My new year (so far) in pictures ...

Viele Road, early morning. It rained the night before which makes the green grass shimmer like emeralds. Lucky for me, a heron decided he wanted to be in the picture!

My Soroptimist club hosted a poster contest for high school juniors and seniors. The purpose was to increase the awareness of human trafficking, an awful abomination against people. The students were delightful, the winners were ecstatic with their cash awards, and the kids all appeared to have a great time.

I had these two skeins of sock yarn. I tried three times to crochet a sock, but, it wasn't working. So, I started making little granny squares. Don't know what I'm going to do with them. Yet. But, I'll come up with something. I just love the colors of this variegated yarn!

Coming back to work, I took a ride along Anapu Road. It's much more scenic than the main thoroughfares. Then, I spotted this guy. Looking so alone and forlorn. I was glad I had my camera with me.

I've been "playing" with "To The Fair" Poppy Parker lately. She was the W Club upgrade doll two years ago and she's really quite stunning. I combed her hair out, so it's loose and it gives her a much softer appearance. I'm getting into redressing my girls, too. This is my zen.

How many pins is too many?

Don't look at me like that.
I know it sounds like a really dumb question.

I'm talking about Pinterest of course. Pins on pin boards. How many is too many?

I was tooling around Pinterest today. I get a weekly email showing me boards I might want to follow. The message is assembled based on my pins and 'likes' on the site, and, I don't mind if they keep track of that kind of data. Considering the kinds of things I pin, I think it's pretty harmless. We're talking about art and fashion dolls, clothes and kitchens, favorite movies and Marilyn Monroe. These are the same things most every other pinner on Pinterest is interested in. I'm sure of it. A flock of folks obsessed with pinning. Why it has become a twenty-first century sport!

Sampler Blanket from Ravelry

So, you're probably wondering why I ask this question. Okay. I'll tell you.

Labores De Aguja. It means "needlework" in Spanish. A lovely needlework image was offered under the "Boards To Follow" section, so I clicked on it. The name of the board was "Labores De Aguja" and there were 9,572 pins. Nine thousand, five hundred and seventy two.

Holey mackerel! It would take two days to look through 9,572 pins!

This got me to thinking about my own pin boards. I'm not in a profession that would make Pinterest useful to my business. I simply love dolls, fashion and art, and any combination thereof. However, I had recently capped my board, "Lookbook As I See It" at 1,000 pins. I realized that was enough. I even considered that it is too many.

Then, today, while researching for this blog post, I saw that my "Type & Art, plain & simple" board has 1,098 pins.

Oh, yeah. Clearly, I need to sort through them and create new boards that are more specific. Maybe one for "Type" and one for "Art." I have one dedicated to "Watercolors" and it has definitely made it easier to find an item than, say, having to pore through a thousand pins. Yep. I think I'm gonna do that.

I don't know if other folks use their pin boards for reference. I often refer to my "Good Eats" board for those saved recipes. And, my board, "My Style & then some..." has been a lifesaver when shopping. I always have to show the stylist what I want at Supercuts because I don't always get the same stylist. And, I pin clothing purchases so I can refer to them when I'm shopping if I want to match color or some other little detail. I actually use them.

Who knew?

So, as I question my own use of Pinterest, I realize I must also edit my "Fashion Dolls" pin board. That one has more than 1,600 pins, and that's waaayy too many! How am I going to divvy those up?

Well, I guess you can figure out what I'm going to do during my down time today. Yep.

Sift and sort my doll pins. It's sort of like pulling weeds. It's an opportunity to bring order to something in my life, and considering there are so many things I have no control over, it's nice to be able to do this and see the results.

Enjoy your day!

And, hey! Thanks for stopping by!

I've changed how I use Pinterest ...

I am a doll collector. If you've visited this blog more than once, you may know that.

I started with Barbie.
Loved her as a child.
Love her as an adult.

Then I met the Asian dolls, Momoko, Misaki, Susie and Kana!

Which lead to Jason Wu's Integrity Toy Company where Fashion Royalty and Poppy Parker dolls are created in very limited numbers.

Not to mention the 16-inch dolls Gene Marshall and Tyler Wentworth.

Clothes. Accessories. Furniture to scale. Cars. Books and Magazines. Shelves of dolls. And, more shelves filled with my girls! A room dedicated to my hobby.

BUT.
You see, the thing about being a collector of anything is that you want to meet other collectors who collect the same kind of thing you collect.

