Christmas Eve

As you probably know, we start celebrating on Christmas Eve here in Germany and it's also the day of gift giving.
I have written about that and about the Christ Child as the gift bringer in my part of the world before.
Things may have changed in the last 50 years 😉, but in my time it was tradition in my and my friends' families to put up the tree on the morning of Christmas Eve.
Seems the Christ Child did too!

Christ Child is a Dawn doll with an outfit beaded by me.
The Christmas trees are Steiff.

Dawn was a registered trademark of the Topper Company. I am not affiliated with Topper in any way.
Steiff is a registered trademark. I am not affiliated with Steiff in any way.

Getting ready for Halloween

We are ready. Just sayin'.
So you better start buying those regular size chocolate bars because this is no disguise. We are the real thing and you might regret not being prepared when we come to your doors, especially now that we have the witch power-up as well. She's small but mighty.
And Hoppie may still be in training, but we are expecting great things from him.

You don't want to end up as a toad, do you?

I can sink my teeth into a chocolate bar or into you. Your choice.

Don't think I'm cute. I'm going to rattle my way into your nightmares and my skeleton even glows in the dark. If you fill my bag with goodies, though, I might be taking mercy on you.

My friends say it's okay for me to still need an emotional support pumpkin. I'll do some light scaring this year, but just you wait until next year!

Anyone else looking forward to the spooky season?

Cats, cats, cats, and more cats, part 2

I said I would be back with the random cats around my house! If you are interested, you can find part 1 here in which I said "I have quite a few around the place, some because I fell in love with them myself, others because for some weird reason people think I like cats and have given me a lot of items over the years. Really strange, I know. Why would they think something like that? 😂"

Let's start with a cat in existential crisis. I get you, cat, I really do. I feel like screaming this way a lot these days.
When the resident artist with the fuzzy ears decided to turn my beloved bunny peeler into art - in other words, he knocked it down and broke it - I had to look for a replacement. The bunny peeler had been a gift from my cat food shop (the best blade ever), so I had to settle for a black cat instead. Gundel and I love black cats. As expected, it's not as good as the bunny, but it does the job.
Oh, and those are cat tins behind it. They came with some cat medication and are perfect for holding tea, wire, and beads.

"Are you interested in a Steiff cat?" As I have mentioned before, Steiff has a huge variety of dogs, but not so much of cats, and we already had the most common post-war ones, so our reply to our seller acquaintance was a little lukewarm.
"She has a red ribbon." Steiff cats (and dogs) often had a ribbon around the neck, so that didn't tell us much. "In the ear." Now that made our ears go up like those of a cat. If it was really a red ear tag, that would mean pre-war and was definitely worth looking at.
It was love at first sight. Not only has the lady the beautiful green-blue eyes (we always called them pre-war eyes because after the war the cat eyes turned a more vivid green instead) that we loved so much, she also wasn't a tabby as in striped, but had more of a dotted fur. She was absolutely gorgeous and is - along with Fluffy, but that's another story - still my favorite Steiff cat. She's almost 100 years old, can you believe that?

I deliberately took her photo next to those scratches on my sideboard. Wanna guess? Yes, it's another artwork by the resident artist (Marsha, how's that for the next SIA challenge? 😜). In his defense, he was inspired by an earlier piece of art by Greebo, displayed on the same sideboard.

When I saw this cat keyring at a jewelry shop, I just couldn't resist ... I had to make the ex buy it for me 😂 That sounds worse than it was, really. I just said "ooh, I love her" and he asked me if I wanted her. We were on a shopping tour through antique and thrift shops on a day off and had been prepared to put down a bit of money here and there.
Oh yes, I wanted her. I love my silver cat. She's cute and heavy, and if I can't find my keys in my shopper because they have once again hidden in the bottom corner, I always feel around for her.
Once I thought I'd lost her, the screw of the keyring had unscrewed. Ever since the first thing I do when grabbing my keys is to make sure the screw is tight.

This is another cat I can identify with on some days when I'm not in cat peeler screaming mode.
It's a print by Wiebke Rauers, a German freelance illustrator.

