I met one of my oldest friends almost 30 years ago thanks to Steiff. My ex and I were in the Bay Area for the first time because of a conference. Back in the days it was still possible to combine a conference and holidays (four states in a week, I still don't know how Americans do something like that), so while he was preparing for his first talk in English in a fancy Berkeley hotel (our motel was not quite as nice), I got to discover the area participating in what was called the "ladies' program" in a flippant way, even if in that case the conference participants' partners all happened to be women.
On the first day, however, we did get the chance to explore San Francisco on our own, and our first stop was FAO Schwarz whose connection to Steiff was famous among collectors thanks to some special editions. After spending some money there *cough cough* we asked if they knew how we could get to know collectors in the USA. They couldn't help us with that, but they offered us the phone number of a lady who had done repair of some studio Steiffs for them before.
I still remember how nervous I was when I called her. How do you explain to someone that you don't know them, but you got their number from the toy store because you collect old plush animals? I guess it was destiny because we are still friends now.
I can't sew. I never learned it, and the little sewing I have to do is exhausting to me, but when Jenn came to visit Germany for the first time, she gave me the sweetest little dwarf that she had made herself, and suddenly I had the crazy idea that she should show me how to sew a simple bear.
In the end I had three bears, I think, I'm not sure where the two smaller ones are.
This one, however, guards my CD shelf from which he falls down quite regularly, even more after Gundel moved in. For some reason she keeps pushing him off which is not something she does with other things. Maybe her headbutts are too much for him. She did again today which is why I thought he deserved a random Saturday post.
His name is Boxer. He's hand sewn from a beige tipped black synthetic fur, has paw pads from dark grey felt, vintage light blue painted glass eyes - with that fur it would have been hard to see the eyes if I had picked brown ones - and a pink nose - which would be very unusual for a black bear, but I found he was a little unusual, anyway.
I called him Boxer because I seriously believe he's in the fitness studio too often. Just look at those shoulders.
Ok, so it's actually that's not his fault, I didn't think the arms would sit that high up in the end, but I love him nonetheless.
He's soft and cuddly and sweet and proof that I have used a sewing needle before! ;-)
I never ate that much jam. It's not that I don't have a sweet tooth, I
definitely do, but for breakfast jam has hardly ever been my first
choice. I like my bread rolls with cheese or egg. Maybe if I'm really
hungry, I'll have a slice with jam last, kind of like a "breakfast
dessert".
It drove my ex crazy when I asked to have just one bite,
but what should I do if that was all I really wanted, otherwise I would have got me some bread
with jam myself.
It's still a very rare event that I buy jam for
myself because I know people who give it to me which is very nice of them, either as a souvenir
from a trip or because they make it themselves. Jam, marmalade, jelly in
all kinds of fruity variations, for example plum, quince, raspberry,
strawberry, grape, blueberry, but also ginger and my favorite one hands
down - "orange with Queen Mum's favorite (aka gin)"!
Do you know the difference between jam, marmalade and jelly, by the way?
Looking at my various glasses gave me the idea for this week's Jewelry Artisans Community Oldies but Goodies Challenge, the colors of jam.
Which kinds do you recognize? And which is your own favorite flavor of jam? Bon appetit!
1 Jewelry Art by Dawn
2 The Crafty Chimp
3 My Bijou Life
4 RioRita
5 Cat's Wire
Times are not nice ... and I'm sure you know what words I'd rather use. There are days when I really struggle with it - even a couch potato like me can go a little crazy after weeks of self-isolation - which is the reason why I chose this topic for our Jewelry Artisans Community Oldies but Goodies Challenge.
I'm not the motivational type, I never have been (honestly, I only had that one poster for the picture, not the phrase when I was a teenager!), but I think it helps a little to hang on to the things that make me happy. It can be something big or something small.
I'm happy for example about having a family and neighbors helping me out during these times. I'm happy to have Gundel with me even if she has definitely begun to show her mischievous side. You should hear her talk back to me sometimes, but hey, the cat is the boss, we all know that, and it would be very lonely without her. I'm happy that I'm on vacation this week and even remembered in time although I hardly ever know at the moment what day and date it is. That means "The Avengers" binge is on - Mr Steed and Mrs Peel, that is, no superheroes for me. I'm happy to see the pear trees behind the house bloom.
