Doll Collection Refresh - Baby So Beautiful

 You can be forgiven for not knowing what Baby So Beautiful dolls are. They were produced by Playmates for one year over 1995-1996. But they're one of my all time favourite play doll lines. Even when they came out, I was a teenager going through a "Dolls are not cool" phase. Even still, I dragged my best friend into a department store to check them out and we spent about an hour deciding which ones we'd want if we were little. As far as I know Baby So Beautiful were the original line. There was also Newborn Baby So Beautiful (which was smaller and younger) and Young Lady So Beautiful (who wore weird out of date ballgowns, up dos and fur stoles) but I'm pretty sure they both came later. Before I wrote this I tried to find more information about these dolls online, and was shocked to discover that there really wasn't any. I'm currently fighting the urge to buy every single one of these dolls that show up on ebay and build a database of faces, eye colours, hair styles and everything else. Unfortunately if I did that the Giant Husband would probably have me commited.

 Baby So Beautiful was a toddler doll with a similar concept to the original Cabbage Patch Kids in that there was an almost infinite variety of skin tones, face moulds and paint, eye colours, hair colours and styles, and outfits. This meant that no two dolls were exactly the same. Each doll came with a "Baby book" (a leaflet printed on magazine paper with spaced to record information about your doll) with "So Beautiful Firsts" printed on the cover, a pink plastic hairbrush, and an opalescent white plastic  "locket" on a gold coloured cord to keep a picture in. The tag-line was "The most beautiful baby in the world is your baby!" and like a lot of 1980s doll lines the pretence was that the child was adopting the doll.
 The dolls themselves are impressive for a play doll. The vinyl is good quality, with realistic inset acrylic eyes, and applied eyelashes. Their hair is lovely, not plasticy like most play dolls, and their outfits are detailed and well made. Two things really stand out to me though. The hair is wigged rather than rooted and the eyes are stationary - to me both these things are unusual in a play doll. But all in all, looking at these dolls now, I can only assume that they were discontinued because they were too well made and high production costs made them unprofitable. As far as I know all of the dolls produced were female.
 I have three of these dolls. Two were purchased at a toy shop in a small country town about ten years after they went out of production, the other is a rescue doll from a charity shop. I'm going to be working on these at the same time as my Patience dolls. Mostly because when I had a look at the rescue doll, she had the look of a doll in need of urgent care.

 Kathryn was my first Baby So Beautiful. And to me, she embodies everything that I remember about the line. This is the face that I remember the most, this is one of the few outfits I've seen more than once, this is the hairstyle I remember seeing. Her eyes are beautiful and clear, she has a cute ringletted hair style, and a sweet outfit. Hers is the best outfit of my three dolls. A pink blouse with lace trim to the collar and sleeves, a floral romper suit with lace frills across the backside, lace trimmed white anklet socks, delicate white shoes (with more lace) and a hair ribbon - surprisingly made of lace!

A sweet, little face

 She doesn't need much done for her. A quick dust, her clothes need a wash and she's lost a shoe. I'm pretty sure it's in a box of Barbie accessories in my wardrobe but haven't had a chance to look for it. Her hair is particularly dusty and her ringlets have loosened on one side. So maybe wash her hair (I hate washing doll hair) and try to fix up her curls.

Dusty, messy curls.

 Her shoes are the only thing about her that concerns me. They're that kind of fake leatherette stuff that's fabric with an incredibly thin vinyl layer over the top. It's horrible stuff. The vinyl always goes melty and peely or sticky and gross. The one shoe i currently have is discoloured and already starting to peel near her big toe. I want to clean it, but I don't want to make the damage worse or clean it with anything that's going to make it deteriorate faster than it already is. So, I'm kind of in two minds about whether I should touch it at all.

  Next is Cecily. Cecily has a different face mould, which I equally love and hate. From some angles her opened mouth expression makes her look slack-jawed and stupid, from other angles it's a look of wonder. I love the small dimple in her chin and her strangely high eyebrows. But I don't particularly like the colour of her face paint. It's too pink but also too dark, but I forgive it because it goes nicely with the colour of her outfit. She's the only one of my three dolls that still has her locket (none of my three still have their brushes or baby books.) but she used to have a headband which I can't find (and I'm pretty sure it's gone for good.) and it's possible she once had a blanket. I say possible because I know that I once had a pink doll's blanket bound in the same fabric as her dress. But I can't remember if it was her blanket or not.