I told you before that Steiff didn't just make plush animals, but also a lot of wooden toys.
Pictures of Steiff animals also appear on a lot of other items, however (which is a topic for another post).
This is one of them. I have three of these little plastic bowls for children in my collection, another one with a Zotty teddy and a cat, and one with two dwarfs. This one has a Cosy Molly and a Cosy Snobby dog watch over a sleeping Floppy Kitty (Floppy animals had embroidered "closed" eyes).
There's just a copyright mark for Steiff on it but no maker, and I never bothered trying to find out more. I have some smaller plush animals sitting in there, so you can still see the design.
Can't you imagine toddlers eating from these? They are cute, sturdy and easy to grab. The bowls, not the toddlers.

I own a small collection of Zippos with cats on them, most of them gifts. I used to use all of them, but now they decorate my cat book cabinet.
Once we were at a pub. It was quite full and when we left the table, the next group was already over it. Right outside the door I noticed I had forgotten my pack of cigarettes - you can tell from that how long ago that was! - and my favorite Zippo. We are talking not even a minute before I was back, but both the pack and the lighter were gone. I asked at the table and just got shaking heads, so I asked the waiter and he said no one had given it to him.
So I went back to the table again and said it was impossible they hadn't seen it. All of them looked at one guy, one of the girls looking mad and giving him a sign, so he slowly reached into his pocket and pulled out my Zippo and cigarettes. I was upset and said "So you really just lied to me?". He didn't even look embarrassed and shrugged. One of them could have caught up with us easily. I admit I called him something when I left. He could at least have apologized. The girl said something I don't remember, but the others just laughed at him for getting caught. Some people!

I didn't try to polish these or anything, the use and wear is telling their own story.

I got this cute little pair years ago as a Christmas gift from a colleague. The pinkish stone is so pretty. I choose to believe that these two are friends.

Have you ever heard of The Kindness Rocks Project?
It's about painting pebbles or rocks and hiding them in public for someone else to find. Children do it, but also grownups. There are Facebook groups where you can share your finds or the rocks you painted yourself. The rocks can have messages, little paintings or both.

An artist friend of mine (I'm not saying the name because she's in web timeout as far as I know) painted rocks for a local project. She showed pictures, and when I said how much I loved this one, she very generously offered it to me as a gift.
It ended up in our customs office. At the time, they picked random private parcels for checks and you had to go to the office to open the parcel as they weren't allowed to, and then they would determine its value to see if fees incurred.
When I put the rock on the table, the clerk took it, turned it around and asked me what it was. "Uh, a rock with a cat painting on it?" "Yes, but what is it?" "It's a rock. There's nothing more to it. There's this project for which people paint and hide rocks. An artist friend participates in her town and sent this one to me because I liked it." "Oh." We looked at each other, maybe she tried to read my mind for the reason why anyone would do any of this. "A rock." "Your friend did that beautifully." "Yes." "Okay, I guess ... that's it then. Have a nice day." And off we went, my rock and I.

I love it when an item comes with an extra story on top of the original story 😁 

That's it for today, but I'm pretty sure there will be a part 3. See you then!

Nostalgia - How toys become real

A few weeks ago, I read "The Velveteen Rabbit or How Toys Become Real" for the first time. The book isn't a children's classic here in Germany, but I had seen it mentioned every, now and then and figured it was about time to read it.
If you don't know it, here's the plot.

Not a velveteen, but an artificial silk plush Steiff
bunny from the 1940s (not complete, but in
wonderful condition)

There are different kinds of collectors.
Collecting can be about diversity of items, a shared detail, about the monetary value or the emotional one, about the perfect or the imperfect look, about color, about use, about rarity, about history, about sentimentality ... I could keep going on like this.

As a collector of Steiff animals, I can say that a unplayed with vintage Steiff, possibly even complete with button, chest and ear tag which get ripped off easily by children's hands (no safety buttons back then), has something very special. It never fails to make me wonder how that is even possible. Has it spent the last 50, 70, 100 years or more in a cabinet, never touched? Has it been living in a bubble (I use the word "living" on purpose, you'll see why)?
I would lie if I said I don't know how breathtaking an old "new" Steiff can be. There are collectors who only look for those, and they are ready to pay the price for the (often) few chosen ones.

And then there are the others.
I'll never forget the fleamarket where I found this little fellow. I ran to drag the ex over to the stand to let him know I had fallen in love.

Now you might not understand how someone can fall in love with the obvious victim of a moth attack that has swingy limbs.
You might even think that this is a bit yucky or disturbing.
I, however, saw an 80 year old friend (over 100 now).

