A Little Light Rambling

  I haven't gotten much of anything done lately. The Giant Baby and I took turns having a bad cold. Then it was time to try to wean him off the antacids he's been on his entire life. We're supposed to try this every three months to see if he's grown out of reflux. He hasn't. Not only has he not grown out of it but the experience was so harrowing that right now as far as I'm concerned, he can take the antacids forever. Then, just as he was starting to seem more like his usual self, his Dad left him in a dirty nappy while I was at work and he got his first ever nappy rash and it was nasty. And he was miserable.
  All of this has made the Giant Baby uncharacteristically fussy and clingy. Even now I can't get him to nap in his cot. He will only nap in my arms, on the couch or in the car. Which limits what I can do at nap-time. I don't want to spread sewing stuff out and then have to madly scramble to put it away when he wakes up. Mostly because I'm pretty sure I'd miss something and he'd get hurt. I can't spread doll stuff all over the lounge room to take photos. Partly because turning enough lights on to take photos will wake him. Partly because if he wakes up, he will turn into a tornado of rage grabbing dolls and my camera and anything else he can reach.

Mega-Toddler! He'll hide the tv remote and then scream because you take too

long changing the channel.

  And he's turned into Mega-Toddler. Can't reach something? Screech. Can't find Mum? Screech. Don't want to do something? Screech. Want to do something? Screech. Every day he falls over or bumps into something at least once, gets told no, tries to do something he's not allowed to do or doesn't have the skills for yet or that isn't physically possible. And his response to all of these things at the moment is screaming. Which is super-fun.
  His Grandmother taught him to say please. I honestly had no idea he was old enough for manners. So now, if he wants something he shrieks "Ease!" in a voice that makes Elmo sound like Barry White. Even better, when he gets angry (usually because the first please didn't work) he'll keep yelling "please" but it sounds more and more like "arse" each time he says it until I start to wonder if he's going to turn into Father Jack Hackett from the tv show Father Ted. Although if I could teach him to say "drink", "girls", "feck", and "that would be an ecumenical matter." perhaps we'd have some kind of routine on our hands. The Giant Husband says this is not allowed.
  Meanwhile between the Giant Baby, housework, work-work, and everything else, by the time the Giant Baby goes to bed at night, I'm too tired to do more than scroll listlessly through my pinterest feed for five minutes before going to bed myself. So my projects have been temporarily put on hold.

  The dress for Not-Glinda in particular has hit a snag. The bodice is done. I need to make the skirt and attach it. Except I have no intention of hemming it by hand which is a problem. I can't use the sewing machine when the Giant Baby is sleeping because it wakes him. I can't use the sewing machine when the Giant Baby is awake. Because there is nowhere in the house that I can set up the sewing machine that he can't get to. . . actually since the doors in our house don't close properly, there's just nowhere he can't get to full stop. So it has to wait until there's a weekend when I'm not working and we don't have plans, when I can talk the Giant Husband into taking him somewhere, even the other end of the house would do.

  The Baby So Beautiful dolls are progressing. Slowly. I'm putting money aside for a new wig for the bald doll. I want screamingly red, wispy ponytails for her. I have a vague idea of what kind of clothes I want for her, but I want to see her finished with her new hair before I make my final decision. At the end of the day it will almost certainly be a simple, high waisted dress. I don't think I will try to make her clothes that disguise her injured hand after all and I think I'll go for something cute rather than something fashionable so it dates better.

  I recently bought a new play doll. A Shibajuku Girl doll. I want to write a review of her here because before I bought her the only reviews I could find of the line were Mum-blog reviews which more or less read "Amphetamine and Lobotomy received this doll for review. They both thought she was pretty. Amphetamine loves her long hair. Lobotomy hasn't stopped playing with the accessories since we opened the box. The end." Which is great but doesn't answer any of the questions I have. Like how is she different to other dolls? She's taller than other fashion dolls but is the extra height just her giant head? Can she wear other dolls clothes? What's her jointing like? What sort of quality are we talking about? How well made are her clothes? And most importantly do I like her? Strange as it may sound I don't know if I do or not. I'm intrigued. But I don't know what I think yet. Possibly because I haven't even had a chance to open the box yet. I have a few extra shifts at work this week, but if I survive that, the Giant Husband has promised to amuse the Giant Baby on the weekend so hopefully I can get that done then. And hem Not-Glinda's skirt.