Got it?

Doll collectors are an enthusiastic group for the most part. They enjoy sharing their collections and being with people who enjoy talking about dolls. Up until the turn of the century, we would meet at doll shows and club meetings and conventions, but today, the doll show has all but disappeared from the collectors' social landscape, doll clubs come with their own politics, and conventions are few and far between and very expensive. This change in how doll collectors congregate is a direct result of the internet.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, doll collectors began turning to ebay to purchase the dolls of their dreams. This online marketplace decimated doll shows and took away the most rewarding way collectors had to connect to each other. Then, just when we had adjusted and become accustomed to being lonely doll collectors again, social networking appeared.

It took a while ... but, we found each other again ... and, then some! Which was my answer to gaining "followers" on Pinterest!

I gain from 2 to 5 new followers a day now because of my doll pin boards. And, the movement is growing! Doll collectors have been sharing on Flickr for years, and, yes, you can create sets and collections with your photos. But, it's not the same. Somehow Pinterest brings collectors together in a new way.

Last year, shortly after I discovered Pinterest, I was, for reasons I cannot explain, obsessed with the site and the process of pinning. {I even write about it here.}

For nigh onto a month, I did it for hours each day. The Android ap wasn't yet developed, but I found a way to pin on my smart phone. {Yes, I was ecstatic when they DID create the ap!}

About two months into it, I created my Fashion Dolls board. I thought it would be fun to create a place where I could have stuff that I liked! A couple of months after that, I saw I had a lot of Barbie Fashion Model Collection (BFMC) pins, so I created a board dedicated to them. Then, Vintage Barbie & Friends followed, along with Momoko and Poppy Parker and, more recently, Barbie Basics. Just like a small child, I found the process of sorting these images and web site links very satisfying. And, it was free!

My most useful pinboard is "handmade."  I like to knit and crochet, do scrapbook and journal stuff, so Pinterest has become an especially good way for me to keep up with those crochet sock patterns I wanted to try and those journaling ideas I had admired and felt inspired by.

And, the time did I arrive when I actually USED my pin board as a RESOURCE! Over the weekend, I was working on a granny square afghan I've been making for forever. (Or, so it seems!) I had pinned several different methods for joining those granny squares, so, it was a pleasure to not have to wrestle with my 3-ring binder of patterns or folded sheets of paper buried in my yarn basket to find the one I wanted. It was right there on my "handmade" pin board.

I introduced my darling husband to Pinterest, but not because he's into fashion or landscape design ideas like me. Instead, it became useful when we were doing work on our kitchen. It provided me with a forum to share with him on line as we shopped for materials and design ideas.

He has since discovered it is a handy way for keeping track of recipes. He likes to cook and bake and he's always on the lookout for new ideas for the kitchen! He has a 7.5-inch tablet and sets it on the counter just as my mother and grandmother used to do with their recipes written on 5" x 3" index cards.

My how times have changed, huh?

So, where I used to be obsessed with how many pins and followers I had, today, Pinterest has become a genuine resource for me, and, I think, for others who share my interests. Especially doll collectors! We're a special breed and we've found a new way to connect! Maybe that's what the Pinterest people intended all along!

Pinterest ~ the learning curve

I last posted about my newest "addiction" to Pinterest and, since then, I have forced myself to limit the amount of time I spend on the site. It's really difficult, though. I see the e-mail messages in my "in box" and am drawn to see who is re-pinning from my boards. Then, I visit their boards and, BOOM!  I'm off pinning again.   {{big sigh}}

For me, pinning has been all about collecting. There. I said it. I am a "collector." I collect fashion dolls in real life. I have an entire room dedicated to them. I created an exhibition of fashion dolls last summer at a local museum and, if you're on Facebook, you can see some of what we did here. I also collect ephemera, which I think stems from my love for the written word. But, back to my collections ... my "boards" on Pinterest.

In the beginning, it was all about the "eye candy." So many beautiful images and I could put them all in one place and revisit them anytime I wanted. "So, what!" you might say. "What good does that do a person?" And, you would be right. For someone like me, pinning images has no socially redeeming value whatsoever. Except, it allows me to organize what I like, and that's important to me!

Prior to joining Pinterest, I collected images from the Internet on my computer. If I saw something I  liked, it was as easy as a right-click and "save image as." I have folders titled "Pink" and "Blue" and "Type and Art" and they are full of things I've seen, liked and wanted to return to without having to, again, search for them. Now, I don't have to right-click! I just pin those little babies to one of my boards and enjoy visiting them!

