Halloween Darkness

Tomorrow is going to be October 1st.  I am excited!  October 1st is the day that I pull out all of my Halloween decorations.  Starting tomorrow, every nook and cranny will be covered with Halloween figures of one sort or another.  Thankfully, my husband is a good sport about it, because the stuff is everywhere.

When my husband and I were younger, we used to dress up for Halloween night and spend the evening handing our candy.  Sadly, Halloween has changed.  Where we lived then, Halloween was a big deal.  Dozens of kids were out trick or treating.  It was a non-stop parade of costumed children all evening.  We enjoyed it as much as the children.


The neighborhood we live in now does not have many trick or treaters.  Many of the homes are occupied by the original homeowners, who are now senior citizens.  Families are smaller and do not necessarily live close by.  Our neighborhood has fairly large lots, and is not very well lit with street lights.  Children would rather trick or treat in a newer neighborhood where the houses are closer together so they can get more candy quicker.  Parents are happier with the newer neighborhoods because they are better lit, which makes it safer. 

I still light a pumpkin and put it on the porch light every year.  As long as even one child comes by, it is worth it.  I feel that the child that has actually braved the dark of the neighborhood to come to the door has had a better learning experience.  It teaches them not to fear the dark. 

I find that as a society, we have becomes too dependent on artificial light to feel safe.  Being in the dark does not necessarily mean that something bad is going to happen, but that is how people perceive it.  I have been in people with power outages in public places and seen how many people experienced anxiety symptoms.  They do not trust themselves to be able to function in the dark at all. 

The point of Halloween is to be out in the dark and confront your fears.  Being out in the dark gives you an understanding of which of your fears are real, and which fears are figments of your imagination.  Some fears are true such as the fear of tripping in the dark.  Other fears are only true sometimes; such as the occasional mugger.  But for the most part, our fear of the dark is irrational.  The majority of the time we are in the dark and perfectly safe. 

Being out in the dark teaches us to engage our other senses.   In the light we use our sight more than anything else.  In the dark, we have to depend on our senses of hearing, touch, and smell.  It is a very different experience.  Suppose you were to be trick or treating on a dark street on Halloween.  Instead of a brightly lit space, you just see a pumpkin glowing in the distance.  It will stand out much more in the dark.  As you come up to it with all your senses engaged, you might get a more intense pumpkin smell from the candle heating the pumpkin.  Or, you might be more sensitive to the heat from the candle as you pass by it.  Although it is dark you might be more sensitive to motion.  If someone jumps out and yells BOO! you will get a bigger scare than if you see your friend standing there waiting to jump out at you.  Try Halloween in the dark sometime.  You might find the experience stimulating.

How we perceive something affects how we react to it.  It seems that right now, many people are reacting out of fear.  It affects how we react to situations, to strangers, or to trying something new.  Fear is paralyzing us as a society.  We have to learn to accept our fears, understand them, and be able to act in a positive, life-affirming way.  Halloween is a perfect place to start when teaching how to embrace our fears.  After all, our fears start when we are young.  What better time to learn to deal with them.

Cabin Trip September 2018

First coat of paint is on this wall.

We were in the mountains again earlier this month.  This trip we were busy painting the outside of the cabin.  The wood trim has been painted from time to time, but it has been twenty years since the cinder block was painted.  The paint is beginning to show some wear, so it was time to get busy and get things painted again.  The winter's are very harsh up there, and we don't want water infiltrating the cinder block.

Stone steps from the yard to the stream.

Cinder block is not the easiest thing to paint.  It has a lot of pits and holes in it.  You have to add on a thick layer of paint and then push it into the little holes.  It will look like it is covered, but as soon as you move on, air bubbles will come out of the holes and leave little openings.  They need to be sealed shut.  Minute bits of water can get in there and freeze.  Over time, it can damage the block.  We noticed some areas on the inside where the block froze, and a chunk fell out and left a divot.  Therefore, we will be paining a second coat, trying to seal up as many of those little holes as possible.

The weather was very warm and humid up there.  During the day is was sometimes uncomfortable.  It took us a few days to acclimate.  The nights were in the sixties.  It was still pretty humid even at night. 

We don't have an air conditioner up there any more.  There used to be one, but after many years the plastic that held it in the window started to disintegrate.  One day I was looking at the air conditioner and realized that I was seeing the outdoors through holes in the panels.  Insects were getting into the house through the holes.  We decided that it was time for it to go.  That was probably a good thing.  Once we took it out of the window, we realized that the filter and vents were all filled with mildew.  I am glad we did not turn it on.  I have really bad mold allergies. 

We have not figured out what to do about air conditioning.  We might have to purchase a portable room air conditioner and haul it back and forth with us.  Since the cabin is not constantly conditioned space, we are always going to have a problem with mildew forming on an air conditioner.  I guess there is a reason that we travel up there in a cargo van.  So far, we just haven't decided to make that purchase.  Many times in June and July it is still cool enough to be wearing a flannel shirt in the evening.  We usually avoid the cabin in August because the gnats are so bad.  So we would really be only using air conditioning once or twice a year.  I suppose if worst comes to worst and it is so hot we can't stand it we will come down off the mountain and buy an air conditioner. 

