Mumpy and grumpy

Dig the rain in the background of these pictures!  These were taken last Thursday afternoon, but it's been much of the same since, with some thunder and wind thrown in.  Lordy, the weather has been insane lately!  For the Bootheel it's just been rain and temperatures in the eighties, which I'll gladly take over the tornadoes that the Great Plains had.  The outlook for this coming week looks downright bad for a large chunk of the central U.S., and if I recall correctly, some of y'all as well.  "Don't be scared, be prepared," Ryan Hall always says, and indeed I'll be taking every precaution I possibly can.  I know where I can hide at Grandma's house and I know where I can hide at the library, and I never wear sandals anymore so I should be good to go.

Secondly, I send my apologies to Barb the Evil Genius for not emailing sooner; for some reason my email is being very contrary.  I'll keep trying, chica!

Sooooo...with summer creepin' in, I've continued my search for doll clothes, this time for Terri Lee and Mary Jane.  I don't know why I suddenly got bitten by the Terri Lee bug...yeah I do.  She and Mary Jane got moved over to Grandma's house.  I think Terri Lee wishes that I'd left Mary Jane behind. 

Terri Lee:  Seriously, why didn't you???
Mary Jane:  ;-)

Because Mary Jane is special, Terri Lee.  Both of y'all are.  Mary Jane is hard to buy clothes for, not that she or I mind.  She looks so cute in her original outfit!  Or maybe "cute" isn't the word I'd use to describe Mary Jane.  LOL, either way I like her in her original outfit, and that's good because she's got nothing else!

I saw an advertisement that discussed separate outfits for Mary Jane, but I've never seen the little outfits...not yet, anyway.  On the other hand, Terri Lee got some nice new things.  To my delight she's relatively easy to shop for...on eBay, at least.  Etsy doesn't have much, to my surprise.  Now...remember how I like yellow dolly dresses?

I kinda wish my Terri Lee had dark hair for this dress, but that can't be helped.  LOL, I actually bought this dress after I bought the other three because it's so stinkin' cute.  The skirt has TULIPS on it!

Oh, and little touches of green.

At the library one of my favorite patrons is an older lady who sadly is sick with Alzheimer's disease (let's call her Mrs. A, since both her initials are A, LOL).  These dresses arrived on a day when she was in, and when I told her I collected dolls she replied "Oh, I liked dolls too.  I used to sew for the bigger ones."  When the packages came I thought "If she used to sew, then she must see these."  When I did show her she liked the yellow one best, reserving special admiration for the appliqued tulips.  Mama likes it too, but I expected her to because she loves yellow.

The yellow dress came from vom on eBay, and these next three are from solid-deal-store.  This one is the first one I threw her in; it has hearts, like good dolly dresses sometimes have, but they're not all red or pink.  Indeed, the heart front and center (and partially concealed in a fold) is green.

Interestingly, long ago when I was a rookie on Failbook, I took a quiz and found out that my heart is...purple.  The quiz said that my heart was multifaceted and hard to get to, but was honest and would love whoever managed to get to it.  That fits me...well, not to a T, but it fit pretty well.  I found it ironic though that my heart was my sister's favorite color and not my own, LOL.

The next two Solid Deal dresses have my favorite accessory, the hair bow.  This blue dress...I think I'll save it for next Easter.  It's pretty veronal, and here in the Bootheel it's quickly getting summery.  I love the print, though.  This is just an interesting little dress, period.

It even came with a little bracelet!

Interestingly, the bow attaches to Terri Lee's head with a map pin.  I have exactly one hair bow that attaches to my hair with a pin...and no, I don't use a map pin!  I've worn that bow all of two times in the past year (May fifth of last year and January thirteenth of this year).

Mrs. A astutely pointed out that since this dress is organza/organdy it'll need a petticoat.  Done and...almost done, LOL.  I ordered a nice petticoat right after Mrs. A left, and hopefully it'll be here soon.  Justin's saddle shoes STILL aren't here.

Now to the last little outfit.  I love patriotic clothes, and when I saw this dress I thought "Yep, gotta have that one too."  Mama likes it too, LOL.

This one came with matching bloomers and another little bracelet, but I forgot to show those.  Aesthetically this is my favorite of the dresses, but it is tight around the neck. 

