DOLLS IN PINK
Pink is such a favored color by little girls, it’s no wonder that many of the dresses for dolls were in pink — or the second favorite — purple.
DOLLS IN PINK – Marilyn Armstrong
Tag: square
BERRIES BY THE STREAM – Marilyn Armstrong
FALL BERRIES BY THE MANCHAUG DAM
Down along the Manchaug stream we found berries. Yellow and red. Some less red but pinker. I don’t know what they are. Fall berries?
The birds and deer eat them.
I take their pictures.
Does this make these graduation berries?
ROSY MANCHAUG – By Marilyn Armstrong
Rosy Manchaug
Although we usually photograph the dam in Manchaug, the area is known for it’s rather large and deep pond and an annual rubber duck race held there.
From the pond come a lot of streams, not all of which have names. They don’t run long distances, either … which is perhaps why they don’t have names.
This dam is near a mill. All the dams are near a mill because that’s why the dams were built — to power the mills. I don’t know what the mill is being used for now. Probably some kind of industrial space. The old stone mills were built very well and may well last nearly forever.
But the area also has some apocryphal history, that a Native chief was drowned in that stream having fallen from the pond above it. It’s a long drop and the stream isn’t very deep, so I can’t imagine many people would survive the fall.
When we first found the dam — actually, it was Kaitlin and me who found it the first time. We were wandering around looking for something to photograph when I heard the rushing water. Not every dam is beautiful to photograph, but Manchaug is different. It’s not part of the Blackstone River … just a narrow neck of the pond formed into a dam that drops straight down to a stream.
Right next to the stream, there’s a pre-school — directly between the old stone mill and the stream. Until recently, they didn’t even have a fence to keep the little ones from falling into the water.
While I understand New Englanders tend to be pretty tough, a pre-school, dam and a rapidly running river seemed a bit extreme. I’m glad they built a fence.
Processing
Essentially I’ve been using monochrome formatting to get the pink tones into these pictures. Although black and white is the “typical” format for monochrome, it is by no means the only one.
You’ll find many formats some of which use many colors and others based on two primary colors, as well as bi-tonal formats that use a wide range of colors.
Our software gives us hugely increased access to filters and processing techniques. We can create antique-style photographs using pastel tones. We create “damaged photographs” and pictures that look as if they were created on glass plates or made with silver.
Pink is one of the more difficult colors to find, but by golly, I found it!
ROSY ROCKS AT MANCHAUG – By Marilyn Armstrong
Rosy Rocks by the Dam at Manchaug
Garry and I have no sense of direction. Manchaug used to be a town, but it didn’t have enough income to keep itself going, so it parceled itself out to Douglas and Sutton. Maybe Uxbridge too, but I’m not sure about that.
Thing is, the river that runs through Manchaug which is one of the many tributaries of the Blackstone and is part of the valley’s watershed, but most of it is a big pond … and the pond is located in Douglas.
We tried to find it today, but even though we followed the sign and we could hear the water, we couldn’t find it. It was in the woods somewhere, hiding. It isn’t the place we usually go when we shoot pictures of the dam anyway.
After driving around for a while, Garry said he was pretty sure he’d seen a sign on 146 that said “Manchaug.”
I said, “sure, why not? We aren’t accomplishing much driving around in circles in Douglas.”
So we got back on 146 and sure enough, there was a sign for the Sutton version of Manchaug, but once you got off 146, there were no signs at all. I said I thought it had mentioned Whitins Road, so why didn’t we just stay on Whitins Road and maybe the dam would appear?
We found it and the little Manchaug Post Office, a personal favorite of mine because how many post offices have hand-painted signs, right?
We took pictures of the dam, pictures of the pond, pictures of each other and the classic shot of each of us taking pictures of the other.
I got into an obsessive mode with the water falling on and flowing over the rocks at the base of the dam, so I figured one of them was going to have to be pink. Because there was a lot of water rolling over the dam … the most water I’ve ever seen in that small river. The rain has come this year.
Garry wanted to know where I’d seen pink rocks and I tried to explain the whole square pink picture thing to him, but he lost me somewhere around square and pink. I think I got a nice mauve motif going on this one.
The rocks at the base of the dam in Manchaug in slightly blushing pink. Most importantly, we actually found the place! Yes, we found it!
And that was our day. How was yours?
WILD STRAWBERRIES – By Marilyn Armstrong
Wild Strawberries
I’m going hunting for a proper square pink picture. It’s not the pinkness that’s the problem. It’s the squareness. I have oodles of miscellaneous pictures full of pink … but most of them aren’t square.
These are wild strawberries. We used to have a lot of them, but this year, not so many. The strawberries are tiny but incredibly sweet.
SOMEDAY MY PRINCE WILL COME – By Marilyn Armstrong
What Sleeping Beauty said
At some point in her young life, Kaitlin acquired a pair of Pepto-Bismol pink Sleeping Beauty lamps for her bedroom. For some reason, she never cared for them … but I did. I don’t have room for two end tables, so I use one of them, but have a second in reserve, just in case.
Not only are they pure Disney, but they glow in the days and say “Someday my prince will come.” It’s a little unnerving, honestly, but today I realized that there’s nothing pinker than a Disney Sleeping Beauty bedside lamp. It is totally pink.
SWEET SUE – AN AMERICAN CHARACTER DOLL IN FINEST PINK – Marilyn Armstrong
Sweet Sue – I made the hat myself
American Character was never as popular a name as Tony or Madame Alexander … or for that matter, Barbie or even Ginny. But American Character dolls had the sweetest faces for dolls of that period.
Their best-selling doll was “Sweet Sue” of which this is an original. She was extremely popular from the early 1940s until the end of the 1950s when high-heeled fashion dolls became the trend.
Okay, let me rephrase. The doll is original. Her hair is original, but her clothing shredded. I bought her a made-to-order dress. I also made her a hat because Sweet Sue always wore a hat and usually one with flowers.
Quite a few of these days came through my world and most of them, I sold, but this one, because she was not as valuable since her clothing was not original, I kept for my own. She lives on my dresser along with two Cissy dolls from Madame Alexander and one Princess Elizabeth (as in the child queen of England), also by Madame Alexander.
I have many other dolls in the room, but Sweet Sue is a favorite, with her lovely face and gentle smile.
Also, the hat is pretty cool, isn’t it?
