The Poisoner by Stephen Bates Book Review

 I decided that it would be fun to have a record of the various books that I am reading, and since I just finished this one, I wanted to review it while still fresh on my mind.

The Poisoner - the Life and Crime of Victorian England's Most Notorious Doctor - by Stephen Bates

This book had everything it needed to catch my attention and pique my interest. Poisoner? Victorian England? And add to it a delightfully ghoulish cover, I was hooked. I didn't know anything about William Palmer - who is the subject of this book. 

The book is 318 pages long and packed with information regarding the Palmer case. The author doesn't waste a single paragraph. This book is not a hard read - its written well, in an organized and easy to follow manner. But its not a book you can read in a borderline stupor to simply pass the time. No, you have to pay attention. You can't zone out for a minute, or a vital piece of information might be missed. I did at times find it a little repetitive - but, it is easily forgiven when you understand the method in which the book is written.

Victorian England's most notorious Doctor was William Palmer. His crimes came about in an era where newspapers - thanks to a recent removal of tax on them - hit a new high of popularity and accessibility - and therefore, people were thirsty for sensationalism. And a crime involving poison - and a new poison in Strychnine at that - and a doctor, was just the thing to cause a national stir wild enough that even the Queen herself followed the news. In order to understand this case and what it meant to the public, the author sought to recreate the era for you in the areas that mattered in relation to this case - horse racing, the press, even how the law itself was practiced - all to give you a very real and living picture of life in mid Victorian England.

In this sense, the book almost serves as a history lessen in and of itself. I learned a great deal. Did I necessarily care about all of it? No,(I admit to skipping the last few pages about horse racing.) I wouldn't have minded a little less information in some sections. It sometimes felt like information overload - so don't read it when you are really tired! 

But, when you get to the end, it all comes together so well, I was highly appreciative of the amount of information given. The author successfully brings to life the many different characters involved with this whole ordeal - before, during and even after the trial. You get such a strong sense of who these men were, and the role each one played, be it for better or worse. You get to witness the trial itself - the poor handling by the defense and the masterful precision of the prosecution. You get to read the witness testimonies and see how they were examined and cross examined. Or not. It is a really fascinating view into the Victorian courtroom. And one more point that I want to point out - the author keeps a very neutral attitude about the controversial trial and the character of William Palmer himself. Was he indeed the master of poisons, the cunning, evil serial killer that he was painted out to be? Or a desperate man painted into a corner through bad judgment and a poor moral compass? Did he or did he not poison his victim - was there more than one? And did he use strychnine like the prosecution believed? Read the book and form your own opinion!

Happy Easter 2021!

 It's technically not quite Easter yet but since we did our celebration on Friday, the holiday is pretty much over for me. Friday was pretty fun. I swapped my normal Friday activities with Sunday's which gave me the day to just chill and enjoy the festivities. We did gifts this year. I got an adorable Calico Critter baby bunny in a basket Easter with cute little Eastery accessories that I wanted really badly. 

I still have not yet opened my Critter set. It's so cute I almost hate to take it out of the box. Once I do that it's going to have to be stored away so that I don't lose any of the pieces. But I also can't wait to play with those little eggs that the baby bunny comes with! :D Too, too cute. I will save this for a rainy day, I think. 

Later on in the afternoon, we dyed Easter eggs! I haven't dyed eggs in years, so this was a lot of fun. We just got the plain dye this time, no fancy stuff. I think the plain boring dyes can be more fun in some ways as it is a lot of fun to dip eggs from one dye into the next to mix it up and create some really cool colors. I managed to dye one of my eggs an olive green! I'll have to take pics of them really soon. There is no room in the fridge for them so they will be food for wild animals pretty soon. I am always sad to throw out my Easter eggs. While I don't get quite as attached to them as I do my pumpkins every year, it's still sad. Silly maybe, but I can't help it. 

