The Desert Mermaid

I've always had a few accessories I've really wanted for Daja. Her staff, for one, and her suraku--that is, her survival kit. Those were pretty important, and I managed to put them together pretty well.

But I also really wanted her skates. They play a pretty big role in Cold Fire, and I think as a doll she's maybe 14, which is right at the time she'd be using them. But while I could make a staff and I could find a good little chest online to work as the suraku, making doll-size strap-on ice skates was a bit more of a challenge.

Fortunately, I don't have to. American Girl heard me!



No, seriously, they came out with a pair of strap-on skates for their new historical, Caroline, that were EXACTLY what I was wanting to get Daja. It's a damn lucky coincidence for me.



Okay, they're a bit of a cheat--Daja's got long feet (although the pointy toe of the boot doesn't help). But I am not going to be terribly picky about my 1/3-scale historically accurate non-boot ice skates.



In other news, I also made a jumpsuit for Rocket! She can totally hang out at the shipyard, or perhaps any satellites of love that happen by, and she'll fit right in.



And while her universe isn't QUITE the Star Wars universe, it still makes for a pretty good flightsuit for her piloting ventures. Or any Jedi-ing she might feel like doing.



Rocket has the most fun hair ever. I love finding new colors to add to it, but I think the pink-and-rainbow look is my favorite.

UPDATE ON THE LIGHTING IN MY HOUSE: Still bad.

The fabric for the shirt put me in mind of a couple things. It’s soft and a bit thick like a kikoi from East Africa, which is one of the parent cultures of Rocket’s society. And maybe it’s the stripes that remind me of a sailor shirt, and I wanted to evoke that here—something a merchant spacer would wear on a ship in hyperspace.

The pants were an accident. I originally intended this outfit to have black pants with a blood stripe, a direct ripoff of Han Solo’s pants, but I hadn’t made them yet and the purple pants she does have didn’t look good. So I grabbed these khakis from Molly’s aviator outfit and really liked them. They are a little little big—I don’t think they’re Pre-Mattel, but they still fit Molly better, and she does need a pair of pants. But I do like the khaki, so I’ll have to make a similar pair for Rocket at some point.

And yes, I still plan to make her more classically shiny Space Clothes. But this was first on the list, and I had the fabric!

All together now: D’awww.

I think it’s the boots that really gave me a handle on Kyōko’s personality. I put those on her and start to get a feel for the kind of clothes I should make for her.

Anyway, this shirt’s made from one I wore when both my rack and my gut were a lot more contained. It’s thin and soft and perfect for a doll tee, and the scribbly pattern on it could probably afford me a couple more doll-size clothing bits, too. I’m extremely pleased by how it turned out, especially since I was wrestling with a haunted sewing machine.

Yes, haunted. Goddamn thing resets every few minutes, jerking the needle around and claiming it has never heard of “bobbins” and sometimes deciding to do embroidery just for the hell of it. It’s either being harassed by a sergergeist or it’s got Alzheimer’s. Either way, after managing to stay awake just long enough to make a doll shirt—it only fell asleep eleven times while I was hemming the bottom—the poor thing has been shipped back to its manufacturer for an exorcism.* Now I have to remember how the emergency backup sewing machine works if I ever want to finish my space quilt. At least until Pazuzu gets relocated.


*Mom had previously kept taking it to Earl the Sewing Machine Guy, who would attack it with a soddering gun and return it proclaiming that it was all fixed. After the third time THIS YEAR that his soddering gun failed to have any effect, we decided that maybe Earl was not helping.

Once again, it turns out that being an alleged grownup who plays with dolls is helping me at work! Last time it was because I was the World’s Greatest Mannequin Dresser;* this time my experience doing silly photo stories will come in handy. See, the Liberry will be doing a bunch of stuffed animal parties over the next few weeks, in which kids drop off their stuffed animals and the critters have Liberry adventures all night and we take pictures, and then the kids watch the show and we give the animals back and tell the parents they may want to wash the beloved ball of plush before they do anything else.

And, as reigning photostory champion, well, I have volunteered to help make up and photograph silly scenarios. Anyone have any swell ideas?

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Speaking of such things, I got the dolls all set up for XMas! It is too dark to take pictures now, though.

Now only Daja needs an XMas outfit, because I just made one for Loke (and HOT DAMN my sewing skills are getting better) and then somehow wound up with four more for her anyway.** Daja will probably get a shiny over-robe for her current shirt and pants combo, if I ever get my ass in gear enough to make it.