Anyway, it was a nice trip even though we worked hard.  There is always something that needs doing up there.  I expect that next trip up we will also be getting up leaves.

Next week I will be back to blogging about the life size doll I am making.  Check back on Sunday for the latest on that project.

Life Size Doll Armature - Making the Hands

I wrote the post before I went to the mountains.  I am still learning to use my new computer with a different operating system on it.  Apparently it did not like the way I added pictures to the blog.  It would not load the post.  I am trying a new way of adding the pictures.  I hope it will post this time.  I am sorry for it being so long between posts.

I have been working on this project for a while.  It is finally getting to the stage of making the details.  Today I will be blogging about making the hands.   As always, there is more than one way to do something, so the first choice I had to make was what method to use.  I have tried different means of making doll hands over the years.  Some hands have been sewn and stuffed fabric.  I have sculpted hands from bake in the oven clay.  I have made mittens so that I did not have to show the hands for winter dolls such as Father Christmas figures.  For this doll I wanted to try a new method, tape and gloves with an internal wire armature so that the fingers could be posed as needed.

Since this doll is life size, I could use my own hands to make the structure for the hands.  I made one hand at a time.  I started by slipping on a vinyl glove.   I used vinyl because that is what I happened to have on hand at the moment.  A nitril (spelling ?) glove might have been a better choice because they tend to be a tighter fit.  However, I decided to go with what I had in the studio. Some methods of making hand shapes with tape suggest just wrapping the tape around the hand and fingers until everything is covered.  I chose not to use this method because I felt it would make the fingers too rigid for what I wanted to do with them.  I tore bits of masking tape into small manageable sized pieces and beginning with the fingers started covering the glove with the tape, overlapping the pieces of tape.  The tape was pressed tightly around the fingers and hand.  I covered the glove up to the wrist.

Once the glove was covered it was time to cut it off my hand.  I used a pair of scissors with rounded tips to avoid injuring myself.  I am right handed, but I was still able to cut the glove off by myself.  I started the cut at the center of the wrist and cut up almost to the tip of the middle finger.  From there I was able to pull my hand out without cutting any of the other fingers.  After removing the glove, I taped the cut pieces back together.  Then I made the other hand.

I wish I had stopped to take a photo of the hands at that point so I could have one for the blog.  However, I was on a roll and just kept on working.  The only photos of the hands were taken after I placed them on the doll.

To be able to pose the fingers I made an internal armature from wire.  I used 16 gauge wire, but if I were to do it over again I would use an 18 gauge wire.  The 16 gauge was a little stiff.  I cut 22 inch (55.88 cm) lengths of wire for each finger and the thumbs.  I bent the wire in half so that there would be a rounded piece of wire at the end of each finger rather than a sharp piece of wire.  Once the wire was folded, I taped the wire to hold the to pieces close together.  The wire was inserted into the finger and then stuffed with polyester fiber fill until the finger was firm, but not bulging.

As I added each wire, I also taped the next finger to the previous finger at about the center of the palm of the hand.  It helped keep the finger wires from slipping.  It also provided a platform for the stuffing that would fill out the hand.  Once all the fingers and the thumb had been stuffed, it was time to stuff the palm and back of the hand.  I used pieces of cotton batting to stuff the palm and back of the hand, adding a little polyester fiber fill at the base of each finger to form knuckles.

Because I had used my own hands to create the doll hands, I could easily mark the joints of the fingers.  That helped to determine where to create folds in the wire to make the hand hold the pose I wanted.  Once again, this was a bit more difficult than it needed to be because I had used a stiffer wire.  The fingers are not going to be moving out of that shape easily, so maybe it was not such a problem after all.

I already had a plan for the hands decided when I planned to make this doll into a dancer.  She was supposed to be holding a fan in her raised hand and the hem of her dress in the lower hand.  Now that I am going to do something else with this doll I am not sure what she will be holding in the raised hand.  I will figure it out as I go along.  Who knows it could be a glass of wine or it could be a dagger or something.  I am sure that it will all come together sooner or later.

The long wires protruded well past the wrist.  This  was by design.  The wires were slipped up into the PVC pipe of the armature.  This helped hold the hand in place.  The hand was also taped onto the PVC pipe.  I added a little stuffing here and there and some bubble wrap to integrate the hand into the arm.

So that is about where I am with the doll right now.  With just a little more tweaking to the armature I will be ready to start on the papier   mâché.  I will be blogging on this in the next blog post.

Life Size Doll - Armature Completed

Unfortunately, I am still learning how to use my new computer.  I took the torso photos with the camera turned sideways.   Although the photo shows upright in my pictures file, it shows up sideways when I tried to post it on the blog.  Rotating it with my edit program did not solve the problem.  I will have new pictures of it to post next week.  Sorry for the inconvenience.  Now, on with the post I had written.

After much procrastination, I have the armature completed.  At least, it is at a point that I can live with it and get on to the next phase of the doll, covering it in papier mâché.  When I thought about making this doll, I was at thinking that I would do a much better job of sculpting the musculature.  However, I did not imagine how busy I would be this year and how little time I would have to work on this project.  Nor, for that matter, did I really expect that this doll was going to end up being taller than I am.  So after much longer than I expected, the doll is ready for the next phase.

