Happy Birthday Izannah Walker! We are starting this year’s birthday celebration with a video that I filmed this spring for Beyond All Limits March 2020 Virtual Doll Convention. I hope you enjoy learning a bit more about Izannah Walker’s life, her dolls and the clothing they wear. ❤
Please come back at Noon Eastern time, today September 25th, as the dolls and I take a fun look back at the past ten years of our Izannah Walker birthday celebrations!
At 4:00 p.m. Eastern time you are cordially invited to attend this year’s Izannah Walker Birthday Party, here on http://www.izannahwalker.com ❤
To close out Izannah’s 203rd birthday, the dolls invite you to a Sleep over, this evening September 25th, at 8:00 p.m. Eastern time. Change into your nightgown, make a cup of cocoa, and come visit with us for a bit… We promise you sweet dreams of little cloth Izannahs ❤
Tomorrow morning, September 26th at 10:00 a.m. Eastern time, you can get a Behind the Scenes peek at a bit of what goes on in preparation for all of my birthday party posts.
We will finish our 203rd Birthday Celebration tomorrow night, September 26th at 8:00 p.m. Eastern time, with the unveiling of my first reproductions of Sarah Alice. ❤ She is the newest addition to my antique Izannah Walker doll family and dearly beloved by all of her sisters. ❤
The sisters are firm belivers of farm to table, after all that is how they were raised when they were young. They usually do all their marketing at a “Pick Your Own” Farm Stand here at Thyme Forgotten Farm… I am the farmer and they are my very best customers
Monday – Washing.
Tuesday – Ironing.
Wednesday – Mending.
Thursday – Marketing.
Friday – Baking and Partying!
Saturday – Cleaning.
Sunday – Day of Rest.
Now that the dolls have finished their marketing it is time for them to decorate the house for tomorrow’s birthday celebration! We hope you will be able to come join us throughout the day as we celebrate Izannah Walker’s 203rd Birthday!
The first birthday post will be live at 8:00 a.m. Eastern Time tomorrow, Friday September 25th, 2020. There will be many more posts throughout the day…
One Saturday, September 26th, 2020 at 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time this year’s special edition birthday dolls will be posted for sale HERE! All dolls sold on a first come basis ❤
Preparations are still under way for Izannah Walker’s 203rd Birthday party here on my Izannah Walker Journal. The celebration starts on Friday, September 25th, at 8:00 a.m. Eastern time.
The chore for today is Ironing! Eliza Jane has taken charge, as the eldest she sometimes has a tendency to be just a little bit bossy… but the other little cloth girls don’t mind that at all today, since it means that Eliza Jane is willing to do all the ironing! She doesn’t trust the others not to scorch the clothes.
The little Izzys are up early to get their chores done so that they can play this afternoon… Today is wash day! Monday – Washing. Tuesday – Ironing. Wednesday – Mending. Thursday – Marketing. Friday – Baking. Saturday – Cleaning. Sunday – Day of Rest.
The dolls are washing their party dresses today, so that they will be all ready for our 10th annual Izannah Walker Birthday Celebration this Friday, September 25th, 2020 beginning at 8:00 a.m. Eastern time. ❤ Have you decided what you are wearing to the party???
Tilly J. Lamb and I are both spending our days making dolls in preparation for our annual Izannah Walker Birthday Celebration on September 25th & 26th, 2020
I haven’t sent out a newsletter in quite some time… the one overwhelming thing I most want to say is that I hope you, your families and loved ones are safe and healthy. This has been such a very sad and difficult year for our world.
I debated with myself about whether or not to write my annual Autumn Newsletter, but in the midst of such very unsettled and stressful times I find that I need a few happy, fanciful things to think about. Tiny bright spots that make life feel a bit more normal and remind me of better days. So I decided to go ahead and write, hoping that you might feel the same and be interested in a bit of studio news and upcoming events.
The dolls and I are busy making plans to celebrate Izannah Walker’s 203rd birthday on September 25th. I started writing my Izannah Walker Journal ~ Paula Walton’s Doll-Making Notes blog in January, 2009. The little Izzy’s and I have been celebrating the anniversary of Izannah Walker’s birth on my blog for ten years! Since my first birthday post on September 25th, 2010!
I’m getting a rather late start on preparations this year. I have to admit that since March I have been feeling much too antsy to make dolls… I have needed to do more physical, less detailed work. To be up and moving all the time rather than sitting… I have been throwing myself into taking care of my little remnant of an 18th century farm. My life is going through a lot of changes at the moment and one of the things I am exploring is the feasibility of farming on a very small scale, so I have been growing a few experimental crops and trying out new plants. I’m not at all sure that farming is in my future, but it has made for an interesting, busy, exhausting spring and summer. I have also been concentrating on taking care of my family and making things for them. I have made masks, masks, and more masks. Not nearly as many as some people I know, who have been donating them on a large scale, but I have still made a fair number ~ about 75 so far, with more requested and on my to do list. My concentration on family has included making toys with my granddaughter and sewing clothes for her first year of school.
Now, just finally, I am feeling as if I can return to making dolls, creating spun cotton fancies, and all the other art and handwork that I love. Apparently I am not alone in this, as I have recently been seeing comments and posts from other artists and craftspeople remarking that they too have not been able to work on their art and creations for months…
I am very, very honored to once again have been selected by Early American Life as one of their top traditional craftsmen in 2020. This marks the 41st time I have been juried into their prestigious Directory of Traditional Craftpersons. One of my dolls was featured in their August 2020 issue.
Reminder
Both the Spun Cotton Ornament Class and Izannah Walker Doll Making Class member help sites have moved to private facebook groups. If you are a member of either class and would like an invitation to the group please email me. You must be a member of facebook to use the private facebook group.
