June gloom

Been raining a lot here, which means it's constantly overcast and humid -- but also that the grass is a very vivid green. I saw these cheerful flowers on the back deck and took Mallow out there for a pic with one of the reliable ol' Michael's springtime decor benches.

She's wearing this $10 Disney ily 4EVER fashion pack inspired by Daisy Duck. I got it back in April, curious about how the clothes from his particular doll line (which I have almost no familiarity with) might fit Blythe. The shoes are ludicrously large, but I guess I prefer that to too-small heels.

I was attracted to this particular set because of the purple daisy sweater! I love daisy anything, as I'm sure you know. But also this is my favorite purple. I love a lavender. The top is pretty large on a Blythe; you can see the sleeves are all pushed up on Mallow.

Overall I prefer handmade items for my dolly wardrobe. The tactile experience of these mass-made sets for various playline dolls can be, uh, scratchy and slippery. And I just think I prefer stuff that fits my dolls' bodies well. I almost never buy Blythe clothes off Etsy if I can see they are made to fit bodies other than Neo Blythe or Licca. They always fit strangely when put on Neo bodies, and I end up feeling like I wasted my money on something that doesn't actually look good on my dolls. Many such cases. When the clothing's at such a small scale, fit is very important.

But! That being said, there's still something really fun about finding some doll clothes when out and about. Do you know, I have had many dreams over the years about finding vintage or handmade Blythe clothes in weird stores or places where it is a surprise to find such things. In my dreams I am frantically trying to decide what to buy.

Hard to take a single dang doll picture outside without this goober getting all up in my biz. LOOK AT HIM!

I have several things to post about, and literally several posts in draft format. But I have been feeling like some of the things don't really warrant a whole post, haha. I was trying to think of how to consolidate some of the topics -- like grouping them into like-ish items -- and thinking, "Maybe I can just do a post purposefully hopping between several discrete things?" And then June got away from me.

And good riddance to it, I must say!

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lofty ambitions part 1

So I know I said that I felt like doing some more doll-dressing, but what I actually ended up doing is taking off all my dolls' clothes. All twenty-one Neos are standing around nakedly in my room this past week.

I did this because:

• I wanted a blank slate for all the girls. Some of them have been wearing the same 'fits for a really long time (over a year) because I liked them, and I just realized all of a sudden, "I'm never going to want to change some of these outfits, but I should anyway."
• I wanted to see every single pair of shoes I have, specifically!
• I wanted to see if I had proper storage, still. All my dolls being totally undressed is a thing that never happens, really, but I wanted to see the state of my storage options. I need to change some of what I'm doing; boxes are overflowing as it is.
• I wanted to see if all my girls had underwear. A couple don't! I don't strictly think they need panties. Some things fit better without that layer in the way, taking up valuable space. But I also irrationally don't want any of them to feel less loved because they don't have undies. Hahaha.
• Just really want to do Blythey stuff right now. I want to do dressups I've never done before. Revisit my doll wardrobe and find pieces I've never used (I have many, haha) and use them, finally. Maybe even declutter??

I kind of had fun grouping my girls somewhat, as I put them all back where I keep them (atop my desk and on a ladder shelf). All the blondies and peachies. The gingers. The sandies/brunettes. I love seeing new (old) girls like Olive betwixt Fey and Zasha. I love seeing Lamb and Holland side by side -- those curly girlies. It's inspiring me. And the utter hilarity of Klara and Tiphanie sitting on the same bench when they have scads of hair that fells them so easily...

So, I'm going to have to dress all these girls again, when I hardly have the time to even do so right now! Because I am trying to do a lot of stuff right now. So as ridiculous as that sounds: Dressing all these gals again officially falls under the heading of Lofty Ambitions. I'll post about another Lofty Ambition I am undertaking quite soon. I feel insane for trying to load more onto my plate these days, when I have sort of bitten off more than I can chew already.

