CRAFTS WITH ANASTASIA--DARNING EGGS AND BETSY WETSY DOLLS

Darning Mushroom with Yarn and Needle

Author Lois Winston, she who writes about me, stops by today to talk about the first time she sewed something.

Do you remember the first time you picked up a needle and thread? Probably not, unless the memory is more involved, which is the case for me.

When I was four years old, I was spending the day at my grandparents’ house. My grandmother was sitting in the kitchen, darning a sock. Most people these days have no idea what darning means, let alone how to do darn, unless they lived through the Great Depression. Even people lucky enough to have income during those years, as my grandparents did, never wasted anything. If you tore a dress, a shirt, or a pair of pants, you patched it. If your big toe wore a hole in a sock, you darned it.

Darning involves placing a wooden egg or mushroom shape inside a sock. Some darning eggs have handles attached to them, as in the photo above; others don’t.

The darning egg is placed in the sock. The hole is stretched over the egg and held tightly in place with one hand. Then, with needle and thread to match the color and weight of the sock, a series of parallel vertical running stitches are made close together over the hole, extending at least 1/2" beyond the hole on all sides. Once the hole is covered with these vertical stitches, horizontal rows are woven over and under through each of the vertical stitches until this woven patch completely mends the hole.

So getting back to my story…

Grandma was darning a sock, and I wanted to sew something. “You have nothing to sew,” she said.

“Betsy Wetsy’s dress is too long,” I said, holding up the doll for her to see. “She’ll trip.” 

Betsy Wetsy was a popular “drink-and-wet” doll in the 1950’s. The doll came with a baby bottle you filled with water. You inserted the bottle’s nipple into the hole in the doll’s mouth and squeezed the bottle to “feed” Betsy. Then she’d wet her diaper from the hole in her body. 

I have no idea why my doll’s dress extended below her feet. The dress must have been a hand-me-down from another doll. Come to think of it, Betsy was also probably a hand-me-down from an older cousin.

“Needles are sharp,” said Grandma. “You’ll stick your finger.”

“No, I won’t. I promise.”

After a good deal of pestering on my part, Grandma finally gave in. She threaded a needle for me, and told me to be careful. I marched into the living room, pulled the ottoman up to the sofa as a seat, and used the sofa cushion as a table. With Betsy still wearing her dress, I began to sew a hem.

I was extremely pleased with my efforts—until I lifted Betsy to show Grandma what a good job I’d done, only to discover I’d hemmed the dress to the sofa cushion! Needless to say, Grandma was not happy.

“But I didn’t stick my finger,” I said.

Click here to watch a Betsy Wetsy TV commercial from the 1950’s.

As I grew older, I began sewing my own clothes and eventually designed dolls, just like Emma  Wadsworth, my heroine in Love, Lies and Double Shot of Deception. 

Love, Lies and a Double Shot of Deception

Life has delivered one sucker punch after another to Emma Wadsworth. As a matter of fact, you could say the poor little rich girl is the ultimate poster child for Money Can’t Buy Happiness — even if she is no longer a child.

Billionaire real estate stud Logan Crawford is as famous for his less-than-platinum reputation as he is his business empire. In thirty-eight years he’s never fallen in love, and that’s just fine with him — until he meets Emma.

But Emma’s not buying into Logan’s seductive ways. Well, maybe just a little, but she’s definitely going into the affair with her eyes wide open. She’s no fool. At least not any more. Her deceased husband saw to that. Besides, she knows Logan will catch the first jet out of Philadelphia once he learns her secrets.

Except things don’t go exactly as Emma has predicted, and when Philadelphia’s most beloved citizen become the city’s most notorious criminal, she needs to do a lot more than clear her name if she wants to save her budding romance with the billionaire hunk someone is willing to kill for.

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BOOK CLUB FRIDAY--KICKING OFF THE HOLIDAYS WITH AUTHOR CHRISTINE DESMET

Blink, and the holidays will be upon us. Hard to believe, isn’t it? From now through the end of the year we’ll be periodically featuring authors of holiday mysteries who will talk about their favorite holiday memories and traditions and even a favorite holiday ornament or two.

First up is Christine Desmet, author of the Fudge Shop Mystery Series and the Mischief in Moonstone Novella Series, to talk about a wonderful childhood tradition from her days growing up on a farm in the Midwest. Christine is also a screenwriter, as well as a writing instructor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Continuing Studies program. Learn more about her and her books at her website.  