In Closing Thank you all for your interest in my work for all these years. I have enjoyed getting to talk or correspond with so many of you! Knowing you has enriched my life. I hope that I have been able to add just a bit of fun, whimsy and knowledge to yours!
I’d like to leave you with this recipe for Birth-day Pudding. It is the recipe that the dolls and I baked for our first Izannah Walker Birthday Party in 2010, and what we will be making again to celebrate this year. It is very easy and quite delicious! You don’t even have to be a doll lover to enjoy it ~ lol!
Butter a deep dish, and lay in slices of bread and butter, wet with milk, and upon these sliced tart apples, sweetened and spiced. Then lay on another layer of bread and butter and apples, and continue thus till the dish is filled. Let the top layer be bread and butter, and dip it in milk, turning the buttered side down. Any other kind of fruit will answer as well. Put a plate on the top, and bake two hours, then take it off and bake another hour.
This receipt (aka recipe) is from Miss Beecher’s Domestic Receipt-Book by Catherine E. Beecher. Catherine Esther Beecher was born in 1800 in East Hampton, Long Island. She founded the Hartford Female Seminary in 1823 as well as other schools for young women in Ohio, Illinois, Iowa and Wisconsin. She wrote A Treatise on Domestic Economy (1841) and Miss Beecher’s Domestic Receipt-Book (1846).
Notes:
After buttering my dishes I dusted them with sugar, before layering in the bread and butter.
I cut the crusts off my bread, as the pudding was for a special occasion, but you certainly don’t have to. I saved the crusts as a treat for the wild birds in my yard. You may also save them to make stuffings, bread crumbs, or croutons.
I chose cinnamon, mace and nutmeg as my spices.
I baked my doll sized pudding in a custard cup, which would also be nice if you want to bake yours in individual portions.
I preheated my oven to 350 degrees and baked my puddings for 15 minutes, then I reduced the oven temperature to 250 degrees and continued baking for the remaining 2 hours and 45 minutes. I removed my doll size pudding from the oven after 30 minutes of total baking time. Your baking time is going to depend a lot on the size of your dishes and the thickness of your pudding, so check your oven fairly frequently. It’s also a good idea to put a cookie sheet under your dish, because my pudding bubbled over as it was baking.
Do you remember the tale of Izzybelle and the Runaway Tomatoes? Ismay read it to all of her sisters on Izannah Walker’s birthday last September, as the dolls waited for the cake to bake. If you would like to read it again click here.
Today I spent several hours out in the garden with the tiny offspring of the Runaway Tomato. I have to admit that I am very tenderhearted when it comes to taking care of the plants in my garden. I usually cannot bear to weed out tiny volunteers that pop up in the wrong place, which makes me a very bad gardener and is how we wound up the the Runaway Tomatoes trying to take over the world last year… In my defense, last year I had a terrible “case of the woodchucks”! The woodchuck family that moved into my barn was attempting to battle the Runaway Tomatoes for world domination! Despite all my best efforts they managed to get into all of the gardens and eat everything in sight, especially the tomatoes! So when the tiny yellow Runaway Tomtoes popped up in unexpected places, I left them alone, in hope that the woodchuck hoards would be befuddled and over look them. Surprisingly enough that actually worked, though it was terribly unruly and chaotic, and I wound up with more tiny yellow tomatoes than I knew what to do with!
This year I have had different gardening woes… my greenhouse was leaking so badly that I couldn’t start my seeds as early as I should have. Not knowing if I would be able to fix the leaks sufficiently enough to plant, I delayed and didn’t even order seeds. The good news is that I actually DID fix all of the leaks, the bad news is that it took me quite a while to figure out how to do that. So here is where the Runaway Tomatoes come back into the story. All of those many, many volunteer tomato plants last year reseeded themselves, and now there are soooo many tiny tomatoes coming up between the bricks in my garden paths! I spent several hours today gently teasing the little seedlings out of the ground and planting them in flats. Currently they are tucked into the greenhouse for the night, all safe and sound. In the end Izzybelle and her Runaway Tomato saved my garden tomato crop two years in a row, and the moral of this story is that Doll Collecting can make everything in your life better!!! (though sometimes in strange and unusual ways ❤ )
Here is the program that I did for the Beyond All Limits Virtual Doll Convention that is being held right now on facebook. All the dolls were very excited to have virtual visitors come for tea ❤
My Izannah family and I would like to wish everyone a very Happy Christmas! We’ve had a long, lovely Christmas celebration here in our snug old house. I hope your day has also been filled with Peace, Love, & Joy ❤
As a bedtime story tonight I am telling the little cloth girls the tale of how they all came to live here in this very old farmhouse in a small New England town…
… it all began Once Upon a Time, as all the very best stories do… Before I knew a single thing about this very old house, or this small little town…
The very first thing that happens in this story is a photograph, and in this photograph was a doll… What kind of doll you ask? That’s a very good question, and one I could not answer! So I searched and I searched, and I read about dolls… until at last I discovered the name of the woman who made the doll a long, long time ago. Can you guess who that was? I think you can… you no doubt know how the rest of the story goes too! So we’ll simply say that we wish you great happiness on this Christmas night ❤ ❤ ❤
The very first thing that happens in this story is a photograph, and in this photograph was a doll… What kind of doll you ask? That’s a very good question, and one I could not answer! So I searched and I searched, and I read about dolls… until at last I discovered the name of the woman who made the doll a long, long time ago. Can you guess who that was? I think you can… you no doubt know how the rest of the story goes too! So we’ll simply say that we wish you great happiness on this Christmas night ❤ ❤ ❤
Izannah Walker Journal 
