I don't know if you had gathered this from my blog by inference but I really love working in my house.  The reasons?  My studio is in my house so I can always put my hands on exactly what I need, or go down to the basement and use my dye pots and tables to create exactly what I need.  But this picture gives you hints of some of the other reasons.  These are scones.  Sometimes I make pies, or cookies, or bread, or even soup for my knitting, quilting or doll making classes depending on the time of day and my inclination.  But if I am pressed for time I can whip up scones in my sleep.  Do you see the pages of the book in the background there?  That is my scone recipe, which I actually no longer refer to.  I have had this book since I was 23 years old and living in Boston and even there it was quite an old book.  I bought it in a second hand book store and started cooking up scones right away.  Given that I am now 56 my estimate is that I have made scones now at least 1,196 times (once a week for 23 years).  Lately I have been making them much more often that once a week, but there was that awful year when I had no oven --  let's not think about that.  What I do like to think about is that 23 year old girl in Boston buying a second hand book and flipping through it and saying...."Hmmmm, scones.  I've always wondered about scones."  And I like to think about how she would have felt if she had known all the times, all the people, and all the places that those scones where going to show up in her life.  Due to popular demand I have put the Scone Recipe up on the Pattern Page, which seemed like the least illogical place to put it.

This is a doll I made for my niece Sarah over 20 years ago.  Her mother resurrected it and passed it along to me for the doll spa treatment.  I can, of course, entirely replace a doll.  And usually that would actually be much easier than carefully deconstructing and then reconstructing.  But you would lose all the love that has been put into an older, more experienced doll so I prefer to go with the spa treatment.  What I saved on this one is her head and her little nubby hands.  I rebuilt and restuffed her body, this time with wool instead of poly fill, and I redid her eyes and mouth a bit using the same colors of embroidery floss.  Her hair had stood up to the years quite well and her face just needed a little washing.  And then, just because I wanted to, I made her a new sweater with this beautiful Russian wooden button.  Girl (who is now a 25 year old mother) and doll should be reunited this Saturday.