Although the progress has been agonizingly slow, it has had some humorous moments.  One such moment came in the final step before attaching the head.  The plan was that the head would have a PVC pipe in it so that it could attach to the neck at the shoulder area.   I used a straight piece of pipe with a Tee connector at the top.  The plan was to glue the pipe into the head.  Well, the joke was on me.  The head was so rounded that I could not get the Tee connector to sit flat enough against the head for the glue to hold. I used a lot of glue, but it was just not going to stay where I wanted it to stay.  I had to come up with a Plan B.

Plan B nearly caused a disaster.  I decided that I would wedge the pipe into place long enough for me to partially fill the head with expanding foam.  The foam would fill in the open Tee connector.  Once the foam hardened, it would hold the pipe in place.   I sprayed in some foam, making sure that the pipe stayed upright by checking it with a level and correcting the position when needed.

I have had experience with expanding foam before.  I knew that it expands much more than you think it does.  I only filled the head about half way.  I actually stayed with the piece for an hour.  Everything seemed okay when I walked away from it.  The foam was no longer expanding.  A dry coat over the top.  The instructions said that it was hard enough to trim after an hour.  I walked away thinking that everything was going to work out just fine.  There was plenty of pipe exposed for making the connection to the body.

Imagine my horror when I walked back into my studio a few hours later.  The foam had continued to expand and had overflowed above the head and continued to expand along the entire length of the pipe.  It had even pushed its way into the opening at the end of the pipe.  A small amount of it had fallen off onto the back of the head.  Fortunately, it came off easily from the varnish.  The little bit of residue that remained scratched off with a finger nail.  That area will be covered with a wig, no it was not going to ruin the piece if it had not come off well.  It was just that first shock of seeing the head like this that made me think that the project was close to ruined.

I used a utility knife to cut away the excess foam and excavated down far enough to find the end of the pipe.  I was able to pull out the plug of foam that had filled the end of the pipe.  I was ready to add the head to the body when I ran into another difficulty.  Although I had dry fitted all the pieces when I started, the pipe in the head no longer fitted into the connector on the body.  I tried sanding down the sides of the pipe, thinking that the rough residue left by the foam was causing it not to fit.  That did not work.  I never could get it to fit, but not for lack of trying.  I am thinking that the pressure of the foam may have deformed the thin pipe slightly.  So, it was on to Plan C.

Plan C actually worked.  I put a dowel into the connector and wedged it into place with small bits of a skewer.  The dowel then went into the pipe in the head and wedged with more bits of skewer.  Everything was glued then taped into place.  The head was on at last.  A few more layers of tape and things were good to go.

The hands went on next.  However, the post is already getting long, so I will blog about creating the hands next week.  Check back next Sunday for details.

Fixing the Armature

When I blogged last, I had said that the armature had developed a problem.  One of the joints had come undone and the arm was hanging loose.  This was pretty discouraging since most of the armature had been padded already.  Fortunately, most of the work on padding the shoulders had not been completed.   The only correction to the problem was surgery.

I used a utility knife to cut down through what padding was in place to reach the PVC joint that had come loose.  The padding was peeled back from the section so that it could be pushed back down and taped once the repair was made.  The joint was re-glued, then taped with duct tape to make sure it stayed in place.  Once the doll is finished, you will never even know it happened.

 I think the real problem is that the PVC cement/glue whatever it is was old and starting to dry up.  I don't think it was tacky enough to be able to form a bond between the two pieces.  I hate to say it, but I am going to have to open a brand new jar of the stuff in order to get this arm to stay in place.  I did not want to do that because once you open the jar, that is pretty much it.  The glue dries up fast once opened.  Most likely the rest of it will just go to waste.

A lot of progress has been made this week on the doll.  I have finished padding most of the armature.  The initial work has been done on the hands and put on the head (more about that next post).   Imagine my dismay when I walked back into my studio yesterday morning and saw that same arm hanging down again, loose and swinging.  At this point I am guessing that the other end of that same joint has come loose.  More surgery will be required.



I took the doll outside to re-glue the arm.  The glue has a very strong odor and should only be used in a well ventilated area.  One of my big challenges in working on the armature is that it has been cloudy and raining for days.  That day it was cloudy and I thought I could get it glued back together  it rained.  I was wrong.  No sooner than I had the tape on the joint the rain started.  I had to drag it back inside and leave all the doors and windows open to air the place out.

I guess while I am working on the repair I will reconsider the pose of that arm.  Part of the problem may be that the angle of the arm is putting too much stress on the joint.  Sometimes the materials don't want to do what you want them to do.  The arm may be angled differently in future pictures.  When I originally made a sketch for the doll, she was a dancer and the left hand was holding out her skirt.  At this late date, I don't think I am going to finish that doll in time for the competition, so I may be turning her into a Halloween doll.  Who knows, maybe she will be holding a trick or treat bag.

Next blog post I will be showing the head and hands.  The explanation would take too long to do on this post.  There were some comic moments.  Check back next Sunday for those updates.