About Ditsy Dormouse
Hi, my name is Kiki, and I started crafting under the name Ditsy Dormouse in 2016 in a bid to do something with the time I spent just vegging and watching TV in the evening. I rediscovered the creativity I hadn’t used since secondary school and it gave me a different focus from my difficult, challenging and sometimes harrowing job in social care. I am lucky that both my parents are quite creative. My Mum bakes, knits and sews; my Dad draws, writes and works metal. Both my maternal grandparents were painters and handy in a number of ways. Creativity was encouraged in both my sister and I. Nowadays, ideas often come from customer requests, out of the materials I have handy or just on a whim. When I get tired of painting, I sew, and when I get tired of sewing, I paint. I use a variety of mediums and i like to experiment. In the beginning, however, it was a bit different as I tried to come up with somewhere to focus my need to create.
The name Ditsy Dormouse is very personal. Initially when thinking about what to craft I remembered that my Grandma had been very active as a crafter and artist and this gave me an initial direction in terms of refining and modernising some of her creations.
I thought I’d share her story and the origins of the name Ditsy Dormouse…
Ellen Sophia Dawson was born in West London in July 1924. She was the youngest of seven children and was 15 in 1939 when war was declared. She waited until 1941, the day before her 17th birthday, before happily joining up for the Auxiliary Territorial Service or ATS - The women’s branch of the British Army at the time. She later told me that as the youngest of seven children it was her very exciting and first opportunity to get a brand new set of clothes - albeit military issue.
She was a Predictor Operator guiding Anti-aircraft guns where to fire. She attained the rank of Corporal during her time in the ATS, but was often in trouble, so that she lost and regained her Stripes with such regularity she would only attach them with a tacking stitch. Among her unit she was known as Dormouse Dawson due to her stature and slight build. This never really stopped her and despite being little she was quite a force to reckon with. There was always the hint of that rebellious streak in her later years.
She had to leave the ATS when she got married in 1944 and was always disappointed that she never got to travel abroad during her service, as her mother wouldn’t give her permission.She had two children - my own mother and my uncle - before becoming a single mum in 1953 after her first husband upped and left them to head to Canada.
Ellen always worked. Too many jobs to mention over the years, but could turn her hand to almost anything and was extremely creative. She cooked, baked, sewed and painted and remarried in 1957 to the man I knew as Grandad - Don Garland - who was also creative and a bit eccentric. (but that’s a whole other story!)
In her retirement Grandma would sell her wares at Craft Fairs, Bazaars and Flea Markets. My favourite thing she used to make were little squashy-faced character badges that she called Ditsies. I still have the Ditsy she gave me after I strongly hinted that I might like one back in the 90s. (left) That was where I started; refining and modernising that idea. Everything else came from that.
Grandma died in 2017 at the age of 93 and never really got to see that I had taken up the crafting baton from her. Her health and cognitive function had deteriorated heartbreakingly in the years before her death. I was however, lucky enough to inherit her ‘crafting box’, which was a testament to her WWII ‘make do and mend’ mentality. In there were many treasures she had kept to use in some way as it ‘might come in useful someday’.
Ellen Sophia Garland (nee Dawson) 1924-2017
The Real OG Ditsy Dormouse.
I wrote this poem and read it at her funeral….
Grandma
Some Grandmas knit
Ours didn’t
She did make Christmas decorations out of ping pong balls - plump Puddings & Fat Robins
And the latest 80s fashions or elaborate merengue-like Lady Di Wedding Dresses for Sindy dolls.
She made crafts to sell at summer fetes and bizarres
and sewed clothes and cosies and knickknacks and trinkets
Not to mention the scary clown badges, and dear little Ditsies.
But she did not knit
Some Grandmas bake cakes
She did make the best tasting pastry to a secret unconventional recipe
(which i pried out of her and credit for my successful mince pies every year!)
And her apple pie was to die for.
Famous it was and enhanced by foraged blackberries (more of those later!!)
But her Yorkshires never really made it and were the size and shape of Jaffa cakes
and she didn’t bake cakes
Most Grandmas don’t shoot
Ours did
She joined up for the war as soon as she reached the age.
She told me it was her only hope of getting new clothes as the youngest of seven.
Even woolly, scratchy MOD issue woolly pants were preferable to hand-me-downs she said
Manning anti-aircraft guns, Corporal Ellen ‘Dormouse’ Dawson defended the realm alongside brave others and only once nearly shot down an ally…Only once!
And wouldn’t you love to hear her racy GI stories! Oh wouldn’t you? Luckily i did.
So she shot
Some Grandmas wrap you in cotton
Ours didn’t
So Blackberries! Oh Blackberries! Even now i see them in hedgerows and they make me smile
And cringe.
The time we, my sister and I, went foraging with our City born but nature-loving Grandma
Blackberry picking. For pies. Those lovely pies.
Uncovered arms and legs. Climbing into brambles for the plump-tious, delicious, but vicious fruits
Returning home eventually as if we, all three, had been attacked by Lions, and Tigers, and Bears, Oh My!
And lost in the woods, thinking we’d never find our way home. Grandma chose this time to regale us with the ghost story of the headless monk for which the wood was named.
She loved us, but she did not wrap us in cotton
Most Grandmas don’t say poo!
Ours did
Not only that but she studied it. identified it and specifically asked for a book so she knew what was using the garden as a convenience!
The internet search for that particular Christmas gift was interesting I tell you!
The garden! She loved her garden! the flowers that mean ‘Grandma’ to me are Sweetpeas, Lavender, Gerberers, Freesias and the little blue ones that seemed to be on all her clothes.
She loved spiders - particularly Fred who lived in the downstairs Loo and heaven forbid anyone should try to oust him - and all the creatures that made the garden home.
And she said Poo!
Lots of Grandmas are creative
Ours was too
But so creative. She painted, and modelled and made things out of other things.
She made salt dough loaves of bread for our pretend shops and not only furnished a homemade doll’s house but a doll’s Hat Shop too (we could ignore that the mannequins in it looked like they were dressed for a bondage club!!)
She never stopped making. And inspired me to make too.
She saved every scrap and thread and bead and ribbon to go into her craft box.
And she created
Some Grandmas pioneer
Well ours certainly did
Had she been born 20 years earlier i guarantee she would have been chained to railings fighting to vote.
She survived being a single mum in a time when, yes sure, the war had left many mums single but there was still much stigma attached to divorced women.
She worked. A lot. I mean in job after job after job, but she worked.
She was a soldier, a worker, a mother, a talker.
She pioneered
Some grandchildren remember
And we choose to
Remember….
Diddy bags for the journey home
Telling us she couldn’t go out when it was wet, because she shrank in the rain!
Her smoking cigars at weddings
The smell of lavender
Her brilliant stories
Baking, Making
Peapods and “Goosgogs” and berries straight from the garden
Calling us ‘Pickle’
The Quirky, Fun, Cheeky, Naughty woman we called Grandma
Kiki Kingsland-Humphries
September 2017