EUREKA! NANCY SANDER The Love of Hair G


reetings! To all of you who have lost all their summer gigs. To all of you who struggle financially as we find our major source of income evaporating before our eyes. To all of you who, like me, wonder if… it isn’t time… to step back… At the age of seventy-eight, having been performing for 48 years, I wonder: Is this the year I should pack up my stage and re- tire? My head and heart say, “Never!” but the rest of me is saying, “Who do you think you are?” Maybe the virus thing is a hint?


she needs whiskers that won’t come out, she pokes these stiff threads through from the inside and puts a dab of plastic glue on the crossbar inside to keep the whisker from working its way free. July 2002


Great Beard


Cut long strips of felt. Take small elastic and, after coloring it to match, start two or three stitches; stretch it out as much as you can, holding the felt to keep the needle from breaking. Sew along the stretched elastic. When the elastic is released, it snaps back to its original length and creates very nice sausage curls in the felt.


Great Hair:


And speaking of hair, Jennifer Stroesser of Columbus, OH, tipped me off on a great way to make curly hair. She cuts fleece into narrow strips. By pulling on these strips, she gets a really neat twist. July 2005


Troll Hair


But no matter which way I decide to go, I will never give up the love of the art and all the people who are like me. I love hearing from all the folks who follow this column. It is impossible to think that in the year 2021, Eureka will celebrate its fortieth year! Can we shoot for fifty years? For some time now, I have been exploring the idea of a compi- lation of Eureka tips, organized by topic. Just think: “Forty Years of Eureka Tips.” Does that sound like fun? Here is a sneak preview:


Awesome Hair


When my kids were teens, they wouldn’t even get in the car with me on trash day, but you should see the awesome “hair” I got off the bottom of an old sofa. It was the three-inch twisted fringe, called “bullion” (as I later found out), that all old sofas, chairs, and drapes used to have. I used it for a witch and, being green, black, and burgundy, it worked beautifully.


Now this twisted fringe has come back, and you can buy it in the local upholstery shops. There are so many varieties of color, texture, and lengths. Just yummy. May 2002


Whiskers I heard from another longtime contributor, Lettie Schubert of


Mill Valley, CA. She says that when she buys new clothes with the price tags and cards attached to the garment on a plastic thread, she cuts the thread off, leaving as much of the thread attached to the “crossbar” as possible. She saves these, and when


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And, of course, you can still send me your tip on any topic at all. I might even get it finished by 2021! Until then, stay safe, stay happy, and stay healthy. And, who knows? I might not retire after all. I have this idea for a script…


I was looking for something different for hair on my troll, and came up with a brand new look. I went to my thrift shop and pur- chased a pair of gray parachute nylon sweat pants. I cut one and a half-inch circles from the material. Then, from the outer edge of each circle, I cut around the edges, in a spiral, toward the middle. When I picked up the end of the spiral, the material dropped in a curly lock. A slight tug on both ends locked the spiral into a strand. I glued bunches of these strands together, and the effect was a mass of bulky curls. Adding other colors and using different widths in the cutting gave dimension to the pelt. March 2003


African American Hair


Joyce Berty of Parma, OH, makes puppets for sale for children. When she wants to make an African American puppet, she uses black pompoms. 1982


Vampire Hair


Do you need to make a man puppet that looks like Dracula? Black swiss straw is the way to go. Smooth it out and glue it down. It looks positively oily. 1998


So, folks, what do you think? But I have a problem. From 1990 until 2009, “Eureka” appeared not in the journal itself, but in a separate newsletter called Playboard. Although I have a few of these, a ton of them are missing. If you saved any Play- boards, I could really use your help in this project. Please take some of this quarantine time to photograph the “Eureka” part of Playboards and email the photos to me at puppetswithpizazz@ gmail.com.


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