Close up of Cecily's eyes.

  Cecily's dress is like a reject from the wardrobe of Little House on the Prairie. A pink on cream, floral, twill dress, with a double collar - one layer pink, one white; and bootees in the same fabric with bows on the front and white fuzzy pantaloons. Compared to Kathryn's outfit, this seems really lazy and a bit boring.

Cecily's dress in it's full boring glory.

 This doll's hair puzzles me a little. It looks at first glance as though it's in two plaits or pigtails, tied with ribbons. But when I looked at her more closely I saw short hairs sticking out all over her head. At first I panicked thinking her hair was somehow decaying and falling out. Then I realised she was still wearing her original hair net which comforted me a little, assuming if anything was decaying it was more likely to be the hair net. Having looked at her more closely now, I think it's actually not anything decaying. Rather it looks like her hairstyle is actually a short bob with one long strand hanging down on each side in a curl and the short pieces are the ends of the bobbed part.

 Untidy, sticky outy hair.

Faux pigtails

 Cecily needs a dust. Her clothes need a wash and she's somehow gotten a few grubby marks here and there that need cleaning off. I'm not touching her hair. If I'm right about her hairstyle, once the hairnet is taken off her hair will be impossible to keep nice.

The third doll, Kirralee is from a charity shop. At some point she has been the victim of a dog attack. The fingers of her left hand are gone, she has a small hole in one of her feet and very faint bite marks allover. When I got her she was bald and naked with no lip paint. At the moment she's dressed in an old My Child dress, her underpants, shoes and socks are stuff I happened to have lying around that fitted her. Her wig was stolen from a porcelain doll whose head was smashed. Her dress and her wig fit badly. The dress is too short. The wig is too big.

Kirralee's beautiful golden eyes and unfortunate mouth.

 But the biggest problem is her lips. I don't know what I used to paint them but it was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. It's bleeding into her vinyl. The paint needs to be removed before it ruins her face. Hopefully I can remove some of the staining with a magic eraser but I'm not overly optimistic. Then she will need a new mouth.
 Other than that she could do with a good clean. She needs clothes that fit, if possible something that will conceal this. . .

A new wig would be amazing but that will depend on whether or not I can get the Giant Husband to agree to the expense, which probably means it won't be as nice as I would like. Or possibly something could be done to make her current wig fit better. Hopefully I can get her looking a bit better than she does at present.

Doll Collection Refresh - Wilde Imagination Patience

  A lot of my dolls have been in storage for quite a few years now. All of my dolls have been neglected for the last few years. Most of the dolls that have been in storage have recently been taken out of storage for display. And one thing that's glaringly obvious is that almost all of my dolls are in need of attention or help of some kind. Some only need a quick dust. Some need more extensive help. Either way I'm going to do a series of posts, introducing them here, along with what they need done. Then, unless I completely lose interest, I will hopefully be able to do follow up posts once they've been fixed up a bit. I can't guarantee they will necessarily receive help in the order that they're introduced. But I am hoping I will get them all looking like their best selves eventually.

 I'm starting with my Patience dolls, mostly because Wonderland Patience has been sitting on my shelf where I can't possibly miss her. Patience is the product of Tonner's Wilde Imagination and she's really quite adorable. She has a cartoonish, over-sized head and her eyes move independently.  As in independently of each other. One eye can be pointing far right, while the other points far left. This was a cute novelty at first but I have to say, I am completely over the eye mechanism. It's almost impossible to pose her without one or the other eyes going wonky. My other grievance with these dolls is their hair! Both of mine have rooted hair and it's horrible. Badly curled, plasticy fibre, ridiculous amounts of product in it. Both of my dolls need something done with their hair.

Wonderland Patience

 My Wonderland Patience really doesn't need much done. I'm washing her clothes because they've gotten a little dusty, the whole doll needs a dust. But the more pressing question is her hair. I was incredibly disappointed with her hair when I got this doll. The promotional pictures showed a doll with neat ringlets, the actual doll had a messy tangle of loose curls, stiff and crackly with product. I washed out the product and curled her hair around drinking straws into nice ringlets. Problem solved. . . . until one day the Giant Husband let the Giant Baby play with her to keep him quiet. Thankfully there was no damage to the doll, but two of the ringlets on one side of the doll's head, have been completely fluffed out. I really wasn't sure what to do about this. I know that simply recurling those two ringlets without messing up the rest of her hair is going to be beyond my abilities. I bought a wig, thinking I would simply rewig her. But I actually really like the yellowy blonde of her hair, the wig I bought doesn't have the same yellowy tones to it and so far I haven't been able to go through with this.

