Still quiet?

Well, it looks like I’ve not been up to much but that is definitely very far from the truth! The last week has been spent almost solely fulfilling Etsy orders (everyone’s gone Borrowers crazy!), and because I’m a fool & make all my zines with lots of extra bits, it gets very time-consuming putting everything together.  I ran out of one of the key components, but I think that worked out okay in the end, as I created a cute little addendum, with a substitute for the missing item…  Oh, and I had my first 2 Folksy sales last week, too, so that was also quite exciting – although definitely no competition for Etsy, as yet!

I say I’ve been solely fulfilling orders, but of course, that’s not really the case, as I’ve also been working on several new (related) ideas.  One is nearly complete, and the others are still at germination stage, but they’re definitely sprouting…  Will post more details once I’ve got all these orders underway!

Does anyone know the story of Baba Yaga?  That’s what one of my new projects is based on: a Russian/Eastern European folk tale about a witch who lives in a hut on chicken legs (to minimise the kernel of the story to the extreme!).  My first encounter with Baba Yaga was when I was 6 years old.  After a day trip to Cumbria where my sister and I made a wish in a wishing well, we went to bed and forgot all about it.  The next day, there was a letter waiting for us from ‘the fairies’.  They explained very sweetly, that they were sorry but they could not supply the item/s we had actually wished for.  However, they hoped that we would be happy with the record that they had left for us instead.

This was in the days before CDs even existed, and the record was a bright yellow vinyl.  For the life of me, I couldn’t tell you what it was my sister and I actually wished for, but believe me, the excitement of a yellow record was more than a good enough substitute for me!  On the record was a story.  That story was Baba Yaga.  I can’t say that the story shaped my formative years any more than any other fairy tale that I remember, but it is a story that keeps finding its way back into my life.

So look out for a Baba Yaga-shaped ‘something’ coming soon to TangleCrafts; and in the meantime, check out these cool projects elsewhere, that I found while I was ‘researching’: A Baba Yaga doll (from SmallWorks) that you can turn upside down and magically transforms into her nemesis, Vasilissa the Fair/the Wise/the Brave; and a Baba Yaga plushie hut, complete with chicken legs from Melissa Sue Stanley!  The doll reminds me of one my Grandma made (one each for me & my sister) when I was little, which was a ragdoll Cinderella & broom one way up, then transformed into a glamorous Cinderella in beaded ballgown when turned upside down.  Why did I not keep these things…?