I guess if I wanted to nitpick I could harp about Terri Lee's shoes being black and not matching, but at least she's consistent!  So far I've yet to get a poorly made dress for this particular doll; all four dresses are handmade, and aside from a loose end or two I've found no huge sewing errors.  I have a lot of respect for folks who do this kind of thing for a living, because sewing on such a small scale can't be easy.  I know knitting in this scale isn't always easy!  Anyway, I'm satisfied with these little outfits, but I don't think ANYTHING makes Terri Lee happy.

Terri Lee:  Whyyyy are you looking at me like that???

Mary Jane:  I think y'look nice!

Darn it, Terri Lee, you two are gonna have to learn to get along!  I've seen other Terri Lee and Mary Jane dolls peacefully coexisting, so I know it can be done.  But anyway, now that I know that stuff is available for Mary Jane, I'm gonna keep my eyes peeled.  She deserves to have nice new things too.

Hugs and rain,
RagingMoon1987

I lied!

I had a little money left over this pay period, so I bought a beat-up Terri Lee doll.  She came blowing earlier today, on the tail end of yesterday's storms.

Mumpy Terri Lee, as Tam would call her.  I always get a big LOL out of that, but if one stops to think, Tam is actually right!  When I was a little kid and I'd go on a pouting bender Mama would snap "Quit that poutin'.  I can out-pout you!"  And she could!  But seriously, even back in the forties critics said the doll wouldn't sell because she had a "funny face," but they were quickly proven wrong.  Terri Lee proved VERY popular, and a bit (a lot?) groundbreaking as she had a couple'a black friends (Bonnie Lou and Benji) and brown eyes instead of the blue eyes that were standard for dolls then.  Probably her small-town persona helped some too; Terri Lee was a product of a family-owned company in Lincoln, Nebraska, a sizeable but not ridiculously big town, and her creators never made any bones about her rural heritage.  Hold up a bit...my mistake, she started off in Lincoln, but the factory burned down.  For reasons I can't remember the company retained roots in Lincoln, but opened up a new factory in California.  There they continued their success (with some hiccups) until some a-hole burned down the California factory.  That proved to be the beginning of the end for Terri Lee's heyday, though she saw a revival during my adolescence.  My favorite reproduction was always this one, made by the one and only Robert Tonner, with sherbet-colored clothes and a yellow mohair wig.  Tonner called that hair "chick," I think, and the doll herself was entitled "Daisy Chain."  Terri Lee's full-tilt nitty gritty history can be found here.  Melanie O. at Doll Land includes some additional information about what happened to Terri Lee after the 1960s.  To my horror, Miss Melanie fell victim to Parkinson's in 2019 and had to quit collecting and blogging.  I wonder where she is and how she is now...I have friends with Parkinson's, and it's a terrifying, frustrating ailment.  I hope to God I don't get it, and I hope none of y'all do either.

Right, back to matters at hand.  Even now Terri Lee has her fans (like me) and her naysayers (Mama, LOL).  And yet...I know I've mentioned in the past that I like these dolls, but I've gotta admit that one of these stern-looking dolls gave me a turn.  My family was at our favorite antique mall many years back, where I got many of my best dolls back in the day.  I was in my usual place, ogling Crissy and Toni and a brunette Chatty Cathy and a Malibu Skipper in a pretty red dress, when I suddenly saw this cranky little poppet glowering at me!

Maybe she was mad because I hadn't noticed her right off the bat.  How I could've overlooked her is anyone's guess, but I did.  I was so startled that I shrieked and jumped back, to my sister's great amusement.  The little doll had pretty face paint, but she's obviously rewigged and her price was a little high, so I said no thank you to that one.  The doll I have now has a rub on her upper lip, but her coloring is prettier than the pale poppet at the antique store so I think I did pretty well.  A rub is easily mended.

She's a little ruffed up all over, like vintage dolls will be, but that doesn't matter to me.  I've got a Terri Lee doll, and that's what matters.  How about some clothes to cover those cute little britches, chica?

That dress fits more like a nightgown than a dress, but it'll do for now.  To my considerable chagrin there are not a lot of things available on Etsy for Terri Lee, but Vee's Victorians has one dress available in three color variations, and Sherry's Terri Lee Doll Clinic has some things, and eBay and Jan's Doll Closet also have some odds and ends.  Whatever, I love a challenge. 

Of course I can't talk about Terri Lee without bringing her rival Mary Jane into the mix.

Terri Lee:  What the...???  What are YOU doing here???