Finally -- and this has nothing to do with any of the rest of this post -- I did some light Halloweening with some cat ears and makeup for a family party. My mom took this pic of me and my nephew, who has grown so much lately. He is fifteen months old, a big boy who has started walking and can say "hello," "bye-bye," "kitty," and "night-night," and I have been treasuring time with him especially of late because he and his parents are moving a few states away in just a few days time. So this is just an addendum of a memory, for my own enjoyment.

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Froggy, you weren't such a bad guy, either.

The other day I was possessed by the urge to crochet a froggy headband for my girls. This is not an original design or concept, really! Just my take on it! There are lots of cute frog-inspired helmets and stuff for Blythe out there.

I'm kinda tickled with the way it turned out! I used a yellow-green yarn (it looks greener IRL than in these particular pics, but it's definitely not lime green), plus some white and chunky black, all of which I already had on-hand, and had myself a nice little time figuring out how I wanted to do the eyes.

I considered using elastic along the back to make it particularly accommodating, but I've done this on other headbands and it's some extra labor, and if you don't get the dimensions of the elastic exactly right, then the headband can be too large or too small, and either slouch or be so tight it slides up and off the doll's head. I did a couple of ties made up of single crochet, and quite simply tying them around the doll's chin before moving them behind her hair works so great!

I also added these heart beads on to the end of the ties, just for a cute touch! (I should probably trim these long draggly bits, huh.)

Honestly, making this gave me so much serotonin. I've been pretty bummed the last couple of months, and this did me soooo much good. I love spending time with my girls, and dressing Mallow in this green drawstring dress I've had in my dolly wardrobe since 2010 inspired me even further, so I made something else too! Stay tuned!

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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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dolly dressup 2: dawn of a new day

I decided to do it.

I decided to make more dolly dressup videos.

Since my last dressup video in April 2017, I'd thrown away the old wobbly desk I used to use for dressups. I'd broken one of my three filming lights. I barely touched my camera. I think I even switched to a new desktop computer.

It was sort of a journey, just prepping to do this. Finding a place to film. Fixing my broken filming light (by hand!). Getting out all my old doll "set" stuff. Cleaning the wicker pieces with q-tips. Getting my filming equipment together. Re-learning how to use my tripod...

Filming was also just a long process of thinking, "How did I do this...?"

You have no idea how arduous filming a dressup can be. My arms are unnaturally outstretched because the tripod is in front of half of me. Like, one knee is INSIDE THE TRIPOD. If I bump the tripod by moving too much, I have to either do something again or cut around the footage somehow. I am looking through the viewfinder of the camera the entire time because I can't see the doll or the clothes due to the angle in which I'm holding her. My camera does not have autofocus for video, so I'm manually focusing it the entire time.

(That doesn't even touch the post-production stuff -- editing, et cetera. That's hours of work.)

However, towards the end of the dressup, I started experiencing some...

I felt legitimately pleased with the outfit and was so enjoying just looking at Mallow, and I really remembered why I have loved Blythe for so long now.

So... I am actually working on another dressup video. I'm also planning on making an Etsy shop update. (When I tell you I've made a bunch of these headbands, I'm serious.) But I've decided that I need to engage with Blythe hobby stuff differently than I was engaging with it five years ago.

My mental health is different. YouTube itself is different. 2020 certainly hits different.

I haven't drawn up a contract with myself or anything, but I'm going to try just doing what I want to do, when I want to do it. I'm going to try not to worry about what other people think of anything -- my hands, my voice. I'm not going to do requests. I'm not going to make informational or tutorial videos. Set boundaries. You know??

Do it for the serotonin!

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fences

This has been one of the most difficult summers of my life. If you have positive vibes to spare, please send them my way. My dad has been in the hospital for four days and will likely be there for several more, as he had some major heart surgery. I'm sorry I don't have happy news to report, anything fun to share, or anything else really going on... I really wish I did.

As you know, I don't like to post bummer stuff here. That's just what's up.

My Blythes have been packed away in my closet since late May (I started out June by painting my bedroom). I just unpacked them again today. I dressed Mallow, but left my other girls naked.