And now back to the battlefield.

New doll! Tonner Deja Vu Anne De Toile

Not going to lie - I'm a little bit intimidated by how grown up she looks.

I'll bet her family never have to have toast for tea because

she forgot to defrost real food!

This is my first new doll in almost forever. . . nope, that's a lie. This is my first new ridiculously expensive doll in almost forever. Having a baby means that suddenly if you say "I'm going to buy a three hundred dollar doll.", instead of muttering "Whatever" and hoping you don't expect him to pretend to be interested, suddenly your husband laughs and laughs and laughs and laughs. And you laugh too because clearly it's a joke because the Giant Baby outgrows ALL of his clothes every twelve and a half minutes, so all your spare cash is spent on miniature clothing that doesn't even fit your dolls! (Seriously, the kid isn't even 18 months old yet and he's already wearing a kid's size 3!)

 But recently we got our tax refunds and made an agreement. He could buy a stupidly over-priced pair of gaming headphones, if I could buy a ridiculously expensive doll. And I surprised myself by immediately going to the Tonner website and ordering a Deja Vu doll. I've been fantasising for a couple of years now about how great it would be to have an Iplehouse BID or KID. I've been kicking myself for never buying a Bethany doll for my Helen Kish Chrysalis collection. But when I had the opportunity, I didn't hesitate. I ordered an Anne de Leger and even though it surprised me, I don't regret it one bit.

 When the Deja Vu dolls first appeared, I wasn't impressed. The storyline concept was kind of interesting but the dolls just didn't do it for me. (Also on the pages for each individual doll, Tonner used to have little paragraph long mini-stories. That seems to have vanished from the website and there are just extremely factual descriptions of the dolls.) Frankly, this face sculpt has always made me think of. . . a more inflatable kind of doll, if you get my meaning. I think it's supposed to look like the sort of face of a heroine on the cover of a romance novel. And while I can see that, the other thing is always my first thought.

Even now, most of the Deja Vu dolls, I feel pretty "Meh" about, but I really like the Anne de Leger character. Not her name so much, which I always misremember as Anne Legree, as in Simon Legree the villainous slave owner in Uncle Tom's Cabin. Probably not her story either (I think it was something about her suffocating because she locked herself in a trunk to surprise her lover, who never publicly acknowledged their relationship anyway) which makes her sound pretty dense and hopeless - but her clothes! Her lovely Georgian clothes. Afternoon Stroll and Countryside Visit are my absolute favourites but, oh well, I missed the boat on those ones. The one I have Anne De Toile was the only one available when I ordered mine.

 Anne took forever to get here, or maybe about ten days, time blurs, it's hard to tell. Waiting for the baby to go to sleep that day, so I could open her up was one of the hardest things I've done! This warning on the side of the box made me laugh.

With shipping and Paypal's crappy exchange rates, this doll cost me $350! You don't need to warn me!

If anyone under 14 tried to touch it, I would bite them!

(And if I was insane enough to give a $350 doll to a child, I would be too insane to read this!)

 Anne was covered with tissue, when I pulled it back, she looked like she'd had her neck broken.

Seeing this is what reminded me of the story of her locking herself in

a trunk, like a gigantic moron.

 Two little bits of card were on top of the tissue paper covering her. One is a little instruction card explaining how to remove her hands - because apparently not everyone has had an Ever After High or Monster High doll. The other is her certificate of authenticity which explains that she's an edition of 200 and a convention doll.

This will definitely be the first thing I lose!

 I have mixed feelings about this. Yay! I have an Anne doll! Yay! She's a special convention doll! And if you add in the amount it would cost to travel from Melbourne to America for a doll convention to the original cost of the convention and doll, there is no way I am ever going to be getting a convention doll from a convention. BUT I can't help feel, if I had gone to that convention, and bought a convention exclusive doll, I would be pretty annoyed if afterwards the same doll was made available to just everyone online. But it also makes me feel extra pleased with her.

Stuck to the inside of the box were three little plastic baggies.

The staple that held the hat in place, was through the hat, which made me swear, 

but I removed it carefully and I don't think you can tell.

 These held her shoes, earrings and hat. (Note - I realised after I took the photos for this that I've put the hat on the wrong side of her head. Don't care. Prefer it this way and keeping it this way.) 

