So Drew's blue hair is just simply no longer blue. It used to be a really lovely shade, as you can see on Kate Hardin/Moofala's Flickr stream. It's now a strange, extremely muted purple-tinged reddish color (kinda-sorta pictured here, last year). The pigment has faded in a very patchy, streaky way, so it's an uneven color as well.
Twice I've tried to dye it blue again with RIT dye, but the dye will quite simply not take, and I really don't know enough about the dyeing process to understand why that is. So I went shopping for new hair for Drew. I found no blue scalps that I liked, but I did like this mossy green bob, so I got it.
On the posi side:
- I do love this particular shade of green, and the fact that it's a bob with some fun curl. I really like Lady Panacea's green hair, and I don't have any girls with green hair, so this is a unique color amongst my Blythe family, as well as a unique hairstyle.
- Also, the hair is very nice to comb. It's very silky and soft.
- It's just REALLY nice to have Drew back together. She's been disassembled for a year, since I was trying to dye her scalp, and this took me a while to do.
On the other hand:
- I am very unaccustomed to this color on Drew (whom I've had for ten years), and so it is both cute and very jarring. Drew's always been my little blue girl.
- "Drew" is a very blue/purple name. I have color-grapheme synesthesia, so letters, numbers, days, and months have colors for me. Ds are purple, Es are blue. So it feels like, "But her NAME is the wrong color now." Ws are, admittedly, grass green. But I still see the name Drew as an indigo color.
- Drew has a sort of muted, slate-blue eyeshadow look, complete with lids of that color. Just for me personally, when that's matched with this green, it isn't my favorite look.
- This is silly, but I prefer whatever plastic Takara uses (... used!), texture-wise. It isn't nearly as shiny or slippery or soft. So this feels extremely different to the touch. It's not that this hair isn't nice, because it is. Rather, it's just a tactile thing that signals to me, "This isn't Takara hair."
- This hair is very voluminous, and thus it is quite wide. To me this is a very Japanese hairstyle, in that I used to see it on mori girls back in the day.
So, I am as of yet unsettled. I like it and yet I find it jarring. I think I am somewhat in mourning over her original blue hair, even though it's been faded for a number of years now.
I have options!
I might keep looking for scalps that are a Drew-ish color of blue. Or I could keep attempting to get her old scalp all fixed up. (I don't know how to do this!)
Another option is to get her faceup refreshed -- or even do that work myself -- so her lids and eyeshadow are a color that really complements the heck outta this green. A beautiful brown, maybe? I could get a new eye mech and brown lashes, gently sand off the blue shadow on her faceplate and do a brown lids/shadow combination, and replace her pair of dark blue chips with an attractive green pair.
But will she still be Drew then? I mean, yes, of course, but. She will have this whole different look. It's not that it's not a cute look, but also, Who Even Is This Doll...
Change is very jarring and distressing for me, so I think I'm fretting just because of that.
(BTW this one of the headbands I've needle felted recently!)