Ringlets

Ex-ringlets

 So as i see it, I have three options.
1. Wash her hair and straighten it.
2. Recurl her hair. (Ugh. Can't remember the details of the technique I used but do remember it was a pain to do.)
3. Rewig her - either with the wig I bought or buy a new one.

 Since I can't decide which thing I want to do, I'm possibly doing all three! I'm going to wash her curls out first. If I'm not happy with that, I can recurl it. If I'm still not happy, then it's time for a new wig.

Patience as not-Glinda

 My other Patience is Patience as Glinda. She needs a little more done because I really don't like her original outfit. So much so that she's been naked for the last two years, so I don't have to look at it. I would rather have her naked on a shelf than wearing that dress. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with it. If you like pink and puffy and sparkling and frilly, it's probably a dream. I simply don't like pink, puffy, sparkling or frilly that much. But I haven't been able to decide what to make her. Something with a big skirt will balance out her head and look better. And when it comes to details, it doesn't need to be overly detailed. Because her features are a little cartoonish too much detail might look funny. I would describe this as Illustration quality rather than Portrait quality. Some details can be omitted and the scale of buttons and trim doesn't have to be perfect. But I still need to decide how to dress her. When is she? Who is she? At the risk of sounding insane I think I'm having trouble because I haven't really bonded with her at all. Most of my dolls have a sort of character to me. This doll - I have no idea who she is. She's not Glinda. She doesn't have a name. She's no one.

 I also don't like her hair. Actually there are some rolls at the front sides, that I like quite a lot. But the main body of the hair is tangled not-curls, crispy with product. I don't like that.

Rolls to hold hair off face - I like this.

Crunchy birds nest hair - I don't like this.

So to summarise this doll needs-

1. Hair washed and tamed.

2. Clothes.

3. A name.

Hopefully there'll be more from me soon.

I really just don't know right now. . .

 I finished the Giant Baby's sunsuit about three weeks ago. I've been waiting for a day warm enough to photograph him in it but I've finally accepted that I finished it just as the weather turned too cold to wear it. Not sure what to do with it now. Give it to someone else for next Summer? Hold onto it in case I ever have another giant baby? I really don't know. Anyway this is the finished product

I ended up faking the buttons. It really does up with press-studs but I thought the buttons looked nice so sewed them over where the press-studs are sewn on.

Two weeks ago was the Giant Baby's first birthday party. I was expecting a simple family lunch but his Dad had other ideas. There ended up being quite a few guests, goody bags, and photo boards, and more food than most families would eat in a week! I would have preferred not to go all out for a baby, not out of meanness but because he's a baby. He too young to enjoy parties, he just got annoyed because his routine had been interrupted and followed me around demanding food and hugs, then got stressed because he was tired but there was too much going on for him to sleep. I think this picture sums up how we were both feeling by the end of the day

 Sadly that's the only photo I have of his cake. I agonised for weeks, scoured pinterest and my Mum's old cook books to learn the theory of using fondant icing. Unfortunately I decided not to bother doing a practice run and while the finished product was ok, I really wasn't satisfied with it.

 Before I move on to my next project I have to make shoes for the Giant Baby. Not because I want to. Because I don't have much choice. He's just started walking and he really needs something to protect his feet. He's not ready for hard soled shoes but pre-walkers and first walkers are all too small for him. We tried buying him a pair of those ultra-fashionable baby moccasins sized for a 2-3 year old. They are lovely, and beautifully made and fit really nicely BUT they're made of extremely fine leather, almost like a chamois, and after a week of crawling around on the sandpapery concrete of our yard, he'd already worn holes in them! I will also say I don't think the shoes were at fault here, they're clearly better suited to sitting in a pram at a cafe than the punishment we subjected them to. Long story short, baby needs a hardy foot covering that isn't going to damage his feet, and it looks like I'm going to have to make them.