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This may also warrant a trip to Dumb JoAnn’s, which is the little JoAnn’s closest to us. They call these smaller branches the convenience stores, except that Dumb JoAnn’s was recently remodeled into a Terribly Inconvenient Store. You can’t see a damn thing in there anymore, and there is no way for two shoppers to get around each other when they meet in an aisle, and for some reason they’ve started doing the take-a-number thing when they cut fabric and have a huge loudspeaker so they can say “NOW SERVING NUMBER 74” as loudly as possible in a store the size of a 7-11. This is weird, because we could hear people calling just fine. We just can’t get to them, because we are lost in the Unsolvable Craft Shit Labyrinth. I think I caught a glimpse of a Minotaur, trailing pipe cleaners and fabric bolts, with chunks of Sculpey matting rough fake fur, roaming the aisles last time I was there.

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I actually cooked dinner tonight! Tasty rosemary pork with applesauce, whole wheat noodles, and peas. I am totally unmotivated to cook right now, but when I do it is AMAZING.

I have Plans for cooking tomorrow, too. You will get to hear all about it if things go as planned.

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I should be playing Epic Mickey right now, but I DO NOT OWN IT.

Ditto the Donkey Kong Game, which I believe is officially titled OMFG DKC.

Instead I’m all up ons buyin’ Xmas presents for everyone else. Isn’t that just the saddest damn thing you ever heard?

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The cat has fallen in love with my Xmas surprise to myself. (WHAT? I was just trying it out!) I did not expect that at all.


*No, seriously, all the other ladies at the store complimented me on my unsurpassed technique in putting clothes on dummies.

**eBay is friend to children everywhere doll nerds! I just got a huge lot of clothes from the golden days of iDolls FOR CHEAP, yo! I wasn’t even sure that stuff actually existed!

I have remembered how to sew!

Proof:


Loke gets a new shirt! It looks suspiciously like an old shirt of mine that I wore back in the days before I sprouted a large pair of Strange Bumps right in the middle of that sparkly copper design.


Daja’s Winter Outfit! Not including her coat, of course. The shirt and pants are both thicker and woollier than her other clothes. The tunic isn’t strictly for winter, and it’s not actually new, but I think it looks good with the shirt and pants. Plus, the frogs were damn fun to put together.

Daja seems to prefer manly clothes, based on the descriptions I’ve read. I admit that I’ve borrowed a bit from Tortall fashions for her, too—hey, same author. Now she needs some Emelan-style over-robes along with these tunics.


The problem with making costumes for her is that she’s supposedly getting all her clothes from her stitch-witch sister, who’s a lot better at sewing than I am. Same goes for making her metal accessories—she would probably scoff at this belt I made her, but she’s a doll, so she can’t really do it herself.


The shirt isn’t finished yet; it still needs two more snaps and then the total cheat buttons. But you can’t tell under the tunic!

I want her to have a few basic shirts she can either wear alone, or as mix-and-match with her tunics. After that I’ll branch out a bit, I think.

Next up: tinier clothes for the Global Friends, and perhaps pants for them that don’t look like they were made by an unskilled 16-year-old!

-Let’s clear something up from a couple entries ago: I was being hyperbolic. I am finding a whole lot of awesome books at the library. However, in any genre you get bad or lazy or assholish writers, and a disproportionate number of these like to put in scenes of sexual violence not for story purposes, but because they can’t think of anything else. These books may look quite a lot like the books by good writers on the outside, and when that's the case I have to open them up to find out what they’re like.

-That said, book recommendations are always welcome! But I have quite a long list of books to try out already, so I can’t guarantee I’ll ever get to these books.

-I had to refuse to go to the Yarn Place with Mom thist morning. I have a whole stack of art junk sitting around waiting for me to art with it already. Bead stuff, chainmail stuff, cord stuff, sewing stuff … If I were capable of hyperfocusing, I would have my own damn Etsy store by now.

-I did manage to make Loke a T-shirt out of one of my old ones. It’s not bad for a first effort, but I do need practice in this new (to me) technique. I managed mostly to line up the hems provided, but the shirt is a little lopsided. I wore this shirt a lot, so the fabric was not sturdy—a couple of times it tore easily. But the biggest issue is the neckline—if you’re going to make a pullover shirt for a doll, the neckline has to be big, because dolls always have huge heads, and figuring out the width of the shoulders and the sleeves wasn’t easy. I think it’ll work better next time.


Also, Loke may eat your soul, but you can't deny she looks fabulous in turquoise.

-I've come up with a way to shut my brain up at night when it's compulsively worrying instead of going to sleep: I write a list of every worry I have in a few words, then tell myself I can deal with it tomorrow. It seems to be working ...

