Versatile Blogger Award

jSarie at Revenge of the Toy Box was kind enough to give me a Versatile Blogger award!

This award involves sharing random facts about yourself. Here are some of mine:

- I visited Germany over the winter of 1989-1990. The first stop was Berlin. If you don't remember, the Berlin Wall was opened between east and west in November of 1989. Thus, I got to touch the Berlin Wall, and even got some souvenir wall chips to take home.

- I am one-quarter Transylvanian Saxon. The Saxons have lived in Transylvania for hundreds of years. They have their own culture and speak Saxon, which is similar to German. Folklore has it that the Saxons are the descendants of the children led out of Hamlin by the Pied Piper.

- My sister and I were born on the same date, two years apart. We were also married on the same date, eighteen years apart. The marriage thing was completely coincidental, because not only had my sister forgotten my wedding anniversary (!), she and her husband got married on a Sunday to save money on a hall.

- I started seriously doll collecting with Caboodles Barbie, which my husband got for me because I loved, and still love, my Caboodle makeup case. I still have both the human-sized and Barbie-sized Caboodle.

 

I'm going to nominate

- Mrs. Anderson of Mrs. Anderson's All-Purpose Blog 

- Black Kitty of The Mulicrafteral Lab 

- Lisa of Once Upon a Doll Collection

She also put up pictures of the Target room box, which I had completely forgotten about!

- my friend Scottius at Scottius Maximus. He posts mostly about sports and gardening, but I'd love to see what random facts about himself he'd come up with!

Quiet Sunday Afternoon

Lindsay has engrossed herself in a book as a pleasant way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

I worked on creating a pattern for a knit top for J-Dolls. When I started making silly mistakes, I knew it was time to take a break.

House Shaped Room Box

If you don't read The AG Minis of Snickerdoodle Street blog, or you don't shop at Target, you might have missed this little storage box that is shaped like a little house:

As you can see, it's not really for the bigger doll; Madeline measures only 7" high. The measurements of the box are 11" to the top of the roof, 12" wide and 8" deep. But it will work for smaller dolls. Here is another picture, this time with the 6 1/2" AG mini Samantha.

You could set up a small room setting, or even just have dolls standing on display. This box can hang on the wall, too, so if you don't have flat space, you could hang it. It is on clearance at Target, so if you want one, I'd say better sooner than later. The inside of the house is colored either blue or pink. It will be in the storage section. This house came out with a great many other storage bins, boxes and baskets, all in bright blues, greens, reds and pinks. At my Target, this house was on an outside aisle, but some of the other items from this collection were on endcaps, so look around if you don't see it right away. Let me know if you pick one up!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Well! I'm finally able to sit down at the computer and get out this post. And not because I was out drinking green beer, either! I was finishing up Sophie's dress.

She is currently the only doll I own from Tonner's 10" Ann Estelle line. The dress pattern is one of the few patterns right now that I can make up without too much trouble, so I chose it for this day. I'm going to be concentrating now on spring clothes for all my dolls. Maybe something for a J-Doll next.

Irish themed clothes, especially dresses for Irish step dance, are very popular among doll manufacturers. Among other things, Tonner made Irish Lass a part of his Kripplebush Kids line for two years.

Photo by Diane Drummond from Tonner catalog

Around that time, Tonner also put out an Irish dancer in his Betsy McCall line. A picture of that doll can be seen on this Pinterest page, along with a great many other photographs of Irish dance dolls. American Girl not only produced Irish dance wear for the 18" doll, one of the dolls in the smaller Girls of Many Lands line was an Irish dancer as well. In her book we learn something about the early history of modern Irish dance.

Not only did Tonner produce dancing dolls, in 2006 we saw Irish Incantation Tyler, in a beautiful golden gown. Here are some photos of the doll, although not the gown.

Another Tonner doll that did not have an Irish theme but certainly looks very Irish is the doll currently gracing my blog header, Elegance Sydney from 2003. She was a basic doll and came wearing a pale green teddy and matching shoes. Here is another picture of her, wearing a dress and bracelet from Franklin Mint's Princess Diana.

Urgh. Video I wanted to put here is not working from either Blogger or YouTube. I'll try tomorrow. It's already way late for this.

Body Staining

I'm a little discouraged at the moment. I have a couple of the Madeline dolls by Eden that were popular around 2000. One doll I bought used. She was washed and now I should probably get some braid spray to soften up her hair and set it nicely.

The other one I bought in the box. I have had her for a couple of years, but between a couple of moves, I'd never taken her out. I've decided I'm not thrilled with Eden's outfits (they have big tags on the back, on the outside) so I was going to sell most of it. Unfortunately, Nicole's outfit stained her body and chin. And it seems like it was the cotton blouse that did it. Kind of unusual for cotton to stain, I thought. So now Nicole has to endure the indignity of being propped head down on my window sill with benzoyl peroxide on her chin and shoulder. And I will probably not get very much for her outfit. Not that it was worth a huge amount, but every little bit goes toward getting more dolls or outfits or furniture!

Doll Dressing

Since I'm going to be selling off J-Doll Spitalgrasse's outfit, the doll is in need of new clothes. Momoko clothes are adorable, but way too rich for my budget. I don't see too many individual outfits being offered for other dolls, like Pullip, and the prices there can get high too. I'm going to keep looking, but since I can sew doll clothes, why not make my own?

I suspected that Fern's outfit would fit Adelheid (J-Doll's new name) and it does. Fern is one of four dolls Mattel made in its When I Read, I Dream series. She has the older Stacie body. Fern is the main human character in the classic book Charlotte's Web, and she comes dressed in a red and white checked shirt and denim overalls skirt, suitable for sitting around a pig pen, except perhaps for the skirt.

While I guessed that the outfit would fit, what surprised me was how much it makes Adelheid's eyes pop. She looks fantastic in it, a perfect country girl or farmer's daughter. Given the height difference between Fern and Adelheid, the skirt is way too short and the waist of the overalls also comes up too high on Adelheid's body. But I had to take a few shots of her shoulders and head so you could see how great this looks.

My daughters both had their own Fern doll, but were never particularly attached to them. I will probably take one of the other Fern's shirts apart and use it to help me make outfits for Adelheid and her J-Doll sisters. I hope to get to it soon. I'm feeling better, but still tire easily and have occasional pain. Overall I'm doing fine, considering.