Fun fact - you can bake brownies using PEEPs as a sweetener. We ended up with several packages after a mix up of who loves which candies, so I decided that I wanted to experiment and see if I could make a batch of brownies with no sugar and just melt these nasty mothers (that nobody wanted to eat) down to sweeten the brownies with.  My thought was to melt them down via a double boiler and then add them into the dry ingredients. I added some (almond) milk into the bowl to encourage the melting action that showed no signs of happening the first several minutes of this experiment. I was thinking that I might have to scrap this whole thing - I mean,  those things could outlast the apocalypse! After awhile though, they began to soften and turn into a sticky, sweet, bubbling mix of goo. I used peanut butter instead of regular butter, and I added that to this bubbling mixture so that it would melt. I honestly added a little too much, and it was the all natural ground up at the local health food kind, and therefore, I ended up adding just a pinch more sugar to counter balance the lack of sweetness that a Jiffy peanut butter would not have had. Overall, they turned out pretty good. Maybe a little bitter, which likely came from the coffee that got spilled in the batter. But not bad, considering I just threw ingredients together and hoped for the best. I've got 2 more boxes of PEEPs to melt down and eviscerate so next time I will make some frosting to accompany the next batch of brownies I make. :) That was fun. It was fun to experiment to see what could be done. This has probably already been done, but given how much Google sucks any more as a search engine, I couldn't find any recipes that used melted down PEEPs as a sweetener. 

Over all, it was a good holiday that ended with eating some of the yummiest pizza that I have made in awhile. I topped it with finely chopped leftover London Broil, red pepper, tomato and green olives. Delicious! 

Of Winter Storms and BJD wigs

 So this has been quite a week for the bulk of the country. First we had Winter Storm Uri come through and tear things up. Then we had Winter Storm Viola come through and wreak further hell on us. (And here I was blaming it all on Uri.) Luckily for me, my area survived just fine. We had our ice storm. Nothing really came of it except a thick coating of ice on the trees and other surfaces. The roads were fine pretty quickly after the initial ice storm.

 Then we had the snow come through with more cold temperatures. The morning after some snow came along the previous night with the threat of more coming, the humble space heater that single handedly heats the space where I spend 90% of my time died. Wanna talk about some fantastic timing, geez. We raced off to town on borderline sketchy roads before lunch with the hopes of finding a replacement before the weather got worse. And wouldn't you know it, not a single freaking store had one in stock in the entire town!! Where did they all go?? As a last ditch effort we went by our storage building hoping we had one stored away in there and lo and behold, we did. Whew! No freezing until the one I ordered finally made its way here or they restocked in town!

That was the extent of any real drama for me during this rotten stretch of weather. It's been cold, but nothing that bad. We never lost power. We never had the roads completely shut down. They weren't always perfect for driving, but I was surprised to see that finally, FINALLY, the local government figured out how to prep the roads for the incoming weather AND take care of them during it all! I feel really fortunate as it seems like all of the surrounding areas were hit pretty hard. Though nothing can compare to the horror going on in TX right now. Those poor people. 

Speaking of TX, I had some wonderful luck this last week. I am in desperate need of wigs for my BJDs. Desperate. I don't want to buy anything from China right now. Domestic shipping can be challenging enough. No way I want to gamble with any potential drama with overseas shipping. And that, of course limits my choices by quite a bit. Especially now the Monique is going out of business. So, I decided to check Den of Angels MP like I periodically do and I found a really nice looking fur wig for really cheap! So I messaged the seller ( who, you might have guessed is in TX) and lucky, lucky me! She had a bunch of wigs that she had been meaning to list that she said she would give me a deal on if I wanted any! Yes, please, don't mind if I do! I picked out 6 fantastic fiber wigs (one is a gift for a family member) and she let me have them all plus the fur wig I had originally inquired after for $45! OMG! What a fantastic deal! It might be awhile until she can get them in the mail but it's totally fine with me. Thankfully she is doing okay as I heard from her today. That's the most important part. My dolls can just wait until everything is safe for trips to the post office. :) I'm just so thrilled to have been given such a wonderful deal. All of my big dolls will have a wig! It's like winning the BJD wig lottery!