Mary Jane:  ;-)

I'm predicting that these two will get along about as well as Rose Tyler and Sarah Jane Smith did.  Even though Mary Jane was created to rival Terri Lee, these two are pretty different.  Their faces are the most obvious difference; Terri Lee has the aforementioned mumpy cheeks and painted eyes, while Mary Jane has jowly cheeks and inset eyes that flirt and sleep.  Terri Lee is blonde and brown-eyed, while Mary Jane has deep auburn hair and blue eyes. 

Mary Jane is a hard plastic walker, while Terri Lee is just hard plastic, a kind that feels cheaper than the stuff Mary Jane is made of.  More importantly, Mary Jane has slimmer limbs and shorter arms than Terri Lee.  Presumably this renders clothes sharing out of the question. 

That's kind of a pain in the butt that these two can't share clothes, because it isn't easy to find clothes for either of these dolls.  MAKING them wouldn't be so bad, but finding them ready-made isn't easy, especially for Mary Jane, who had a very short production run.

Since I made such a big to-do about the weather yesterday, here's a recap.  Malden and the majority of the Bootheel made it through unscathed, though I figure there's some damage to siding, trees, and car windows here and there.  Arkansas and Iowa did not make it out nearly as well; Little Rock and Wynne (both Arkansas towns that I've never been to but know of quite well) both got hit hard, and at least four fatalities have been reported at Wynne.  Someone also died at a crowded theater in Belvidere, Illinois, who is no stranger to violent tornadoes.  As for Iowa, I don't know of any fatalities there, but one of those tornadoes was a friggin' BEAST.  It was beautiful in a perverse sort of way, as tornadoes often are, but one can't ignore the cloud of debris it kicked up.  As for me, well...I honestly was expecting to wake up facedown in a puddle of mud, having been blown out of my house and into the backyard.  That's how bad all the weather stations, from our local meteorologist on up to Ryan Hall and Reed Timmer, were making it out to be.  I spent the day and part of the evening with my heaviest boots lashed to my feet and my purse and Rita Cheryl's go-go bag at the ready.  But Malden didn't get hit and I am very thankful, though I am keeping the less fortunate in my prayers, just as I did last week when Rolling Fork got hit.  Oh, and did I mention that my sister drove to Fayetteville, Arkansas and back in all this crap???  She did, and she made it just fine until she got to Poplar Bluff.  Then she had to stop and wait out a tornado-warned thunderstorm before completing her last leg of her trip (Jackson, Missouri was her destination).  To give y'all an idea of how far she had to travel in two days, Fayetteville is in the northwest corner of Arkansas, not too far from Joplin, and Jackson is eighty miles north of Malden, very close to the Mississippi River.  It was ten P.M. when she got home, to "a clean house, a warm meal, and a hot shower," as her husband put it.  He's a keeper, that husband!  So things could've been worse for my family, and they could've been way better for some other poor folks.  And spring is just getting started.

Wish me luck with my grumpy little girls!  I've already got my hands full with Felicity and Amazing Maddie, and Sila Clops is also still pissed with me.  

Hugs,
RagingMoon1987

Last dance with Mary Jane...

...one more time to kill the pain!  Probably this would've been a good post for Wednesday since Wednesday was 4/20, but I didn't get her on the twentieth.  This is Mary Jane, and if you've got a good memory then y'all may recognize her.

One day in 2019 a patron/friend brought both Mary Jane and her childhood Cissette to show me.  What an honor it was to see them both!  I'd never handled either a Mary Jane doll or a Cissette doll before.  Well!  This past March 18th rolled around, and my patron/friend was in again.  When I inquired about the well-being of the dolls (I playfully do this with my fellow dolly lovers) she said "I may just let you have Mary Jane.  I don't think my kids or grandkids would appreciate her."  The "may" in that sentence turned from a possibility into a certainty yesterday, so here's Mary Jane, Terri Lee's main rival.  I've always wanted a moody, broody, pouty little Terri Lee to add a little more 'tude to my mostly sugar-and-spice collection, but Terri Lee is crazy-expensive so her obscure lookalike will do nicely.  For the record, a well-kept Mary Jane can also go for a decent price.  Not a Simon and Halbig-level price, mind y'all, but a hundred bucks isn't so bad for a hard plastic walker.

