It has been a long quiet day here today. Jake was up 3 times last night to attend to cows in labor. 3 times in one night! I am so grateful that he doesn't have to do that often. But, oh, I am not quite myself today.

Last night I did the stitching to create the fiber collage for my Flat Stanley Goddess. The needle lace turned out beautifully. I used several different colors of threads so the piece blends with both sides of Goddess's body. I still can't make the scan pick up the sparkle of the angelina; believe me when I say it is much prettier than it looks here!

Here is the lower body with the overlay pinned in place. I am amazed at the amount of shrinkage that occured when I released the needle lace from the stabilizer; I would estimate a loss of between 30 to 40 percent. It's a good think I made the piece bigger than I thought I would need.

Unfortunately, this means that her flukes are smaller than I wanted them to be, but they still look OK. There is no part of the doll body inside of the flukes, so I did some more machine stitching to stabilize the shape. Even so, there is some distortion; you can see it on the right fluke. I like it though; I think it makes it look a little more natural.

Here is the finished tail with the embellishments added. I suppose I shouldn't have done so much, but each step just seemed to ask for the next to be added. And so on and so on and so on!

I am especially pleased with her asymmetrical belt. The little pearl at the base of her tail looks a little lonely and out of place. Perhaps someone else down the road will add something to make it seem more integrated into the piece.

I still have to add to the artist's journal. That's the part I find the hardest. This particular journal is on it's way to becoming quite a piece of art in and of itself. I don't want to be the one to mess it up!