 Meanwhile I'm trying to decide what I want to do next. There are so many things that I want to do and narrowing down the options is hard.
 I want to finish my dollhouse. It's mostly done. And given the amount of money and time I've invested in it, it really seems important to finish it. Also there are boxes of dollhouse furniture waiting to go into it, and once it's finished and the furniture is in, that will free up some storage space. But it's hard finding a safe place to use a hot glue gun (you need one to attach the roof tiles) with a ridiculously tall one year old stumbling around the place.
 I have a Dollmore Zihu, that I wanted to make into Claudia from Interview with a vampire. Her face-up is done but I haven't finished her body blushing or made any clothes for her yet. But first I'm going to have to work out how to spray her with Mr Super Clear to fix the colours without doing permanent damage to the baby's lungs.
 I have a Luts doll put away that I wanted to make into the Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia of Spain, as a child. And this presents the same Mr Super Clear problem.
 My newest Kish doll is only half dressed. I made her a skirt but never made a top to go with it. I really need to fix that.
 I have a Living Dead doll put away who had half of her face paint removed in order to change it and she needs a dress. . . but I'm not actually one hundred per cent sure where she is.
 I have a Wilde Imagination Patience as Glinda who I really want to make clothes for because I really, really do not like the Glinda oufit but I can't decide what to make for her. I keep considering making her a Little Women era outfit, then she could match in with my Patience as Alice, but then just as I decide to do that, I change my mind and think that would make them too matchy-matchy.
 I want to dress up my Kish dolls as characters from Little House on the Prairie. This idea interested me so much about a year and a half ago that I've got sketches of the outfits I was going to make for Mary, Laura and Carrie, and I think I even have fabric put aside for this. But then I always try to start planning something for a Nellie to wear and get a sort of writer's block.
 I want to make a entire Edwardian wardrobe for one of my Kish dolls. Her name is Sugar Plum Wren but I call her Emily because she reminds me of the character in the book "Emily of New Moon." And I can't look at her without thinking what a fantastic Edwardian child she would make.

 In particular I want to make this dress. I have loved this dress since I first found it in one of my father's books, when I was nine. But I'm not sure that I'm technically up to the construction, also as the Kish dolls are more or less waistless, I'm not sure I could get it to look right. I've got some ideas on how to put it together but I'm definitely not confident.

 So, at the end of the day, I have too many ideas (at least ten times as man as I've put down here) and so far whenever I try to settle on any individual project my brain suddenly becomes completely unwilling to come up with ideas for that project, but is happy to concoct three or four new ones. So, I'm going back to making these horrible baby shoes, because I have to, and to think about what my next project will be.

Progress Report: Plagues, Beautiful babies and Video editing

  So, how much progress have I made on the sunsuit? None at all. The Giant Baby and I have both been sick. Nobody ever told me how terrifying a baby can be coughing up snot. I've been up half the night for over a week just in case he chokes to death. The practical part of my brain tells me that's super unlikely, but it's hard to listen to the practical part of your brain when you're holding a baby that's coughing and gagging like he's intent on dying.

  Meanwhile the Bonds Baby Search has started for this year.  What's that? Bonds make underwear and basic baby clothes. I love their baby onesies. Why? Because I'm a little OCD. Bonds is more expensive than say Kmart brand but there's one big difference. If you have two onesies, both striped, one a six dollar one from Kmart, one a twenty five dollar one by Bonds, what's the biggest difference?  If any of the stripes match at the seams on the Kmart one, it's purely accidental. With the Bonds onesie all of the stripes will match up on the separate pattern pieces at the seams. I love that! Of course, that's not enough for the Giant Husband to be willing to spend the extra money on Bonds but at the moment almost all of the Giant Baby's onesies are Bonds because almost nobody else makes onesies larger than a size 0 and he's a size 1 now.

 Every year Bonds holds an Australia wide "Baby search", where people submit photos of their babies and the winners get the chance to be in Bonds advertisements for the next year. It's not something to be taken seriously, it's a bit of fun and free models and publicity for Bonds. And if you have a kid under three, you enter them, because that's just what you do. But you don't expect them to win. Mainly because there are roughly 60,000 kids entered so the odds are not stacked in your favour.

  The Baby Search has come under some criticism over the last few years. People complain that the "People's choice" section, which is based on Facebook votes, is just a popularity contest. I'm not arguing with that. It is. Anything that involves Facebook is a popularity contest. But I don't think it's something to complain about. And more realistically, from the point of view of the company, it's a way of making the general public feel like they're involved without actually giving them any real control.