A Homemade Ice Cream Headache

When I was growing up, the holiday season meant an odd array of tastes and smells mashed together.

There was always homemade vanilla ice cream made with ice chipped from the cow’s watering tank, pickled herring for Dad, oyster stew for Mom (which she made herself), and when I got old enough (around age 14)—a “hot toddy.” The latter was made of hot eggnog with a splash of brandy from a small bottle my parents kept hidden.

I grew up on a southern Wisconsin dairy farm in a family of five kids. My siblings were all younger than I was but close enough in age that we could play and work together. We didn’t have much in the way of fancy food or fancy anything. It was a thrill on the last Saturday catechism before the Christmas holiday to get a small sack with an orange in it. Sometimes Santa would leave an orange in our stockings at home, too. Stockings were pinned to the arms of our red sofa because we didn’t have a fireplace.

One of our best holiday traditions was making homemade ice cream. We loved it, but boy was it work. My mom expected us to work for it, too. If we wanted ice cream, we had to take an axe and chip away at the ice that had formed in the watering tank for our herd of Holsteins.

We lived six miles from our small town, and even if we wanted to buy ice back then you wouldn’t have found it in the little grocery’s freezers. Besides, what farmer would be silly enough to waste money on ice when you had it just outside the door in the cow tank!

My brothers are all younger than I am, but by the ages of 10 or 12, they were strong and had been driving tractors and stacking bales and such for about four years. They’d get the axe or hatchet and away they’d go to the frozen tank and chip away for a half hour or more to get a couple of buckets of ice. I would sometimes help collect the chips and put them in pails. We never thought about the danger of a kid wailing away with an axe. We were taught early how to be careful on the farm (though accidents did happen).

For Mom, this activity of making ice cream was a great way to get us five kids out of her hair, as she’d say.

After sending us outside on a blustery, freezing and snowy day, she might use the time to roll out bread dough on the big kitchen table and knead a half dozen loaves. She made fresh bread almost every day in all the years I was growing up. The holiday season required more bread for the turkey stuffing, but Mom also needed mega amounts of bread for toast and sandwiches for us kids because we were home from school for two weeks. My oldest brother was constantly saying, “Mom, what’s to eat?”

The house smelled heavenly of bread baking by the time we hauled in the ice and got the ice cream maker up from the basement. One of us would go out through the cold and snow and retrieve a gallon or two of fresh creamy milk from our bulk tank in the milk house connected to the barn. Mom dumped the milk, sugar, several egg yolks and vanilla extract into the stainless steel cylinder.

Then it was time to turn the crank by hand. (There was no such thing as an electric churn in those days.) This was torture because it felt like the cranking went on for an hour (which it may have) and our arms would fall off.

As the ingredients turned into ice cream, the cranking became harder and harder. We would switch off regularly. And sometimes argue about whose turn it was.

We also had to keep adding ice chips and sprinkle salt on top of them to keep the scientific process of ice cream moving forward. It always amazed us that “melting” the ice created “frozen ice cream.” Mom would take the lid off the top of the steel drum now and then and declare, “Too soupy. Keep cranking!” We groaned.

After our “arms fell off,” we had ice cream.

We were so eager for the tasty reward that when it was dished out in cereal bowls we’d eat it too fast. Talk about a headache!

We never learned. Every time we made homemade vanilla ice cream, we knew we were in for a headache. But it was worth it.

Ice cream made that way during a holiday time is something special, a wonderful way for a family to enjoy being together.

When Rudolph Was Kidnapped

Mischief in Moonstone Series, Novella 1

This delightful series focuses on the humorous mystery and romantic adventures of the kind folks who live in the environs of a small village nestled on Lake Superior in northern Wisconsin. Along the way in the series, silkie chickens, a giant prehistoric beaver skeleton, a kidnapped reindeer, and other flora and fauna contribute to the amusing mischief and mayhem.

When her pet reindeer, Rudolph, is stolen from the live animal holiday display, first-grade teacher Crystal Hagan has a big problem on her hands. Her students fear that Christmas will be canceled. Ironically, the prime suspect is a man who lives in a mansion known as the "North Pole". And to her shock, Peter LeBarron admits to kidnapping Rudolph and he won’t give him back without some romantic "negotiations".

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BOOK CLUB FRIDAY--GUEST AUTHOR LOU ALLIN

Lou Allin is the author of the Northern Ontario Belle Palmer series and the RCMP Corporal Holly Martin series set in Canada's Caribbean. Learn more about Lou and her books at her website/blog. www.louallin.com

Toddlers and Typewriters, not Tiaras

It’s never too early to put a child on the road to a profession. With only one child, all my parents’ efforts focussed on me. Not until I began sifting through their pictures from 1950 did I notice the trend.