Once my wigs get here I will attempt to do a proper photo shoot showcasing each wig. Eep! Exciting stuff!

Day 1 Critter Challenge

 So I was recently challenged to a Critter a Day sewing challenge. This means that I must complete 1 piece of clothing a day for MY Critters. It doesn't have to a complete outfit. But it must be one piece and it must be photographed and posted about to complete the challenge. I have no idea if I can do this but it would be good for my self esteem to actually be able to complete something like this. And it would be wonderful to make items for my own Critters instead of spending 100% of my sewing time on projects for others. I've been struggling with completing anything at all lately. And maybe taking a little bit of time for mine but refill my creative tank that has been near empty for the last half of the Year that Must Not Be Named. Any ways, here's to hoping!

First piece completed is this Newsboy hat for my Caramel dog. His name is Heart Valentine. This is technically my first run of the hat pattern so I might do some tweaking on the next one though I am actually happy with it. 

The rest of his outfit will be a white shirt with a red bow tie and red pants with chocolate brown suspenders. Going with the whole Valentine's theme here! :D Tomorrow I will make the shirt. 

Look who joined the family

 So, here I am back on Blogger after looking for much greener pastures on Wordpress. Thing is, Wordpress is a little tricky to use, for those like myself who are technologically challenged. I had forgotten that I had started a previous WordPress blog years ago that I hadn't touched in ages and it is giving me no possibility of linking the 2 accounts where I can easily switch back and forth between them. The trouble really began when I forgot my password (I swear to always write down that new password and this is what happens. Every. Single. Time. Some mistakes you learn from. Others you keep repeating!) I used to be able to sign in via my Google account but since it suddenly booted me back into my old blog, I now cannot access my new Drowning in Dolls blog. Who knows if it'll switch back or not? So, for the time being, I am locked out of that blog. 

Now that that rant is over, guess who joined my doll family yesterday? Why only the lovely vintage Miss Revlon, of course! Here's a bit of a back story....

Back in the mid 2000's I briefly had a beautiful brunette 18" Miss Revlon doll. I ended up parting with her, though it was with some reservations. I figured if I missed having one too badly, then I can always take to eBay and find myself another one.

Time went on and I would occasionally think about that doll and wonder, not only about who ended up with her and if she was loved in her new home, but also if I really should have ever sold her to begin with. "Should I get another one?" I would think. I would even look at some on eBay now and again. But that practical voice in my head that likes to criticize every new doll purchase would always talk down the greedy insatiable doll collector in me who would shriek "you need at least 6 of them!" and I would put this doll out of my mind.

A few weeks back, a booth at my favorite local Flea Market got several Miss Revlons in. When I saw them I got so excited. There she was! Right within my grasp! I looked at them and that old voice kicked in "you don't need yet another doll!" And since every one of the dolls had chopped off hair, I obediently listened and wandered off in search of more ponies, barbies or MH.

And now let's fast forward to Saturday, which at the time of my writing this, is yesterday. I woke up from an impromptu "it's the weekend so I can" mid morning nap only to suddenly come to the soul thudding realization that I just HAD to have one of those dolls, chopped off hair and all!

My confidence fueled by a quick Google search resulting in 2 interesting but not helpful in the least bit blog posts related to restoring Miss Revlon, I was off to the Flea Market! I unfortunately suffered a bit of a sprained knee just a few days ago (all in the name of rescuing my cat) so it is lucky that the booth that held the Miss Revlon dolls wasn't all the way in the back. It still took me some doing to get back there, at least for me, being a habitual speed walker. As I slowly lumbered up to the shelf I was surprised to see that only 2 dolls remained. Both were red heads with blue eyes, both wearing some sad clothing. They stood leaned into each other, and gave off an air of being really good friends. As it didn't seem right to separate them, I snatched them both up. After all, it was the morally right thing to do! One was for $15 and the other $13. The $13 one had a gouge on her nose and upper lip, the other a couple of smudges or missing spots on her eye brows. All fingers were in place and their limbs were tight. 