It's so instinctive for me to dress Mallow in light colors and pastels, but since none of my dolls were wearing anything at all, all of the clothes and shoes I have for them were available to pick from, and I decided to try and do something different. I ended up using this brown and blue checkered dress, blue tights, a navy tutu as a petticoat, brown CoolCat boots, and this new deer-eared headband by dinosaurparties which I got in a trade.

To see the outfit come together was rewarding, and to try something new for Mallow was, too. It's super hot out, not really time for tights or fur-trimmed boots or anything autumnal, but who cares?

That is it! I just wanted to post at least once while it's still July.

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Just so typically me.

I made this little pink deer hat for a trade -- white/frost hats aside, I usually make these hats in variegated yarn, I think it looks better that way. But! I love pink, so I like how this looks. Not so much in pictures, but in person it looks soooo bubblegummy and nice. I'm making myself one out of the rest of the skein and I think I'm gonna froof it up ridiculously. Beading? Applique? Yes?!?!

Today I painted an embroidery hoop for that Lemongrab piece I did. I painted it gold, since the fabric has those gold triangles on it. This scrap of cardboard has been my palette for projects the past few years... I think you can tell that I like to paint things pink and gold.

Yep. "It me." I'm not saying that if I could start with a completely empty room like in The Sims and decorate it to my whims that it would look like that palette, but... it probably would. I'll let you know when I find a place for that Lemongrab piece. There's too much stuff on my walls already.

Here's one of the garlands (yes, plural) I made the other week hanging over my mirror -- this one doesn't have green, just pink, white, pink/white, and neutral goldish/white. It's highly unnecessary. Like, my room just plain does not need this.

(But doesn't my Enid Collins mouse box bag just ~go~ in my space? It's crazy. Also, those leis are left over from my birthday... not sure what to do with 'em. But they're not usually there. The bunny ears, however... yes. Always there.)

Oh, to close out this entry, I wanted to post about Mallow's dress. I never mentioned this dress in a haul or anything, but I snagged a House of Pinku dress last year (LAST YEAR!!!) and Mallow has been wearing it ever since. It's got this sweet heart beading on the bodice! It's presh to death. House of Pinku makes dresses I adore, but I never seem to catch them, and they are technically beyond my Blythe budget. I'm very good at sticking to that budget and am rarely tempted by things that bust it, but I don't mind going over it every now and again if it's for something I really love like this dress.

Underneath it is a MINI JIJO tutu skirt thing, and of course, Mallow was my helper model for the pink hat. With all this pink on, she looks like a blonde.

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Two-Day Trippin: Excelsior!

While in Texas, we stayed at the Excelsior House. My parents took my sister and I once there when we were fairly little -- I was maybe 8 or so. This time, I shared a room with my grandma. We just went to California together in May, so we are pretty good travel buddies.

Mallow, my grandma, and I were in the Jay Gould room. It was by far the coolest room out of the three my family rented, temperature-wise, so everyone wound up congregating in the room. It wasn't until then that my sister's boyfriend informed us that the Jay Gould room in particular is supposed to be incredibly haunted. Hahaha! I'm much more scared of real people than I am of ghosts. Unfortunately there was no spectral activity going on, unless the relative coldness was indicative of spirits.

Sister and her boyfriend were staying next to a room that seemed to be undergoing some kind of renovation or repair. Its door was open, too. We peered inside and the whole thing was dark and draped in plastic sheets and very creepy.

"I really want to go in there and take spooky Blythe pictures," I said.

Sadly, these were the only ones that turned out much, since it was almost totally dark in the room and my lens was like, "Nooo..." But I think Mallow looks like she has lived there for a hundred years and wants someone with play with and stares perpetually out from behind things with one doleful eye. I took her Mary Janes off for the effect.

I had been concerned about bringing a Blythe since sometimes people can be really judgey about them, but I'm glad I brought Mallow just for the sake of getting to take eerie pictures in a plastic-draped room. And I'm glad I brought her, specifically, because she managed to be both ladylike and ghosty.

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Two-Day Trippin': Gladewater

So, my family took a quick trip to Jefferson, Texas. My mom was taken there by her mom as a kid, I was taken there as a kid. Several family trips have already been made! It was a trip purely for nostalgia and family togetherness purposes. I took Mallow with me.

