Above, little Cordelia holds a birthday cake lit with lots of sparkly candles...and invites all of you to join in the fun this month (since we'll be the one giving the present). We'll be hosting our first blog giveaway with a drawing for a free gift -- so stay tuned for details and the sign-up post!
Sometimes, a selkie maiden is taken as a wife by a human man and she has several children by him. In these stories, it is one of her children who discovers her sealskin (often unwitting of its significance) and she soon returns to the sea. The selkie woman usually avoids seeing her human husband again but is sometimes shown visiting her children and playing with them in the waves....
Selkies are not always faithless lovers. One tale tells of the fisherman Cagan who married a seal-woman. Against his wife's wishes he set sail dangerously late in the year, and was trapped battling a terrible storm, unable to return home. His wife shifted to her seal form and saved him, even though this meant she could never return to her human body and hence her happy home.
Some stories from Shetland have selkies luring islanders into the sea at midsummer, the lovelorn humans never returning to dry land. (Wikipedia, "Selkies").
Quoth the Raven -- "Nevermore!"
I started these dolls originally as a traditional Hansel and Gretel...but with Halloween rolling around the corner, I stitched Hansel a little candy bag and swapped Gretel's witch doll for a gingerbread witch.
Hilda the Gingerbread Witch is my favorite part of the set, by the way. I think it's her expression of surprise as she surveys the damage...
Ichabod is the first out of the box for the "Ghostly Gallows" series. The Anniversary Edition has a faded fabric head instead of stuffed burlap, a sorrowful painted expression instead of stitched-on patches like before. Ichabod trades in his forest-green coat and brown boot for a black riding duster and shoe and stocking befitting of even a New England schoolteacher (circa Washington Irving, of course). 
His claw-like hand is reminiscent of Hob the Goblin King.
Memhotep the Mummy is doing his best to be scary... but it looks more like he's picking out a pumpking to carve. Maybe if his brothers were backing him up in the photo, he'd frighten a few more visitors...
Boo.
(Little Miss Firecracker)
And welcome a slightly scarier crowd for Halloween.
(The Irish Banshee)
(Don't you love the little pumpkin head?)
...the "And Friends" part of the series includes the friendlier little folk like the Halloween Parade and the mummies, a departure from the scary sort who haunt lonely stretches of road and dark, deserted houses.
Whatever they're discussing, it's a private party. Her looks tells me that my camera and myself are simply intruding.
