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The Princess and the Pea by Madeleine Sara
I was very much a child with a vivid imagination and the characters from stories seemed to rise up from the pages and populate my thoughts and dreams. 

I have been told that my birth name, Sara, means Princess. This I find particularly amusing as one of my all-time favourite fairy tales is 'The Princess and the Pea' by Hans Christian Anderson. 

This story reveals how only a real Princess can feel something as small as a pea through 20 mattresses and 20 feather beds. You may well laugh, but yes, indeed I think I really could. In fact, futons are positive torture racks for someone like me! The idea of the Princess and the Pea has often popped into my head as wonderful inspiration for a character. 

As the ideas began to germinate (excuse the pun) I imagined a soft sculpted princess figure with painted, needle sculpted features and tiny wired fingers lying on her high bed of mattresses. 

Her bed would emerge from the centre of her fairytale story book and the exaggerated size of the pea beneath the mattresses would emphasize the level of discomfort she was feeling. The story book would have cloth pages embellished with small embroidered images and printed text. I began to envision her with dark rings under her eyes and untidy hair from the poor night's sleep, wearing a green Indian cotton embroidered nightgown and a silver tiara, to denote her nobility, which I crocheted from silver Goldfingering and beaded. At only 14" tall, she has the tiniest fingered hands I have made to date.

I named this character Princess Lathyrus  
(Latin name for Sweet Pea), which seemed dually appropriate since the name also conjures up the idea of lethargy.  

Once upon a time…
The old Queen ordered that the bed should be made with twenty featherbeds piled on top of the twenty mattresses, under which a pea had been placed. "We'll see if you're a real Princess," she said to herself."

In the morning, the old Queen went to see the princess. "How did you sleep my dear?" she asked. "Dreadfully" replied the princess, "I hardly slept a wink all night. There was something hard in the bed and now I am black and blue all over." 
Then the old Queen knew, since only a real princess could be so tender as to feel a pea under twenty mattresses and twenty featherbeds…