Adventures in Crafting

Not content with the other outstanding projects I've got on the go, I've found myself a new one!

I was browsing the Mandarake site when I saw a forlorn Momoko being sold as junk because her hair was cut and her lips were partially rubbed off. When I looked up which Momoko she was she became a must have - she's a Happy Summer Guaranteed Pink ver. Momoko, which means she's the rarer, alternative version to the standard Happy Summer Guaranteed. She's a tan skin doll with blonde hair and pale lips. Although I didn't much like her in her original form, I can't wait to transform her into a new doll because I've always wanted a tan Momoko!

I'm going to reroot her in a blend of hazelnut and cognac saran hair (from My Little Customs again) to give her a multi-tonal hair colour. Warm brown mixed with the dark red is going to look awesome next to her tan. I'm going to paint her lips coral or a tan brown and paint in her teeth. I may gloss them a little as well.

Pretty excited about this project. I'm making clothes for her as well because she won't have a stitch when she arrives.

It was a nice day...

Good Omens has to be one of my most favourite books in the entire universe. That's pretty high praise considering all the books there are in the universe and considering how many books I've actually read over the past 23 years of my reading life, but it's justified, I think.

My paperback copy gets read at least three times every year and I never get bored of it. It's my go-to book when I'm having a sick day, it comes with me on holidays, it's the first book I reach for when I want to read but don't really know what I want to read. It covers all the bases. Considering how many times I've read it, it never gets old and it never dates.

My paperback is battered now and the pages are loose...so to stop any further deterioration (the pages are yellowed and it's been dropped in the bath before today too!) I bought a copy for my Kindle. What a brilliant decision!! I really can read it everywhere now.

Buying my Kindle was also a brilliant decision. I got it almost a year ago so I could keep all my journal articles all in one place without printing them or dragging my laptop everywhere, and she's been invaluable. Did I say she? Well, my Kindle is a girl - I named her 'Ziyal' because there were all these hand-wringing reports that eBooks would be the end of 'real' books...and while I was using my Kindle I realised that it's not a book replacement, it's a hybrid. I could have named my Kindle 'Spock' after the most famous hybrid in Trek history, but I chose Ziyal because as an artist from a mixed heritage I think she'd have appreciated the mixture of print with technology and understood.

I've been a bit naughty, buying Kindle books and downloading the free ones (I bought the Hunger Games books, and I now have the entire catalogue of Oz books!), but I know the train journey to London is going to take a while and B is going to need sleep after all the hours he's been putting in finishing his essay and researching for his dissertation. These will keep me occupied while he rests up!

Morideryn

Source: flickr.com via Jessica on Pinterest

Here is Morideryn! She should be celebrating because I started a layaway for her real body today!

I did want to get her an Ariadoll Elegance 14yrs body, but Ariadoll are closing on the 31st of March and Switch are taking over their moulds and sculpts after that. I didn't know whether to rush and get an Ariadoll body now, or wait and see what Switch would do...but I could end up not liking the new things they do with the sculpts.

Eventually I saw a Volks SD13 girl body on the MP at DoA at a really good price and decided that was the right body to get.

While I really love the Aria body and think it is very elegant, I did worry about if I ever was able to go to a Volks Dolpa (a dolls party held by the Volks company), I wouldn't be able to bring Deryn because she'd be on another company's body. This way, I know that the resin-match would be perfect and she'll be a full Volks doll, rather than a hybrid, so if there ever was any chance I could go to a Dolpa, I wouldn't have to leave her behind.

The other consideration is Deryn's actual character. She is the daughter of the chief of a nomadic, forest-dwelling tribe and a crack-shot with a bow and arrow and a sling. Princesses are supposed to be willowy and lithe, like the Ariadoll body, but a tribal princess who herds reindeer and lives off bread and stew isn't going to be a skinny minnie. She's going to have some meat on her bones and the Volks SD13 body is like that. It has soft curves and some musculature, which is perfect.

Here is Morideryn's backstory;

Deryn's full name is Morideryn (a Welsh-Japanese portmanteau meaning 'forest bird') and she comes from a northern nomadic people called the Mori, who are all red-haired, raucous and brave. They move from high-ground summer lands in the north to low-ground and sheltered winter lands in the south every year and drive their herds of reindeer and well-trained herdwolves with them.

Deryn is the daughter of a chief, Moribran, and his wife, Alis, who is an outsider to the tribe. As Deryn is only half-Mori, her father decides to send her to her mother's people to be educated at a very posh school called Graiglwyd College for Young Ladies, where they speak her mother's language.

