The Brady Kids - Time To Change.mp3

Dressed Lamby in this romantic outfit the other day and was soooo happy with it! She looks like she should be riding on a bicycle with a baguette in the basket. I especially love the way this beret looks with her swoopy fringe!

Blouse: YlangGarden on Etsy
Skirt: CraftyCoraShop on Etsy
Shoes: Thehandflower on Etsy
Beret: Dear Darling via Junie Moon

I myself have been happily living the beret life this winter:

My gray hairs are crazy these days. One of the reasons I dyed my hair pink back in 2014 or whenever was that I already had a lot of grays and didn't feel old enough to have them in such abundance yet. Well, it's twice as bad now. I want to try and look at having them as a privilege. I am privileged to have lived long enough for this to plague me. (BUT ACTUALLY I HATE THEM!)

Well, anyway, happy 2025... I guess?? I have been in a terrible state of dread, anxiety, and depression since the American election in October. Seriously. I have had to up a dosage on my antidepressant for the second time in the span of nine months or so. 2024 was a terrible year for me -- its saving grace being the birth of my nephew.

I want desperately to quit social media. All social media. It's literally been awful for my mental health. Which, as you know, I often reference obliquely here... but in general, Cure Touch is a safe and gentle place for me, where I post things I like and that make me happy, and not a place where I post about my trials and tribulations. I will continue to focus on the little happy things here. I am just saying. I'm really struggling with being online in the current climate. I'm a big believer in curating your online experience as much as humanly possible. But it's become harder and harder to do that on a lot of platforms. They thrive on negativity and outrage, and they shovel that crap at you, whether you want to see it or not. I want to see posts by people I like and follow, and but most platforms now show you a lot of additional random posts/tweets/whatever, and I basically never want to see that stuff. It's riddled with slurs, racism, consumerism, and so much worse. There's never in the history of social media been any tweet or post that's made me say, "This platform is free! I can never leave it!" Nothing is that funny. Nothing makes the bad stuff worth wading through. And the way AI's being jammed down my gullet at every turn makes me so angry!

It's incumbent upon me to make this change for myself; I can't expect the platforms to improve. So. I'm really trying to limit my online exposure to stuff that makes me take point after point of psychic damage as I scroll. I want to fully quit... but then where will I see the latest pics of my blorbos??? I'm not kidding. I'm literally still hanging around these places so I can keep track of what Daniel Bruhl is up to, career-wise. And so I can see pics of him. Heheheh.

Unfortunately I dropped a lot of my usual hobbies during the last half of 2024: crocheting, sewing, Blythe, video projects, beading, journaling. So I haven't been up to anything I can share here.

Here is a list of things I've been relying on the last three months of poor mental health:

• Neopets. Yeah. I very abruptly took up Neopets. I'm a complete newbie and don't know what I'm doing. Neopets is incredibly ugly to me in every way, but the dailies give me something to do other than scroll. Every day I'm playin' Destruct-o-Match III.
• Playing the guitar. It is better for my mental health than even my medication, I think. I would like to post about this further, but I have been working very dedicatedly on filling out my guitar chord notebooks.
• Babysitting my nephew. I get to see him twice a week and it's the greatest. He fills me with so much peace and joy. Really, nothing else in this world can compare. When he smiles or babbles I am transported.
• Indulging in my hyperfixations. Primarily this has meant focusing on collecting some specific figurines. Ideally I will also post more about this.
• Writing "comfort fic." By this I mean writing very niche fanfiction for an audience of one: me. I don't care if I finish it. I don't care if it's bad. It has one purpose: to entertain and comfort me.

In a very exciting and random twist of fate, yesterday I adopted an EBL Blythe off Instagram!! She's on her way to me now. I'm really hopeful I can get back into Blythey stuff this year, just for my own pleasure. Getting a new (very old) doll is definitely one way to go about that!!

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family portrait 2024

Yooo! Class picture!

I've actually gotten a few requests for an updated family portrait in the last couple of years, but even with five less dolls than I have now, I have been like, "I have no idea how to accomplish such a thing..."