A child loved him so much that he stayed around although he had lost most of his fur, loved him so much that someone made the effort to give this little fellow new paw pads from white leather (now worn as well), sewn on very neatly and secure.
I remember how on edge I was as a kid when my own teddy had holes in his felt paw pads and I watched my mother sew on new fabric ones.

The child is probably not here anymore, but he is, and oh, the stories he could tell! Maybe he was like my teddy and saw his child grow up and get old before ending up at a fleamarket in Marin County just to be found by a pair of Germans and being taken back to within 60 kms from where he once came.

The velveteen rabbit is told: "Real isn't how you are made ... It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real." ...
"Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."
Spoiler alert: The nursery magic Fairy turns him Real, a real little rabbit.

I have no doubt that this teddy became Real to his child like the velveteen rabbit to his boy because he was loved (even though he still has his shoe button eyes). Maybe he's still waiting for his fairy and I'll happily give him the spot with some other teddy friends to do so.

Because that's the kind of collectors we were and there are others like us. They don't just love the perfect ones, they love the loved ones, the played with, the "flawed" ones those we wish could tell us their stories, all of them, not just the good ones ...
Just saying.
Each of them has their own beauty.

Nostalgia - Wooden Steiff toys

Some years ago when I still did the "Finds of the week" posts, I had some called "I'm a collector" in which I shared vintage items. Over time my collections have mostly stopped growing due to different reasons, but they are still there and still loved. I also have vintage items, some inherited, some gifts, some from fleamarkets, some more interesting than others. So I thought it could be fun to share some of them every, now and then and tell their story.

In my post about the Teddies for tomorrow, I had mentioned that there were times when material for Steiff plush animals became scarce because mohair and felt were used for other purposes, for example uniforms (plush animals would have been so much better), and that they used substitute materials, but also produced wooden toys.
Today I want to show you just a few that I pulled from my cabinets - literally pulled which wasn't easy because of course all of them were in the back, it's going to be fun to fit them back in - and mention some others at least.

Let's start with the "Pyramidenkubus" (pyramid cube), also available under the name "Satzkubus" (set cube), in its original box - a set of six hollow cubes with one side missing for nestling them in the box.
Given they probably got stacked and then knocked over, it's amazing there's any color left.

We'll stay in the builder's world a little longer.
Here we have the "Bausack" (building bag) which was linen from 1951 to 1958 and held 100 small building blocks, later it was also available with big blocks in a plastic bag.
I have never counted to see if there are all 100, by the way.

Can't afford your own shipping line yet? Start small with the "Schiffsbaukasten" (ship building set)! It's always good to be prepared.

And yet another building set, the "BiBau", probably called that because the blocks are from two different natural woods in two colors - mahogany and maple.
My guess is that the maple was never as light as on the box because I've seen another box with blocks in similar colors. As you can see, the box has never even been opened, so I think it doesn't have to do with dirty children's hands 😉

Do you have ten black thumbs just like me? No problem.
Build your own flowers from plastic stems and wooden leaves and blossoms!
Look, even I can do it.
Of course, the box is a gross exaggeration of what you can do with the set. My set is complete and I couldn't even build a one color flower. You'd probably need like three boxes to create what's in the picture.

Steiff didn't just force you to build things.
They also made beautiful wooden animals, especially pre-war, but I don't have any of those.
I do have two of the later wood burning series, however. There were many more, wisents, dogs, bears, cats, rabbits, zebras, lions, squirrels, camels, elephants, cows, and who knows what else (without looking it up) - and these two cuties.
See the metal tags instead of the "button in ear"?

That's not all of course.
Steiff made little and bigger trains, agricultural and construction vehicles, puzzles, tiny bird houses, toy boxes, hobby horses, hand wagons (I have one of those, but it's misused as a storage box right now, so sorry, no picture), small or slightly bigger scooters (I have some of those, hard to take pictures of), YoYos, horse wagons.
If you are interested, check out this page which has some wooden Steiff listed.

I think my favorite wooden Steiff is this one, though. You'll see why.

Looks harmless enough, doesn't it?
It can be very dangerous if you try to drive to your field in the morning and get ambushed, though! 😂

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter!

Three years ago we got our egg delivery via bunny post for the first time. This was the promo picture and we were sold right away. Who could resist such a sweet smile?
Actually, he's an old friend of mine.

