Grail dolls and party plans.

 Since I spent so much time culling my doll collection, I'm making a conscious effort not to buy new dolls on a whim. Basically I would rather buy fewer dolls that I really like and stuff for them, than a trillion dolls that I'm going to get bored of quickly.

 But my first new doll of this year has arrived. (I'm not counting my Iplehouse dolls as FIRST because they haven't arrived yet.)

 A Shirley Temple doll, I got on EBay. I've got mixed feelings about her and I knew I would have. I've always wanted a Shirley Temple doll to make clothes for. I find Shirley Temple a bit "meh" but a lot of her clothes were great. My ideal Shirley doll would be a number 3 Little Darling painted to look like her. Some were made at some point, for a convention, I've seen them on EBay. But since I don't have unlimited money or the patience of a saint, that's not really an option.

 This is the Shirley Temple dress up doll. I wanted this doll desperately, when Danbury Mint released her, back in the 90s. Eventually my enthusiasm waned a bit. Actual owner pictures never looked as nice as promotional pictures. So when I finally found one for sale in Australia, I was in two minds. I wanted her and knew if I didn't buy her, it might be years  before I saw another one that didn't require international shipping and I would regret it. But I was pretty sure that if I got her, I would be disappointed.

 She's not "blow me away" amazing but (possibly because my expectations weren't high) she's much nicer than expected. Sure, from a lot of angles, she has a maniac, serial killer, stare, she looks like she fell asleep in a sunbed, and her wig isn't in fantastic condition. Her dress is clearly the ballet dress from the Baby take a bow film, and not a great rendition of it. I actually think her dress is from one of the porcelain Shirleys that Danbury Mint made, but I'm not sure.

I actually really do like her and since a few years ago, when the real Shirley's costume collection was auctioned, I bought a copy of the auction catalogue, I have plenty of pictures to work from when I do make her clothes.

 I'm also planning the Giant Baby's Rainbow Candy Birthday party. Ugh. Last year, he had a rainbow candy birthday cake amd ever since has wanted to have this birthday be a rainbow candy birthday. This is last year's cake

The Giant Baby wants to decorate cupcakes at his party. Which is fine. Except our oven is shit. I don't know where to buy blank premade cupcakes and I'm a cheapskate anyway. I'm also not going to ask someone else to make forty odd cupcakes because I'm not actually Satan. So today I did some experimenting.

I had read that you can cook cakes in an electric fry pan, and I can't remember if I've ever made a cake in our oven. So we made up a batch of cupcakes and cooked half in our oven and half in the electric fry pan.

The verdict? As Tiny would say "Oh dear!"

The ones from the oven came out burnt on top, slightly undercooked in the middle and hopelessly lopsided. But very yummy.

The ones from the electric fry pan didn't rise enough, didn't brown at all (obviously they wouldn't), and tasted weirdly eggy.

Gah. I think I'm going to have to get my silly self to Big W to get a microwave cupcake cooker and keep my fingers crossed that that actually turns out decent cupcakes.

Argh! Plague!

 I have made almost no progress on my crinoline petticoat. By almost no progress, I mean I have found a shop that sells corset boning and is getting in hoop wire (which is apparently an actual type of wire designed for petticoats), but I'm waiting for them to get hoop wire in before I order anything.

I haven't done any sewing. The day of my last post, I came down with a virus. I had a sore throat in the morning, by the end of the day, I could barely stand up. It was unpleasant.  Then, a week later, as I started to feel better, Tiny came down with the same thing. She had a fever of 40-41° (about 105 in farenheit) for days! It probably didn't help that at least one of those days the weather matched her fever. We got to spend most of one night in the most post apocalyptic emergency room I've ever seen. And then the baby insisted on keeping her hospital bracelet on for days. She's still under the weather even now and most of my time is comforting her.

 The Giant Baby started kindergarten this week. Because the baby's been sick, I haven't really been able to take full advantage of the break but he really seems to be enjoying himself and he looks adorable in his big sun hat, so that's good at least.

And I haven't really been just sitting on my bum while all this has been happening. I've been trying to sort out my fabric stash. My fabric stash WAS three huge plastic tubs and some old pillowcases, stuffed with fabric, in absolutely no order whatsoever. There were actual lengths of fabric, off cuts and remnants from various sources  and old and secondhand clothes all balled up together in a huge mound of chaos.

I've been trying to put all the bits of the same fabric together, unpicking the clothes, removing trims to save for later, throwing out any scraps that are smaller than my palm, folding everything neatly and putting it in zip lock bags.

 I'm about two thirds of the way done now. I'm just not sure how to divide it all up once I'm done. Whether to use my three big tubs or smaller boxes. Whether to divide it by colour or print or fabric or what. All I've decided for sure, is that it NEEDS to be divided somehow.

Hopefully I can update with something more productive and interesting soon.