Debbie Ritter, Uneek Doll Designs at Etsy.com

Profile of doll artist Debbie Ritter, Uneek Doll Designs at Etsy.com Profile of doll artist Debbie Ritter, Uneek Doll Designs at Etsy.com I met Debbie after finding one of her dolls featured on a blog about Lady Jane Grey. I couldn’t wait to buy the doll, and soon bought others, including the portrait of writer Barbara Pym, featured on my blog Miss Barbara Pym meets Miss Charlotte Bronte. Debbie is a transplanted Hoosier to Alabama as of summer 2013 with four grown children and one grandchild. She has been married 25 years. Besides making dolls, her interests include reading, walking, art work, and cooking (when she has time!) Debbie is a born artist, and as she says of herself; “I grew up with a pencil in hand and carried paper everywhere I went- got in trouble a few times with teachers for drawing on my homework, and art was my best subject in school.” Debbie does not collect dolls per se, but likes to create them as a favorite art form. A doll house kit first inspired her miniature creations: “I got inspired to create my art dolls when my husband was given a dollhouse kit by my mom, who despaired of my father ever putting it together. Being the tooling engineer that he was, he put it together and I decided to make some dolls to go in it out of clothespins. She loved it so I continued and I made up my own technique and developed it over time.” I can really relate to Debbie over dollhouses and the need to populate them. My dad was an electrical engineer who built one fantastic dollhouse for me from scratch, and another from a kit. He is an electrical engineer, and it seemed to take forever. He didn’t electrify my houses, and when I asked him why, Dad answered, “We’re Victorian.” Debbie’s dollhouse adventures began a chain of thinking; she decided to combine her love of classic literature, history, and the observation of ordinary people into creating her art work. Debbie finds people in general inspiring because if you study someone long enough, you will see some features that stand out. It is those features challenge her. She started selling her creations when by chance a lady waiting on her at the craft store mentioned Etsy. Debbie wrote the word down and forgot about it for 2 months, then decided to take the plunge to see what would happen. The rest is history and she has been doing well at it ever since. The artist’s work has been featured at “The Today Show” where the crew gave Susan Boyle a replica of herself that Debbie had made during a live interview between Boyle Meredith Viera. . Debbie’s work has also been featured in Vanity Fair online, The Art Doll Quarterly, Doll Collector Magazine, New York Magazine, -Show Time series on television, -Mystery Scene Magazine, New York Magazine, CI Living in Champaign Illinois, and my blogs Dr.Es’s Doll Museum, Dr. E’s Greening Tips for the Common Person, An Apologia for Countess Erzebet Bathory, and Memoir; Writing your Life Story. She can be reached through me or her Etsy store, uneekdolldesigns.etsy.com

Some News for all

Oh, to be Spring! We are being inundated with more snow mixed with freezing rain. It was an amuseument park ride from hell this morning just driving from point A to B, with all sorts of wonderful hills and ice-covered bridges. Thank goodness Starbucks was there! I have a mixed bag today; started as the expert guide for about.com at the Doll Collecting site. Take a look, and share ideas, especially for handmade dolls and folk dolls. Doll making is all about recycling; just read about the dolls Ma made in The Little House books. Crafts, in general, are wonderful ways to recycle and use scraps, especially in assemblage and reclaimed art. On the health front, I have beeen drinking RAAW juices this week, and I notice a definite improvement with sinusitis symptoms, which I call Sylvia Plath's disease, since she sufferred terribly from it, too. Also, it helps with the gag reflex brought on by asthma, as does coffee. So far, I have tried Cranberry Ginger, Strawberry Purple Carrot, and Very Berry Wheatgrass. I am not a spokesperson for this product; I also drink many other juices, some homemade, some concentrate, Naked, some Aldi or Save a Lot brands, nectars, etc. I still love Hi-C Cherry when I can get it, too. But, this juice is 100%, and the fusion is similar to V-8, but more organic with no persevatives. The juice in Cranberry Ginger is made from 1 1/2 c. cranberries and 1 c. ginger root. At our local health food store, Greatest Grains, the juices are .30 less than at our local supermarket. They run about 2.50-3.29 for a 12 fl. oz bottle. There is zero fat and 1% sodium, and 110 calories. I picked up some free brochures and newsletters at Greatest Grains as well, including one for Dermale products for skincare, and a first issue for Women Sense: healthy women create a healthier world. Articles in this new paper include articles about low thyroid, a study that shows women aged 25-65 are the most stressed [really?} and studies about the risk of too much sitting. Common sense, and obvious, but they get your attention about things we know but take for granted and ignore. Also, an article in "Memory Pause" and weight loss tips, and finding peace for a good night's sleep. More original 49 tips will also be posted. So far, some of my articles on About.com include "Lincoln Dolls," "Estate Dolls," "Sherman Smith Doll Maker and Whittler," "A Doll Collector's Calendar," "Hinges and Hearts: Metal Dolls," "Automata" and "A Tribute to Shirley Temple." We had a reading on our metal doll project and exhibit which went very well yesterday with members of loca writing groups joining me. Be well, deal with the climate changes, and know spring is coming. My little seeds are sprouting, some in Kleenex filled plastic cups in my office :)