 On this Christmas morning photo, my mother wrote on the back, “This probably turned you off ironing.” My expression says, “What’s with this padded dressing gown? I’m not in a Thirties film.” My dad was a movie booker, and I went to private screenings with him from the age of five. If I had to be Myrna Loy, couldn’t I be Nora Charles and help solve cases? Yet strewn around my feet in this photo are little evidences of career choices. A blackboard. A tea table.

Here’s my first cutaway dollhouse. I invited my large dolls to examine the little people inside. Would interior design interest me? Women weren’t majoring in architecture yet. Fashion? Why did the Daddy doll have an ugly brown suit? There’s my horse Pegasus in the back. Mom loved mythology. 

Cooking is useful, career or not, and my mother filled her house with homemade pies, cakes, and cookies. I had my own apron, rolling pin, and even a meat grinder! Early Hannibal Lecter? The doll folk are avoiding my glance. Mother writes, “This is why you are such a great cook. Encouragement.” Too true. I rarely eat out.

Here the dolly family examines the fruits of my labours. My smile looks forced. Note how I refuse to stick out my pinky. I do have a politically incorrect brown doll, and is that Betty Boop in the back row? My family is growing. Time for a little birth control. Not long after I will cut their hair and draw anchor and US Navy tattoos on their chests, even my mother’s 1912 cloth baby. Why does my only boy doll get to sit alone at the table?

Every kid loves animals! Women vets were beginning to appear. Here’s my budgie Winky. “Look into my eyes, bird. Stop pooping on the curtains.” Windy was actually very mean and bit everyone except my mother. It had a bad habit of walking on the floor. One day my father, well…..the less said, the better. It was fast. Tekoe and Pekoe replaced Winky but were not allowed to fly the coop. Since we lived in an apartment (before litter boxes), dogs or cats were out of the question. I did raise scores of white mice, two favourites were Errol and Bette.

Time for sports. Here I am with my brand new Schwinn. A light that flashes, a horn that beeps. It’s gigantic, but I will grow into it. No training wheels for me. I graduated to a racing bike at eleven. But few women made sports a profession other than Barbara Ann Scott or Babe Didrikson Zaharias.

Let’s get professional. My aunt was a nurse, and in that headdress, so am I. Check that medicine cabinet and the stethoscope. I have an assistant, so perhaps I was ward matron. I had my own chemistry set, too, but I combined ingredients at will and heated them over my Bunsen burner until they turned black and smelled up the house. I liked lighting candles in closets, and my mother let me. Can you believe it? If we hadn’t been Episcopalians, maybe that habit would have suited me as a nun.

Teaching was the last logical path. Mom made it to vice principal in the Cleveland schools. In my misguided career from 1966 to 2005, I had the same happiness and success as this expression. The dolls seem to be listening, and they’d better, thanks to the punishing pointer, but they were a captive audience.  Although later I was happier teaching English at a community college in Northern Ontario, I can never forget a year in a high school in Portsmouth, a shoe- and pottery-factory town bypassed by time since 1900 and the poorest county in Ohio.

The seniors were very civil, and my mythology class was sweet. But the tenth-grade boys I could line up against a wall and……..where’s my Uzi?

“Why you always sayin’ that I act like a fool?” one lad asked.

“Jim, you don’t have to ACT like a fool,” I said.

“Kiss my ass!” He got it loud and clear.

Off to the principal’s office. Many youthful tears later, parents brought in and more crying. No wonder I preferred being called Coach for my volleyball duties than Doc in honour of my useless PhD in Christopher Marlowe. But for $7500 a year? No thanks.

This last picture should have given me the hint. This can’t be my mother’s Misery-style Remington basher, but it’s no toy. Later on, she will bribe me with money at twelve to teach myself to type. Here I look serene, surrounded by the Internet of the day, an encyclopedia set. Should I have followed my heart and leaped full-time into creative writing? The juvenilia in the next essay will demonstrate my early efforts.

Twilight is Not Good for Maidens

A midnight attack on a girl at an island beach galvanizes the quiet Fossil Bay community and calls into question the effectiveness of law enforcement. RCMP Corporal Holly Martin must conduct her own investigation to discover a killer stalking young women in Canada's tourist paradise.

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