And I'm happy to present this selection from the challenge. Some beautiful happy pieces there, don't you think?
1 My Bijou Life
2 The Crafty Chimp
3 Cat's Wire
4 RioRita
5 Jewelry Art by Dawn
Move over, Easter Bunny. Take a step back, Easter Beagle (sorry, I still do love you). There's a new kid in town.
Meet the Easter Bunnaroo.
There are different opinions of him, but I can't help thinking that this little dude has a bunny Mom and a kangaroo Dad.
Of course I could say I knew that from the start, but actually I have to admit that the plan had been to give a little Easter bunny to some lovely people. It was my first one, and maybe I should have paid more attention to the mischievous giggle of muse Mabel in my head.
I poked and poked and my little bunny became bigger, especially his head, while the ears seemed to shrink with my trying to make that big head sit right on the body. For some reason his belly started growing as well, so I had to make the feet longer ... maybe a little more wool around the neck ... at least the tail is still that of a bunny, but it's too small now, more roving .... okay, I finally gave up trying to change him because I actually like him the way he is, and I hope so will the people he went hopping to. I mean, he's bringing gifts, right?
I admit I had a bit of a hard time letting him go. I'm sure this feeling will change once I have made more critters, but at the moment they are all my children. Weird children maybe, but that was to be expected, after all they are mine ;-)
Some
years ago when I still did the "Finds of the week" posts, I had some
called "I'm a collector" in which I shared vintage items.
Over
time my collections have mostly stopped growing due to different
reasons, but they are still there and still loved. I also have vintage
items, some inherited, some gifts, some from fleamarkets, some more
interesting than others.
So I thought it could be fun to share some of them every, now and then and tell their story.
Welcome to a new nostalgia post in which I will tell you not one tale this time, but three - the tale of blind King Charles, the tale of the eye tin, and the tale of Ada-Ada all of which are connected to one another.
First of all let me take you to a big fleamarket in Tübingen about 30 years ago. We - my ex and I - were still very new at collecting Steiff back then. We made some epic mistakes, but which beginner doesn't, and don't forget, not only didn't we have internet in those times, but there were also not many Steiff books or price guides out there.
So when we found that little blind dog at a stand, we were not at all sure if the asked price of 30 DM was okay. We knew that it was a sitting "Charly", a King Charles Spaniel, famous for their association to King Charles II of England. "Charly" had been produced by Steiff between 1928 and 1936.
You could tell this one had had a bit of rough life. His fur looked a bit sparse here and there, but worst of all, his eyes were missing! We didn't have any eyes for him at home, and even being almost 60 years old, was he worth the money (we were a young couple and couldn't just throw money around)? He did still have his old button with remnants of red tag that was used from 1926 to 1934 underneath. We put him back on the table to think about it, took a few steps and went right back because we know we couldn't leave him there. He was so cute, and we would think of something. I guess that is how plush animals and dolls end up with buttons for eyes, but that wasn't to be our Charly's fate.
Obviously this is him with eyes which brings me to the next tale.
I don't remember at all when and how we stumbled upon the "eye tin" that I have mentioned before. I just remember how excited we were about it. In it there were mostly vintage glass eyes for plush animals, brown, blue, green, blue/green, pink, and of course the small brown ones I showed in the other post.
The first thing to do was to find the right size for Charly to give him his eyesight back. That was so much better! How could we ever even have thought about not taking him home?
Those eyes helped out some other animals over the years, a big one-eyed Fluffy cat, a big llama that had had to make do with some cheap plastic eyes before it came to us, and more.
Finally the tin got put away waiting for new patients to come along, but there weren't any. It was never forgotten completely, standing out there in the open, but the only time it was needed was when I made a teddy of my own. He's black and has blue eyes. I think he was the last one getting eyes from the tin.
I opened it every, now and then, admired the eyes and then put the lid back on.
Only when I started needle felting I thought it was time to put at least some of them to good use.
Here are a few quick pictures now. These are not showing the complete collection of eyes, and you can see I didn't go through dusting them yet, either.