  The far bigger complaint is that it's "a beauty contest for babies." I'm definitely not going to argue with that. But I also don't have a problem with it. They're babies. What else can you judge them on? Their knowledge of Cold War era Eastern European politics? I have no problem with the concept that kids should be judged on achievement rather than looks. But these are babies. They shouldn't know that they're entered in the competition at all, much less whether they win or not. Quite frankly if someone has told their toddler that they're in this competition, whether or not they've won and explained it often enough that the child understands and feels inadequate because they haven't won . . . that sounds like a messed up situation but to me that sounds more like some pretty messed up parenting than an evil contest. And even the concept of rewarding achievement is weird to me. As a kid, I won a lot of certificates at school, but from the age of eight or nine, I was aware that I wasn't trying anywhere near as hard as the other kids. So, is that fair? Giving awards based on who did it best rather than who tried the hardest? Also, at the end of the day, if I was going to not win something, I would much rather a looks based contest "Sorry, you weren't the prettiest." to a personality based contest "Sorry, we all think you're a jerk."

  Anyway, rant over, the point was that the Giant Baby needed a photo to enter the contest. I planned on taking one specially. Except by the time I found out about it, he was sick. At the moment, it's not easy to photograph the baby. He doesn't sit still any more and now if I put up a backdrop he just rips it down. I tried for a week to take a decent photo of him, but it just wasn't working. In the end I gave up and used a photo I had taken just before the competition started. I was about to enter him when the Giant Husband reminded me there was a video section this year and said he'd like me to enter the baby in that too.

  I've never filmed anything before but I kind of assumed it would be the same as taking photos. No. Only needed a few seconds of footage but getting the baby to face the camera for more than a heartbeat was difficult. For photos I hold a digi-bird where I want him to look. That didn't work. It's ok for a still shot but with video, it meant I had a lot of footage of the baby smiling, then screeching because he wanted me to give him the digi-bird. Tried putting the digi-bird away, and got a lot of footage of the baby throwing himself at the poor dog, with my voice in the background saying "Let go of the dog!"
 
  In the end I got some ok footage by putting the tablet on the floor with the forward facing camera on and a digi-bird on the floor in front of it. Then came the nightmare of editing the footage down to fifteen seconds so I could put it on Instagram. I didn't think that would be a problem. My copy of Photoshop Elements came with Premiere Elements which is video editing software. Which I have never used before, have no idea how to use and nearly had a nervous breakdown using. Firstly it rotated all my videos ninety degrees and I couldn't work out how to rotate them back and then I don't know the file formats for videos so it took me ten thousand years by trial and error to find a format to save it in that both my tablet and then Instagram would recognise! I am definitely sticking to still photos from now on.

  So, the Giant Baby is entered. I have possibly taken putting his entry together a little too seriously but that was more because I didn't want people thinking I had done a half-arsed job of it than actually expecting him to win. As there are already ten thousand kids entered just in his section (boys in his age group) I think I would actually fall off my chair and probably need a doctor, if he was even shortlisted.

  And now that that's all done and we're both nearly better, it's time for me to get back to work and finish this sunsuit.

Project One : Sunsuit for a Giant Baby

Giant Baby in a Giant Sunsuit

This came about for a couple of reasons. I'm not the sort of person that makes clothes for humans, simply because buying fabric is more expensive by far than buying clothes. This may not be true in other countries but in Australia it is definitely the case.

 I got a shock when the baby started needing a size one. All the places that I shop for the baby have babywear up to a size two and kidswear that starts at size one, so I was looking forward to size one, I thought I would have a lot more choice. But it doesn't work that way. Because, of the places I shop for the baby, there is almost no babywear larger than a size 0 and almost no kidswear smaller than a size 3! For every five racks of clothing there will be maybe one individual item in a size 1 or 2! Which means instead of going "Oooo! That's cute! I'll buy that!" or "That's cheap! I'll buy that!", shopping for the baby is now a case of "Well, that exists, I guess I have to get it." And even still, two months later he only has about a quarter of the amount of clothes he had in every other size. (And about half of that is a size too small)

 But when I was eight months pregnant I went insane. I looked through the things we had prepared for the baby and got ridiculously upset because I had only bought fitted sheets for his cot. In real life I had done that on purpose, all the advice at the moment seems to be to put babies to bed with just a fitted sheet and a sleep bag. (We use Gro-bags and I love them.) But pregnant me forgot this and promptly went out and bought three matching manchester sets for the cot. Fitted sheet, flat sheet and pillowcase, one even has a matching blanket. So, I decided to make sunsuits out of the flat sheets.