I used to take my dolls out into the backyard and pose them on a bench we had, but we don't have the bench anymore, and ~20 dolls makes a quick hike to the backyard not terribly feasible anyway. It took long enough with seven dolls, and now I have just one shy of twenty. You might not think it's a lot of work to wrangle them, but just moving them across my bedroom to line them up here took sooo long.

(I know that people have far larger Blythe collections and manage to photograph all their dolls at once, but I don't know how these people do it!! Lots of time?)

For this, I turned some plastic storage boxes upside down in order to create a riser, like this is choir class, and draped the boxes in fabric so they wouldn't be too distracting. The dolls aren't in any particular order per se, except that the back row is RBLs, the middle row is FBLs, and the front row is RBLs again. Also, Aury is in front because of course she is!! The newer dolls are in front just by virtue of having been farther away from the desk, and so the last to be placed on it.

There was nothing on god's green earth I could do to keep the dolls' hair from sticking to each other and falling in their faces. I tried to fix Gavin's hair so many times, but it just wouldn't cooperate! So, what you see is what you get, in terms of all that doll hair.

Speaking, you might notice that Drew has her original scalp back on, even though the fading on it is so atrocious.

As a bonus, I have a couple of other group pics to share:

The redheads! The gingers, really, as Fidelia is certainly a redhead too. I have been seriously wanting a little pic of all my gingers together since I got Citron!

Also:

The blondes! Are you seeing these ringlets on Holland??

I thought of breaking down the family into groups by hair color and doing a whole series of portraits, but the rubric breaks down by the time it reaches dolls like Gavin and Miette. I didn't want to have a group I was mentally thinking of as "the leftovers." I know they are just inanimate objects and cannot care, but I still would have felt bad! So I stopped here.

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adventures in hand-sewing, part 3 - long-sleeved tops

My hand-sewing ambitions have lead me to making legit shirts! Well -- knit tops! That counts!

I kinda can't believe it?? Like, look at this dark green top. I made this!!! Waaah! It's kind of peasant blouse-inspired, with the lace on the sleeves and the bow at the neck, which is crochet thread. (It was experimental...)

Honestly! I sewed it inside-out on accident. This is the "wrong" side of this knit fabric. It is so hard for me to put things together correctly. But I am sooo stoked on it anyway!

This was my second attempt at this pattern -- the boatneck tee from xoxoBlythe.com. My first attempt came together wonderfully. Full of ambition, I sewed some rick-rack onto it, around the bottom hem... and it ceased being stretchy enough to close in the back. So I can't really use it now. Lesson learned, hahah. Or maybe I'll just cut off the bottom and make it into a crop top. And maybe next time I make this pattern I will make it correctly?? Who can say.

My second (technically third) long-sleeved top is this turtleneck (pattern from Like These Dolls). As I have a goodly amount of this ribbed knit fabric on hand, from which I make socks, I made a white ribbed turtleneck.

This pattern has a video tutorial, which was very handy for me, despite it coming together in similar ways to the boatneck tee in the end. Even with the video, I managed to do several things wrong... or wonky, at the least. I sewed the collar on backwards, so the "wrong" side faces out. I hemmed things in the wrong order. I congratulated myself on getting it hemmed in advance. But surprise surprise, order mattered! So the back is not hemmed at all. Hilarious.

Still, I ended up with a perfectly wearable item...

Look at this! LOOOK AT ITTTT! That's a TURTLENECK if I ever saw one!! HERE IT IS ON LAMB! (And look at this Farrah Fawcett hair on Lamb...)

Despite all my mistakes (at least four very distinct ones) I am elated! I think when it's actually on a doll, you can't really tell it's riddled with mistakes. Rather than a snap, I sewed a tiny square of velcro onto the neck, and I'm so happy with the way it sits. Even if the wrong side of the fabric is showing.

I don't feel I have become good at sewing. I don't feel confident I can tackle any pattern. I can't. I need really great instructions, or really clear video tutorials. I have bought patterns I don't understand how to make. But I have still gained experience and ambition, which was a goal of mine a year ago. To quote myself: I've wanted to re-enforce my hand-sewing skills and just practice a lot, with the aim to increase my comfort level with sewing in general. These skills are imperfect but hard-won and I'm very happy I have kept trying new things.

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video: Get Lamb Ready With Me

Spoilers??

