Heat of the moment

<sings off-key>  It was the heat of the moment, tellin' me what my heart meant!  I'm almost ashamed to admit that that's the only Asia song I like.  I love Yes, but just about all of their side projects flop in my eyes...with the possible exception of Jon and Vangelis, and the definite exception of Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe.  AllMusic advises listeners to file ABWH under "Yes" and I usually do just that, so I don't know if they count as a side project, LOL.  But ANYWAY it was a scorcher today and it looks to be that way for the next two days.  Mama and I are camping out at Uncle Man-Child's since neither of our A/Cs are working like they should, and I've brought a few friends with me.

Rita Cheryl, of course, and Aimee, and Aimee's friend Emily (a nineties-era Lickety Treats), and Mama's old Barbie.  I don't know how Aimee's managing to hold the smile in those sleeves, but she is.

Barbie:  "She's crazy."
Aimee:  "Am not!  I'm fine!"

I'm kinda with you, Barbie.  Anyone who'd wear long sleeves in this weather is either insane or trying to avoid a bad sunburn.  Poor Aimee, I originally bought her to steal her dress, but she's grown on me.  Right now she's got a human-sized hair band on her forehead to keep her bangs flat.  She looks...kinda cute that way, actually.  I need to get a gold band and see how that looks, since it would match Aimee's dress better.

Barbie kinda needs a hair band too, now that I think of it.

"Motley Crue is my hair band of choice, please."

Motley Crue!  I didn't think you were into hair metal at all, Barbie!  I guess one can't live in my house for too long without picking up at least a slight taste for hair metal.  For the record, my hair metal band of choice will always be Poison, due to the happy memories I associate with their music.  Anyway, after we all got done piddling in the library's parking lot Emily and Rita Cheryl fancied a trip to the playground.  Yes, the playground, with a heat index of 103.  Y'all think that slowed my girls down?  Well...it slowed Barbie and Aimee down a little.  Aimee still claims that she is fine, but I think the heat finally started to get to her.  Normally she'd be trying to keep up with Emily, but right now she's at the slide chatting with Barbie.

Aimee:  "So, what do you think about them releasing a Barbie movie?"
Barbie:  "...haven't they done a bunch of those already???"

Aimee asked the question I'd been wanting to ask but forgot, LOL.  Apparently Barbie is just as surprised as I was to learn that there was gonna be a live-action Barbie flick.  Looks like the movie's gonna be cute, though.  And get this:  Margot Robbie makes a convincing Barbie, but she's not a twig.  If one watches the trailer one can see that she's got nice, muscular calves and a healthy waist.  That more than anything will tell little girls that you can be a healthy size and still look like our old plastic friend.  Oh, and get this as well:  one of the Ken dolls will be taking the reins as the Fifteenth Doctor soon.  LOL, how a guy goes from Ken to the Doctor is anyone's guess, but Ncuti Gatwa is a hunkasaurus rex and I'm rooting for him.  Rita Cheryl, what has Luciana said about it?

Rita Cheryl:  "She's just hoping Donna gets a happy ending!"
Emily:  "Wait a minute...wha???"

Don't worry about it, Emily.  Hey, let's see how high you two can climb!

"Yeah, Emily, let's see how high you can climb."

"I can do better than Olivia Reese!"

I'll let Olivia know you challenged her to a climbing contest.  She'll like that!  Oops!

Alright, kiddies, get inside before y'all melt!  I must tell y'all, the heat has not been the only thing making my life crazy right now.  Missouri just enacted a new law that supposedly keeps children safer in the libraries, but I think the law was really passed to make things harder for us librarians.  My mother, Coworker B, and I have all had to start our patrons over essentially from scratch with these super-detailed patron forms, and it's just been chaos.  Put that in with the heat, and my mind is about the consistency of half-set Jell-O.  So out of it am I that I initially set the publish time of this particular post for six-thirty A.M. instead of P.M.  LOL, thanks to Michelle Bogart for pointing that out!  I hope I sleep tonight; the mattress I'll be sleeping on is hard as a rock and the pillow isn't any better.

How about you, Rita Cheryl?  You ready to hit the sack?

"You kiddin' me???  It's not even that late!  Care to share that lollipop, Emily?"

Please don't read that book to Emily!  It's one of my tornado books, and it's a scary one.

Udall, Kansas for the win!  I'd been wanting a book about that tornado for years and good ol' Mama came through.  She almost always does.

