So, obviously, I must have scared myself out of making poupee de vodoun, because I unravelled my doll head and then switched to a different bear and started making it a more “standard” bear head.

I’m not ready yet for the art dolls. That’s pretty interesting, though, since the main doll I was thinking of making was Fonsito. Myabe I’m not ready to forgive my dad yet, and for that reason I’m not read to free Fonsito, or acept Fonsito.

There’s a picture of my dad from school, I think maybe third or fourth grade. And my dad has been telling a story lately about how they took all the schoolboys to the seminary in Denver and said who wants to stay here and be a priest, and he saw they were warm and well-fed and thought it was a pretty good deal. But I think then he learned he would have to leave his mama and he couldn’t do it.

But he’s been embroidering on that story, from serving at altar to the possibility of going to seminary, to he could’ve been a priest and we would have never been born, to convincing himself that he was “Almost a saint.”

So when I was there, he was showing me the picture and telling me this story, and saying, Don’t I look saintly?

And I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. “You look like a little boy,” I said. “You look like sometimes you’re good and sometimes you’re naughty. Like all little boys.” ¡Cómo qué ‘almost a saint’!

So the current bear that I’m working on is kind of chubby and square. blockish. I think I should have made them a little longer somewhere in the body. But I’m sure they will come out cute and happy and healthy. This was a bear I made with larger needles. Not the head, which I’m working on now with an F, but the rest of the body is with a G hook, the largest I’ve yet used on a bear. Hey, I should go update my ravelry page so I’ll know what number bears I’m on…

So today, I unravelled yesterday’s head and am starting an amigurumi head, which I’ll make separately and then sew on to the existing body. The head will be out of proportion to the body—as amigurumi heads generally are, larger in relation to the body for a greater “cuteness” factor”—and that will take away the poppet aspect of the dolls.

But the funny thing is that as soon as I recognized the doll as a poppet, I started hugging it, snuggling into it. My poppet. There’s always a European-based witch somewhere saying “my poppet” like golem says “My Precious”!!

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but I have major skin color issues with the Mother Bear Project. What I mean to say is, these will be toys of children in Africa, and many of the American women make light-skinned bears. Like the woman who sent me the welcome kit told me that her favorite fur color is the “caffe latte,” basically because it’s brown but it still shows up all the detail. And I’m all indignant, like caffe latte is the paper bag test color. And almost none of the kids that I see in the fotos are caffe latte. They’re mostly all espresso.

But maybe I’m anthropomorphizing too much. They’re bears, not dolls.

I remember that when I first tried to do the mother bear project, in… 2011? that I had made a bear with black yarn for fur. And it hadn’t turned out that well. and I experimented with giving it to Nopalito as a toy but was disturbed to see him dragging this black man around, and quickly took it away from him. It’s a bear. Not a person.

But then, I also believe that fiction writers will be held to account for all the people of color characters that they torture and kill off to advance the narrative of the white characters.

So yeah, I guess I hold on to things.

I think my original idea had been to make a bear for Baby Tony and then make another for the Mother Bear project, and there would be two kids across the world who had sibling bears.

But obviously there’s also the element of thinking of Baby Tony as “my” pagan baby in another country.

(In case you don’t know, Catholic schools used to always raise money for “pagan babies”—missionary efforts overseas— and we would “name” our “pagan babies” with certificates that we would post up in the classroom. At the time, of course, I thought that meant that somewhere else in the world a pagan baby was being baptised with the name that we chose. Now I realize that was just a symbol. That those names likely never left our classroom. Anyway, American Catholics who went to parochial school often have this shared memory of the “pagan babies.” Sigh. First world guilt.)

