As those of you, who are following me long enough, would know, I loved to write stories about my dolls and publish them on my blog. Lately I didn’t have the muse. Being a doll maker and owning a small business means having a war on several battle fields spontaneously. Making dolls is the most fun part of it, yet the shortest part of the whole work too. As I decided to make my hobby my job, a friend who had been working as a creative small business owner, warned me: “don’t do that. If you own a business, the creative part will be reduced to the 20 % of your time, on the remaining 80% of your time you will be doing all those other works, which will kill you.” I though it was a bit too exaggerated 😊 Yet it has truth in it. I know several doll makers, whose family members are helping them. Some other earn enough that they can delegate some of the work to others by paying them, many are like me doing everything themselves. In that case you have to sacrifice some creative time for marketing and other organizational work. For me it was the writing part which had to rest a little bit.
As the new mom of Elise sent me an adorable story, which she wrote while waiting Elise’s arrival, I was thus sooo happy. Elise arrived to Texas within 10 days, a lot faster than she was expected, so her mom sent me the mail after Elise arrived. Yet that makes the whole even more beautiful. With her permission, I would love to share her story and the pictures with you. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
Thank you dear Gundi. <3
***
It is still raining! Little Sabine is giving Calico, Finnley’s cat, a ride in her doll buggy. Finnley is bored. She is thinking about Elise, wondering when she will get here...
So she sits down with her colored pencils, and starts drawing...
“What are you drawing?” Little Sabine asks.
“I wonder what an Ex eats? And how much?” Finnley asks with a frown.
“What’s an Ex?” Little Sabine asks.
“I heard Mom say that Elise will come on a “well fed Ex” answers Finnley. “An Ex is a dragon. Elise is coming on the wings of a well fed dragon. We will need to feed the dragon before we send it back to Berlin...”
“Your dragon looks like a weenie-dog!“ exclaims Little Sabine.
“Elise won’t need a very big dragon” Finnley answers.
They go find Billy Scott. He is their big brother, wants to be a farmer, and knows a lot about all kinds of animals. But Billy has never heard of a dragon called an Ex, and suggests they go asks Elias. Elias is the oldest, maybe he knows!
Elias and Linda are sitting in Mom’s sewing room window. Linda wants to learn how to embroider, and Elias is watching the rain, and the occasional car driving by.
Elias came from Warsaw, Poland, last year. He looks at Finnley’s drawing and shakes his head.
“Berlin is closer to Warsaw than to Texas”, he says. “Elise won’t come flying on a dragon. I sometimes see a small delivery truck 🚚 driving up and down the street. With the word FedEx painted on its sides. A man steps out of the truck and drops packages at peoples’ front doors”.
He hands back Finnley’s drawing and goes back to looking out the window. “In a few days, the FedEx truck will come back and bring Elise home to us. She is safe from the rain and from any wild animals inside the truck” he says reassuring all the girls 😊 But now Finnley is pouting.
“I like my story better” she says. “Elise is coming on a dragon, and we are going to feed it chocolates! She’s not coming with some dumb delivery truck, stuck in a dark and boring box!”
***
And so it was, dear Gonca, that the dolls survived the rainy days... We all survived the grey and rainy days! And then Elise came right before my Mom’s party, and no one saw how she got here... Elias did not see the FedEx truck, neither did I! She did come in a box. The box was a tiny bit squashed, like maybe the dragon dropped it once or twice? Elise just smiles, she tells me how she came is her secret... Finnley has a little grin too! I think the two are sharing that secret but keeping it from the rest of us!
Write a comment