American Girl Kirsten

I decided I wanted to buy American Girl Kirsten too, as well as American Girl Felicity. Unlike Felicity, Kirsten was available now, and so she has already come home. There isn't too much to say about American Girls that everyone doesn't know already. The 35th anniversary re-releases have ties at the back of their neck like the older dolls. I guess new dolls don't have these? If I remember right, the ties are to allow for getting inside the doll's body and adjusting her stuffing. The 35th anniversary dolls come with their accessories automatically (at a higher price,) which the original dolls didn't do. Each 35th anniversary doll also comes with a paperback version of her "meet" book. Original Pleasant Company historical dolls came with a hardcover version, but I'm grateful that the paperback is an exact copy of the original books.

Kirsten is the daughter of a Swedish family that immigrates to Minnesota for better farming opportunities. Her year is 1854. Kirsten's accessories are her sunbonnet, an amber heart necklace that was a going-away gift from her grandmother, and what Pleasant Company called a "spoon sack," holding a handkerchief and a wooden spoon. Pleasant Company wrote that since Swedish pioneers didn't have whole sets of eating utensils, people would bring their own forks, spoons and knives when they went visiting. Pockets worn at the waist, like Kirsten's, were common in Sweden, and other parts of Europe. In Sweden, Kirsten's pocket would have been known as a kjolsäck. Extant examples from Sweden are far more detailed, but some do include the year made, and the initials of the maker.

Kirsten's sunbonnet doesn't sit well on her braids.

I had to include a picture of Kirsten with mini Kirsten.

As soon as I got back from vacation, I was on jury duty. In the US, if you are a registered voter, you can be ordered to be available for a two-week period to be able to serve on a jury trial. In this instance, I was called to serve on a jury, and although the case only took six days or so, they were spread out over three weeks, for various reasons that normally would not happen. It messed up my sleep schedule and life schedule, and being bipolar, trying to keep a very routine schedule is important to my overall health. Therefore, my doll blogging and a lot of other things went to the wayside temporarily. Fortunately, each twelve member jury has a thirteenth member as an alternate. This particular judge doesn't choose the alternate until after closing arguments and jury instruction, and I was chosen as the alternate, so I got to leave early on the next to last day, and didn't have to come in the next morning for deliberation. (The alternate choice was completely random.)

On the Shore

Mr. BTEG and I took a vacation last week, to help relieve our depression and stress. We stayed at a cottage at Geneva-on-the-Lake, the oldest lakeshore resort in Ohio. There were six cottages in our little cluster, built in the 1930s. This is what ours looked like.

This is the view from outside our cottage, and the view from the sitting area window.

I wanted to get some pictures of some of my dolls soaking up sun by the lake. I chose to take Teresa and a BMR 1959 doll whom I've named Connor.

It was nice to get out of the house, and get away from everything for a while. I feel renewed, and I'm planning what doll things I'm going to do next.

I Bought American Girl Felicity

but she is backordered until at least September! I don't know if demand exceeded expectations by Mattel, or if they all take this long, although originally, I was told I would get the doll sometime in June. Anyway, I know that the quality will not be as good as the old dolls, but the original Felicity is as expensive as all get out. I want this original style Felicity because of her dress, which is much closer to authentic colonial prints than the purple striped dress that replaced it, or the blue and yellow monstrosity Mattel produced after that. These new "original" American Girl dolls also come with their accessories, which I wish I had for my Samantha.

I would also like original Kirsten and possibly original Josefina, but Felicity is the one that I wanted the most. Since I won't be charged for Felicity until September, at least one more of the other two might make its way into an online shopping cart.

Since I don't like putting posts up without pictures, here is a picture from 2005 of my daughters and I at American Girl Place in Chicago. Mr. BTEG did an eight month consulting gig in Chicago from 2004-2005, and the girls and I went out to stay with him several times. I was homeschooling then, so it was nothing to drive out there for a week or so. The Dancer's Bitty Baby is sitting at the table behind her. She could have spent hours in the Bitty Baby section of AG Place. The Eldest brought her Bitty Baby and her Like Me doll.

Is This Thing On?

Once again, I have been visited by the black dog. I haven't felt like doing a lot, but I have made myself do a few things in the direction of putting up another doll post. However, I'm not completely there yet. So here, have a couple of pictures of Lake Erie at sunset.

Both my husband and I love the water, as do my daughters, and my in-laws. I'm sure the sun rises over Lake Erie too, but you couldn't prove it by me. XD

Ohio's mask mandate is being lifted on June 2nd. I'm hoping that will help improve my well-being.

Oh, here's something funny. My husband got two texts from our cell phone provider saying "Welcome to Canada!" while we were at the beach.