For some reason I am a little disappointed by her shoes. I honestly don't know why, I just can't put my finger on it. But I still like them. Red shoes go with everything! Although I had a little trouble figuring out how to use the poly bands to hold them on.

The hat. . . well, the hat is a hat. I really don't know what else to say about it.

Then there are the earrings. I'm not a big fashion doll person. I don't really go in for grown-up dolls. And, I guess I'm not experienced with things like this. She's still not wearing her earrings. Because for the life of me, I cannot work out how to put them on! Yes, there's holes in her head. Yes, I would assume it was just like Barbie - stick the post in the hole and push. BUT when I try this they go in for about two millimetres then hit something inside the head. From the angle they're going in on, I'm pretty sure they're hitting the back of her ears and then I worry that if I try to force them, they'll end up sticking out the side of her head! Will, hopefully eventually work this out later, either jiggle them until they go in on a different angle or cut the posts shorter or something. Maybe.

On the upside with earring posts this long, if she ever became a spy or something

she could use these as shivs.

 I like her face more than I would have expected. Especially the fact that the facepaint is fairly neutral and muted. A doll with dramatic face paint is going to look out of place wearing a lot of things, but fairly neutral facepaint goes with almost everything. (And as I type this I'm realising something. I planned on displaying this doll. Just displaying her, not doing anything like redressing her. But so far in this post, I've pointed out that her shoes and facepaint will go with anything, which makes me suspect that part of my brain is planning something that it hasn't told me about.) My one quibble about her face is her eyelashes. Her incredible sky-high eyelashes. They reach right up to her eyebrows. But only in places. They're too long but they're also staggeringly uneven. Like a four year old cut them with a butter knife. I'm considering evening them out but I'm also considering how horrifically wrong that could go and wondering if I actually care that much.

Her left-eye in particular has very uneven lashes.

I'm also not hugely impressed by her hair. The colour is amazing but it's dry and producty and wiry and that bothers me. But I'm actually starting to realise I am incredibly fussy when it comes to doll hair and while I'm not in love with her hair, I can definitely live with it.

Anne in all her glory!

I don't think her dress is one of the more impressive Deja Vu dresses but it is lovely. I love these kinds of prints! There are lots of little ruffles and ruching (I love ruching!) and the lace is real, actual lace made from something other than scratchy, nylon mesh. Which is unusual to see anywhere these days. I love the tiny cameo! I love the sort of pompadour/bustle effect in the way the back is drawn up! I love the amount of detail that's gone into it! 

 I have two issues with this dress. The underskirt is an actual underskirt and goes all the way around (Yay!) but the back half of the underskirt (from the side seams back) is just cheap, white, lining fabric. I'm ok with that - makes the doll cheaper to produce and reduces bulk which can be a problem in layered outfits in small scales. What I'm not ok with is how far forward the lining fabric starts. The overskirt doesn't automatically cover all of the lining fabric. When you stand/pose her, you then have to fiddle around adjusting her overskirt so it covers the fake bit of underskirt.

Fake underskirt!

ANNNNND. . . still fake underskirt

This bothers me because it seems so lazy. If they'd made the patterned part of the underskirt just a couple of centimetres longer on each side, they could have avoided this altogether. I feel sure that at some point in the planning process someone must have brought this up and was probably told "Nah, don't worry about it, leave it." 

 But except for it making me feel a little grumpy and OCD, the underskirt/overskirt issue is really minor. Her sleeves on the other hand! I had a horrible time photographing this doll because I could not pose her arms! Seriously! Her sleeves end in gigantic frills, which have a layer of toile over a layer of stiffened tulle. The trouble with this was that if I posed her so her hands were pointing anywhere but down, she was attacked by the sleeve frills! It was like they'd become sentient and were out for revenge. And when I was done, I was so done with fighting her sleeves, that I kind of plonked her on a shelf rather than even trying to pose her nicely.

HELP! It's got my hand!

Who walks around with their hand like this anyway?!

 All in all, even though she's not perfect, I love this doll. While I have perhaps focused on her faults a tiny bit here, that's because her good points are so obvious to me that it doesn't occur to me to point them out. I'm starting to worry that she's going to move onto my way-to-long-list of dolls to make clothes for. . . actually maybe I could make a slightly more grown-up version of the dress I'm making for Glinda/Not Glinda for her. . .

And, as usual, some photo-spam to finish