I decided to cut all the way across the store to look at a booth who has sold vintage and antique dolls and accessories from time to time in the hopes that I would find some shoes that would fit them. No luck, unfortunately! Regretting my decision to even bother, I hobbled up to the check out. I was so pleased with the dolls that the lady who checked me out asked if they were good finds. I told her I thought so!

Now, my plan is to reroot these lovelies. Trying to find instructions or tutorials or anything that gave me an idea on how to remove their heads was a bust. I got on Facebook and joined the Ideal doll groups that I could find and posted my inquiry on how this was to be done. A couple of people were quick to help. And now I am seriously intimidated. If either of my dolls is a later release then I will be able to avoid this bit if not, there is this big ass wing nut holding tbe head on. People do this successfully, but it does scare me a bit to have to stretch that old vinyl over it to take the head off.

We will see how it works out. For now, Peggy Sue and Marilyn (as I have named them) will just have to keep their chopped off hair until life settles down long enough for me to work on them. 

I think I have found the magic solution for my 18 inch dolls!

Spring seems to have arrived! I was awoken early by a robin singing loudly outside the window, and it was a glorious sound and a wonderful way to start my day. Well, I didn't really start my day right then as I dozed back off for a bit, but it is a sign that today is going to be a good day. It's grey and overcast and we are likely to have rain, but its warm and full of the sounds of life. :) 

Yesterday I decided the time had come to once again go through my 18 inch dolls and try to bring some order to my collection. Since falling down the rabbit hole of Our Generation dolls last year, I have added several of those, and my collection began to lose direction and make me once again feel overwhelmed. I know - this is a subject I seem to keep blogging about. I get up to 30 or so dolls, feel horribly overwhelmed, try to cut them down, sometimes achieve it, and then, my collection would bloat back up because, let's face it, I have no power to resist the cuteness. It is frustrating though to seem to lose all control over my  collection, due to my inability to maintain self control, because in the end I stop being able to enjoy what I have. 

My solution in the past was to always just clean out the numbers of dolls that I had. Which, as you can see, is not a real good solution for me! Finally though it dawned on me what exactly I needed to clean out. I needed to prune down how many time periods I want to collect and create with my dolls. I love history and I love sewing. I also love dolls. Put these 3 things together and what I ended up with was a long list of all of these eras I wanted to create. Which is A LOT. If 18 inch dolls were my only collection, then this wouldn't be so overwhelming and also quite doable. But they aren't.

So basically, what I did, was I took some time and thought long and hard over what time periods are actually my favorites - not only for sewing dresses, but also hair styles, accessories and furniture. And that was a no brainer. The 30's and 40's. I also really like the 50's. I thought I liked the 60's, but truthfully, I only like the first like 3 years before the mod look came in. Basically, when the dresses changed from the 50's form, the decade loses me. 

I seem to love the Julie collection, and its been a consistent love since I first saw her collection. For some strange reason, her furniture and accessories were some of my instant favorites. I have her plates and cups and they are some of my most favorite things. Also, the clothing of the 70's while tacky and crazy just tickles me. I love the Julie doll. So, Julie and the 70's stay, the 60's go. 

I have a Mattel Felicity (from probably 2005/6), and I was lucky enough for find her wooden guitar for a steal, and also got her Shrewsbury Cakes Kit. If you were to ask me which doll embodies the magic and soul of Pleasant Company/American Girl, I would say Felicity. I adore her collection. As beautiful as the Elizabeth doll is, she really isn't a part of this perfect Felicity world, so Felicity and her collection stays, Elizabeth goes.