On the way there we stopped in Gladewater, which calls itself the antique capital of East Texas. We only looked in a couple of shops, but I took plenty of pictures! (Way more than I wanted to even edit and post.) One of the first things I saw was a Skipper doll!

I have no need for dishes or glassware (I had to talk myself out of a lot of heart-shaped dishes, knowing I have no use for them) but it's some of the prettiest stuff to look at.

Did I want this pink Pyrex? HECK YES I DID. But it was $120 for the set of four. Heck no.

I'll post again tomorrow. I'm absolutely beat!

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hiveminded

I'd like to pretend I just thought of dressing up a bunch of my girls like bees while I was decluttering my dresses, but that would be a lie. I have wanted to do it for, like, a year. I have a bunch of yellow dresses and enough stripes to go around. It was getting some free socks from CoolCat (the gray and white striped ones Mallow is rocking) that finally pushed me to make antennae out of gold sparkly pom-poms and black pipe cleaners. It was fun!

It's absolutely summer now, though. It's so humid where I live!! So gross and unpleasant. Getting outside, even as early as possible (it was about 8:30am when I took these pictures), was like slogging through a swamp.

Worth it! I do look like an insane person, though, with half my dolls dressed as bees (Soleil and Lamb not pictured... I can only haul so many dolls) and the other half naked.

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video: Blythe Styling Tips

The past few days for me have been dedicated to getting this video finished up! You wouldn't believe how long it takes to make a ten-minute video when you are filming so many small things, working with so many shots, and have so many gigs of HD footage that your little ol' computer starts warning you that you have no space left.


Anyway, I made this in response to a request for such a thing, and before I went ahead with it I put a lot of thought into whether I really had any styling "tips" at all. As I say in the video, this kind of stuff is so subjective! It's not like there's a right or wrong to any of it. I was wondering, what are legit ideas I can share, and what are the things I do that simply boil down to personal preference? Do I really have advice to share that is useful to anyone? Like, literally helpful? I feel funny saying this video has styling tips, when really, I think it's more like me saying, "Well, this is what I do and what I like..."

This was hanging around half-finished on my hard drive for a month so I'm really happy to have it done, even with my general tendency towards mixed feelings in regards to my videos.

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just a little hat post

Post-Christmas downtime, am I right?

This weekend -- besides watching about seven hours of Adventure Time and likely as many hours of British true crime shows -- I made this hat by request! I haven't done a really simple hat in a long time and I enjoyed it. Note to self: get more pastel pink embroidery floss!

Oh, also this weekend, it snowed for the first time this winter! It's lovely to be indoors under blankets, surrounded by Christmas loot, during weather like this.

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a good old-fashioned deer hat party

I was making a couple of deer hats by request this past week, and while I was at it, I made myself a couple, because actually, I never kept but one single fraise (red) one for my own girls. Since I got into the groove of cutting felt, I wound up cutting out enough ears/antlers for eight hats...!

I get to zone out and watch true crime shows or listen to podcasts while I work, and finishing up a hat is always satisfying!

I feel all pumped to get out to the craft store and get some yarn (I definitely want to make a foehn hat) and churn out a few hats. I don't actually have any yarn left at the moment. I'm also out of white/ercu/cream floss, which I usually use to stitch up antlers with. While I was pawing through my stash last night, I did find that I had crocheted, but never antlered/eared, a flora hat and a fetti hat... so I remedied that quickly!

Gavin's wearing a flora hat (she's also breaking in these dusky pink boots I recently got). I chose to stitch the antlers up with mossy green floss. Oddly, it doesn't come off very green in pictures. But it is green.

Mallow's rocking the fetti hat. You might also notice that she has new front-facing eye chips!! They're light blue, which I think really suits her, recalling her stock. I took out the uber-dark brown ones. (Two of my other girls got new chips, too. Pics sometime soon!) I also outfitted her with a new pull string -- hers broke while I was filming my Blythe collection video, if you recall -- and de-sleepy-eyed her, since I wasn't sure if that had contributed to her pull string snapping! While I was in her head, I also gave her a tiny gaze lift. It may not be noticable. I don't tend to go overboard with the ol' gaze lifts.