This year, however, there's a new kid in town because Mr. Gnome is on Easter vacation - Floppy the Bunny who has moved in here not long ago (it was a sale and I blame my sister, this time because she gave him to me 😉), just in time to take over. You have to give young people a chance, don't you?

I just hope Floppy hasn't got overwhelmed ... it was a lot of work.

Mr. Gnome made by my lovely friend Jennifer ❤
Running bunny made by Steiff
Floppy by Steiff (actually his name is Hoppy, but he reminded me so much of the rabbit Bluey's sister Bingo has)
Chocolate by Lindt
Wire knit and bead eggs made by me

I'm not affiliated with Steiff or Lindt in any way.

After Midnight and Harlekin

What do you think when you hear Steiff (if you know Steiff at all, that is)?
Your first thought probably goes to soft and cuddly plush animals for children. If you are a collector or, erm, old or maybe even both like me, you might think of mohair which is not so soft.

Actually, Steiff has used a lot of different materials over the years.
Before they started making toys, the founder Margarete Steiff had a business making felt clothing for women, and in fact the first animals were from felt as well, like the famous elephant pincushion which became so popular as a toy that it shifted the business from clothes to toys.
Other fabrics used were velvet and linen, and with the birth of the teddy bear mohair. Mohair is from the hair of the angora goat and Steiff always got it from the Schulte company, today one of the last weaving mills existing in Germany.

There were times, however, when materials like felt and mohair became scarce, for example in and around wartimes when they were used for military purposes instead like for uniforms.
Steiff always did its best to meet those challenges and come up with toys from substitute materials or to make toys other than plush animals, like a variety of wooden toys like building blocks, wooden flower building sets, carriages, scooters, and more.

For substitute materials they used wool plush, artificial silk plush, cotton plush, and in 1919, they actually made animals from paper plush made from wood fibers with a backing of cotton.
Given the fragility of this fabric, it is not surprising that paper plush animals are hard to find nowadays.
But fret you not, o collector!
In 2020, Steiff started a new line of animals made from different fabrics called "Teddies for tomorrow" (although it's not just teddies). There's rayon, linen/cotton, alpaca, linen/vegan felt, bamboo, hemp, plush from recycled PET bottles - and paper plush.
One reason are rising energy and material costs which endanger the future of Steiff Schulte (which was taken over by the Steiff Holding in 2009), the other the question of sustainability which should be a topic for every company.

Being mainly a collector of vintage Steiff, this series had gone by me completely until someone told me to look a sweet dark blue bear ... and sometime later at a colorful bear.
They are called After Midnight and Harlekin.
(Marsha, this is for you - it was a (very good) sale and I blame my sister. Again.)
These are no cuddly teddies meant for children, not that I expected them to be. The paper plush feels a bit harder than my towels (I don't like fabric softener) which is interesting to me, and I just think they are very cute.
Harlekin is made after an old Steiff design. I love that his colors look a bit faded as if he were vintage.
Others buy clothes, shoes, cosmetics, accessories, I buy beads and teddies 😉

Sources:
1. Rebekah Kaufmann: Cut from a different cloth - six of Steiff's lesser-known teddy bear fabrics. On: Teddy Bear Times & Friends, September 21,2020
2. The History of the Teddy Bear. On the Steiff website
3. Steiff Schulte: History. On the Steiff Schulte website
4. Sustainability promise. On the Steiff website
5. Susanne Decker: Steiff - die Stoffe. Auf: Steifftiere, ein Stück Kindheit (in German)

Random Saturday - The new gang member

I can't believe it has been almost exactly nine years ago that I introduced you to a new face on my fan wall of bead loomed portraits - Margarete Steiff.

I had also talked a bit about how my ex and I became collector of Steiff toys, thanks to a fleamarket that took place twice a year on the grounds of the university we both worked at. It was a huge fleamarket and we didn't have any particular interests, we just looked around.
Then we came to a table with a small plush mouse, a bunny, and a guinea pig, all of them Steiff which we were familiar with, but had never owned ourselves in our childhood. We were informed that people collected Steiff, something we had never thought about before.
"Pieps", the mouse, "Manni", the bunny, and "Swinny", the guinea pig, came home with us. We didn't even haggle. We had fallen in love and it was not curable.

