Her Best Work

I've posted a lot about my Great Grandma Walters and the things she made.  

If my math is right, this photo and the accompanying article about Grandma and her apple dolls  ran in the local paper in 1976. I would have been about four years old.

"A glass display case houses some of her best work, a family of apple-head dolls."

THAT is the case I've been telling you about -- in this post, and this one and probably a few others. Except a case doesn't describe it -- it was a built in hutch with glass doors and I can't tell you how much I wish that someone had taken a picture of it somewhere along the line, because I'd love to compare my memories with what what really in there.

The doll in Grandma's right hand? Here she is almost forty years later:

Look at her little hand beaded necklace. And the gloves. They're masking tape. Masking tape! We fuss about getting the right supplies for our projects, or hear how we need this that or the other thing. And Grandma was using masking tape, which I never even noticed until now.

Her shoes, according to the article, are made from bits of an old glove.

The dress was cut "by guess and by golly." I think that might be my new favorite phrase. It totally describes how I work on a lot of my own projects.

I do question whether this is her best work. It wouldn't be my pick. I'd vote for the painting, or the creepy red riding hood doll, or that little ittt-bittty-teeny-tiny crochet doll dress, or maybe one of a dozen other things that haven't made it onto the blog yet. And that's what the family still has, half a century (or more than a century, in the case of the painting) later.

My favorite quote from the article:

"I pick up ideas here and t'other place. I do anything that I fancy. It all keeps me busy."

I want to be like Great Grandma.