Mary Jane came in two incarnations during her brief appearance in the dolly world, one with a hard plastic head, and one with a vinyl head.  A company called Freydberg made the hard plastic dolls from 1953 to 1954, and Togs and Dolls Corp. made her from 1955 to 1957.  Since my doll has a hard plastic noggin she's one of the older dolls.  I think Mary Jane's expression is hilarious.

She was born to unseat Terri Lee and she knows it!  Unfortunately a lot of Terri Lee fans think that Mary Jane isn't as pretty as Terri Lee is, and I...well, as much as I hate to look a gift horse in the mouth I have to agree.  Terri Lee is supposed to be a little girl doll and she looks the part.  Mary Jane is also supposed to be a little girl doll, but her face has drooping cheeks and an overall haughty expression that make her look like an older woman on a little girl's body.  Haughty look aside, Mary Jane does have pretty eyes.  These eyes apparently flirt and sleep, but I've not yet gotten them to do either.

Mary Jane is a walker like Saucy Walker and a couple of my other older dolls, so I figured her eyes would move with her head as she walks like Saucy's do.  But it turned put that all I need to do is lie her on her side.

Ewww, I don't think I'll be doing that.  I was also able to slide Mary Jane's eyelids shut, buuuuuut...I'm not sure I should do that!  Don't want to break her, after all!

Regarding size Mary Jane is a relatively small doll, being significantly shorter than Rita Cheryl.  Notice that I have a very hard time standing Mary Jane up straight, due largely to her walking mechanism (which is in perfect working order).

I've read that Terri Lee and Mary Jane are not the same size, so clothes sharing is OUT for the two of them.  Big surprise there.

I spent most of yesterday hunched over because of a nasty back spasm (I've apparently inherited my daddy's trick back), so receiving Mary Jane was a tremendous pick-me-up.  She may lack Terri Lee's moody innocence, but she makes up for it by being a character of her own.  I feel honored to own her.

Love and Tylenol,
RagingMoon1987 

More little visitors

The patrons at the library where I work have caught wind that I am fond of dolls, and every so often they bring one or two up for me to look at.  Such was the case today, when one of my older friends brought in two of her girls.  This first one is one I know quite a bit about, but have only seen one other time.

Or I thought I'd seen her once before.  It actually turns out that I've NEVER seen this doll before!  I thought that she was Terri Lee, of whom I've seen exactly ONE, but it turns out that she's actually Mary Jane, a Terri Lee clone!  Mary Jane has a bit of a convoluted backstory, one that has a few similarities to great Barbie vs. Bratz battle of my adolescence.  More information on Mary Jane's production can be found HERE and HERE.

Mary Jane is seventeen inches tall and made of hard plastic, suggesting that she was created before Terri Lee's makers caught on to her existence and began suing (the head became a soft vinyl head after the lawsuit).  She has sleep eyes and she "walks" like Saucy Walker.  She looks a little more "grown up" in the face than Terri Lee does.

I love Mary Jane's haughty expression; it's almost like she KNOWS she was created to derail Terri Lee!

My friend's other doll is a familiar face for any Madame Alexander fan.  She's Cissette!

Again, I don't often get to see these, and since I own a Cissy doll I'm more familiar with her.  As the name suggests, Cissy and Cissette are related, with Cissette being a smaller version of Madame Alexander's beloved Cissy.  Sort of like Little Miss Revlon in a way, one could say.  I also thought I read somewhere that Cissette was the older sister of another popular MA doll named Wendy, but don't quote me on that.

Like Mary Jane, Cissette is made of hard plastic.  I absolutely loved holding her, in fact, because she was so smooth.  She's the same height as Little Miss Revlon at ten inches, but her head is quite a bit smaller.

Cissette was used as a plaything and thus has to contend with a mussed wig.  Her elastic is also beginning to play out, hence her stooped posture.  Underneath her dress she has bendable knees, though my friend joked that Cissette could not bend them any better than she herself could.  At the risk of sounding like a complete know-it-all I warned my friend not to force the knees to bend, lest something break.  My poor old Cissy doll has that problem, though I didn't do it!  I'M INNOCENT THIS TIME, I PROMISE!!!  LOL, anyway, my friend lamented Cissette's floppy joints, and I told her I'd happily restring her if she ever needed it.

As is often the case, I felt honored to see these lovely relics of yesterday, and I hope y'all will enjoy seeing them as much as I enjoyed holding and photographing them.

Cheers and cherry bombs,
RagingMoon1987