On "A Fantasy of Dr. Ox": A Book Review

Title: A Fantasy of Dr. Ox
Author: Jules Verne
Genre: Fiction, Novella

About the Book...

In the Flemish town of Quiquendone to say things are done by its citizens at a leisurely pace is an understatement. Decisions about making minor decisions carry out over a day if not longer, emergencies are treated with languid regard, and even discussions about having discussions drag out. Or at least that's how it is until Dr. Ox arrives to install gas lighting for the town. What the residents don't realize is that the new lighting is providing a means of experimentation and that courtesy of Dr. Ox their lives are going to suddenly speed up. 
Written in 1872, this is a satirical novella about science and the carrying out of experiments.

What I Think...
In the past I haven't been a huge fan of Verne, but finding this one among the Alma Classics 101 Page books and being intrigued by the description, I thought I'd give it a go.

I wouldn't put this book in the category of world's greatest classics, but it was interesting. It's fairly straightforward and simple in terms of plot, which makes somewhat predictable, although not in a bad way. As I had hoped the excessive droning on about scientific aspects, which is part of why I tend to avoid some of Verne's books, was lacking. Instead it was light and, at times, quite funny! In all its silliness, though, it definitely makes one think about the ethics behind experimentation on unsuspecting subjects that isn't that far off from many views held today. It also presents some interesting ideas about the functioning of a society and what happens when they're forced outside of the norm.

To Sum it All Up...
A quick and amusing read, which even over a hundred years after having been published still proves relevant in the message it presents to the reader.♥

On A Magical Pop-Up Book!

Something funny happened on the way to making a garden tunnel book--I ended up making a magic show pop-up book instead. 

I'm not entirely sure where the idea came from, but it started with wanting to make a hat with a rabbit in it and took off from there. While I've been using pop-up elements in cards for years and made a simple pop-up book for a book report in high school, this is my first attempt at putting together a book with fancier elements. 

It took me a total of nearly three full days to make and while not perfect (I eyeballed a lot rather than measuring), for the most part I'm very pleased with how it turned out. 

Now without further ado, I present to you, Abracadabra! 

 

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On An Ominous Seagull: A Photo Post

Maybe it's just my liking for The Birds, but the final photo for the seagull craft tutorial I'm creating for work comes across as rather ominous. Shadows courtesy the window panes.

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On Things to Do While You're At Home: Make Tiny Books

Inspired by the British Library's Discovering Children's Books project and their very cool request for children in Britain to submit their pictures of their own tiny books on Twitter, I decided to finally make an attempt the miniature stick binding toothpick book from Making Handmade Books by Alisa Golden.

These books are made up of eight pieces of paper folded in half with a small paper square glued inside for extra support. The spine is punched through and before gluing the paper shut, a cut pointless toothpick is placed in each fold. Thread is then placed through the holes and knotted around each toothpick to connect all the pages together.  The Tiny Sewing Notions! book is somewhat of a continuation of the tunnel book I made in 2018 and The Insomniac Stars is just me being silly. 

In an experimental mood, I also thought I'd try something different today and present these books in the form of videos!

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On A Spoonful of Sugar!

For the past few months my off and on project has been a 1960's Mary Poppins doll. I was being obsessively nit-picky over details on this and spent a lot of time pouring over the costume details in the movie before working on it.

Background is my mom's childhood Mary Poppins book.

I came across an original 1960's pattern for this on Etsy for about $35 and not being willing to spend that much was extremely happy to find it available as an inexpensive download. 

For such a small doll this was a fairly time consuming project because of all the hand sewing! 

The skirt is one of the only things I followed the instructions on. I'd never done pipping, so that was a new experience and lining a skirt this small was a challenge in itself.

I made a considerable amount of adjustments to the pettiblouse. The pattern called for ruffles down the front, which I skipped since there are no ruffles on the blouse she wears at the beginning of the movie. I also added sleeves because it just seemed wrong for Mary Poppins to go sleeveless! I'm guessing it's because of the gloves they were excluded and while it was a pain to add them, I'm really glad I did.

As you can see, they still need some sort of closure at the wrists, but I haven't decided on how I want to do that.

Lack of tiny buttons in my stash led to the use of French knots that I'm considering a rather satisfactory substitution.

Another change was on the ruffle at the bottom, which is shorter than it should be. I hadn't been able to find eyelet edging that I liked, so I ended up taking some lace, sewing it to a strip of white fabric, and then gathering it to make the ruffle. 

Hook and eye and snap closures.

The pattern said use knit for the stockings. I used muslin. After struggling to get them on, I understand why.

The only thing I would have done differently under normal circumstances with this part of her outfit was to have tried to see if I could find white on white striped fabric for this since in the movie Mary Poppins has yellow stripes on her blouse, however, I don't think the solid white looks too bad.

Moving on, the hair is made out of pearl cotton thread, which might be my new go to for doll hair since it looks so nice. It took a little over three hours to do her hair including having to re-loop the skeins because they were too big to properly loop around for the bun. I'm actually not entirely sure how I got it to look this way, but I can tell you I stitched it together as fast as I possibly could once it was in this position!

The hat took about four hours. Once again I ignored the pattern instructions to do just a few loops of ric-rac around the brim and put it on the entire hat. Overall, despite the amount of time it took I think it was well worth it. I had flowers left over from my Shakespeare hair wreath that were easy enough to turn into daisies with a little bit of yellow felt and some careful trimming of the petals. For the "cherries" I was debating on using beads when I remembered I had these vintage floral pieces that were given to me. Not quite round as the movie embellishments, but good enough!

The boots, like the hat, had to be hand-sewn with each boot taking about two hours. As with the blouse, I used French knots to make the faux buttons.

As is apparent from the pattern picture, there are still a few components to be made, most noticeably the coat. Since I spent so much time trying to figure out the color of the movie coat (a dark purple), I'd rather look at the felt before I buy it. I also need to see the yarn for the scarf before embarking on the adventure of trying to crochet it (one hand makes crochet a challenge). Additionally, I don't like the embroidery pattern for the carpetbag and want to find a fabric to use once stay at home orders lift and I feel comfortable going to the fabric store again. Eventually I'd also like to make an umbrella and a few other accessories not included with the pattern, so there may be part two to this post at some point!

For now, though, I think my Mary Poppins doll is practically perfect in every way!

♥ ♥ ♥

On It's Adventures in Wonderland Day!

Today marks the 168th birthday of Alice Liddell (1852-1934) and is the day that Alice's Adventures in Wonderland takes place!

I was planning to make tarts today, but the warmer weather we've been having is making me feel very sleepy and stupid (considerations of daisy-chains were made, no rabbit ran by) and left me with the inclination to watch the 1931 movie version of the story instead. 

This movie was the first sound version of the story to be put on film and, while not the greatest skipping large portions of the book, it has a few bright points in the theme song by Irving Berlin, some of the card court costuming, and I can now say that Leslie King is officially my favorite Hatter. He makes such marvelous faces and sings horribly! 

 

Happy Adventures in Wonderland Day!

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