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.