Deryn is a very sweet-natured girl, but this is sharply contrasted with her abilities to hunt things single-mindedly - she can kill, skin and joint a rabbit inside ten minutes and she's a crack shot with a sling. She never forgets she's a Mori princess and although she's never snobbish about it, she does expect to be treated with respect.

Her prized possessions are her reindeer hide boots, decorated with hand-carved buttons and leather cord by her Mori grandmother, and her lucky wishbone and pearl necklace which is the inheritance of the eldest daughter of the Mori chief. She is supposed to have traditional tattoos of birds in flight on her shoulders, (I haven't done this yet because she's sharing another doll's body!)

In Mori culture, it is more important to be brave and strong than pretty, and although she is flattered that her new school friends think she is beautiful, Deryn thinks it's the least important thing about her.

Busy busy

Busy week has begun! I've got a lot more overtime at work this week (6.30am starts! Argh!) but right now I'm relaxing at B's while he is off attending a warden meeting.

My spending control has gone a little awry again, but I'll get back into my good books soon. There really were things I couldn't live without!!

Dr Marten boots I've been looking for since 2009 came up on eBay brand new, so I couldn't not buy them. It was a tense battle, but I finally won my dream boots - RRP £140, price I paid, £70! I'm so pleased with them!

Source: ecx.images-amazon.com via Jessica on Pinterest

So, that's been a fun part of the naughty shopping!

What else? Oh, I bought two new books for my Kindle; The Red Tent and Living a Jewish Life by Anita Diamant. The Red Tent is fiction, it's about Dinah, the daughter of Jacob and Leah, and her life after the Shechem incident, where her brothers, Simeon and Levi slaughtered every man in the town of Shechem after Dinah attracted the attentions of the prince. It's a sad story anyway, I'd never have forgiven my brothers for committing murder, especially in my name. The Red Tent does a good job of fleshing out a lot of characters you only really know by name in the Bible, but there's some bestiality and totem worshipping going on that doesn't really sit quite right!

I'm enjoying reading Living a Jewish Life more than The Red Tent. Possibly because it's a fun reference book about including more Jewish things into everyday life. I already try keeping kashrut, I don't eat pork and shellfish anyway, but I keep forgetting about separating meat and dairy - so far this has extended to having pizzas with no chicken on them, but I seem to forget when it comes to cheeseburgers. I have a long way to go!

I bought a Mori Girl skirt today from a shop in Conwy - it's a sweet little shop full of boutiquey things like bunting and hand-made ceramic doorknobs. There's a small selection of clothes, but everything is so perfectly Mori Girl I wanted to buy it all! The skirt is a beigey-undyed linen colour and it'll go amazingly with my new DMs. I'm wearing Mori Girl right now, my new skirt, some crochet tights, some old brown boots, a teal top and a cream cardigan. I have a rope of beads around my neck and a ribbon in my hair :) I really like Mori Girl style, it's so relaxed but also fairytale/artisanal. B said I looked like an artist dressed this way :p

Positiver and Positiver

Now I've got the big groan out of the way, I can talk about more fun/interesting things!


This month I'm going to LONDON :D B and I are going to stay with L&C and try and meet up with as many folks as possible, whilst also attempting to see the sights. B wants to see Freedom Press and the Houses of Parliament, I'm bringing a BJD for fun travel dolly photos - I want one of Melangell sat in an iconic red phonebox.


I've started to be more of a physically organised person - mentally I can be organised and I write lots of lists, but I seem to leave disorder wherever I go. My room is a shit-tip, quite frankly. I have so many things going on with my wardrobe that it's unreal. Anyway. I threw out lots of rubbish at the weekend, and today I'm sorting through my wardrobe; things to throw, things to keep, things to donate and things for Ro.


 Later on I'm meeting up with my friend, Ro, and her baby (my godson!) for tea, cake and a chat! We're trying to meet up at least every fortnight so that he starts remembering who I am (he'll be 9 months old this month) and also so she gets some grown-up chat and to see a face other than her fiance's! I'll be bringing a bag of clothes for her - things that don't suit me but I bought anyway...that kind of thing ;) I keep my clothes in very good condition and she threw away a lot of her pre-pregnancy clothes thinking they wouldn't fit her afterwards (oops!)


Another postive thing is mexican fajita Pringles. They taste amazing. B and I had some yesterday and they were fantastic.


So, not everything is grumbles! There's a lot of positive stuff too!

Kennels of Irritation

It seems a bit bad to be opening a new post with annoyances, but these have been building up a while and I want to get rid of them. So here goes; 

Recasting - I really don't care what your justification is for buying that bootleg, so don't even try. I've heard things like 'Oh, but I *really* love the dolls and can't afford originals' or 'I'd never buy a recast of a doll from single artist studio, but Volks/Soom/Iplehouse are really big companies - it's like sticking it to Walmart/Tesco.'