Little did we know what those three little animals would start, not only visits of fleamarkets, fairs, auctions, but also meeting new people, and doing a lot of research pre-Internet.
We looked through price guides and catalogs, we learned about different buttons in ears or sometimes feet or tails if there weren't ears, different tags, different kinds of fabrics, glass or plastic eyes, and more.
We visited the Steiff museum in Giengen - still the old small one - and had I been a child, I would probably would have wanted to press my nose against the glass or drool on the floor. We watched the short movie about Steiff shown in a small room within the museum every single time we went there. Afterwards we went to our favorite restaurant and dreamed about owning some of these animals.
I have always been fascinated by collectors and their stories, but I'm afraid I may have bored more than one person with my stories.

One animal we couldn't resist was Pieps (who is named after the sound mice make - best translated as Squeak). Whenever we saw one we liked, we added it to our little gang of mice until they overran the place as mice sometimes tend to do.
They sit on dogs, climb up giraffe necks, play with cats, talk to foxes, sit in teddies' laps, peek out from under deer, and keep goats company.
Once I brought them all together for a reunion.
All the white ones with the red eyes ...

... and all the grey ones with the black eyes ...

... and sometimes if one jumps out at me, I'm fine with it joining the gang.
"Pieps, meet Pieps, this is Pieps and Pieps, oh, and that is Pieps, Pieps, and Pieps. Have you met Pieps yet?" Okay, I think you got the idea.

This week a new squeaker has arrived and after a big hello and introduction, she chose to go ride a boar. She's a tough one 😉
Can you believe she is at least 55 years old?

If you now think I'm crazy, you are probably right, but that's how collecting works - it doesn't matter if it's stamps, bottles, toys, books, clothes, shoes or movies!

Getting ready for Christmas - Part 3

I'll make this short.
In part 2 I showed you my decorations in the house hallway. Then I noticed that one of the Steiff mice was missing. A few days later I noticed that one of the teddies had been hiding in the same cabinet.
If someone has seen my brain, please tell it to come back. I'm not doing that well without it, it seems ...

Also I still wasn't happy with my improvised hooks, so I got some garlands which would hide them.
Basically that works well, but now I have the problem that the railings are quite smooth and the ornaments quite heavy which means the garlands keep sliding. I could stop one of them with the hooks on the railing which don't run that smoothly and therefore keep the ends in place, but the other railing doesn't have those hooks, so I will have to come up with an idea. Not this year, though. Maybe my brain will be back again next year ;-)

Getting ready for Christmas - Part 2

Due to unforeseen circumstances, I couldn't get myself to decorate the house hallway in time which meant I was very behind on my advent calendar tree.
There was really no excuse anymore now, so I gave myself a good kick yesterday and went to it.

This year I had to make a few hard decisions. Thanks to my crafty advent calender last year and thanks to not being able to put any of those new ornaments up inside my flat *stern look at somecat who's not interested in stern looks at all*, some of the regulars couldn't find a spot in my hallway decoration this time. Not one spiky bauble! I only have a window sill to hold my Discworld advent calenders and a wardrobe with a small surface, some hooks, and rails which weirdly was not made for decorations originally.
I'll have to think of something next year, maybe some kind of garland for my beaded ornaments to hang on the wardrobe, so I can put the baubles on the rails.
I'll also have to come up with some better hooks. Ordinary Christmas hooks are too small for the rails and I had forgotten to get a better wire to make bigger ones of my own. It really comes out worse in the picture because of the flash, though (it was already darkish when I decorated, so I needed the flash, as if it isn't hard enough to get a good angle for a picture, anyway). I picked stainless steel, thin so it wouldn't show too much, but strong enough to hold even the heavier ornaments, but those makeshift hooks are by no means uniform. Will someone please remind me in time next year?

To give you a better idea if you haven't followed last year's advent calendar, I made a collage of the ornaments I put up (in the picture above the felt ball is missing because I had forgotten it).

Of course, a Christmas decoration without my beloved Steiff is absolutely unthinkable. This year, there is not one but two Christmas trees one of which I topped with my Christ Child Dawn, and an adorable Christmas bunny joined Santa Claus and his teddy and mouse crew (plus one missing in the picture because I had left him behind in the cabinet, what's wrong with me?), also a sweet mouse who's not in festive garb, but fits in so perfectly.

Also I can't do without my advent tree and today I got to open several of the little parcels! What a reward for being so late.

I know it's not much compared to the decorating some people do, but it makes me happy and that's what counts.