Here's another dress-up video I filmed while my last video was exporting (which is a process that can take hours and hours). I sort of like to have the "set" dressed in some way, too. Last time I had my tiny Christmas tree up and was using the Ikea Huset shelf unit. This time I used these vintage wicker 1:6-scale chairs I got off Etsy a while back. I crocheted that miniature ripple throw over the back of the loveseat, but I believe the sweater's from Millie Makes.


These are almost relaxing to do in comparison to most videos. Filming them only takes one sitting of an hour or less, rather than several sittings that take several hours. Editing is never the difficult part for me... actually filming is. But I love Lamb's springy look right now. Her fleece is white as snow!

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hat swap part two

Oh, I guess it's March!!

As I mentioned, Andi and I did a hat swap last month! She very sweetly made me two! I was so flipping excited when I opened the package and discovered this, because these hats are to-die-for cute. Aury has been in this pink one non-stop since it arrived a couple of weeks ago.

As you can see, it's snowed here. Several times, toward the end of the month. I even got into a winter precipitation-related fender bender with a friend of mine last week, which apparently was one of hundreds on that day. Thankfully, it wasn't major and everyone involved was okay. It was an alarming situation and the cars were not as damage-free as ours, so I'm counting myself very lucky, even though it doesn't feel like it was a lucky situation.

Anyway, I waited until the most recent snow melted to grab a picture of Lamb in the other little kitty-eared creation from Andi.

The button on the side is a heart, you guys!!!

Anyway, February was a really busy and typically pretty expensive month for me, but this year there were several stressful occurrences -- the car accident being the least stressful somehow -- so I didn't feel very much like posting here. Cure Touch, as I've said before, is where I try and keep it happy, like a little sanctuary.

A little bit of positivity to end this post:

• I really do love these hats, haha!
• I'm tapering off taking a medication that had made me really uncharacteristically unmotivated. Mental health, yeah!!! I hope I get back to my normal swing soon.
• I've been playing the guitar a lot lately.
• I saw Jupiter Ascending with a couple of friends (and it was awesome; I have no taste) and bought a bunch of grape Blow Pops for contraband movie concessions. Grape Blow Pops take me back to seventh grade in the best way. Sometimes I don't necessarily enjoy nostalgia, but in the event of grape Blow Pops, I definitely do. 

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Merry Christmas Eve! (Also, a video!)

First, here's a shot of Lamb under our tree!

Okay, so you guys would simply not believe the amount of Christmas cookies made in our house the past couple of weeks. I didn't get pictures of them all, but this is only about a third. I helped pipe on these as well as the chocolate horses/teddy bears below, but mostly, these were made by my sisters for parties and friends and such.

(Oh, my little sister made these candy sleighs for her boyfriend's family's kids!)

And one last shot of Fidelia with Jack Skellington. I'm listening to The Nightmare Before Christmas soundtrack right now!



Finally, a video... a vlog, I guess. This was a request. Took forever and ever, as usual. I keep thinking I've got this whole process mastered, but nope. :)

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Accio Autumn!

Autumn's playing a real game of keep-away this year. It's been cool for a beat, then up in the 80s again, humid and unpleasant. As I told my bestie, disgruntled, the only 80s welcome in my life right now are the whiffs of it coming off Taylor Swift's new album.

The other night, my mom, little sister, and I decided we wanted to watch Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows parts 1 and 2 back-to-back. We turned on LED candles and put them in lanterns and turned off the lights to enhance the mood.

There was a weird moment ten or fifteen minutes in where the TV suddenly turned itself off...?  "Spoooky!" said my mom. The remote's on/off button doesn't actually even work anymore, so it wasn't any of us knocking that by accident or anything. We turned the TV back on, and the DVD was still playing...

About thirty minutes in (well, when Kreacher was bringing Mundungus Fletcher to Harry), all of the power went off! Thankfully we had lit those lanterns and we had about a billion more candles, LED and real, at our disposal, but it was such a bummer! I was just really getting into the movie. Plus, we've had some pretty bad storms in the past decade that have left us without power for multiple days, our city really wrecked and my family really stressed, so we all have fearful trauma responses to power outages now. It was only off four about three or four hours, but that was time enough for us all to run a super weird gamut of emotions.

