Everything goes well . . .

The Giant Baby has had all of his hearing tests for the moment and seen all of his specialists and his hearing is steadily improving. Basically whatever fluid was trapped in his ears is slowly draining away. He's going to have to have regular hearing tests to make sure the problem doesn't return but for now he's going to be fine.

And he is picking up new words. "No" is still his favourite but over the last week he's added "mine" and "don't" to his repertoire. And he's finally started actually calling his dad "Dad". His speech therapist (who he loves and keeps trying to drag me back to her office) thinks he'll probably catch up on his own and so he doesn't have to have another appointment with her for another three months.

I delude myself how much easier it would be if he could talk. "Would you like yoghurt or an apple?" "Do you want to watch Toy Story or Frozen?" "Do you want the blue cup or the orange cup?" Even though I know that most two year olds are psychotic little dictators that will specifically ask for one thing and then freak out because they actually wanted the other thing. At least this way I can pretend he's freaking out because I didn't understand and not because he's a mad person.

I'm seriously considering learning Dianna Effner's eye painting techniques. I've always wanted to be able to do more with my dolls and I'm a big fan of her work. But I'm having trouble finding affordable dolls to practice on. I need a doll with painted eyes and molded eye sockets (like Barbie but preferably bigger) but literally all of the dolls available here seem to have inset eyes or flat faces with decal eyes. I'm thinking of resorting to Ebay and getting some second hand Lil Miss or Dolly Surprise dolls. For now I got to practice my fantastic dolly skills at work last week when someone uncovered a naked, headless El Cheapo Barbie in a cupboard.

She's stunningly beautiful now!

Almost every shop near us has posters in the window at the moment advertising an upcoming Stevie Nicks concert at one of the local wineries. This is driving me mental. I haven't listened to her music in years now but from the age of four to about twenty-five, I would have given my right arm to go to that. And for that reason I kind of want to go. But at the same time I know that the winery concerts tend to be a little disappointing. A friend of mine goes to see INXS every year and every year she says the same thing. "It was a great day out, but it wasn't really worth going for the music." Which is pretty much what I hear from everyone that goes to these things. So as someone that doesn't drink alcohol (I know! I could lose my Australian citizenship for admitting that but I'm too much of a control freak to enjoy it) and doesn't like crowds, I'm not sure that I would enjoy it enough to justify spending two hundred dollars on tickets. But I also worry that if I don't go, I'll regret it.

Last weekend I got one of the Our Generation accessory sets thinking the scale would be right for my 14 inch dolls. I chose a beach set, thinking that when I take photos of the sundresses I've made this month, I can use them as props. I don't have a picture of the set yet and haven't checked the scale against my dolls yet but most of it looks like it will work. If it does, there may be more of these in my future. (Especially since I just got a Kmart gift card!) Weirdly it looks more likely that some things are going to be too small for my dolls rather than too big. For example, there's a sandcastle that looks to me more like Barbie scale than 14 or 18 inch doll scale!

I finally ordered a Wellie Wisher doll. I kept talking myself out of it because to make an international order with American Girl, you have to do it by phone. I hate talking on the phone. AND frankly time zones are a pain in the neck to figure out, especially if you're incorporating things like daylight savings time. AND then there are international dialling codes . . . Ugh. Yeah, turns out those things are easy to google and were probably just excuses not to have to talk on the phone. Hopefully she'll get here soon.

Last week I discovered that shirring isn't even vaguely as scary as I've been imagining it to be. I had poured over tutorials online and lots of them said it wasn't scary. None of them pointed out that it is literally just sewing straight lines with your sewing machine! It probably wouldn't even be noticeable if the lines weren't quite straight. Although it's possible that I just lucked out by having a sewing machine that likes shirring. Either way it only took me twenty five minutes to make a coffee, wind a bobbin with elastic, do a test run, shir a dress and finish sewing the remaining seams on the dress! I'm sure I could still play around with different stitch lengths, a better brand of elastic and different tensions to perfect it but I could already do it competently on my first try so it can't be too hard! The biggest issue I had was that nobody local had the Gutterman's shirring elastic in stock so I was using an incredibly cheap brand. (The only one I could find.) And every tutorial ended with ironing the shirring to shrink it up more. I couldn't do that because even using my iron's lowest setting my elastic was melty burning and marking the fabric and smelling like death!

 As for the sundresses, I put on some finishing touches Thursday. Currently I have a pile of ten dresses made from the sundress patterns I made. Hopefully I can get photos taken of them on actual dolls on Tuesday.

I'm also trying to work out the best way to get the finished patterns on here in a printable format that takes into account that the US uses a different paper size to the rest of the world. Where to host the PDF file and what size to make it. If I use US paper sizes, it won't print right anywhere else. If I use the international standard, it won't print right in the US. I'm also avoiding thinking about that because it's confusing. Life was so much easier before I knew not everywhere uses A4 paper! At the moment I'm pretty sure I'm just going to take the smaller length and width measurement from each so it will print as smaller than a full page on either paper size.

And since this post is already all over the place, I'm going to leave it here.