Stay cool,
RagingMoon1987

Sunday randomness: the year's first scorcher

In years past my neck of the woods might've already had a couple'a days (or multi-day stretches) of exceedingly hot weather, but today is the first time this year that it's going to be honest-to-God hot.  The high is predicted to hit a hundred, and I don't dare look at the heat index.  On a day like today I usually keep cool by staying in my pajamas and doing as little as possible, and that appears to be what Joss plans to do.  Behind her, River Song and Arista are plotting a day outside in the shade.  

Watermelons for the win!  I love these My Life As outfits; once upon a time they didn't fit the American Girls...or the sets I had didn't.  But these newer sets fit the newer dolls just fine.  I think these pajamas would be too tight for my Pleasant Company girls, and indeed they're a hair snug on Joss.  But I didn't have to fight them to get them on.

As for me myself...well, I actually have an escape at hand.  Uncle Man-Child has functioning air conditioning, and Mama and I plan to pow-wow there today and do laundry.  Up until now the nights have hit the high sixties or low seventies and thus I've thankfully been able to sleep, but that may come to an end this coming week; the low on Thursday night is only supposed to be seventy-eight.  Le sigh...I'm doomed.  Oh well, I've survived summers without A/C before and I can do it again.

Pray for rain,
RagingMoon1987

Playing Dolly Doctor: Finger Dings Sally Skater

Happy Summer Solstice, ladies and germs!  Now meet Sally Skater...or rather, what's left of her.

As usual, I learned about these dolls from Tam, and because I love dolls with personality I fell in love with their smug little faces...and their cotton candy hair.  Y'all know how I love goofy hair.  Anyway, Finger Dings are from Remco, the same bunch that brought us Jan and Tumbling Tomboy, among others.  Under normal circumstances Finger Dings had cloth bodies with hollow legs that fit over one's fingers, turning the little dolls into a finger puppet of sorts.  But as y'all can see, Sally is missing her body.  Under normal circumstances she'd have looked like this.  Obviously Sally isn't worth much as a plaything without legs, so she'll be needing a new body.  Now...I had read that Finger Ding heads were hard to remove from the bodies without heat.  I saw one blogger utilize a hair dryer, but that fried some of her doll's hair, so I'm going with hot water no, brute force did the trick.  The shoulders are melting anyway, as is the neck.  Sally could still turn her head, but her shoulders were frozen stiff.

Good riddance to bad rubbish.  Now...I saw on Pinterest, on Flickr, and over at ggsdolls that Finger Dings take a small-sized Pure Neemo body, so that's what I got for Sally.  I went the natural-toned route and got all eleven pairs of hands, but since I wanted Sally to be more flat-chested I got the boy body.

I have one other doll with an Azone Pure Neemo body, that being my oldest Licca-chan.  Let's briefly take a look at Sally's new body and Licca's.

There's not a lot of difference at all, actually.  Sally's chest is obviously gonna be flat, and her ankles are sturdier than Licca's, and her new body is a little shorter overall than Licca's, but for the most part the shape and the coloring are the same.  I did notice a defect on the right ankle, though.

Bummer, looks like someone hacked off part of the joint (and part of the heel) with a dull knife!  The mobility of the joint is not impaired, but I can't say that this makes me happy.  The new body also does not come apart at the joints (except for the wrists).  I kinda like how Licca's body can come apart in multiple places, but the new body feels very sturdy, bum ankle and all.

Alrighty, the moment of truth:  how is Sally gonna look with this body?

Well, her neck's kinda long, but for the most part this is a pretty good match.  For the record, Barbie had a giraffe neck too for a spell during the eighties.  I think that if I were gonna do this again though, I'd get a pale body.  Sally's head is pretty fair compared to her new body.  Just a little, but enuff that it might bother a more OCD collector.

I already know that this size of Azone body can wear Licca-chan and Neo Blythe clothes, and I found another post on Flickr that says this body can wear Skipper clothes.  But get this:  the Skipper clothes shown were VINTAGE!!!  I don't have a vintage Skipper doll, but I do have her friend Fluff.

It's been YEARS since I talked about the dress that Fluff is wearing, but my opinions on it are still the same:  it needs something underneath it.  If Fluff can share Licca-chan's clothes then I'll be able to get her a blouse or a shirt to go underneath it.  But first things first:  here's how Sally looks in Fluff's dress.

Mmmm...meh.  Sally looks kinda like a twig in Fluff's oversized dress, and as I stated above it's pretty revealing without a blouse or somesuch like that underneath.  This would work in a pinch, though.

Now, for grins, here's Fluff in Licca-chan's dress.  

I had my doubts since Fluff's chest is wider than Licca's or Sally's, but Fluff actually looks pretty cute in this dress.  Her feet are too big for Licca's shoes, but that's easily remedied.