Something Simple

There has not been much going on here lately. I haven't had the energy to do much beyond the basics in the past month. I spent an afternoon putting together 8.5"x11" sized pattern pieces for a sewing pattern to make scrubs pants for my daughter. I cut out the pieces for a doll sofa from one of those kits where the pieces come pre-cut; you just have to finish cutting them free, and then glue them together. Hopefully I will have that set up soon. It shouldn't be too hard, now that all the pieces are loose. But just so you know that I'm still here, I'm putting up a very basic picture that I took to mark having 100 followers on my Instagram account. I decided to group together just about every different type of doll that I own into the photo, and I'm glad that I did. I discovered at least one new Instagrammer who collects Madeline dolls for example. I'll probably find more people outside of the Barbie/Monster High/Ever After High groove that I've been in. Some of these dolls you have seen. Some haven't been on my blog at all before today, but you'll see them eventually!

Kenmore vs My Modern Kitchen

This post is mostly going to be about the Kenmore kitchen set, but I wanted to add some comparison photos with the My Modern Kitchen, since that is a very popular 1/6 kitchen for collector dioramas. Kenmore is a brand name for appliances, which belongs to the department store Sears. The Kenmore kitchen isn't sold anymore, so it is very high-priced on eBay, for the most part. I bought this set for an incredible deal, even out of box, so I consider myself lucky to have it. You will sometimes see this as the Mammoth kitchen on eBay, since it was made by Mammoth Toys. Summer is our model for today's shoot.

Even the Kenmore kitchen is a bit short for Barbie, compared to a human-sized kitchen to a human. Many collectors put their kitchen pieces up on blocks.

 

 

The Kenmore kitchen has some pretty realistic features. I guess those dark blue circles at the back of the dishwasher are supposed to be sprayers of some kind? Our home dishwasher only has the sprayers underneath each "basket," that spin. The sticker with the controls for the stove was a little bit white at the front edge from peeling, so I fixed that with a black marker. Oddly enough, the dishwasher we just bought last year, looks a lot like the Kenmore dishwasher, from the outside.

 

As you can see, the Kenmore kitchen is taller and sticks out a bit more.  It also looks more realistic. Both kitchens were made as children's toys, but I guess Sears didn't want their own appliances looking cheap, even as toys. The microwave over the stove is more realistic to modern American kitchens, where the microwave also has a steam exhaust fan. The blue tile over the dishwasher and sink below were added by me. I was going to peel them off here, like I did for the stove, but they had stickers underneath that I thought would be more distracting. Plus, the tiles over the sink are currently helping hold the towel bar up. It screws on from the back, but somehow the towel bar came loose.

Neither refrigerator is much to look at on the inside. I pulled out and threw away all the cardboard from the back of the Kenmore pieces, because I washed all of them first, since I got them out of box. This is why the backs of those match the kitchen wall.

Speaking of kitchen walls, this is the first "permanent" room that I have made. I crafted it out of foamcore; the blue walls came in that color. You can see at the base that I wasn't really as neat with the hot glue as I wanted to be. I should be able to cover that with baseboard. I also followed a tip from someone on YouTube, and put sewing pins into the foamcore at the base and the corner on the back, at intervals, to help hold this together. Permanent rooms take up a lot of space, but I want to make the Kenmore kitchen, at least, look more like it has solid walls behind it, instead of four individual plastic units. That will require a long piece of tile to visually join at least two, or all three of the pieces, instead of individual cuts, like I did with the My Modern Kitchen. If I'm joining these pieces together, they should be somewhere they won't get moved around, which means a permanent room. I can also create a corner counter, so the Kenmore stuff doesn't just have to stand there all in a row, and they should all be raised a bit. I might paint the Kenmore cupboards? I've also seen somone separate the cupboards from the tops of the My Modern Kitchen set, and set them further back in a wall, since real life cupboards don't come all the way forward over what's underneath. Modern American kitchen sinks don't usually have cupboards over the sink anyway, because of the humidity, and dishwashers don't always, either. But some of the latter changes would require a lot of work; for now I may just get the Kenmore kitchen a basic set-up, for diorama use.

Do you have a favorite doll room you like to use for pictures, even if it's not permanent?

Two Kitchens

About a month ago, I acquired the 1/6th scale Kenmore kitchen, and I got it out to photograph for a theme on Instagram. I want to take more pictures for this blog, but I have some other things that are taking up some of my time at the moment, so I'm just going to put this picture up that I also used on Instagram. The theme was "Kitchen," and I thought it would be cute to include my Little Tikes kitchen, which is small enough to be a toy kitchen for the 1/6 scale little ones. It's kind of special to me because it's exactly the same as the play kitchen that my daughters had when they were little.