The green eyes for example decided to break out of their bag and jump all over the tin, so they didn't get a picture. Serves them right. One of them smuggled its way into the small collection of bluish/green eyes #2 of which I only have very few. You can tell the difference easily. We are calling them pre-war eyes because it is a beautiful color that was usually used on old cats. It's hard to capture the soft beauty, but you can tell it is not green and it's also not light blue like #4 (which were in the worst shape from the beginning with the paint on the back flaking off very quickly, so most of them are almost clear now).
#1 shows a variety of brown tones including one showing white around the brown. There are more, but some sneaked in with the green.
#3 and #5 are two different kinds of pink eyes used for albino rabbits for example. While #3 are flat painted eyes, #5 have pink glass in the back. I can't be sure, but I always thought they were newer ones.
Maybe I'll get around to clean them up a little, set them up better and take good pictures, but I think you get the idea of the eye tin now.
Time for the third tale which means I'll have to go back to Charly for a moment.
Charly may not have his original Steiff name tag anymore, but he came with a different paper tag on a cord around his neck. We never bothered to try and find out what that tag was about, but we left it on because it seemed to be part of Charly's story. Maybe he had been a gift from a shop or something.
These are both sides of the tag.
One means "50 years of valued workmanship" with the brand ADA-ADA in the center, the other one translates to "Walking well with ADA-ADA".
When I looked it up, I found that ADA-ADA was a big shoe company. It was founded in 1900 by two Jewish brothers (a third brother was co-owner). They started by making children's shoes and later also ladies' shoes. In 1937 they were expropriated and the owners managed to emigrate to the USA in time. After the war they received restitution, the brand didn't go back to them, however. It was one of the biggest of its kind in Germany in the 50s, but finally ceased to exist in 1966.
The name was rather funny. In German "to go ada-ada" is baby talk for taking a walk. From what I read in a history blog they think that the founder was inspired by this term for the name of his business.
If you are as great at math as I am (can you hear my math teacher laughing?), you now know that it's impossible that Charly came with the tag as he was produced until 1936, but ADA-ADA only turned 50 in 1950.
Why should a shoe company or even a single shoe store use old Steiff animals for advertising? (Steiff studio animals were not unusual in shoe stores, by the way, but that's a different story.) My guess would be that a child inherited Charly and put that tag on him, maybe after his name tag had fallen off.
I have thought about taking it off, but I still think it's part of his story even if we will never know what exactly that is.
As long as he doesn't seem to mind ...
It has been a while since I last participated in the Art Elements challenges, and a lot has been going on since - and still is going on.
I'm not here to talk about a virus today, but about how I try to distract myself from it at least sometimes. The Art Elements March challenge seemed like a very good opportunity to me and I couldn't resist the topic that Jenny chose for it - gnomes.
Even though being German, I never owned a garden gnome of my own. That doesn't mean, however, that I didn't see my share of them in other people's gardens. For some reason I remember those best that were in the very small garden behind a friend's house. There was only a rather small spot of grass with at least one lying fawn and a gnome. Classic. We had to move them over every time we wanted to play crocket.
Of course I know all the stereotypes, German gardens overflowing with gnomes, but I can't remember ever having seen one of those myself. Thinking of it, the gnomes I knew must have been very lonely.
Then again, maybe they enjoyed the solitude like the sleeping gnome I have shared on my blog before.
My project was inspired by several things.
One of them were pictures from childhood, much like the one with the snail riding gnome in Jenny's post.
Another one were my friend Star's incredible polymer clay snails some of which carried tiny pixies (the link is working now, I had changed it to go directly to the Flickr album and had mixed some extra links in, doh!). One of them is Maeve, the snail racer, and she's not even the smallest pixie rider (yes, that means you should check out all of Star's snails ... but wait, after reading this post!).
Of course my gnome was going to be a little bigger than those pixies, but I still intended to make him ride a snail. It started with the snail (not a kiss ;-)). I was determined to use a pair of my beloved small vintage glass eyes that I had only used once before.
A little reminder or for those who don't know it, my ex and I collected Steiff animals. One of our finds was a tin full of vintage glass eyes of all kinds for plush animals plus some other stuff. We used some of them or actually the ex did as he was better in attaching them, especially with bigger heads because you really had to pull on the thread to make the eyes sit right and then tie the knot.
There were those small eyes, though, that we never found a use for. The tin - and you may have been expecting this, it WAS a cookie tin! - stood around for many years as I haven't added much to my part of the collection and completely forgot about it. When I started needle felting, however, it caught my look again right away.
