Bamboletta Blog

Here are a few dolls that will be up for sale soon on Natural Pod. From now on I will give Natural Pod dolls on the first of the month and they will be loaded up shortly after. It will be fun to see a whole bunch of them up at the same time. Many of hese dolls feature my fancy new Japanese fabrics and sweaters made with delicious yarns like baby cashmere and the softest alpaca! Nonna has been knitting up a storm lately getting all the sweaters ready for the dolls.

Am I the only one who hasn’t heard of SewMamaSew? Wow, what a great selection of fabrics! J has a cold/cough right now and isn’t sleeping all that well at night so I find myself trolling the internet. I must have spent a good hour on that site alone last night.

I’m often asked about supplies and where to find them. One of my all time favorite places online is Weir Dolls. They have the best customer service and always have what you need. If you want to attempt to make your own doll, I really like their kits. I’ve emailed Weir Dolls many times desperate for tubing or something that I’ve run out of and it’s always shipped asap. Great place. You can just tell when a business is coming from a good place, you know what I mean?

Hey all you Facebook fans out there, Bamboletta Dolls has it’s own page. This is John’s (self confessed Facebook addict) doing. There isn’t much on there now, but I hope to use it for keeping my customers up to date on events and general going on’s. Go ahead..friend me!

Spring. It’s coming! We had a gorgeous day today in Cowichan Valley. Blue skies and warm weather, a day spent almost entirely in the garden puttering about. I have a good chunk of yard to deal with so I’m in a planning stage. This is how it works at our house – I plan and John digs. Poor man, he has no idea what I have in store this spring.. I need to look into renting a sod cutter. There is lots of sod cutting in my plan.

It’s neat living ‘in nature’ I find myself so much more in tune with it. Wow, how much of a hippie do I sound like? But it’s like this..when we moved here there was a lot of  frog singing at night, that goes away and then there are the crickets, the woodpeckers, quails, the Canadian Geese and now the tremendously loud Trumpeter Swans. The eagles, deer, cougars and bears are a mainstay, I know I’ve missed a lot of animals in between. Then there are things like full moon. I never realized how bright it is when there is a full moon, it’s beautiful.

This pic is of B with the horse that lives around the corner from us. We visit him almost daily. He loves us..we bring him apples.

So, my application is off to Circle Craft. Now I have to wait and see if I get in. Ohh, the agony of waiting. I’m really excited about this year. I’ve got my market dates booked for Vancouver (at the Vancouver Farmer’s Market), the Moss Street market and ,hopefully, Circle Craft. I missed doing these kinds of events last year but I was kind of busy with moving to a new city and having a baby. There is something so satisfying about seeing children with the dolls..it’s what it’s all about!

Ben is totally into his school now. We had a really tough go when we started him in January, lots of tears and staying in the class with him. Now he cries when I go to pick him up, lol,  what is worse for a mama? Anyways, I recieved my first ever mama school gift yesterday. So precious! I got a hand dipped beeswax candle that he made in class that day. So freakin’ cute! There are so many unexpected emotions that go with parenting. The joy from getting a gift yesterday was one of them.

Does anyone else share the same love for the ‘Rebar’ cookbook that I do? Jeez Louis, there is not one single bad recipe in there! I made the Mount Fuji Stirfry  the other day and am having leftovers as a snack right now while I type. Delicious!

I think this is one of my all time favorite dolls that I’ve made. So cute and chubby! He’s part of an order for Robert at Mahar Dry Goods. 

I am so excited I just can’t hide it. From now on my mohair and some other types of yarns are going to be custom dyed for me by an amazing yarn company in Nova Scotia. I sent them some samples last week and am waiting for my first batch to come in. This weekend when I’m in Vancouver I’m going to try to pick up a hair colour chart so that I can get even MORE colours made up! I’ve always wanted to have a caramel type of colour… and now I can!

My little man Jasper has cut his first tooth. This can explain why I haven’t blogged in a while, it’s been cranky times here at our home. Funnily enough, I’m cutting my wisdom tooth at the same time. I can completely understand Jasper’s crankiness, I haven’t been a ray of sunshine lately either.

I got some new dolls made up this week. I’m changing the way I operate with Natural Pod and will be giving them a large assortment of dolls every month instead of posting them every week. I’m not sure how it’s going to work as far as when they do go up for sale, but I’ll keep you in the loop. I’m also working on a few gnomes for Mahar Dry Goods, I hope to have these shipped out for the end of the month. My goodness, I just realized that I haven’t made a gnome since July! It’s been too long.

I’m trying to get out to Vancouver this weekend to visit my family and get a much needed dose of city into me. I’m out of all my notions and my fabrics are running low. I love Textile Clearing House, Dress Sew and sometimes Fabricana to pick up my goods. There are a few fabric places here on the Island, but if you are like me and go through about 2 fabric markers a week getting them at 50% off (at TCH) is really worth it. That’s another little tip.. fabric markers… for tracing out your patterns, then sewing, then cutting and for marking out your eyes and mouth.

It’s really different out here. It’s almost been a year and this place still feels pretty foreign to me. In a good way. Last night we were awoken by a fight going on between some eagles and owls. What a freakin’ racket they make! It was the most bizarre sounding thing I have ever witnessed. I still haven’t gotten used to the fact that deer on the road are a real threat. Really. You see them all the time here.

On the dolls front, I am working on a few to try to post up on Natural Pod this week. We’ve been doing alot of prepping the last 2 weeks and paper work. I got my dates submitted to the Vancouver Farmer’s Market and have almost finished up my application to Circle Craft. It’s a pretty intense application/jury process. I need to supply a professional sketch of my booth display. My drawing capabilities are pretty dismal. I should be working on that right now instead of blogging, but this is more fun.

This lovely gal is over to her new lovely home with Adelaide. This sweater is made with a very sweet baby cashmere from Elann.