Okay...I've established that everyone can wear each other's clothes.  Now it's time to throw Sally in her forever dress.  It's another Licca-chan outfit, one with cute jelly-colored heels.

I love it and Sally does too.  Indeed, Sally has turned into a bit of a ham with her new body.  She can ham it up even more with hands; as with Licca, I went full monty on the extra hands.

They come in all the same shapes that Licca's hands came in, so now Licca has someone to play Rock, Paper, Scissors with.

If I were to try this again with a beat-up Finger Ding I'd get the paler body, and I'd pay more attention to the sex of the body!  Sally looks okay in her new dress, but I think she'd look better if she had a full chest like Licca-chan does.  Oh well, can't have everything!  As long as you're not bothered by Sally's longish neck then these Azone bodies are a good fit for the Finger Dings. 

Love,
RagingMoon1987

The blonde bunch

Juneteenth means another long weekend for me, and that means sleeping late and being delightfully, ridiculously lazy.  I also spent some time with my mama and Uncle Man-Child, which wouldn't be a big deal...except that all Uncle Man-Child talked about was prepping, prepping, prepping, with plenty of blather about himself added in.  I know that in this day and age prepping is kinda important, but I'm so sick of hearing about it I could scream.  

Great time to futz around with my dolls!  In the past month I've gotten three large ones...and wouldn't y'all know, they're all blonde.  The first one doesn't need much introduction, since she's an American Girl.  She's Just Like You #115.

She bears a passing resemblance to Alex Kingston and that bitch she plays on Doctor Who, so I named her River Song.  Riv has a long Bob Geldof-style name like Silver Bird does, but I just call her "River Song" or "Riv."  I think this my...third?  No, River Song is my fourth AG doll with hair this curly.

#115 is a fun doll to own, kids!  I bounce her and her curls go boing like in Ramona the Pest.  Unfortunately my problem cat Tommy likes River Song's curls too; I've had to pull the little jerk out of her hair twice, and I've only owned this doll three weeks. 

Then last Friday I got a Failbook message from a friend saying she had a porcelain doll who needed a home.  I volunteered to adopt her, and the next day I did just that.

Lady Diana Spencer, in a knock-off of the blue velvet dress she wore to the White House.  My doll's dress isn't velvet, but oh well.  She came with her box, but it was pretty well smashed.  It's not like Lady Di will ever be worth a ton of money anyway.  These "collectible" porcelain dolls never are.  But they're pretty, and that's what counts to me.  This friend that gave Diana to me is the same one that gave me Belka/Lucy, by the way.  I didn't NEED Diana, but then I didn't need River Song either.

Nor did I need Arista.  I bought her with my own money, just like I did River Song. 

Arista is one of those ily 4EVER dolls that has been semi-trendy lately.  Unlike Diana and River Song she will be getting a review, but that won't be for quite some time.  I feel a little stupid ordering an ily 4EVER doll that looks so much like River Song...a measly three weeks after I got River Song.  

So much for cutting back on dolly purchases!  I did say I was doing that last spring, but as usual I lied.  I didn't buy Diana, but I did buy River Song and Arista, so that's twice that I lied.  Add Terri Lee to the mix and I triple-lied, LOL!  What can I say, this is how I get my pleasure out of life!

Cheers,

RagingMoon1987 

Jaylin gets a kimono...and some other stuff

Sigh...after a long, tiring month I've finally got my house in some semblance of order.  My bedroom still looks like an F4 tornado hit it, but I've at least made a dent.  My A/C is still out of commission, but thank God, this summer has been mild so far.  Among the things I've done is sort doll clothes...and a lot of them.  To guarantee that I won't lose Jaylin's new batch of stuff I started keeping it in a box.  I never lose boxes.  Right now there's room for Jaylin to rest there too, though that may change in the future.  Hi, Heidi!

The expansion of Jaylin's new wardrobe continues, though I'm still keeping an eye out for her old stuff.  Yeah, I know she got something new earlier this month, but with the long sleeves and thick tights she'll soon be roasting...or she would be if she were alive.  But as I've said before, the best way to flesh out a doll's wardrobe is with grab bags, and this is true regardless of what kind of doll you've got.  Through grab bags I've gotten some wonderful things in the past for my American Girls, for my Barbies, for my ball-jointed dolls, and now Jaylin gets to join the club.

Etsy shop is Darlingja.  I think I got the last grab bag she had, but she has Nikki and Odeco-chan dolls for purchase if any of y'all like those (I do, unsurprisingly).  Anyway, most of the grab bags I get contain a ton of separates and maybe one dress, but this contained two semi-full outfits...and one of them is a kimono.  