Just look how many of them there are! I even like the waxy paper bag they came in.
The glass "sticks" reminded me of snail eyes, so I figured I'd simply felt around the sticks and use a little glue at the top part to keep the glass from sliding back out. I poked my fingers a lot even though wearing my finger guards, but it worked the way I had imagined it, yay! I went from the eyes to the body which was okay as well, but don't get me started about the shell. It took forever because I didn't just want to add a ball on top, I wanted a swirl that was noticeable, at least a little. In the end I added the contrast color - inspired by our snails, the colors are just the other way round on them - to make it clearer.
Next was the gnome. I hadn't made a figure yet, but I knew I would need something to reinforce the limbs, and the pipe cleaners I had were way too big. I ended up using some of my stainless steel. There have been better ideas in my life, but although it took me even longer than the snail shell I did not give up.
Mr Gnome got some brown pants, taupe boots with black straps to go with this tall taupe hat that has a little red zigzag embellishment around the edge, and a forest green tunic that is highly fashionable thanks to his belt that I made from some satin gift ribbon and a copper jump ring.
His nose and hands are huge. I'm sure he can smell his way all around the forest and if he had an axe, he'd cut down those twigs like no one else! His eyes are seed beads (shhh, I think he may be a wee bit jealous of Schneggle's eyes).
Of course there was no chance in this whole wide world that I could move Mr Gnome's limbs afterwards to make him sit on the snail by himself. Maybe you can tell that I already designed him in a slightly sitting posture. I could have made him sit right and attach him (what a terrible thought), but he had become too big. The two of them kept falling over, and while they had a good laugh doing it, I decided they'd rather walk together in the end, well, or crawl.
Oh well, I'm sure Schneggle - which is Swabian for "snail" - didn't mind not having to carry Mr Gnome. After all he has two feet that (almost) work perfectly well, doesn't he?
This is not just a design challenge, it is also a blog hop, so please check out the others' posts as well! Thank you!
Guests
Cat (that's me ;-)) - Hope - Linda - Sarajo - Tammy
AE team members
Cathy - Claire - Jennifer - Jenny - Lesley - Marsha - Niky
P.S. Hey guys. This is Mr Gnome speaking. I wanted to tell you what the lady is not saying. Schneggle and I have been trapped. Forest, my foot. Walking together? Inside a vase?? Yes, you read that right. She. Put. Us. In. A. Vase.
Of course she said it was only temporary while we are still hanging in the light tent. It's too dangerous there for us without a place to hide. Because of Gundel. The huge panther who has been trying to kidnap innocent felt critters like us. The other day she stole the voodoo doll, she said. And the black cat head. Both could be saved. It's no fun being in a vase. After all we are not genies!
So if you could tell her to set us free if she hasn't done so yet when you are reading this post, we'd appreciate it. A lot. Thank you!
It's Day 11 for me here in self-isolation (for those who don't know, I'm immunocompromised).
Gundel is tired of me wanting to smooch her all the time. Her look seems to say "DO something, something that doesn't involve me! Stop running after me!" That's cats for you.
These times definitely feel strange for all of us, strange and scary, and along with them come strange thoughts (and strange dreams which is the reason for me sitting here at 6 am writing a post about soap).
When I refilled one of my soap dispensers last night for example and checked how much soap I still had, it made me think of handmade soaps. I still remember the good times when postage from the US to Germany didn't cost an arm and a leg and I ordered one of my first handmade soaps from a shop on Etsy whose exact name I can't remember at the moment - although I'm almost sure it had the word "soap" in there ....
Anyhow, I wondered if I maybe still had some extra soap bar in the house and guess what, I do!
Nothing can go wrong now, can it?
If you wonder why I would have something like this, well, all I remember is that it was from a fleamarket stand in Esslingen maaaany years ago where we also got an old wooden Coca Cola crate for bottles. Collectors, eh? From what I could find about I'm thinking that this soap is probably from WW II or shortly after, but I couldn't find as much as I would have liked. I did finally end up in a wet shaving forum, so now I know that using vintage soap from the 1900s should be completely safe, and go for it if you find vintage aftershave as long as it still smells right!
As I said, nothing can go wrong now.