I have wanted to make a 1920's doll forever, and I have researched the era a lot for that fine day when I actually have a chance to start recreating it. I have several of Rebecca's things that I just cannot part with. I mean, her BF meet hat is just amazing! I figure that these 2 eras - 1910's and 20's, while not as favored as the 30's and 40's are enjoyable enough and close enough that I will keep a couple of dolls in these 2 decades.

As much as I have enjoyed (off and on) the 1800's, these eras have just not been as exciting for me, so they have been eliminated as well. I have sewn a lot of MG clothing for commissions, and that was fulfilling enough to just remove them completely from my own dolls. I'm also not doing anything Victorian. While I might do some Puritan era clothing for Felicity just for fun, I am also removing anything Tudor or medievel fantasy or historical. I have also cut off Lolita and everything modern. And eliminated goth and boys of any style/time period. (I have plenty of boys to dress with my BJDs.)

This feels amazing! While I did cut off a couple of dolls that I really never felt much of a connection to, I still have 19 of them, and it actually does not seem like too many. So it isn't so much the doll body count (within reason, of course. I will not allow myself to get any more than 24 total, and I don't know if I will ever reach that) but for me, it was all the plans of what I wanted to do with them that was frustrating me. I guess I have to admit that as much as I love creating, designing, pattern drafting sewing, etc, there can actually be too much demand on my creativity to be able to enjoy it without stress and strain.

So, basically I have one doll in the 1770s book ended by one doll in the 1970's. I have only 2 dolls sharing the 1910/20's. Everyone else is lumped into the 30's/40's/50's. And its perfect. Now I can make one pattern and I can dress 15 dolls with it instead of having to make 15 different patterns for only 1 outfit! 

The 'oh snap I thought it was done!' project

I have already posted the finished pics on both Facebook and Instagram, but I am just getting to actually blogging about it. This is an outfit that a friend of mine asked me if I would want to make. Her fiance pretty much designed it, and it is for their character named Daisy who is shelled in a pukifee. This is the first of several of Daisy's outfits that I will have the honor of bringing to life. :D The example she gave me was done on a computer, and it always presents an interesting and fun challenge to create a computer image in fabric and make it look like the outfit stepped out of the image into the real world.

The fabrics for this were very specific and needed to be shiny. (Shiny always means high maintenance to work with and also means an inevitable head banging moment of "whhhhyyyy?" for me at at least one point along the way. :P) I found the burgundy for the sleeveless tail coat (or tail vest?) in a lux cotton, a fabric I never had used before. (And the nice lady at the cutting table warned me it would ravel easily. She was so right.) The coat needed to be lined in gold, and I found that in a thin but what would prove to be too wiry to fold over the edges of the burgundy for a thin edging. (Number one head ache of the entire project. O.o) For the collar, the only thing I could find was a satin in cream, as I couldn't find the shade that was the actually bronzish color the outfit was designed originally to have. For the blue shirt, I had a satin that was woven in such a way that gave the color a tonal dimension to it. Next time I go back to the fabric store I am going to look back at what it is called precisely. And the pants I was lucky enough to find a shiny blue with glitter in the costume section. I didn't think it would go, but I snapped a pic as a just in case to send to my friend, and it was the perfect fabric! I went ahead and bought that before even hearing back from her on it in my first sweep of fabric searching as the bolt was close to being gone and it would have really sucked to have let it get away, just in case!

A little time went by as life happened, and when I went back to purchase the rest of my fabrics, to my utter horror, the beautiful blue fabric intended for the shirt was gone! Luckily, I made a trip to a town 45 minutes away that had it in stock. First tragedy avoided!

This outfit really had some sort of disaster mark on it. I always carefully put my current project fabrics in a container where I know where everything is. Well, when I went to find the glittery blue to sew the pants, that fabric had literally disappeared. :O I started working on other parts of the project and finally the fabric reappeared where I thought I had put it.

