach myself all these things just imagine what some of you could do.

Now I do lots of sewing and with the shoddy quality of the clothing around these days I even make most of my own clothes. Plotting a novel whilst sitting at a machine fashioning a doll is a lot more productive for me than sitting at a desk staring out the window. My mind never stops and my Authors are used to getting emails from me at all hours of the night and day. Busy hands make for a busy mind I guess.

Why do I combine my writing with designing and making dolls? Well, a writer can't write twenty-four hours a day and a doll-maker can't make dolls twenty-four hours a day. I have been doubly blessed in that I have two gifts which allow me to use all the resources of my education, background and experience to be truly independent. What a thrill it is to be able to share all of this with friends over the Internet -

That's the real miracle!

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