The length of those sleeves screams furisode, but the fabric suggests a yukata.  Indeed, this image shows that some yukata do have the ridiculously wide sleeves that furisode have, so I'm calling this puppy a yukata.  Here's how Jaylin looks in it.

The yukata was shipped with the right side wrapped over the left, which is...well, wrong.

Right only goes over left on a corpse.  Jaylin is wearing her yukata the correct way.  

I have zero problems with the yukata itself, but I do see where I've fallen short a bit:  Jaylin doesn't have a good pair of shoes for this getup!  Nowadays any casual, lightweight shoe is fair game for yukata, but the only casual shoes I have for Jaylin are blue and bright green.  I don't think that'll work for this fabric!  So I'll need to find something for her to wear...or I could just leave her unshod.  It's summer after all, and bare feet are acceptable during hot months, regardless of what one is wearing. 

The other getup is more what I expected when I ordered the grab bag, and it's more Jaylin's style.  I absolutely love this little crocheted blouse.

It's made of this light, smoky blue yarn that compliments Jaylin's hair.  The front closes with little silver beads that serve as buttons.

The skirt is quite short and is made of black denim with Velcro in the back.  It has a satin "belt" and a couple'a pleats to jazz it up a bit.  I love how the "belt" is tied into a bow.

Then there's two pairs of knee socks, one in light blue and one in horizontal stripes.  I love striped socks...and I also love mismatched socks. 

The shop included a necklace, but I haven't used it yet.  The clasp is a little hard to undo.  I love the colors, though.

The whole ensemble fits Jaylin like a dream, though the buttons on the blouse are a little hard to do up.  Notice that I did go the mismatched sock route.

Once again Jaylin is in her stocking feet, as her black combat boots have joined the world of missing persons.  LOL, I lie a little; I know they're in Storage Hell.  Eventually I will find them.

Lastly, I got this as a gag.  Etsy shop is OneSixthFauxLife.

Yeah, I think I'm better than Chuck Swirsky, frickin' liberal!  For the uninitiated, Max Headroom was this smart-a$$ who had his own TV show during the 1980's, and who served as a spokesman for the ill-fated New Coke.  He's also a footnote in television oddities; in November of 1987 some yayhoo in a Max Headroom mask committed not one but TWO signal hijackings in the Chicago area.  The first time Max managed to interrupt a WGN newscast, and later that same night he targeted WTTW, a PBS affiliate.  Wouldn't y'all know, WTTW was showing an episode of Doctor Who that night, and the Fourth Doctor got railroaded by Max.  You don't do that, folks!!!  When Number Four is talking, you don't interrupt!!!  But interrupt Max did, and his behavior was...disturbing, to say the least.  The Oddity Archive shows and discusses the incident HERE.  ANYWAY, I got Jaylin this little tank top largely for LOLs, and she doesn't look half-bad!  I paired it with her goofy striped bell-bottoms. 

I think the bell-bottoms have found their perfect match!  OneSixthFauxLife sells other shirts in Blythe/Licca-chan-size, so I'll probably be back to get a few more.  But for now I'm happy knowing Max Headroom is where he belongs.  

And that's how I like to build a wardrobe for my "kids."  Little by little, a piece here, some shoes there, a whole little outfit once in awhile, with the goal of putting together a set that is unique.  As usual I'm pleased with most of the stuff I showed today.  The socks are kinda tight, but at least they won't slip off and get lost.  As a last little tidbit, I found a doll that looks exactly like Jaylin on AliExpress, blue hair and gray eyes and all.  I doubt many people would want a doll like Jaylin, but if any of y'all do, there's where you can go.

Ciao for now,

RagingMoon1987 

Sunday randomness: Jettivee finds her name

It's warm, windy, and a smidge threatening today, but that didn't stop Jettivee Bargo from climbing one of my trees.

I told her she'd get her new dress dirty, but since when do the kids ever listen to me?  Anyway, Mama and I got some lunch while the weather remained calm, and after that we visited the graveyard where my dad is buried.  While we were there Jettivee saw a familiar name on another grave marker.

The woman's name is Jettivee Campbell.  She is buried next to her husband and a stillborn son, both of whom died in 1959.  Ms. Campbell lived to be 89 and outlived just about everyone in her immediate family.  Her Find a Grave memorial can be found HERE.  Clearly she still has someone who cares about her, as she's got new flowers on her grave.

Rest in peace, ma'am!  Thank you for the name!

Love
RagingMoon1987