(The next night, with our power back, we successfully got our Harry Potter on. I know you were worried.)

I can't believe it's so far into October, and almost Halloween!! It just doesn't feel like it!

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New family portrait!

(click here to embiggen!)

From left to right: Gavin, Lamb, Aury, Klara, Mallow, Bonnet (the Middie), Clarke, Plummery, Petaline, Beatrix, Fey, and Drew!

It was about darn time for new family portrait, seeing as how it's been a little over a year since the last! Oh my gosh. Toting eleven Neos (and a Middie) out into June heat, trying to find shade, is quite an undertaking. And now that I have so many girls, they're kind of hard to fit into a line up-style picture! There I was, taking picture after picture where Aury looked like she was about to fall over, and I didn't even see it in real life.

It is definitely amazing to see how my gaggle of girls has grown over the past four years. They each have special memories attached. Some were gifts (Plummery, Petaline and Lamb were given to me by friends!); some have traveled with me; some have been my muses; some had technical difficulties; some have been deboxed on YouTube; some have been called particularly creepy; almost all have worked as models for Etsy.

And it all started with my Ice Rune, Aury. I love her so much. My favoritism is absolutely blatant. If my house was on fire, she is the one thing I'd grab to rescue.

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"sewing"

I made a "feathery" dress out of felt for Aury a couple of years ago and it took me this long to have another go at it.

This time it really doesn't look like feathers or have a bird-like feel to it (the "feathers" are smaller, which I thought I'd like more, but don't actually), but I at least actually sewed all the pieces down instead of using tacky glue for most of them! The old one is kinda falling apart now since it was mostly only glued. I am trying to decide if I want to remake it. The fun part, as with making afghans, is picking out the colors!

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summer days, drifting away

I've been remiss with posting, but honestly, I don't mind at all, as this is my hobby blog.

In June, I strained my wrist knitting hexipuffs with such clumsy concentration! They are outside my skill set, for sure. However, this does happen to my wrists if I am crafting too much or holding myself quite tensely, as I tend to while I'm knitting. It's happened twice since I began this blog, and I'm sure it will happen again.

For most of 2013, I've been concentrating on a large, ambitious writing project. Honestly, I've spent so much time thinking about it and working on it the past six months that I need a break now. Summer has been sort of traumatic, so I'm taking a little break from writing. Really, I ought to be happy to be scraping by.

This past week, I've been getting back in the crochet saddle. Reunited, and it feels so good~ I took some pictures of my girls today for the first time in a while, and am reminded how therapeutic it is.

Stuff I've Lately Enjoyed:

• the Bibledex channel on YouTube -- interesting! I came to it by...
• the Numberphile channel, which I believe I got to...
• by Vsauce.
• Dexter!! It's the final season, weep

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those blues

Practicing my knitting by revisiting this slouchy elf hat pattern over and over. It's confidence-boosting that I can manage my way through it, yet at the same time, it still gives me trouble. I am faster at purling now, so that is heartening, at least. Here, Lamb models a hat that will be sent to my friend L's Bloomy Bloomsbury, Edolie.

I just saw the cutest thing on Feeling Stitchy:

This inspires me so much! I really want to do something similar -- maybe not a cozy but some general embroidery featuring a fluffy doily-looking cutout like that. The curvy edging looks difficult to cut, but mine would not have to be so perfect. :)

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I'm a fool for April

Dressed up all my Blythes for a family portrait! Lamb (second to right) fits right in. Alas for Bonnet, I am not too great at taking pictures of Middies.

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cheered up

Happily, even though I've had quite a difficult few days, this dress I bought just for Lamb arrived today and perked my spirits.

Lamby's curls are odd to try and style! She's puffy and fluffy.

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Lamb spamb

I do believe University of Love is named Lamb, for her lamby curls and also her Gwen Stefanian vibe. This morning she got a little hot water treatment and her curls stayed fairly intact. I really had no idea what would happen with them. Her bangs look better, too, and they do this funny little curl! It's actually kind of cute, so I might just leave them like that for now!

Changing a new girl out of her stock for the first time always makes me kind of nervous. I need to go shopping for some Lamby duds!

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