Sunsuit pattern

 The pattern I used is from an Enid Gilchrist pattern book. These were released in Australia, first by the Argus newspaper (which no longer exists) and later by New Idea (a woman's magazine), from the late 1940s through to the 1980s. Although the clothes in the 1980s ones look funny because the patterns are all designed for woven fabric but for some reason the samples they've photographed all seem to be made from t-shirt material. I haven't said which book it's from because of the ones I have, this pattern is in most of them.

 These patterns all include seam allowances but since our baby is a Giant Baby, I pretended they didn't and cut the leg holes a little bit bigger. Also I ignored the suggested trimming and cut the appliques off the sheets I was using and used those to trim the front. 

 I made one right away and he's gotten a fair amount of use out of it, but I started making a second one and it's still sitting on my desk half finished. Why? Because I ran out of hammer on press studs and couldn't find anywhere that sold them so I could buy more. Because I think sew on press studs look messy on human clothes. (I have no issue with using them on doll clothes.) And I still haven't learnt how to make button holes.

 I've decided finishing the second sunsuit will be my first project. Otherwise by the time I finish it it will be too cold to wear it and the baby will have grown out of it anyway. At the moment, as I see it, I have two choices - I can learn to make buttonholes (they can't be that hard, my sewing machine does them automatically, and I really should know how to do this by now.) OR I can cheat by using sew on press studs and just sew buttons on the outside over where the press studs are sewn on to cover the stitches. I'm not sure which I am going to do yet.

The Jolly Green Giant and Me

 I have a giant baby. Nobody quite understands what that means. He doesn't have any kind of medically diagnosed gigantisism (if that's even a word) or anything, but he's a gigantic. And nobody understands what that means. When I say that he's a giant baby, people assume he's overweight and say helpful things like "Don't worry, once he learns to walk, the weight will fall right off him." Except he's not fat. He's just enormous. He's only nine months old, but he has less than five centimetres (two inches) to go before he will be half my height! And I'm not particularly short. I'm on the shorter side of average but I'm not short enough for it to even be interesting. The baby isn't the only giant here either. My brother and my partner both live here and they're both over six feet tall. So I'm outnumbered on two counts by boys and by tall people. Even the cat's a boy and since the baby is already over two and a half feet tall, it won't be long until I'm the shortest person in the house again.

Giant Baby!

 Meanwhile having a giant baby also means I'm trapped at home most of the time. I'm only working one day a week because my partner thinks it's still 1953, and one of the problems of only having one income is that unless it's a good one (and it really is not) there's never any money. And I am bored. Don't get me wrong the giant baby is great. I love the giant baby more than anything, anywhere, ever but I'm not a stay at home with a baby kind of person. I need to be doing something all the time. I, quite frankly, am a workaholic - although don't confuse that with ambition. I will forever be a disappointment to my parents because the only ambitions I have ever had are for peace and quiet and being left alone as much as possible. Being a workaholic that loves routine is hard when you're at home with a baby most of the time. Firstly, I've found that having a baby seems to mean you're rushing all the time to get stuff done. But when you sit down at the end of the day and think about it, it really feels like you haven't achieved anything. And while babies as a general rule like routine too, they also take a demonic delight in destroying the routine sometimes. But worse yet, just as I settle into a new routine and start to make it work for me, he outgrows it!

 Which brings me to the point of this blog. Which is partially to give me somewhere to ramble or rant if I need to (I always think you're better off having a bit of a rant if something's annoying you, than hiding it and eventually snapping and putting rat poison in the family dinner) but also it's a place where I plan to keep track of my projects. I used to always have a thousand projects on the go. But the last year or two, through illness and working and baby I haven't really had time for that stuff. And now I've decided I need to get back to that. Partly because my projects were usually fairly girly - hopefully an antidote to all the boy in this house and also just as something I'm doing for me. Because I want to. Because since the baby was born I really haven't done anything just for me.

 Like with everything else I'm being pretty unambitious with this. I plan on choosing a project (a lot of them will be things I've started ages ago but never got around to finishing) and giving myself a month to complete it. Hopefully I can work faster than that but if not, no pressure. I have a half-built dollhouse that needs finishing, dolls that need clothes and other things done to them, a baby that constantly needs new clothes, I want to learn to make doll's shoes, there's some cooking stuff I want to try (mostly baking and lollies) and about a thousand other things I want to do. If the giant baby will let me.

I'm pretty sure he's laughing at the idea of me being allowed to do

anything that doesn't directly involve him.