Dr. E's Doll Museum Blog: Shirley Temple: A Tribute

Dr. E's Doll Museum Blog: Shirley Temple: A Tribute: We mourn today the loss of Shirley Temple, one of our all-time favorite actresses and dolls. I had the pleasure of meeting her in San Jose ...

An Apologia for Countess Erzebet Bathory: To my Readers; An announcement and About.com Doll ...

An Apologia for Countess Erzebet Bathory: To my Readers; An announcement and About.com Doll ...: To all my dear friends and readers, please note that I am the new doll collecting guide for About.com; this does not mean I am abandoning y...

An Apologia for Countess Erzebet Bathory: The Mechanical Doll of Polybius and Erzebet

An Apologia for Countess Erzebet Bathory: The Mechanical Doll of Polybius and Erzebet: Legend has it that Erzebet had a special iron maiden, more like a doll than a mummy case, with arms that reached out and hugged its victim i...

Dr. E's Doll Museum Blog: Sherm Smith

Dr. E's Doll Museum Blog: Sherm Smith: Sherman Smith On September 22, 1907, an amazing woodcarver and doll artist named Sherman Smith was born. For many years, his work was unkn...

Pete Seeger, our Twitter Follower remembered

Pete Seeger, who died yesterday, at ninety-four, lived into his posterity. For years, he occupied a house up a rising dirt road in the woods. The house was on a cliff, overlooking his beloved Hudson River. He had cleared the land, like a pioneer. In the New York Public Library, he had found instructions for building a log cabin. In the decades since, he cut trees for firewood. A teacher at the boarding school he had attended had taught him to split logs. The woods were orderly, having been pruned for so many years. He believed in the dignity of the individual life, but he wasn’t comfortable with people close at hand. He had no taste for light conversation. He was like the parson of a small parish, constantly engaged with the welfare of his church. Did the farmer whose child had drunk tainted well water and whose wife had died have someone to watch over the child, so that he could tend to his crops? Would it be possible to interest the rich man who came only at Christmas and Easter to pay for the repair of the church roof? Were his sermons sufficiently inspiring? Was his life exemplary? Was he a beacon for his flock? In fact, his life was exemplary. The courage he showed in facing down the House Un-American Activities Committee, his refusal to give names, and his insistence on his right to entertain his own conscience are not common behaviors. Plenty of people gave names. Plenty of people pleaded the Fifth Amendment, but Seeger refused to, because the plea implied a person had something to hide. He chose jail rather than collaboration. At the time, he was a member of the most successful group in show business, the Weavers. He was not surprised when the government threatened night-club owners if they hired the Weavers, and the group’s opportunities withered. In the year before he was to go to jail, he performed as often as he could, in order to make money for his family to live on while he was gone. An appeal kept him out of prison, but he hadn’t expected it to. He was happy to step away from celebrity and the night-club life, which he never liked, and to return to what he always had done: singing folk songs and union songs for children in classrooms and around campfires. There may be a famous person these days who would choose jail over coöperating with the government against its citizens, but I can’t think of one. As famous as he was, he was half of a couple. When his wife, Toshi, died, in July, it was just short of their seventieth anniversary. He was reserved up close and sometimes aloof, as if he were entertaining a reverie. He might have disappeared into private life, but Bruce Springsteen revived him. It was on Springsteen’s plane that Seeger flew to Washington to sing at Obama’s first Inauguration. It was a period when the world’s interest returned to him. After I wrote my Profile of him for the magazine, I wrote a small book about him. He had wanted a biography that could be read in one sitting, and I tried to do that. The book had been a publisher’s idea, and when I called Seeger to ask if he would take part, I said that a publisher had asked me to expand the Profile. I heard Toshi, in the background, ask what I wanted. Seeger said, “He would like to expand the Profile into a book,” and Toshi responded, “Tell him you’ve been expanded enough.” Photograph by CBS/Getty