Yesterday, after breaking my own rule about how much time I had spent on Pinterest, I took a closer look at what I was doing. I have 19 boards and they contain 2,787 pins. And, there are 274 "LIKES," which are completely separate from my boards. Now, I'm not quite sure what the logic is behind "liking" something if you can pin it. I'm thinking it's to track those things that don't belong to one of my boards. Of course, there could be some other reason for it, but I haven't a clue what it might be.

My favorite boards at the present moment are "All Things Pink!" and "beige to white and back again." I guess I'm on a color trip here lately. But, I also like my "Type & Art, plain and simple" board a lot, too, and that board has 132 followers after just a few weeks, so I must be doing something right if people are watching what I pin.

And, that's really what it's all about, if  you ask me. People have a chance to see how I see things. Why did I include this "blue" image and not that one? What criteria do I follow for "All Things Pink?" These are the questions I ponder when I consider this addiction of mine. And, as the number of my followers grows, I find I am even more critical of my boards. I check them to be sure I haven't pinned the same image twice. If it's pinned to the "Blue" board, it must be all about that particular shade of blue; no pink background; no green or yellow anywhere. It's about pure color and how the image conveys it.

I have become aware of legal issues with Pinterest this week. I was reading on other pinners' blogs about how they use Pinterest, good etiquette on Pinterest and discussions about the impact pinning might have on artists and internet businesses and I stumbled on this. So, now I'm not sure how much longer I'll be doing this. I may have to return to the right-click, "save image as" to keep up my collection madness. We'll see.

In the meantime, happy pinning! I'm going to balance my checkbook now!

Creativity Run Amok: President's Day Project

I met "Alpaca Granny" through her blog http://northstaralpacas.blogspot.com/ and enjoyed reading about the daily challenges of a retired school teacher turned alpaca farmer. Eventually I was lead to her etsy shop, North Star Alpacas, where I couldn't resist making a purchase of 104 yards of hand dyed, hand spun Alpaca Merino Mohair yarn from Indy, the alpaca pictured below!

When the yarn arrived, I was in love with it. It came packaged in a glassine envelope with a lavender sachet tucked inside and a tag with Indy's photo on it and a complete product description. It wasn't a lot of thread, so whatever I was going to make with it would have to be inspired. I put it in my yarn basket and over the past year I have taken it out every now and again and felt the texture, inhaling the lavender, wishing for creative inspiration.

Then, President's Day 2010 arrived. I had the day off from work and bemoaned the continued chilly weather we've been experiencing here in sunny, south Florida. I do so love to work in the yard, but that wasn't an option this holiday. The weather report said it was going to be cold all week, with night time lows in the 40s. And, that, my dear reader, is "unseasonably cold" by Florida standards. And, it was this that inspired me to use the beautiful hand dyed, hand spun thread I'd purchased.  I was guessing when I started crocheting ... some might call it "designing." I had no pattern; just my knowledge of crochet to guide me. I used a size N hook, something I'd never done before! My! But, it's a big hook! By Tuesday morning, when I'd finished my coffee, I had a beautiful neck scarf to keep me warm for the rest of the week!

When I got to the office, I was once again inspired to take photos, and when I saw them on the computer screen, I knew they belonged in my blog!  This beautiful scarf is excellent at keeping the back of my neck warm in the harsh winter wind. And, the knowledge of where the fur came from combined with knowing who dyed it and spun it into thread for me makes my creative spirit feel warm as well.

Now, it's nearing the end of the week and the meteorologists are saying we'll see temperatures in the 70s by Saturday.  Meanwhile, I'm enjoying my hand dyed, hand spun, hand crocheted scarf!  Ah! The joy of creativity! Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside!

Time for a litte fun stuff ...

Here's my first crochet project for my beloved Barbie doll. There is a crochet thread on the Barbie Fan Club Bulletin Board and patterns are shared among members. This turned out so much better than I imagined it would. After all, I hadn't done any crocheting in years!

Then, I found a dress pattern on the BFC board and crocheted it in white. I hadn't planned on it being usable. I figured I'd make all the mistakes so I could make a "real" one. Ha! It turned out quite grand, don't you think? I'm thinking about adding a crocheted flower and maybe a wide belt ... and, then ...

... these beautiful colors are for a color block dress pattern for Barbie that I recently found!

I had forgotten how much fun this could be!