It may be spring time but our temperatures here have been jumping around like crazy. Last week I was wearing shorts and t-shirts with the thermometer registering all the way up at 89 degree F! Today? It's cloudy, drizzling, and 52F! What a difference. My garden is loving the rain though. 

Tara is dressed for the cooler weather with a cashmere sweater and a long pencil skirt (with pockets! I love a skirt with pockets). She has knee high leather boots that are simple but classy. 

Today I'm going to tell you about mange. Yes: gross, disgusting, itchy mange. The last Tech Tale was about my second dog, Chiva (who had a broken leg). Our first dog came to us with a nasty case of Demodectic Mange. 

Unlike other varieties of mange, this one is not contagious (except to other dogs with poor immune systems). It is caused by a mange mite called Demodex which crawls around in the hair follicles and causes the hair to fall out and the dog to be itchy. If left untreated it can result in a secondary skin infection. 

When we brought Kaya home she was missing around 40% of her hair and her skin was infected, swollen and red nearly everywhere. She was 1 year old and had been suffering untreated for at least two months. There are a couple treatments for this type of mange, the one we followed meant a daily dose of medication until the mites are gone. It can take weeks to months! 

Kaya also had to be on antibiotics for the skin infections she had. Within days she already looked better! Her skin wasn't so irritated, her scabby spots began to heal over (she was so covered with scabs when we first had her, friends wanted to change her name to Scabby!). A month into treatment her skin was recovering from the mites and we could see hair beginning to grow back. At two months she had no mites left and was declared healthy! 

Five months after treatment began, this is what she looking like:

I know a sketch isn't half as interesting as a doll or dress, but to tide you over, here is a doodle of Ella (from my own version of Cinderella). She, like so many others, is a work-in-progress doll. I love to start projects, it's finishing them that's so difficult!

Even more exciting than a sketch, Meredith sent me her collection of Cora and Coridel, in color! They look amazing!

Click Here or use the link to the left to see her work in the Showcase!

I know, I'm just filling space. I don't have a dress set up with the PDF file so I'm slinking in and posting some sketches (two of them, see how guilty I feel about neglecting the blog?). I haven't had much time to draw or ink or scan images, so I've used up just about all of my buffer. I have a lot of ideas swirling in my mind though. 

It will probably be a couple weeks before I can start fairly regular updates again. This weekend and next I will hopefully have time to draw and then (the boring part) scan them in and format them for your viewing! 

 

Here is Adelaide in a lovely silk formal gown. Recently I've been trying to improve the proportions of the hands I draw. As I look at older works (like this doll) I can definitely see the need for improvement! 

How great God is! Because of his great love for us, a sinful people, he sent his only son humbly as a man to live among us and then die for us having been blameless himself. I love celebrating Christ's birth! It's astonishing to me that he willingly left heaven and humbled himself to death, even death on the cross. And he did it for my sake, he saved me when no one else could. Praise God!

I hope you all have a wonderful time celebrating our Lord's birth! It's truly a time for joy! 

Jana is wearing a red silk blouse with a warm woolen green skirt and black leather belt. White stockings and pert red flats finish the outfit. She's certainly festive!

It's been a while since we saw Ella (and since I updated, my apologies!). Here she wears a simple dress with embroidered hem and neckline. A long tunic covers it to protect from travel dust. 

Sorry the photo's a little blurry. This is a sketch of Brishen, a character I've had running around in my head for a while now. I wrote the beginning of a story that she stars in about six years ago and it never got further than the first scene. Someday she might make it to her own paper doll set, but for now she only exists in random sketches like this one that decorate my notebook margins.

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope y'all are having a great time with family and eating lots of turkey and pumpkin pie. Jana is spending the long weekend with friends and family. She is wearing a festive green dress and, because of the cool weather, a brown trench coat. Leggings and knee-high leather boots keep her feet warm, and mittens and a cap to match her dress

Here is Jitka wearing her winter clothing. She wears thick woolen garments with a goatskin tunic (fur on the inside). A cloak, gloves and boots, reinforced with goatskin for warmth, finish the ensemble. Jitka lives in the foothills of the Great Mountains and the winters are very harsh.

Click below for the jpg or PDF file formats for printing. If you click "read more" you can see the continuation of Jitka's story (begun here).