-Swimming is nice, but sometimes I kinda wish I could plug in the iPatch and swim along to some music—perhaps flick on my Mermaids playlist, as long as I’m in the water.* But on the other hand, while white noise usually bothers me, the weirdness of underwater noise is kind of nice. I love the sound around me when I exhale.

-I keep having small children in the pool and the locker room throwing me wide-eyed glances when my back is to them. I figured it was just the usual small-kid paranoia of Strangers, until it suddenly occurred to me that I have a tattoo on my spine. Good luck figuring out what it says, small children!

-Finally saw The Shining. Not bad, for a Kubrick film. But my favorite bit was definitely the part where Shelley Duvall discovers just what’s in Jack’s magnum opus, and then just keeps digging through the manuscript. You’d think she’d pick a few key bits-beginning, two or three middle parts, end—in the pile and get the idea, but instead she checks every page. “Well, the last forty pages were all the same, but I wonder if page 41 is different …”


*Alternatives: The Giant Bloated List Of Favorites, The Pirate Playlist and The NERRRRRD Playlist. You have no idea how many geek songs I own.

Ah, buggrit, Amazon seems to feel today that I do not need to use the search function, because it knows exactly what I want. Amazon is wrong. Today I’m looking for a couple of entirely new things—the first, obscenely expensive season Star Trek TOS from all of us kids to Dad, and a yet-unrevealed Mystery Item for my brother,* which the store I was damn sure it was at does not carry.

If this keeps up I may go off to Barnes and Noble to get it, despite their failure to use the word “Christmas” enough.

Anyway! I’ve got half the dolls changed into X-mas gear, including Laurel, whose dress surrendered after a valiant fight.** We’ve got a good spot for their puny tree. Now I just need to get some fairy lights for the room, and things will be all set!


*My brother has been known to read this blog, but Dad never does.

**The surrender was not unconditional. I had to concede the sleeves.

So one of the hazards of working at a Liberry: I have stacks of books all over my room.

At least I’m not buying them, though, and the space they take up ’round here is temporary. Man, I love me some Liberry.

Anyway, I’m sitting around reading books when I’m not trying to write them for the last couple of days, so not much bloggy thoughtfulness. Instead, you get a picture of Kyōko in her new school uniform:



I still need to get her some good socks.

I tried to model it after images of actual uniforms I found online. The pleats in the skirt were tremendous fun, but I think they already need ironing again.

Figures I do the short-sleeved one and now it’s winter, too.

Back to the books!

Bulletry!

• Charlie the Putty Tat is slowly getting used to my having moved her room downstairs. She’s back on the foot of my her bed, and hardly ever runs for her life when the air conditioner comes on anymore.
• Sadly, the room used to belong to her sister, Fern, who is much less polite—and a lot filthier, even with the recent bath. Ol’ Thundercat has tried sleeping on my bed, in my hamper, in the dolls’ bed, and on top of my shoes, and she knocks things over and barks a lot,* so I now have a closed-door policy.
• In a somewhat related story, the allergies are restless.  My eyes are leaky and sore, and my nose is starting to follow suit. So are the knees, which seem to be the congregation point for whatever crud I get.

Joann’s had a Labor Day weekend sale, and so I have spent the last few days in a frenzy of stuffmaking:

• Doll Stuff of course, remains entertaining. I’m working on clothes, including Kyouko’s school uniform and costumes for this year’s upcoming Halloween epic photostory. The costume I made ultimately went ker-fail, but I know why and will kick its ASS next time around. I’m also making Summer’s new hearing aid.
• Got some beadwork stuff to play with, including warm-tone wires like brass and copper. Silver’s nice, but give me orange, red, and yellow any day.
• Been eyeing a stack of T-shirts and fabric paint I’ve had sitting around. I’m trying to work out a really fancy design for a shirt with multiple conscripts on it, see.

In news from the world inside my head:

• Dweiji ran into the Princess** in the Chop Shop and, to my surprise, took an instant liking to her. The two are now a Mismatched Pair.
• Loke and Ghil are on the road to reconciliation as they explore the intricacies of interspecies betrayals, redemption, blame, and courtesy, by which I mean they get to watch a mob tear somebody’s head off. Naturally, there is healing all around.
• Triskale has just explained his credo—an exciting presentation on why he felt it obligatory to become a serial killer. The speech could have been enhanced by Powerpoint, but hey, you work with what you’ve got.

*Yes, barks. Thundercat’s not quite able to go “Woof,” but she tries.

**I haven’t given her a name in the years she’s been in my head—nothing seems to fit. For now, the Princess suffices.