Day of the Dead comes again

Happy Monday to y'all!  When I was a kid November first was always kinda like the day after Christmas.  Mama would start putting away her cute Halloween bric-a-brac, and for us kids Thanksgiving and Christmas seemed an eternity away.  Now of course I'm older, and Day of the Dead is one of my favorite holidays.  It's a day for trotting out Flaxie, Z, and Denise in their sugar skull clothes, and a day for Morrada Calaveras to show off, but this year Morrada is not alone.  I've chosen the name "Marigold" for my newest doll, due to her yellow dress and the associations of marigolds with Day of the Dead...and because I love marigolds, LOL.

This poppet came from Whit's Art World on Etsy.  She used to be one of those slightly creepy hard plastic dolls from the 1920's, and she's had her existing creepiness enhanced by touches of paint.

When I first ordered her her eyes were half-closed, but I eased them all the way open.  One of her eyes drifts and that adds to her creepiness!  She got a ding on her nose during shipping that I need to fix.

Marigold is a little under eight inches tall, and if I measure her bow she comes to a full eight inches.  Her head and arms move, but her legs do not.  No biggie, since sitting wouldn't allow her to show off her lovely dress.  The plastic feels a little fragile anyway so I wouldn't be monkeying with her leg joints if she had them.  She's also pretty loose up top, so that her head always lolls to her right.  Definitely NOT a toy, though I had no intention of using her as such.  But Marigold isn't the only new Day of the Dead doll I've got.  In July Mama surprised me with this.

She came accompanied with a blown glass hummingbird, and a slip of paper explaining the Mayan creation myth surrounding hummingbirds.

This accessory earned the doll the name "Chuparosa."  Chuparosa has three tags safety-pinned to her left sleeve.  The top tag advertises the Etsy store she came from, Frida Tehuana.  The "Frida" in question is none other than Frida Kahlo.

The second tag is the "thou shalt not" tag, with care instructions.

The last tag explains Frida Tehuana's purpose, which is to help rural Mexican women find jobs.  I can dig that.  There's more to it than just providing jobs, but y'all can read it for yourselves.

Personal touches like this are the reason why I love handmade rag dolls.  They all have part of the person who made them built in, and they all have some type of history behind them.  Thanks to the tag I know Chuparosa's story.  Anyway, since she's handmade there's a lot to talk about.  Chuparosa's skirt has large sugar skulls and flowers on an orange background, and this muchacho is an intense-looking so-and so!

His female counterpart looks familiar!  These two faces are all over Chuparosa's skirt, by the way.

As for Chuparosa herself, she's not as intense as the male skull on her skirt, nor is she generically cute like Skelita Calaveras is.  Her face is handpainted in a number of bright colors, including green eyebrows.  

Her hair is made of...either very fine yarn or embroidery floss, and it's braided and heavily decorated with satin ribbons of yellow, orange, and purple.  Two of the yellow ribbons are woven into her braids.

A lot of care went into making Chuparosa.  I suspect very strongly that she's supposed to be a decorative item, and yet her seams and clothes feel substantial.  She'd make a good companion for a child aged ten or over, one who is old enuff to take care of his or her things.

Of course I can't use Marigold or Chuparosa as decorations at the library lest my superiors' heads explode, but I can and am using these.

I love matryoshka dolls!  I've never owned a set before...well, before last June, actually, when Mama got these sugar skull cats.  Yes, another gift from my mom, LOL!  These actually do nest, by the way.  I was afraid they wouldn't due to those ears, but they nest just fine!  The fourth one is my favorite due to his mopey face, by the way.

So that's my Day of the Dead!  No shrines, but who needs a shrine when you've got some awesome dolls like these?  Heck, who needs a Day of the Dead shrine when you're alive???  LOL, thankful I am to be alive and not need a shrine!  Sigh...I can't say the same for a few of my friends.  When I was in high school a young man died in a tragic (and senseless) truck-vs-train accident, and the next November one of his friends built a Day of the Dead shrine for him during Spanish class.  Talk about a mental punch in the solar plexus; this boy had a special necklace that he wore every day, and when I saw that hanging on the shrine I darn near cried.  This young man wasn't even someone I was that close to, but knowing him and liking him was enuff.  Despite one sad memory I love Day of the Dead, and I'm happy to have some poppets to commemorate!  No update on my mother, as she doesn't see the oncologist until the seventeenth.  But she says just drinking more water has helped ease her arthritis, so that's something.

Happy Day of the Dead,
RagingMoon1987