My Small (pun intended) Obsession

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It didn’t devastate me to find out Santa was make-believe.  I never was much of a Santa fan as a child.  However, Faeries, Elves, the Borrowers–well, some small part of me that never quite grew up still believes in them, I think because miniatures enchant me.

I have a beautiful Victorian dollhouse that my parents built from a kit–someday I’ll post pictures of it.  When I was a kid, I kept hoping the Borrowers I was sure lived in our walls would move into it.  I tried to make it as a enticing for them as possible.  I spent years finding furniture at flea markets for it and crafting tiny books, curtains, hatboxes, pillows, clothes, hangers, brooms, even a tube of lipstick for Milady’s vanity table.  For anyone on a budget who enjoys decorating, having a dollhouse is a fun way to play around with patterns and furniture without breaking the bank.

The last couple years, my obsession with small has shifted to antique bird cages and the fey folk.  People kept giving me faeries, and I wracked my brain for awhile trying to think of how best to display them without tempting the cats too much.  Then one day I saw a beautiful old cage in a thrift store–it looked like a peculiar mansion, with its gingerbread scroll work and leaf-studded cupola.  I bought it, not quite knowing what I was going to do with it until I got it home and realized it was the perfect place for my faeries to take up residence.  Then I found a second cage and couldn’t resist it either–someone had painted flowers in a charming array around the sides.  I hung glass witch balls from the ceilings, lined the floors with moss, and added various decorations such as a bird nest filled with brightly colored, glittery eggs and a lawn table and chairs for entertaining guests such as Peter Rabbit.

And a tiny bird in a tiny cage.  I’m not sure why I felt the need to put a cage within a cage.  It made symbolic sense at one point, but it escapes me now.  Probably it had something to do with my writing project at the time.  I tend to seek out physical manifestations of whatever preoccupies my imagination at the moment, such as collecting mermaid figurines for awhile or putting together a fantasy art jigsaw puzzle.   Exploring a subject from a variety of angles helps me be more creative with it.  And it’s a relief to my brain to take a break from word-ly pursuits at the end of the day and focus on something non-verbal, like a jigsaw puzzle.  Or constructing a home for my faeries.

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