The problem with blogging during the run-up to Christmas is that often the things I am making are for gifts.

I am a keeper of secrets – my own, and other people’s.

It would be no good at all for me to go posting pictures of things, only to have their proposed recipients spot them ahead of the big day, would it?

Which leaves me with full days, but empty blog posts.

So I thought I would share someone else’s work for a change, something I seem to have got out of the habit of doing recently.

I try, most of the time, to avoid looking at pictures of other people’s dolls.

This is because I am afraid that I will subliminally soak up details that I like about them, and that these will ooze into the dolls I make myself, and consequently I will feel like a copy-cat and a fraud.

But when I stumbled across one of Alena Sinel’s amazing Queen Anne wooden dolls on Pinterest, I knew that I could never reproduce anything so wonderful.

And I just couldn’t help myself – I had to see more.

I found lots more on Alena’s blog, The Old Wooden Sisters.

As well as hand-carving the dolls’ faces and bodies from wood (just look at their tiny hands!) she makes exquisite clothes and accessories for them…

Even more than those little marvels, I love their faces.

They are simple, yet complex; historical, yet contemporary.

They are pretty, yet simultaneously ugly – and they have a knowingness about the expressions that verges on the sinister…

They look like they all have stories to tell and histories to impart – but their lips are sealed.

They look, to me, like the ultimate keepers of secrets. ♥