I'm not an elitist who says 'GTFO of my hobby if you can't afford it, peasant', I don't think like that. At all. But the hobby is expensive and anyone getting into it should be aware of that. You're not 'doing everyone a favour' by driving prices down by buying recasts - you're sowing distrust throughout the community. Second-hand dolls pass through the community a lot and many people are happy to finally track down the doll they've admired for years, but this is all going to stop if we can't trust that the second-hand dolls we buy are genuine. There are already a few countries on my personal blacklist for being too prevalent in dealing in bootleg BJDs. I just can't take that risk with my own collection.

All the people I know in this hobby are not made of money. We love the dolls and scrape and save to be able to afford them. There is no big horde of rich collectors sneering at you because you can't afford a doll. That is your insecurity. We want to cheer you on and encourage you as you save, the way we are encouraging each other, we don't want or like to pat you on the back for getting a 'bargain', when it means you've basically rubbed an artist's face in muck and trod on their back to get their hard work and innovation for cheap. Nice, huh?

There is a common misconception that Volks is a huge company. It isn't. It's a successful hobby company, but not huge. Super Dollfie is the smallest wing of the company, it only looks huge in the hobby because we only see the BJD side, not the garage-kit and figure-kit side. They are hit by the recession as well, closing down Sumikas and moving to areas with lower rents. Volks isn't in trouble, but they are feeling the pinch. If you keep buying recast Volks dolls rather than genuine Volks dolls, the people who create the dolls you admire will be out of work because they won't be paid if they can't sell their product.

Everyone loves a bargain, but a direct copy harms business. There are enough smaller studios copying trends from bigger companies - there's a doll for every budget, honestly. There is no need to buy a recast doll.

Having a whine about DoA - I love being a moderator on DoA. I love helping people out and giving something back to the community, I really like DoA as a fun space to be. Nothing pops my bubble faster than seeing other people slag off the forum and the mods.

It's not difficult to follow the rules, they're there, black and white, anyone can find them and read them. The same as forum announcements - we write them and post them to keep members informed about upcoming changes or updates. I find it so disheartening to receive angry PMs from members who have broken a rule that was announced over two years ago. If we bother to write these announcements, the least you could do is take a couple of minutes to read them, or if you're new, try reading the rules first before jumping in head-first and getting unstuck for spamming.

I have a thick skin, thicker than some of the other mods, but some of the things that have been said about me personally really make me gasp. I'm a mod for an online doll community and you don't even know me personally. I had no idea that being a mod would make me 'high profile' enough to be bitched about. I don't know whether to roll my eyes or be proud I've 'made it'.

People gushing about new dolls and then turning around and selling them a week later - this isn't really a huge annoyance, just something that gives me a wry smile. It really is entirely up to you what you do with your dolls and if you really don't want to keep a doll longer than a week, you shouldn't have to just because you worry about what other people will think. I just find it amusing to watch people so in love with their new dolls quickly put them up for sale. People have unique circumstances, I know this, there may be a pressing reason why you need to sell the doll and get the money together quickly, but when it happens three or four times in a row with new dolls, I do wonder a little whether the person might be better off hanging on to their money and enjoying the dolls they already have for a little while before buying the next doll? So much money must be lost with Paypal fees and conversion from JPY/USD/HKD/SGD/GBP/EUR... over continuous sales. I don't know. If this is you, more power to you, I just don't think I could do it myself!

Busy Month!

January is almost over now! I can't believe how fast 2012 is going already.

This has been quite a busy month. I've been busy with work as well as resurrecting my Poupée Girl account. That's my profile in the link. It's a sort of Japanese fashion/social network where you upload pictures of your clothes for others to admire and you earn ribbons and jewels to spend on clothes for your 'Poupée'. It's much better that I spend fictional ribbons and jewels on stuff than actual money! I need to be sensible and save up!


My new favourite company is Crobidoll. I haven't bought a new doll from them, I bought a wig for Melangell. Well, I originally ordered two but when one was sold out, I got a quick email from Crobi explaining that I could either have a refund to my Paypal or they'd give me store credit so I could buy another wig from them another time. I asked for a refund because I wasn't sure when I'd next be buying a wig and that was super fast too - this was barely 48 hours ago...and today I had a package from Crobi with the wig I ordered (gorgeous, soft and glossy!) as well as a freebie furwig and some stickers saying 'A Present for You'. How lovely :) The customer services person who emailed me was extremely nice and wished me a happy new year - I thought that because of the Lunar New Year and most Korean companies being on holiday that my order wouldn't come until next week or even later if they had to sort through the post. I am beyond impressed with them and I definitely recommend them.