Neither of these hats are particularly wintry, but there haven't been hats in these colorways in my shop since, I think, 2011. When international shipping prices got jacked up a couple of years ago, it really depressed me and put me off even wanting to make hats at all for a long time, because mostly, I shipped international! Still can't figure a way around this, but I think I'll indulge in making hats while I feel like it!

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Ripple Throw Progress Report: 5/7

Just checking in on my 2014 ripple throw's progress (and indulging my crazy color compulsions with my Blythes; nothing new here)! I'm currently estimating it'll have seven swathes of color, but that's only an estimate. I feel like I'm about 70% done.

I had no particular vision for this throw's whole look besides knowing that I wanted to do larger swathes of color, but not just two alternating colors. Honestly, I'm not sure how I feel about it! I enjoy the process of rippling, so the outcome isn't everything, and I'll only know how I really feel when I lay it over the end of my bed, probably.

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Cookie crumbles.

After a particularly stressful week last month I decided I wanted to get a couple of Blythe dresses; retail therapy strikes again! Seriously, my September was... woof.

When I was cruising around Etsy for Blythe dresses I was caught by this one, by Kuloft. At $25 (for the dress; the headband was $15), it was over my Blythe budget. I have only a couple of times paid more than $20 for a Blythe item. $20 is just kind of my personal limit, even though so many items cost well over that! I understand why, as the hats I charge $20 for are very time-consuming to make, but there's only so much I'm willing to spend in an already expensive hobby! But I splurged because I knew this would be a perfect Mallow dress. And because Kuloft's shop was having a promotion where you could get a flower dress + headband with free shipping for $39! (With shipping, it was more like $46-47!)

However, luck was not really on my side for this purchase. I couldn't find a coupon or promo code or anything despite searching around the shop and Kuloft's Instagram. I left a note to Kuloft with my Etsy purchase saying that I couldn't find a promo code but that I saw that there was free shipping for this promo. But I didn't get it applied to my purchase. I'm confused about that, but... hey. It's fine. It's ten dollars.

When I opened the package I was awestruck by how beautiful this dress is!!

Seriously, I love it so much! It's not my usual thing to get a "statement" outfit like this. Usually I like to buy little dresses that are really layerable and suit lots of my girls. I did layer a Minijijo tutu/petticoat/skirt underneath this dress for even more frill, but it's gorgeous all on its own. The tiny bells at the collar jingle oh so softly, little fairy tinkles. These colors are right up my alley. So I am really happy I got it!

This headband, though. It broke in two places before I even got it out of its plastic bag. I'm so bummed... it's a lovely headband, but also it's something I got just because there was a promotion. I wouldn't have bought it on its own or if there hadn't been a promotion. Which, of course, I didn't get the benefit of after all! So to have it shatter before I could even hold it in my hands or see it on my doll's head was vexing. I didn't handle it roughly or anything... it broke while I was opening up the bag it was sealed into. I should have carefully cut the bag open with scissors, but I opened it more like you would a bag of chips, just pulling the plastic apart, and that was enough to break in two places.

I hot-glued it back together. You can't really see it in pictures, but it doesn't sit on the head well now, and I expect it will fall apart over and over and I'll either be hot gluing it till the end of time or it will just never get worn. This is a travesty, man!

The fact that I broke this headband is certainly my own fault, as was the assumption that I would perhaps be refunded the shipping cost for the promotion. But alas, I spent waaay more than I normally would on a whole ensemble well outside my "norm," so I feel this broken headband keenly. I could cry. Why!! This was my splurge!! Oh, so upsetting.

Still, at least this dress is still the most beautiful thing ever...! I would certainly buy another one of these, although... not the headband.

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a minty hat

Made this little pixie hat with minty baby yarn by request! (I usually just make hats by request at this point!) I love applique and hardly ever do it anymore, but I'd like to change that. I really find it so fun to do. And this is probably the fifth or sixth time I've appliqued a toadstool -- best thing to applique!!

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