Oddling poppet moment. . .

She whispered as she was having her hair put on. It was something I may have missed earlier if I did not know to listen. They all do it. They murmur, squeak, and intone. In Elphaba's case, she heaped imprecations upon the clouds and bigots. It was raining when I made her. This one sweetly murmurs in hushed mommy tones, encouraging her babies to scoot out into the sun to be seen in the light.

Each poppet I make brings a completely different experience to me. One thing that I find to be most fascinating is the difference between working on a poppet of my own thought designs versus working on a custom poppet for another person. While I am working on my own thought designs I choose freely and sometimes wildly from available resources to fit my mood and desire. The obvious part of working on a custom doll is that it's not my desire/need that needs filling in this case. The part that that grabbed me was the fact that I could use my trance training in a meaningful and effective manner.

This is not without some side effects I guess. You see every coin has two sides. The other side is that I pick up strays. They wander in unexpectedly, roam around the house, then leave me with my brow quirked up into my hairline in WTF???? position. Good thing it usually occurs when I can put things down and go do something else.  Or maybe it is the fact that I have put things down and have gone off to sweep the floor, is the reason these things happen. I am already pretty focused on that one person as I am making the poppet. Maybe this is just one more reason to make one poppet at a time.

Listening to my poppets come around to life, has taught me more about my about my craft than any book could have. Don't get me wrong, books are an excellent place to start and excellent to keep around as reference, but they are certainly not the end all, be all of magic in any way, shape, or form. Each part of the process gives me more experience as I practice. Each experience moves me further down the rabbit hole as I expand my lexicon of material familiarity. New ideas no longer worry me, they are just ideas and can be shifted. Granted there is always the strange occurrences on this path, but that's a very large part of the fun. Ok, sometimes later. After we survive ourselves.

There are two Witchy proverbs I like that apply to this Oddling Poppet Moment:

A library of books does not equal one good teacher.

Practice is better than a teacher.