I’ve been crocheting bears. Really, I’ve been doing it as a way to develop my skills.
No, wait, let me start at the beginning.
I started crocheting bears for a charity, Mother Bear Project, that donates the Bears to children in Africa who have been affected by HIV. Many of the children are in orphanages and have no toys of their own. It’s problematic, in that it lets privileged first world women fell good about doing something when in fact they’re doing nothing to the system that provides both their privilege and the South African poverty. Guilt. But it’s something that gets me to think outside of myself and my myopic, perfectionist world, and to think of making something for someone else. And I also think about the kids that Chip met in South Africa and how moved he was to see people who are truly poor, and to see global inequality.
Anyway, obviously, I’ve made some kind of peace with this charity to be able to participate. Although I don’t really talk about it to anyone.
So I’ve been making these bears. Crocheted in the round. And in the process, I’ teaching myself amigurumi, the Japanese art of crocheting cute little animals.
In my overall vision, I want to make dolls I was especially struck by the art of Ramona Garcia who creates paper mache dolls in the Mexican tradition. Paper mache, or cartonería—was a homegrown answer to the fancy porcelain dolls that peninsulares children brought with them from Spain. Creative. Cheap. Easily replaceable. Vulnerable to inclement weather (the glue is animal based, and the paper mache turns to stinky mush when it rains)
The dominant style for these dolls is of pink-skinned trapeze artists—there’s a Russian element in the mix, too.
In addition to having Ramona come to my class and teach my students the history of the dolls, I also took an workshops with her at Comalito Collective. It was really more of a crafty workshop, because she had blank paper mache dolls for us to paint. I had sort of wanted to make a doll for my dad, for Alfonsito in New Mexico around 1950, but the doll blank I received had. Little tricot new hat on it’s head. So I made it a kind of a girl doll, with overalls, but cut short like capris, with a Peter Pan collar, like my St. Gertrude’s uniform shirt, The tricorne hate I painted pink above the dark hair. I think it was some composite of Alfonsito, little Cathy, and Altagracia, my sainted child-aunt.
Anyway, another strong influence on both my teaching and my storytelling has been Clarissa Pinkola Estés, who talks a lot about the symbolism of dolls. Vasalisa’s mother gave her a doll to keep in her pocket.
And for a while, dolls were big in the Wiccan community as a source of power—getting in touch with your inner child, tapping into feminine energy, that kind of thing. And I’m lousy at paint or sculpture, so I stared thinking about crocheting dolls. I’ve always —ALWAYS—had a thing for dolls. When I was little, I would have eight or ten doll on my bed so there was little room left for me. I especially loved holly hobby dolls for a while, and I also used to buy dozens of the knock-off babies at the swap meet. My grandma Lupe at one time sewed giant Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls as a little side business.
We have a doll of Luz, too. Their old friend Jeanne Ramirez made it. Jeanne makes dolls that look like actual people. And this doll is like a little trains guy, in their blue-checked shirt, and their jeans, and their fisherman sandals.
I always wanted to sew dolls. When I was little and living in California, I would make this little dolls (based on corn husk dolls, I think) using kleenex, cotton, and thread. I remember my Aunt Alice being really struck by them and telling my mom I needed a creative outlet, like knitting. My mom said I wouldn’t have the patience for something like that, but obviously I felt like I did, since I still remember it.
Decades ago, in junior high, we had a workshop of soft-sculpture dolls, which totally stimulated my imagination and made me want to make all kinds of dolls, including a Virgen de Guadalupe doll.
Anyway, my sewing skills remain quite pedestrian. So far I can make blankets and hem pants, and that’s about it.
But my knitting and crochet skills have come a long way. And I became interested in small knit or crocheted dolls. I have the Star Wars kit and am on my third attempt of making a Princess Leia dolls. I have one book of amigurumi figures made to look like celebrities, and another of fashion dolls knit by Scandinavian designers Arne & Carlos.
And I’ve been thinking about putting stones and crystals and herbs and words inside the dolls, to help ground people or to protect them
Oh, another big doll influence is Woman Who Glows in the Dark, where the therapist will hide a doll that the client has to find, to recover a lost part of herself.
So I’m making these teddy bears, with the idea that someday, I will make dolls to represent Fonsito and Antonio, those skinny little manitos, nuevomexicano boys on the ranch.
And this charity project and its bears make a great venue for developing those skills. They'll take all the bears that I send them, so I don’t have to stare at my failures. Theres’s communities of women who work on the bears, some of whom have made 100 or even 300 bears. So I can ask for advice. Although the emphasis is really on the charity, not the craftsmanship, yet there are some people doing really amazing detail on their bears and definitely as a form of creativity.
I think I’m prob’ly on bear 15 or 16 right now. I made a bunch of bear bodies when I was in Las Cruces last week. I didn’t tak any stuffing with me at all, so I couldn’t finish the bears or make their heads. So I have these flat bear bodies. Last night, while watching television, I pulled out all of my flat bears and started stuffing them. Luz says it’s kind of disturbing to suddenly have all these headless dolls all over the house.
The simple pattern for the bears call for a rectangular head, which you then needle sculpt to get round with round ears on it. My first one came out looking more like a cat than a bear. None of my faces have been exactly prize-winning, either: I still have a lot to learn in the embroidery skills. But like I said, I finish them, I ship them off. Someone else is in charge of quality control, so I’m not going to worry about that too much. (An important consideration for my OCD brain).
But since I’ve been especially dissatisfied with the shape of my heads and ears, I’ve been thinking of trying a round, amigurumi head instead and making the ears separately and attaching them.
And I finally did that with one bear, where I’ve made it a round head, but haven’t progressed to the ears.
And today, I did that with another one, with one of the bodies I was working on in New Mexico: I added a neck and started a spherical head and am about halfway done with it.
And I realized what with round heads and still without their ears attached, they don’t look like bears. They look like people. They look like voodoo dolls. Well, that’s not really the right word, because I think it’s European witches who used them, poppets, and in the Salem witch trials the women were accused of having poppets. So I did a little research on poppets and Poupees and saw that really, that’s the protective element of what I was thinking of for healing dolls. The herbs, the stones for protection, the words of protection. Was I thinking of it as witchcraft? Curanderismo, sure, bruerjía, perhaps ironically. That white/dark good/evil magic has really been drilled into us, hasn’t it!
Anyway, I was kind of ashamed to admit that the doll looks like a poppet. The funny thing is that I posted that on face book, and then got really anxious, and then laughed to see that my post was immediately liked by two of my homegirls: Alicia C de Baca and Joanne Barker.So that was a kind of reassurance.