2015 Ripple Kick-Off

Wednesday, September 30, 2015

It's the (torturously slowly) changing weather, I think, but I've been gagging to crochet. To make my annual ripple, more accurately.

I've been planning the colors for this year's ripple for a while, and they are not the ones I am blogging about in this post! I was talking to the cute boy I am hanging out with these days about my rippling mood and suddenly asked, "Do you need a blanket??"

He replied that, actually, yes, he did, because his comforter had come apart and was losing its batting, and he had borrowed a blanket from his mom. Also, he's just moved and has almost nothing in his new apartment. I joyously informed him I would make him a blanket. After all, I have two ripples in my bedroom right now that I've made for myself, one full-on blanket sized and one throw sized, and I don't exactly need another... I just love to have a project like this that's so easy to pick up and make some progress on at any time. Absolutely perfect TV-watching accompaniment.

I sent him some pictures of ripples from Ravelry just to demonstrate how many really different variations you can get and to see which ones he was the most drawn to. Then I made him go with me to pick out yarn.

It's sort of an overwhelming thing to do when you don't know exactly where to start -- "What colors do you like?" I asked -- but we wound up fairly quickly matching colors to the t-shirt he was wearing. Like, I think it took us less than ten minutes.


He wears this t-shirt a lot (and yes, that is a selfie he took a couple of months ago and posted to Instagram, but I didn't know if he'd want me to show his face on my blog, so I cropped him, and I will absolutely remove this image if he's uncomfortable with being on my blog) and I think it's a character from something, but I'm not sure.

Anyway, I like the colors a lot, actually, and while we didn't find 100% exact matches for the purples and pinks, the icy gray-green-blue shade of the owl's eyes and beak is actually pretty dead-on in person. Uh, I'm only assuming this thing is an owl. I don't actually know...!


The shades we got are all Hobby Lobby's I Love This Yarn! which has a really great shade selection. Clockwise from the left: Dark Raspberry, Aubergine, Mulberry, and Glacier. I found a slightly more saturated purple than Mulberry, but Cutie liked the lighter shade better. In retrospect I think a good middle tone works better.

So good!! This will be such a unique color combination, and not too feminine, although this guy is pretty fly so I don't think he'd care either way.

I'm getting started on this today and am really happy this wound up being my ripple for the year rather than the one I had been imagining.
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video: Get Holland Ready With Me!

Monday, September 21, 2015

This weekend's project:


I've been ill this past week and I absolutely hate touching my dolls when I'm sick or dirty. My hands gotta be CLEAN to grace their plastic. I also had a hard time doing the voice over because my voice would give out mid-sentence, so I just left it a little spare. That's okay.

I actually tried on three different outfits, which I cut from the video; I really wasn't feeling anything. But I dig the outfit she wound up in.


Yay, autumnal vibes!! Yay house-shaped bag!

Bless Holland. Her hair is a real mess. It needs a treatment. But she's precious anyway. Presh to death. I adore FBLs.


Wisp is rocking neutrals right now too, and coincidentally... she also needs a hair treatment. The filename for this pic is "two girls who need hair treatments.jpg." No lie. But I've wanted to take a picture with these two together since I got Wisp. Curly hair?? Lovely brown tones?? Aiee! The sun started to come out as soon as I started taking pictures, so I only got a couple. I then literally stood up and shook my fist at the sun like Grandpa Simpson in the "old man yells at cloud" bit.


Another thing I did this weekend: I finally switched out a pair of Holland's chips for a neutral set (the pink front-facing got booted; the neutral set I put in is pictured above). I have several pairs of wheat/brown/gray chips still waiting to be installed. I just really love them. I'm wondering if I should give Holland a darker brown pair??

In other news, I'm desperate to crochet. I want to be rippling... but I haven't found the right yarn yet. It's wigging me out!
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September styles

Wednesday, September 9, 2015


Right now, a bunch of my girls are wearing a particular combination: sweaters + shorts. I'm so ready for fall, but acknowledge that it's still summer out, so I wind up compromising with a little of each.

Beatrix's vintage Ken doll sweater is actually too big... the sleeves come down over her hands, and I have a bobby pin cinching the sweater in back. But it's such a gnarly retro look! I love it! She looks ready to get back to school and nerd out in the library.


Still doting on Wisp. This is only her second outfit change. I'm sure I'll put her in something other than lovely browns, but her hair is swaying me big-time.


Wisp and Aury (I love taking pics of my first girl, Aury, with my latest doll!!) are wearing mimundoblythe sweaters -- I highly recommend them!


I haven't just sat around taking pics of my dolls in what feels like a good while. I enjoyed it so much!
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hustlin'

Saturday, September 5, 2015

So much on my plate lately. I feel really behind in almost every area of my life. I wish there was a defragging process for my brain.

For the past couple of months, I've had a YouTube channel trailer in the works. I finally finished it up and posted it last week.


For a 30-second affair, this took me an unreasonable amount of time to finish.

I didn't save any of the footage from my videos prior to somewhat recently. It's dozens of gigabytes, and my little old computer just can't handle holding footage for more than one video at a time... maybe two, max, depending. I pretty much had to trash the footage as well as the finished copy of the video every time I made one, so I don't have most of my videos in any format anymore. They only exist on YouTube.

However, when I realized I was going to attempt a channel trailer, I knew I needed to keep my hands on as much footage as I could manage. I kept everything I could manage to on my camera's SD cards. This summer, I invested in a second external hard drive to be able to transfer other files off my computer and clear some room, as well as back up footage shot for videos.

Just to create the trailer, I had a dozen or so huge, huge files of footage from various different videos, plus the transcoded footage also, so it took up far more room than it should've while I slowly picked out three-second bits from ten-minute chunks of footage and wondered what I was even doing.

Even at the best of times, I have very mixed feelings about YouTube, and sometime, I'll talk more about that. Right now, I'm just happy it's done!


Recently, also, Michelle from BlytheLife.com interviewed me! You can read that here if you want! I talk a little about blogging vs. vlogging. Looking through my folders for pictures to include was a real trip down a very happy memory lane. Five years in and I'm still convinced my Aury brightened my life.
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