The pants were quite easy to make and went quickly. The sleeveless coat was pretty tricky. I literally spent hours figuring out the best way to sew it. I first had shoulders seams, but then I felt it was adding too much bulk, so I removed that. Then I had the issue with trying to fold up the lining over the raw burgundy edges to create that thin edging effect that I mentioned earlier. I had done this same technique on a coat for a 70cm doll, and while tricky, it was successful. It didn't work out quite so well on such a tiny tiny outfit. There are a lot of corners and tips that were too much of a challenge to do neatly. The parts I did manage to sew looked okay until I put it on the doll and noticed the wiriness of the fabric was causing it to bunch up in an unseemly manner. That was not going to work! So, I set it aside for a little bit to let it simmer in my brain to figure out a solution.

Next I worked on the shirt. I hand painted all the stars on it, and oh, it looked so pretty! The next step after putting the shirt together was to do the cuffs. These cuffs are made out of the burgundy with a cream ruffle and a gold embroidery. I sent my friend pictures of the embroidery stitch options, and she said she would confer with her fiance to see what he liked best for Daisy's outfit. Until I knew what embroidery stitch to use I wasn't able to test out the fit of the shirt as the sleeves and sides weren't sewn up, and I also wasn't able to see if the coat fit over the shirt correctly until I had a finished shirt to try it over. (Yes, I had done test pieces, but with certain types of fabric you can only truly tell when the pieces are sewn in the right fabrics.) I felt pretty certain though that I was nearly done and all I needed was to do the embroidery which was going to be oh so simple and then boom! Done! Right? Well, unfortunately, noooo. When they decided on the perfect embroidery stitch I set out to get it done quickly. What happened quickly was my discovering that the way I had planned to sew the cuffs didn't work as Lux cotton is temperamental (I really want to add an expletive here, but I won't..), and so I had to put more seams in it that I had originally wanted to which was my initial attempt to lesson the bulk. So, I had no choice but to redo that a few times until I thought that I had it right. When I tried it on, nope! The sleeves were too narrow to handle the thickness of the cuffs and so once I had it turned inside out (which nearly tore my nails off to do so) I couldn't even get them over my dolls hands. So, instead of trying to take the cuffs off the sleeves, I just cut the sleeves off as I swear there was no turning those sleeves inside out again. That meant redoing the shirt with all my hand painting as trying to take the cut off sleeves was not an appealing option and I also figured I would make a couple of minor readjustments that likely weren't even necessary. (The more I work on a project the more "mistakes" I imagine and that's when I need an intervention.)

Happily, redoing the shirt was actually not a big deal. (After I had to find that fabric as well that hid in the exact spot I knew I had put it in for a couple of days. :/)The cuffs went on with no drama. The coat finally came together in my head how to go about doing it, and as luck was *finally* on my side, I was able to find a tiny gold trim which my friend loved to go around the coat. :D The final thing was that ruffled collar. I honestly thought it would come together lickety split, but no. :( It had its own tricky kinks to figure out. It took me a few times of doing and redoing, but when it finally came together, it was magical!

 

The final step was closures and that bright red bow at the throat of the collar. Of course a little more suspense was due me in those final moments of creation. I didn't have the 1/8th red ribbon that I was going to use for it, which also was a happy mistake. I ended up take 1/4 inch ribbon and sewing the bow together from different pieces of ribbon - each tail was a separate piece, etc, and in the end it came together perfectly.

I was a happy, happy panda when I finally got it out in the mail! I was nervous and excited for her to get it. I was honestly a little terrified that something wasn't go to fit right, which of course I would have fixed. My bliss upon hearing that it arrived and seeing on Daisy herself was indescribable! Even though this one was a rough journey, I am looking forward to sewing for Daisy and her human keepers again. Only this time, I am going to be a little more aware of tricky fabrics for such a small scale and be much more prepared. :)